Big Sur, Mail, and Smart Groups

[Computer Bloke]

I have a client with a brand new MacBook Air M1 running macOS 11.3. It's a lovely machine and a huge step up from her previous one, but it has one small problem.

The client's workflow involves sending quite a lot of mail to quite a lot of contact groups which she's carefully set up using Smart Groups, filtering by things like location, star sign (yes, I know), and so on. This works perfectly in El Capitan but Mail in Big Sur only recognises conventional contact groups, not Smart Groups.

The workaround is to expand the Smart Group in Contacts and then drag the expanded list over into Mail. This works but it's ugly, error-prone and never had to be done before.

Google seems to think that this is a bug that came in with Catalina and has never been fixed. Is Google wrong, and is there a better way?

 

[timeshifter]

One way it might work, *if* it would work - a virtual machine. On Intel based Macs it's a piece of cake to run a prior macOS in a VM. I've been Googling but not confident you can do that with the M1.

 

[Markverhyden]

Purportedly Parallels has a M1 compatible version so you could run earlier macOS versions. The good news is Parallels comes with a free 30 day trial.

Parallels Desktop for Mac with Apple M1 chip

Best way to run Windows on Mac - Parallels Product Blog - Run Windows, Linux, and more on your Mac. Helpful tips and tricks, Apple macOS and Mirosoft Windows news

www.parallels.com

 

[timeshifter]

I've heard about people running Windows in a VM on the M1, but it has to be an ARM version of Windows. So it makes me wonder if prior macOS releases could run.

"More than 100,000 M1 Mac users tested the Technical Preview of Parallels Desktop 16 for M1 Mac and ran Microsoft’s Windows 10 on ARM Insider Preview, as well as tens of thousands of different Intel-based Windows applications—including Microsoft Office for Windows, Microsoft Visual Studio, SQL Server, Microsoft PowerBI, and MetaTrader. "

 

[Markverhyden]

I've heard about people running Windows in a VM on the M1, but it has to be an ARM version of Windows. So it makes me wonder if prior macOS releases could run.

"More than 100,000 M1 Mac users tested the Technical Preview of Parallels Desktop 16 for M1 Mac and ran Microsoft’s Windows 10 on ARM Insider Preview, as well as tens of thousands of different Intel-based Windows applications—including Microsoft Office for Windows, Microsoft Visual Studio, SQL Server, Microsoft PowerBI, and MetaTrader. "

I've not bothered looking into their new chip. So it looks like they've dumped the discreet component system and have gone whole hog on the SoC concept. Which is no surprise since it's what they plan to use everywhere. ARM is an SoC as well so I'm not too surprised they've been able to shoe horn that in. But no earlier Apple Desktop OS is designed to run on an SoC.

 

[timeshifter]

Yes, there’s a lot to PoE about the new M1 Macs, performance, battery life, all purported to excellent. Intel is apparently so nervous they hired Justin Long (“I’m a Mac” guy from the old ads).
But backward and legacy compatibility is not a plus.

(edit: first sentence should read there’s a lot to like about the new M1 Macs,... don’t know how PoE was in place of like)