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macOS 11 (Big Sur) Compatibility News

125 points by pier25 6y ago

sneak 6y ago
Wow, that’s pretty rare/impressive. It’s not often these days that the killer poke rears its head. Anyone have more detail here? What is it about the TRAKTOR KONTROL S4 MK3 that makes it vulnerable to damage via software?
- TaylorAlexander 6y ago
  No idea but it apparently has motors. Firmware should protect against damage this way but perhaps they didn’t account for the way Big Sur would end up communicating with it.
buildbot 6y ago
Maybe this is cruel, but in some ways I’m surprised modern hardware can be damaged over a modern bus? I wonder how it damages them.
- TaylorAlexander 6y ago
  The device that can be damaged is a DJ controller with haptic feedback. So it has motors in it, and some kind of audio outputs. If the audio levels get turned to maximum or the motors get sent invalid commands, it could cause the device to damage itself. I’d call it a firmware problem if the motors can be commanded to move too fast, but anyway it may be reason for them to warn their customers. The editorialized hacker news headline makes it look like Big Sur is to blame, but it could easily be written as “Native Instruments Hardware does not fully support Big Sur and could be damaged if run on Big Sur.”
  - sqldba 6y ago
    Or, depending on the cause, “Bugs in Native Instruments hardware / drivers can damage their hardware with Big Sur”.
    - mijoharas 6y ago
      To be fair to the person you're replying to they say: > I’d call it a firmware problem if the motors can be commanded to move too fast So it sounds like they agree with you. (Edit: typo)
    - sneak 6y ago
      It seems that the rule the crowd likes to go with is “last change broke it!”, which is something I don’t like very much.
  - morpheuskafka 6y ago
    Yeah, that is an issue of the device IMO. It should prevent itself from being run in a destructive manner so long as the bus itself is in spec (ie no overvoltage, reverse polarity, etc). Unless it is clearly labelled as not to be connected to any system that hasn't been specifically evaluated and qualified by them, this shouldn't be the customers fault. Also, I initially misread this as National Instruments and imagined a DJ programming in LabView, LMAO.
    - pySSK 6y ago
      > Also, I initially misread this as National Instruments and imagined a DJ programming in LabView, LMAO. This made my day. This is one of the funniest things I have ever read.
  - hungryforcodes 6y ago
    I’m not sure why you’re getting downvoted. This is a totally succinct summary of the situation.
- marcan_42 6y ago
  It's definitely a buggy device/firmware. There is no way an OS update can cause this (barring some massive Apple bug which is unlikely); more likely the device firmware mishandles some valid standard USB commands that older OSes didn't issue. In general, it's quite common for USB device firmware to be of extremely poor quality; it'll be tested and bugs fixed until it works with the target OSes and drivers, but no comprehensive testing of whether it can deal with all possible standard request patterns is done.
- tialaramex 6y ago
  As I understand it the Kontrol S4 has moving parts (essentially motors) under USB control. Obviously you could design this sensibly so that no legal inputs result in malfunction let alone damage, but that might cost more, so, do it all in software right? And then you're at the mercy of the software and anything (such as the OS kernel) which that software depends on. We do teach Computer Science / Software Engineering students not to do this, showing them e.g. the Therac-25 incident as an example of why software control isn't enough - but well, check out how many HN regulars are proud that they either didn't pay any attention in class or never attended and are "self-taught". SANE (the Free Software document scanner software) has run into cases where it's just cheaper to have code that checks "Is this the end of the bed? If so, turn off the motor" than spend five cents on a limit switch or one cent adding a stop so that the scan head physically can't fall off. Somebody reverse engineering a driver sends "Move scan head" and, to their astonishment, it falls off its rail and their scanner is broken. Oops. Now, who feels comfortable shipping that to users knowing if your finished driver didn't catch every edge case you might destroy their scanner?
  - bigbubba 6y ago
    Sounds like a nightmare, I guess SANE is an ironic name?
    - wahern 6y ago
      IIUC, that example seems more like an indictment of the scanner manufacturers, not the developers of SANE. SANE includes that code because some manufacturers didn't implement such a simple, obvious, and crucial constraint in the hardware. Unless maybe the poster's point was that the SANE developers shouldn't try to support such fundamentally broken hardware?
      - bigbubba 6y ago
        I didn't mean to suggest that SANE was a poor project, I guess I just supposed it was sort of gallows humor from developers working on a hard problem.
    - 6y ago
- fxtentacle 6y ago
  A big risk with audio hardware is that buggy os drivers might lead to noise being output. One can attempt to detect and block this in hardware, but a compressed EDM track with reduced dynamics can look pretty close to loud noise at some short moments. Now let's say you have a high power Amp configured correctly for mixing a -24db classical music recording and then the OS glitches out and you hear 0db noise. That might blow up your speakers, headphones, or even worse, your ears. My experience writing kernel drivers for audio software is that Windows will accept the click sound and then stop processing if the buffer runs dry. OS X used to have issues that it'll continue playing, meaning it'll reinterpret random memory as sound. Not sure if that was fixed in recent Mac versions, as their approach does have memory & performance benefits. But it means that audio driver glitches on Mac can be physically painful for the user.
  - tarsinge 6y ago
    > Now let's say you have a high power Amp configured correctly for mixing a -24db classical music recording and then the OS glitches out and you hear 0db noise. That might blow up your speakers, headphones, or even worse, your ears. I experienced one glitch like that while mixing with headphones, it's hard to describe how loud it was, a bang in my ears that made me fall and left me shackling for a few minutes. If you have ever be surprised by headphones at max volume, imagine it's even (way much) louder (because music at max volume is not a full 0db white noise). To this day I now avoid playing with plugins with the headphones and only put them for the final mix/mastering.
martimarkov 6y ago
I think the title is misleading. Most ppl here would know it is a firmware issue most likely.
- Redoubts 6y ago
  > Most ppl here would know Judging by the comments, apparently not.
baldfat 6y ago
Why does Apple get the Professional OS nod when EVERY update is a break in your workflow Majorly. Heck every Mac is always on a different update because they are scared to even update in Mac only cooperate networks like mine. It has always been a pain in my video editing life too.
- coldtea 6y ago
  >Why does Apple get the Professional OS nod when EVERY update is a break in your workflow Majorly. Because every update usually also moves things forward. E.g. on Big Sur they moved third party kernel extensions to userland ones. That's safer, less crash prone (an extension issue doesn't bring down the whole system), more modular, makes it possible to upgrade an extension without a reboot, and so on. Check PC forums of pro music users how often they have issues with drivers, incompatibilities, updates, etc. And that's not with "switching to a major new architecture" issue, or "moving kernel extensions to userland" type fairs, which are major changes and can understandably bring issues with them (but can be totally worth it long term). It's just incompatibilities between the million different hardware combinations you can find in a PC, Windows issues, etc. >Heck every Mac is always on a different update because they are scared to even update in Mac only cooperate networks like mine. Actually it has been reported time and again that Macs are among the fastest percentage wise to move to the latest OS version compared to Windows PCs, with something like 70% having moved over in a couple of months...
  - alacombe 6y ago
    > Because every update usually also moves things forward. Just because something move forward doesn't means it moves in the right direction. > And because they still have the better OS/hardware combo. Do they ? How many brain-time did Apple waste yesterday by soft-bricking ALL THE DAMN MACS running Canalina ?
    - coldtea 6y ago
      >Just because something move forward doesn't means it moves in the right direction. Sure. In this case though I meant "in the right direction" too. I, for one, welcome third party kernel extensions moving to userland. >Do they ? How many brain-time did Apple waste yesterday by soft-bricking ALL THE DAMN MACS running Canalina ? A little. Nothing like the brain-months I've wasted on Windows and Linux troubleshooting, and I've been using Windows for ~30 years, and Linux for ~20 (plus several UNIX varieties of yore, like SunOS, Solaris, and AIX, with the ocassional toying with FreeBSD as well). I'm annoyed by several things in Apple land as well (e.g. the keyboards on the last 3 years on laptops, the firewall bypass situation in Big Sur, the not-so-useful touch strip, and lots of minor issues), but I'm also annoyed by the "grass is greener" sentiment all the time, or the "sky is falling/Stallman was right" rhetoric...
edub 6y ago
Does Apple have a "Release to Manufacturing" phase in their release schedule before the product is GA? A time for all their software and hardware partners to fully vet their product against the gold master.
- pram 6y ago
  Presumably the developer beta serves that purpose?
- adenylyl 6y ago
  There have been a series of beta releases since June. (For some reason, they say in the linked page that beta releases have only been available since August, but that's not correct).
  - pfranz 6y ago
    I don't maintain software, but I've heard from multiple others that since betas are just dumped and things are quietly added, changed, and removed, it's difficult to trust a beta for development.
    - kjakm 6y ago
      Things aren't quietly added/removed. Each release comes with updated release notes/changelog and typically points out things that are WIP or broken temporarily.
cageface 6y ago
macOS updates almost always break a lot of audio apps. You're better off waiting a few point updates and checking with the vendors of the apps you use before upgrading.
- lostgame 6y ago
  I'm still running Mojave. Fuck 'upgrading' to an operating system that kills a ton of 32-bit VST plugins I paid for a decade or so ago that will probably never get updated, while adding no meaningful features of substance for me. I don't need a dark theme. I don't need to be able to answer calls from my iPhone on my Mac or whatever. I just need the software I have paid for, that has worked for 7 consecutive software iterations, to continue to work. I'm in the 'Snow Leopard was peak MacOS / OSX' camp, honestly; having used the OS as a daily driver since 10.3.x...
  - pram 6y ago
    >I just need the software I have paid for, that has worked for 7 consecutive software iterations, to continue to work. This contrasted with your last sentence is amusing because it can be applied to 10.5 (no more CE) 10.6 (no more PPC hardware) and 10.7 (no more Rosetta)
alacombe 6y ago
which begs the question... Is backward compatibility dead ? People are rejoicing when developer updates their app "fast" to support new OS, but once upon a time, one wouldn't even expect to have to update anything at all, just because "new OS version". You can easily run Win 95 app on Win 10. I can run a CNC controller built for WinXp, controlling very destructive equipment on Win7 without issue, and I've been using statically linked binaries on Linux for years without problem, so really WTF ? Are Apple fans just that blind ?
- slmjkdbtl 6y ago
  It's just buggy, not dead. However there should be a point when backward compatibility should be dropped, if you want to keep maintaining a sane codebase and interface, or force a "better" way of doing things. When Apple deprecated OpenGL and moved to Metal, I hated it but I actually respected a lot, cuz Metal does have a superior design, and by deprecating old technology they're forcing devs to use this better technology for better software (being proprietary is separate issue).
  - rorykoehler 6y ago
    Looking at the list of hardware that doesn’t work anymore and I’m delighted I didn’t buy any when i was considering it. I would be very pissed right now if the expensive hardware I bought stopped working due to an OS upgrade. Most of my musical equipment is much older than NI as a company even and I never have to worry about it breaking due to software updates.
  - alacombe 6y ago
    > It's just buggy, not dead. However there should be a point when backward compatibility should be dropped, if you want to keep maintaining a sane codebase and interface, or force a "better" way of doing things. Not when millions of people rely on working computers, and as much third party peripherals.
    - slmjkdbtl 6y ago
      Then I'm interested to know when, what's the number of years, should we drop backwards compatibility for a certain version of interface, if ever. I'm sure there're still a lot of punch card programs and today no new system support it. Also there's always a option to not use the new technology that dropped backwards compatibility, which is why many people still buy second hand game consoles and casette players. I love them, but I accept the fact that they're no longer backward compatible with new devices.
unicornporn 6y ago
Reminds me why I'm always a year behind when it comes to updating macOS.
- te_chris 6y ago
  I still haven’t left Mojave on my music machine
malthaus 6y ago
Audio Software (and firmware) developers are really not the benchmark for this. They always lag behind, exploit hidden / unsupported features and never manage to play by the rules of the platform they are on. All this is enabled by the music gear community which blindly accepts a 2k synth (e.g. Moog Matriarch or Novation Summit) to be riddled with bugs one year after release or companies like NI or Elektron to always be 6 months late with compatibility for new Mac OS releases (first Catalina, now Big Sur), shifting blame on Apple. It's Apple's platform - they signal changes well in advance. As a developer you either support it and play by the rules or move off it. NI hasn't even managed to update their UI to the high DPI / Retina world in many cases.
- looping__lui 6y ago
  No offense, but why should the software developers just pour money and resources into maintaining ever changing OS requirements and hop through Apple loops for no visible customer benefit (e.g., better and additional capabilities)? Why do software developers have to spend money because Apple keeps changing the stuff constantly? UX retina are non-trivial changes. In the case of Qt, I recall that this meant changing the version this dropping other OS versions that were previously supported unless you duplicate all development effort. Apple has NO incentive to not keep changing everything and breaking stuff thus forcing people to constantly upgrade and buy new hardware. For me, there weren’t any material changes in the OS I was happy and started using.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
fxtentacle 6y ago
What this shows you is that it has become financially unviable for pro audio companies to support Apple. [1] is practically the same announcement by Avid Pro Tools, which is the standard for Hollywood movie production. I also have a personal stake in this, because I used to sell pro audio software, including things that integrate with Pro Tools and OS X. We saw the writing on the wall around OS X 10.11 when major studios asked us to support Linux and subsequently bought $40k Linux-based mixing desks. The fact is that any professional customer that uses NI has jumped ship years ago, so for Native Instruments the Mac market is shrinking in revenue, while growing in costs. In my case, Windows and Linux are now paying for feature development. We still snort out OSX binaries from an old 10.9 xcode, but those aren't notarized because no paying customer has asked for it yet. This is what happens if you don't value the time of your third party developers, for example with useless updates and poor documentation. I'm sure Apple will spin this as "the app store provides", but there's only so much work you can put in for a platform with a median lifetime app revenue of <$1000. In short, professional movie studios have voted with their money, and now the market follows suit by canceling Mac support. [1] https://avid.secure.force.com/pkb/articles/en_US/Compatibility/macOS-Big-Sur-Support https://avid.secure.force.com/pkb/articles/en_US/Compatibili...
- nubizus 6y ago
  Thanks for valuable information. I am planning to make a little home studio for me and my friends, would you be so kind to give me advice in which DAW to invest my time, and what are alternatives on linux regarding support of thunderbolt or usb interfaces. Is windows the only future-proof and viable option for producing music nowadays? Thanks in advance.
  - fxtentacle 6y ago
    My impression is that most Hollywood work is now done with Pro Tools on Windows. For example, I know for sure that Expendables 3 was mastered this way. For classical music and bluray mastering, I hear the most from Nuendo users on Windows. Their cheaper variant Cubase is popular for audiobook production. For music production, BitWig and REAPER are currently the rising stars. Both are popular on Linux: https://www.bitwig.com/download/ https://www.bitwig.com/download/ https://www.reaper.fm/download.php#linux_download https://www.reaper.fm/download.php#linux_download BitWig especially fits in with the hacker spirit because you can modify and script almost everything. They also have many features for live shows and / or DJing. That market used to be squarely owned by Ableton on Mac, but the latter has recently fallen out of favor over plugin compatibility issues with newer effect VSTs. For broadcast, meaning TV shows and live sports streaming, I heard that BBC and the likes are using LAWO which are custom integrated hardware+software solutions capable of loading Linux VST plugins. https://www.lawo.de/up-to-date/news/nbsp/floating_earth_uses_lawo_mc256_for_bbcs_children_in_need_rocks_live_recording.html https://www.lawo.de/up-to-date/news/nbsp/floating_earth_uses...
rutierut 6y ago
Their first-generation Kontrol MK1's(original price $1000) haven't been working on Mac OS for years now. I've been modding them, taking out the processing units and replacing them with custom ones that are class compliant. It's a shame these music hardware companies tend to do no future proofing at all sometimes.
bichiliad 6y ago
I make music, and I have to say, the jump to 64 bit and the jump to macOS 11 have been pretty damaging to my workflow in the short term. My DAW, my drivers, and my plugins are all written by different developers and they all need to update for me to get fully back to work (In fairness, I made the mistake of upgrading eagerly to macOS 11, which is on me). At the same time, working on a Mac in general has been so, so much more reliable than working on windows. I used to have endless problems with dropouts or latency problems on windows, regardless of the driver, sound card, or buffer size I used. I’m sure things have improved in the time since, but I’ve been so much happier making music on the Mac. I’ve used my 2013 laptop at plenty of live shows and haven’t had any sort of problem yet. We’ll see what happens in the next year, but I’m not ready to count macOS out as an audio workstation OS.
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  > I make music, and I have to say, the jump to 64 bit and the jump to macOS 11 have been pretty damaging to my workflow in the short term. My DAW, my drivers, and my plugins are all written by different developers and they all need to update for me to get fully back to work (In fairness, I made the mistake of upgrading eagerly to macOS 11, which is on me). Apple doesn't care because they'll still get their $99/year from developers and their App Store is almost infinitely profitable.
  - bichiliad 6y ago
    None of the plugins or pieces of software I use had to be installed through the app store, and I think that's something of the norm there. I think managing large, required changes (like updates in processor architecture) is difficult, but I don't think I can fault Apple for going through the changes regardles.

125 points by pier25 6y ago

Wow, that’s pretty rare/impressive. It’s not often these days that the killer poke rears its head. Anyone have more detail here? What is it about the TRAKTOR KONTROL S4 MK3 that makes it vulnerable to damage via software?

TaylorAlexander 6y ago
No idea but it apparently has motors. Firmware should protect against damage this way but perhaps they didn’t account for the way Big Sur would end up communicating with it.

buildbot 6y ago

Maybe this is cruel, but in some ways I’m surprised modern hardware can be damaged over a modern bus? I wonder how it damages them.

TaylorAlexander 6y ago
The device that can be damaged is a DJ controller with haptic feedback. So it has motors in it, and some kind of audio outputs. If the audio levels get turned to maximum or the motors get sent invalid commands, it could cause the device to damage itself. I’d call it a firmware problem if the motors can be commanded to move too fast, but anyway it may be reason for them to warn their customers. The editorialized hacker news headline makes it look like Big Sur is to blame, but it could easily be written as “Native Instruments Hardware does not fully support Big Sur and could be damaged if run on Big Sur.”
- sqldba 6y ago
  Or, depending on the cause, “Bugs in Native Instruments hardware / drivers can damage their hardware with Big Sur”.
  - mijoharas 6y ago
    To be fair to the person you're replying to they say: > I’d call it a firmware problem if the motors can be commanded to move too fast So it sounds like they agree with you. (Edit: typo)
  - sneak 6y ago
    It seems that the rule the crowd likes to go with is “last change broke it!”, which is something I don’t like very much.
- morpheuskafka 6y ago
  Yeah, that is an issue of the device IMO. It should prevent itself from being run in a destructive manner so long as the bus itself is in spec (ie no overvoltage, reverse polarity, etc). Unless it is clearly labelled as not to be connected to any system that hasn't been specifically evaluated and qualified by them, this shouldn't be the customers fault. Also, I initially misread this as National Instruments and imagined a DJ programming in LabView, LMAO.
  - pySSK 6y ago
    > Also, I initially misread this as National Instruments and imagined a DJ programming in LabView, LMAO. This made my day. This is one of the funniest things I have ever read.
- hungryforcodes 6y ago
  I’m not sure why you’re getting downvoted. This is a totally succinct summary of the situation.
marcan_42 6y ago
It's definitely a buggy device/firmware. There is no way an OS update can cause this (barring some massive Apple bug which is unlikely); more likely the device firmware mishandles some valid standard USB commands that older OSes didn't issue. In general, it's quite common for USB device firmware to be of extremely poor quality; it'll be tested and bugs fixed until it works with the target OSes and drivers, but no comprehensive testing of whether it can deal with all possible standard request patterns is done.
tialaramex 6y ago
As I understand it the Kontrol S4 has moving parts (essentially motors) under USB control. Obviously you could design this sensibly so that no legal inputs result in malfunction let alone damage, but that might cost more, so, do it all in software right? And then you're at the mercy of the software and anything (such as the OS kernel) which that software depends on. We do teach Computer Science / Software Engineering students not to do this, showing them e.g. the Therac-25 incident as an example of why software control isn't enough - but well, check out how many HN regulars are proud that they either didn't pay any attention in class or never attended and are "self-taught". SANE (the Free Software document scanner software) has run into cases where it's just cheaper to have code that checks "Is this the end of the bed? If so, turn off the motor" than spend five cents on a limit switch or one cent adding a stop so that the scan head physically can't fall off. Somebody reverse engineering a driver sends "Move scan head" and, to their astonishment, it falls off its rail and their scanner is broken. Oops. Now, who feels comfortable shipping that to users knowing if your finished driver didn't catch every edge case you might destroy their scanner?
- bigbubba 6y ago
  Sounds like a nightmare, I guess SANE is an ironic name?
  - wahern 6y ago
    IIUC, that example seems more like an indictment of the scanner manufacturers, not the developers of SANE. SANE includes that code because some manufacturers didn't implement such a simple, obvious, and crucial constraint in the hardware. Unless maybe the poster's point was that the SANE developers shouldn't try to support such fundamentally broken hardware?
    - bigbubba 6y ago
      I didn't mean to suggest that SANE was a poor project, I guess I just supposed it was sort of gallows humor from developers working on a hard problem.
  - 6y ago
fxtentacle 6y ago
A big risk with audio hardware is that buggy os drivers might lead to noise being output. One can attempt to detect and block this in hardware, but a compressed EDM track with reduced dynamics can look pretty close to loud noise at some short moments. Now let's say you have a high power Amp configured correctly for mixing a -24db classical music recording and then the OS glitches out and you hear 0db noise. That might blow up your speakers, headphones, or even worse, your ears. My experience writing kernel drivers for audio software is that Windows will accept the click sound and then stop processing if the buffer runs dry. OS X used to have issues that it'll continue playing, meaning it'll reinterpret random memory as sound. Not sure if that was fixed in recent Mac versions, as their approach does have memory & performance benefits. But it means that audio driver glitches on Mac can be physically painful for the user.
- tarsinge 6y ago
  > Now let's say you have a high power Amp configured correctly for mixing a -24db classical music recording and then the OS glitches out and you hear 0db noise. That might blow up your speakers, headphones, or even worse, your ears. I experienced one glitch like that while mixing with headphones, it's hard to describe how loud it was, a bang in my ears that made me fall and left me shackling for a few minutes. If you have ever be surprised by headphones at max volume, imagine it's even (way much) louder (because music at max volume is not a full 0db white noise). To this day I now avoid playing with plugins with the headphones and only put them for the final mix/mastering.

martimarkov 6y ago

I think the title is misleading. Most ppl here would know it is a firmware issue most likely.

Redoubts 6y ago
> Most ppl here would know Judging by the comments, apparently not.

baldfat 6y ago

Why does Apple get the Professional OS nod when EVERY update is a break in your workflow Majorly. Heck every Mac is always on a different update because they are scared to even update in Mac only cooperate networks like mine. It has always been a pain in my video editing life too.

coldtea 6y ago
>Why does Apple get the Professional OS nod when EVERY update is a break in your workflow Majorly. Because every update usually also moves things forward. E.g. on Big Sur they moved third party kernel extensions to userland ones. That's safer, less crash prone (an extension issue doesn't bring down the whole system), more modular, makes it possible to upgrade an extension without a reboot, and so on. Check PC forums of pro music users how often they have issues with drivers, incompatibilities, updates, etc. And that's not with "switching to a major new architecture" issue, or "moving kernel extensions to userland" type fairs, which are major changes and can understandably bring issues with them (but can be totally worth it long term). It's just incompatibilities between the million different hardware combinations you can find in a PC, Windows issues, etc. >Heck every Mac is always on a different update because they are scared to even update in Mac only cooperate networks like mine. Actually it has been reported time and again that Macs are among the fastest percentage wise to move to the latest OS version compared to Windows PCs, with something like 70% having moved over in a couple of months...
- alacombe 6y ago
  > Because every update usually also moves things forward. Just because something move forward doesn't means it moves in the right direction. > And because they still have the better OS/hardware combo. Do they ? How many brain-time did Apple waste yesterday by soft-bricking ALL THE DAMN MACS running Canalina ?
  - coldtea 6y ago
    >Just because something move forward doesn't means it moves in the right direction. Sure. In this case though I meant "in the right direction" too. I, for one, welcome third party kernel extensions moving to userland. >Do they ? How many brain-time did Apple waste yesterday by soft-bricking ALL THE DAMN MACS running Canalina ? A little. Nothing like the brain-months I've wasted on Windows and Linux troubleshooting, and I've been using Windows for ~30 years, and Linux for ~20 (plus several UNIX varieties of yore, like SunOS, Solaris, and AIX, with the ocassional toying with FreeBSD as well). I'm annoyed by several things in Apple land as well (e.g. the keyboards on the last 3 years on laptops, the firewall bypass situation in Big Sur, the not-so-useful touch strip, and lots of minor issues), but I'm also annoyed by the "grass is greener" sentiment all the time, or the "sky is falling/Stallman was right" rhetoric...

edub 6y ago

Does Apple have a "Release to Manufacturing" phase in their release schedule before the product is GA? A time for all their software and hardware partners to fully vet their product against the gold master.

pram 6y ago
Presumably the developer beta serves that purpose?
adenylyl 6y ago
There have been a series of beta releases since June. (For some reason, they say in the linked page that beta releases have only been available since August, but that's not correct).
- pfranz 6y ago
  I don't maintain software, but I've heard from multiple others that since betas are just dumped and things are quietly added, changed, and removed, it's difficult to trust a beta for development.
  - kjakm 6y ago
    Things aren't quietly added/removed. Each release comes with updated release notes/changelog and typically points out things that are WIP or broken temporarily.

cageface 6y ago

macOS updates almost always break a lot of audio apps. You're better off waiting a few point updates and checking with the vendors of the apps you use before upgrading.

lostgame 6y ago
I'm still running Mojave. Fuck 'upgrading' to an operating system that kills a ton of 32-bit VST plugins I paid for a decade or so ago that will probably never get updated, while adding no meaningful features of substance for me. I don't need a dark theme. I don't need to be able to answer calls from my iPhone on my Mac or whatever. I just need the software I have paid for, that has worked for 7 consecutive software iterations, to continue to work. I'm in the 'Snow Leopard was peak MacOS / OSX' camp, honestly; having used the OS as a daily driver since 10.3.x...
- pram 6y ago
  >I just need the software I have paid for, that has worked for 7 consecutive software iterations, to continue to work. This contrasted with your last sentence is amusing because it can be applied to 10.5 (no more CE) 10.6 (no more PPC hardware) and 10.7 (no more Rosetta)

alacombe 6y ago

which begs the question... Is backward compatibility dead ? People are rejoicing when developer updates their app "fast" to support new OS, but once upon a time, one wouldn't even expect to have to update anything at all, just because "new OS version". You can easily run Win 95 app on Win 10. I can run a CNC controller built for WinXp, controlling very destructive equipment on Win7 without issue, and I've been using statically linked binaries on Linux for years without problem, so really WTF ? Are Apple fans just that blind ?

slmjkdbtl 6y ago
It's just buggy, not dead. However there should be a point when backward compatibility should be dropped, if you want to keep maintaining a sane codebase and interface, or force a "better" way of doing things. When Apple deprecated OpenGL and moved to Metal, I hated it but I actually respected a lot, cuz Metal does have a superior design, and by deprecating old technology they're forcing devs to use this better technology for better software (being proprietary is separate issue).
- rorykoehler 6y ago
  Looking at the list of hardware that doesn’t work anymore and I’m delighted I didn’t buy any when i was considering it. I would be very pissed right now if the expensive hardware I bought stopped working due to an OS upgrade. Most of my musical equipment is much older than NI as a company even and I never have to worry about it breaking due to software updates.
- alacombe 6y ago
  > It's just buggy, not dead. However there should be a point when backward compatibility should be dropped, if you want to keep maintaining a sane codebase and interface, or force a "better" way of doing things. Not when millions of people rely on working computers, and as much third party peripherals.
  - slmjkdbtl 6y ago
    Then I'm interested to know when, what's the number of years, should we drop backwards compatibility for a certain version of interface, if ever. I'm sure there're still a lot of punch card programs and today no new system support it. Also there's always a option to not use the new technology that dropped backwards compatibility, which is why many people still buy second hand game consoles and casette players. I love them, but I accept the fact that they're no longer backward compatible with new devices.

unicornporn 6y ago

Reminds me why I'm always a year behind when it comes to updating macOS.

te_chris 6y ago
I still haven’t left Mojave on my music machine

malthaus 6y ago

Audio Software (and firmware) developers are really not the benchmark for this. They always lag behind, exploit hidden / unsupported features and never manage to play by the rules of the platform they are on. All this is enabled by the music gear community which blindly accepts a 2k synth (e.g. Moog Matriarch or Novation Summit) to be riddled with bugs one year after release or companies like NI or Elektron to always be 6 months late with compatibility for new Mac OS releases (first Catalina, now Big Sur), shifting blame on Apple. It's Apple's platform - they signal changes well in advance. As a developer you either support it and play by the rules or move off it. NI hasn't even managed to update their UI to the high DPI / Retina world in many cases.

looping__lui 6y ago
No offense, but why should the software developers just pour money and resources into maintaining ever changing OS requirements and hop through Apple loops for no visible customer benefit (e.g., better and additional capabilities)? Why do software developers have to spend money because Apple keeps changing the stuff constantly? UX retina are non-trivial changes. In the case of Qt, I recall that this meant changing the version this dropping other OS versions that were previously supported unless you duplicate all development effort. Apple has NO incentive to not keep changing everything and breaking stuff thus forcing people to constantly upgrade and buy new hardware. For me, there weren’t any material changes in the OS I was happy and started using.

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fxtentacle 6y ago

What this shows you is that it has become financially unviable for pro audio companies to support Apple. [1] is practically the same announcement by Avid Pro Tools, which is the standard for Hollywood movie production. I also have a personal stake in this, because I used to sell pro audio software, including things that integrate with Pro Tools and OS X. We saw the writing on the wall around OS X 10.11 when major studios asked us to support Linux and subsequently bought $40k Linux-based mixing desks. The fact is that any professional customer that uses NI has jumped ship years ago, so for Native Instruments the Mac market is shrinking in revenue, while growing in costs. In my case, Windows and Linux are now paying for feature development. We still snort out OSX binaries from an old 10.9 xcode, but those aren't notarized because no paying customer has asked for it yet. This is what happens if you don't value the time of your third party developers, for example with useless updates and poor documentation. I'm sure Apple will spin this as "the app store provides", but there's only so much work you can put in for a platform with a median lifetime app revenue of <$1000. In short, professional movie studios have voted with their money, and now the market follows suit by canceling Mac support. [1] https://avid.secure.force.com/pkb/articles/en_US/Compatibility/macOS-Big-Sur-Support https://avid.secure.force.com/pkb/articles/en_US/Compatibili...

nubizus 6y ago
Thanks for valuable information. I am planning to make a little home studio for me and my friends, would you be so kind to give me advice in which DAW to invest my time, and what are alternatives on linux regarding support of thunderbolt or usb interfaces. Is windows the only future-proof and viable option for producing music nowadays? Thanks in advance.
- fxtentacle 6y ago
  My impression is that most Hollywood work is now done with Pro Tools on Windows. For example, I know for sure that Expendables 3 was mastered this way. For classical music and bluray mastering, I hear the most from Nuendo users on Windows. Their cheaper variant Cubase is popular for audiobook production. For music production, BitWig and REAPER are currently the rising stars. Both are popular on Linux: https://www.bitwig.com/download/ https://www.bitwig.com/download/ https://www.reaper.fm/download.php#linux_download https://www.reaper.fm/download.php#linux_download BitWig especially fits in with the hacker spirit because you can modify and script almost everything. They also have many features for live shows and / or DJing. That market used to be squarely owned by Ableton on Mac, but the latter has recently fallen out of favor over plugin compatibility issues with newer effect VSTs. For broadcast, meaning TV shows and live sports streaming, I heard that BBC and the likes are using LAWO which are custom integrated hardware+software solutions capable of loading Linux VST plugins. https://www.lawo.de/up-to-date/news/nbsp/floating_earth_uses_lawo_mc256_for_bbcs_children_in_need_rocks_live_recording.html https://www.lawo.de/up-to-date/news/nbsp/floating_earth_uses...

rutierut 6y ago

Their first-generation Kontrol MK1's(original price $1000) haven't been working on Mac OS for years now. I've been modding them, taking out the processing units and replacing them with custom ones that are class compliant. It's a shame these music hardware companies tend to do no future proofing at all sometimes.

bichiliad 6y ago

I make music, and I have to say, the jump to 64 bit and the jump to macOS 11 have been pretty damaging to my workflow in the short term. My DAW, my drivers, and my plugins are all written by different developers and they all need to update for me to get fully back to work (In fairness, I made the mistake of upgrading eagerly to macOS 11, which is on me). At the same time, working on a Mac in general has been so, so much more reliable than working on windows. I used to have endless problems with dropouts or latency problems on windows, regardless of the driver, sound card, or buffer size I used. I’m sure things have improved in the time since, but I’ve been so much happier making music on the Mac. I’ve used my 2013 laptop at plenty of live shows and haven’t had any sort of problem yet. We’ll see what happens in the next year, but I’m not ready to count macOS out as an audio workstation OS.

heavyset_go 6y ago
> I make music, and I have to say, the jump to 64 bit and the jump to macOS 11 have been pretty damaging to my workflow in the short term. My DAW, my drivers, and my plugins are all written by different developers and they all need to update for me to get fully back to work (In fairness, I made the mistake of upgrading eagerly to macOS 11, which is on me). Apple doesn't care because they'll still get their $99/year from developers and their App Store is almost infinitely profitable.
- bichiliad 6y ago
  None of the plugins or pieces of software I use had to be installed through the app store, and I think that's something of the norm there. I think managing large, required changes (like updates in processor architecture) is difficult, but I don't think I can fault Apple for going through the changes regardles.