Any brave souls tried Catalina on your DAW machine?

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

I would like to offer a dissonant opinion to the one that is emerging in this thread, and that is one of calling bullshit on developers who are not ready for Catalina. The narrative they present us with is of this sudden difficult "situation" they now find themselves in, that will require our "support" and our "understanding" because Apple -- for reasons that are absolutely inexplicable -- made changes to their OS yesterday.

Apple did not change their platform yesterday. They seeded the beta for Catalina in the first week of June. And yet I'm getting all of these messages from plugin developers who are "advising me" to not upgrade my entire OS. Translation: Ignore the hundreds of security patches -- some of which are quite substantial -- the new features, the bug fixes, and everything else. Just hold on all that until we can get our act together for our EQ plugin that hasn't seen an update in five years.

UAD did this little dance with Mojave and it was laughable. They seriously acted as if they had absolutely no idea that anything about the audio subsystem was changing. Total nonsense. Their hardware was completely inoperable for months because they didn't have their shit together -- not because Apple sprung something on them. Xcode had been available for months. Mojave had been available for months. In fact, I'm sort of expecting an email from them. Or maybe they learned their lesson? I almost dropped their entire platform. Steinberg (hardly a small independent developer) did the same thing with Cubase. "Thank you for your understanding." Give me a break.

Apple is hardly perfect, and I could write a post a lot longer than this one about that. But good grief, if I get one more email from a giant audio company asking me to "support them" during this difficult time . . . You've got to be kidding me. What you're actually doing is proclaiming the many ways in which you care more about moving product than good engineering and QA. And since it's often the same suspects every time this comes around, I'm starting to understand this little game of "who's ready and who isn't" as way to cull my plugin folder.

I'd be curious to know what your must-have-now Catalina features that would stop you waiting for a little while.

[fmr]

To an outsider "the Apple world" looks like a never-ending carnival, always on the move, trying to keep the buzz going, collectively campaigning to turn any negative news into positive, restrictions into freedoms, straitjackets into roller skates in a disco, and unconditionally accepting and then dutifully regurgitating everything that the grand ayatollahs orate. It looks like a religion with its powerful self-regulatory behaviors, thought-policing and gospeling. I only did a few minutes worth of googling and already found several different sites which all parrot the official Apple truth about why such a drastic change is perfectly reasonable and justified, most of which makes very little sense to me but hey, I'm not a Reborn Applean. I'm sure they have their reasons, but "performance" and "progress" are not it - they're a business, not the Hare Krishna.

[fmr]

NI is a really good example of what I'm talking about. They have things in their portfolio that I don't think have been touched since the Clinton administration. Yet they've released at least two major software products since the Catalina beta dropped. You can't tell me that they have spent any serious time on Catalina. And now, as they prepare to lay people off, I (a very loyal customer who has donated thousands of dollars in "support" to them over the years) start to think, "You know what? Here's another solution. How about I install Catalina and uninstall your products. I know this shows a lack of "support" on my part, but, you know, f**k you."

There is a "slight" difference. You do NOTHING with Catalina (at least, nothing you aren't doing already). OTOH, you (supposedly) do A LOT with NI software.

I still don't get this urge people feel about installing the newest OS as soon as it gets out. The OS does nothing. It is there just to allow the applications (the real productive software) to run. The best we can say about an OS is that we don't notice it exists. The worst thing is when it gets in the way.

In the latest years, Apple has been releasing a "new" OS every year. This is the dumbest and most stupid and dangerous thing a computer company can do. It creates instability, compatibility issues, obsolescence, etc. I am still happily running Sierra, and I don't plan to change any time soon.

[Forgotten]

I’ll give it a week or so then upgrade. There are definitely reasons to upgrade and the OS does have new features and functionality each time. I don’t really want to go back to the light color scheme on my MacBook that was implemented in Mojave, so really glad I updated just for that

Hasn’t MS gone over to two major updates a year now? Not sure it’s just Apple that updates to a regular cycle.

[fmr]

Hasn’t MS gone over to two major updates a year now? Not sure it’s just Apple that updates to a regular cycle.

Microsoft UPDATED the same OS they are running. They didn't change it. It's the same Windows 10, with just a few "tweaks". Nothing was broken in terms of compatibility, 32-bit abandoned, whatever.

Apple, OTOH, usually breaks several things in each new version. And they don't bring much to the table either, except for the planned obsolescence.

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

And they don't bring much to the table either, except for the planned obsolescence.

It seems that for the last few OS revisions (OS & iOS) backwards compatibility has been extended to older machines than were usually expected. My mid-2012 MBP is compatible with both Catalina and the latest LPX. If a 7-year+ machine is still considered current, then they need to consider firing the 'Planned Obsolescence' department

[Tj Shredder]

That is the way you need to go to get people buy new machines. Apple does not charge for OS upgrades. They support old machines officially, though it would not make sense. I remember very well, was it when Yosemite came out? We had a lot people who needed help because they just upgraded on to a machine with 2 GB of RAM. The machine would come to an halt, the OS alone would need 4 GB. At that time still spinning hard drives had been standard. It was a swapping orgy... Some „supported“ machines could not even be upgraded with more memory...
For users best advice: do not upgrade if there is no need for, don‘t even dream of it. Keep the OS save at about 2 versions behind.
For developers, get the betas as early as possible and, damn it, start to think about supporting Linux!!! I would switch to Linux the moment Cycling74 would support it, a plus would be NI. But my hopes are low, as Cycling belongs now to Ableton...

[sin night]

Apple usually releases security fixes also for the previous version of OSX, so there's no urge to upgrade on day one (though the new security features look nice).

Anyway, I don't really get the Apple's release schedule; a new o.s. every year is a bit too much in my opinion; a two to three year cycle would be more manageable in my opinion (something like the LTS versions of some Linux distributions). Especially because they seem to break compatibility almost every year. And this year, it sounds like they will break a lot of compatibility.
I usually wait about six month to upgrade the o.s. on my music computer, I wait for all the software to support it. Software is never really ready on day one of a new o.s. (this is true also for Windows), so I expect to wait some months before moving to the latest version of the o.s.

The public beta period for a new Apple operating system is roughly 3 months and takes place in the summer of the north part of the world (when people usually take some holidays). In my opinion, it's not enough time (especially with a yearly release schedule).

To be honest, the drop of 32 bit support is something that was bound to happen at some point, so I think it should have been already addressed by the various software companies (a 32 bit only dependency is a tickling bomb, given the widespread support of 64 bit in the past few years).
The restrictions (like the signature requirements or the authorization requests to access resources), however, are a huge problem for people relying on tools from third vendors (especially if there are a lot of different tools and vendors!).

I think my next studio computer will be a custom built Windows machine (only because I can't use Linux for this task)... maybe I'll buy another Mac for internet and general productivity when my current one will be unsupported; but I need something reliable (especially from a compatibility point of view) for serious tasks like making music.

[Forgotten]

Don’t all Ubuntu variations have a yearly update for their LTS release? I think annual major updates is pretty common with Unix variants now.

[teilo]

I still don't get this urge people feel about installing the newest OS as soon as it gets out. The OS does nothing. It is there just to allow the applications (the real productive software) to run. The best we can say about an OS is that we don't notice it exists. The worst thing is when it gets in the way.

In the latest years, Apple has been releasing a "new" OS every year. This is the dumbest and most stupid and dangerous thing a computer company can do. It creates instability, compatibility issues, obsolescence, etc. I am still happily running Sierra, and I don't plan to change any time soon.

That's rather hyperbolic.

You can't imagine why someone might upgrade, therefore there is no reason to upgrade. You do something, therefore everyone must do the same.

"The OS does nothing" is not remotely true. You do actual work in the OS. Essential work like managing your files, backups, interfacing with hardware. You know, like plugging in external displays, say, an iPad, using Sidecar. Oh, whoops. That's only available in Catalina, so who would want to do that?

We will be pushing this upgrade out to key segments of my company at the earliest opportunity for one reason in particular: Vastly improved SMB support. Another reason? Superior security model. Read-only root file system. You see, people use Macs for more than just DAWs.

[samsam]

Interesting thread, thanks.

Great to read the input form the windows folks too, always a bonus in Mac OS threads.

[maschinelf]

Guys I have a question that I haven't been able to find a definitive answer to. The problem is my macbook pro is lying in my hometown and I've been away for three months. I want to update this computer (currently on mavericks) to Mojave but hoping I can still do so after Catalina is released.

I was already aware of the impending Catalina update before I left, so afair I already downloaded but did not install the Mojave update before leaving town (though not 100% sure about this). I assumed at the time that I would be back in around a month.

The problem is once Catalina is officially released, I don't know if Apple will continue to sign Mojave and I can still update to Mojave AFTER the release of Catalina. As it stands now, I need to stick around here for a few more weeks (until around the 8th of October), and if I go sooner it'll only be because I want to update before Apple stops signing the damn os. They pushed the Catalina release back to October but haven't given a date. I just want to know if it will still be possible to install Mojave after Catalina is released.

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

Guys I have a question that I haven't been able to find a definitive answer to. The problem is my macbook pro is lying in my hometown and I've been away for three months. I want to update this computer (currently on mavericks) to Mojave but hoping I can still do so after Catalina is released.

I was already aware of the impending Catalina update before I left, so afair I already downloaded but did not install the Mojave update before leaving town (though not 100% sure about this). I assumed at the time that I would be back in around a month.

The problem is once Catalina is officially released, I don't know if Apple will continue to sign Mojave and I can still update to Mojave AFTER the release of Catalina. As it stands now, I need to stick around here for a few more weeks (until around the 8th of October), and if I go sooner it'll only be because I want to update before Apple stops signing the damn os. They pushed the Catalina release back to October but haven't given a date. I just want to know if it will still be possible to install Mojave after Catalina is released.

The trick with this is to make sure you have downloaded the installer to the current, outgoing OS before they officially release the latest. That way you will always have a copy of the installer in your appstore purchases section

So you will be able to install Mojave, as long as you have the installer.

[maschinelf]

Thanks, yea I'm pretty certain I downloaded it. Though I think OSes stopped showing as app store purchases after Mavericks. I know it used to work before that you could register an os as a purchase and then download and install it later, sometimeseven after the next os became available, but something apparently changed after Mavericks. I could be wrong about this though. I also have another Mac running Mojave which is with me, so I'll check later to see if Mojave shows as a purchase.

[chk071]

I'm sure they have their reasons, but "performance" and "progress" are not it - they're a business, not the Hare Krishna.

TBH, in the age of influencer marketing and all that, it goes hand in hand.