Is N-10 Catalina compatible?
Can i ask an honest question?
How do you Mac folks feel about the rolling series of obsolescence versus first adopter teething troubles from Apple?
Over the last few years I’ve camped out in a few different multiroom studios. I’ve beem surprised by the frequency of “can/should I/do I have to update OSX” and the hassle and lost time I’ve seen very professional users deal with from it.
I understand there can be advantages to the Apple ecosystem with iCloud and your iPhone and so forth. But in a audio/DAW setting with specialized haedware and plugins it seems like more stuff gets broken by the OS than seems reasonable.
I have 20 year old audio software and hardware desiigned for Windows 95 that runs perfectly on Windows 10. So, coming from a different paradigm, it just seems like Apple makes it harder than need be. As a PC guy, i just think it would drive me nuts.
Please take no offense, I’m just honestly curious.
I work in a Mac environment most of the time, on PT. In my opinion the combination of PTHD+Mac OS is just waaaayyy more cumbersome than Nuendo on Windows. Like, it’s even silly to compare. It got to the point that I chose to no longer do any tech support for a two-room facility I helped set up; two PTHD systems on Macs with a Windows file server. I just got to the point where I felt I couldn’t spend the necessary time to keep up with all the nonsense.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it is like this though. I really do think that Apple either knows but doesn’t care or knows and plans for obsolescence.
Looking at the life cycles of true support in the digital world, they are nothing short of ridiculous in general. We take it for granted that we could (or actually: we can!) repair mixing consoles from the 70ies, while software companies drop support for operating systems less than 10 years old like a duck takes to water.
Apple is the tip of the iceberg, no doubt, but the paradigm of the whole digital ecosystem is flawed.
uR242 + Reaper no work in Catalina.
Im back to Mojave.
An interesting statement from a 3rd-party developer:
→ https://www.meldaproduction.com/text-tutorials/switching-from-osx-to-windows
[…]
So what is the problem with Apple anyway?
Imagine you are a builder (the software developer of a DAW/plugin…) and you started creating a big factory some time ago. You have built the foundations, walls, started putting some equipment for various companies (your customers, the users) in it. And obviously the factory needs a roof, right? You started building your factory with a very specific roof manufacturer (Apple) in mind, which uses some odd roof attachment system, not a perfect one, but it does the trick. But suddenly this manufacturer comes in and says “sorry, we have a new attachment system, for which you need to make your factory one meter shorter and change the attachment bolts”. Of course you, being the builder, know this is a total nonsense and all they need to do is a little gadget (converter) from the old roof attachment system to the new one. But they just won’t do that, and even worse, they won’t let you do that either. They just won’t install the roof until you remake the entire factory. So you as a builder are in trouble. Your customers asked for this roof, which isn’t special in a way, it just has a specific colour that other roof manufacturers don’t make (and there are many of them, cheaper and often better ones). But to make it all work, you have to spend a huge amount of time rebuilding your factory for no good reason and after that some equipment (ProTools 10) now won’t even fit in, because the factory will be too small. That’s a situation without a reasonable solution and it happened several times before, but it seems to be getting worse than ever.
So the real question is, do you want the developers of your DAW and plugins to spend their days trying to fix the problems arising from system upgrades, or to improve their own software products, making them more functional, more powerful, faster, stable and easier to use? If it’s the latter one, then the only solution seems to switch to Windows. The only one, who can make a difference is you, the customer.
Apple has consistently shown they no longer care about their professional customers outside of, perhaps, video editors, over the last 10 years.
Thanks for posting this – I have felt this was the situation for many years, but to see a developer state this is kind of refreshing. I have long since ditched Apple for these types of reasons. Windows isn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s been far better for me and work, clients, films, etc., than OSX.
However, I do still wish that Steinberg would consider standardizing on a Linux distro, but that will likely never happen.