Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan status update on compatibility

I don’t think we are acheaving anything by argueing on each other.

Yes it is poor Steinberg has not solved this, but even worse is the lack of communication from their part.

Any information on progress, eta and so on would earn trust and lessen the frustration…

Any why do you insult me, then!!! By the way, you are a new member, you’re not a moderator. It’s not your place to say who belongs in this thread or not! If you’re not careful, a moderator may decide that it’s you who don’t belong here. But, as I said, that’s a question for the moderators to decide.

Any news about the compatibility with OS X El Capitan?
Why are You taking so long???
I just want the DAW that I’d paid for, working good!!!

I hate to overanalyze this reply from Steinberg, but it’s problematic for me. First, they say they’re waiting for Apple - not sure why that would be. Is it not possible to fix this on their own? Second, it’s heading for a month now and really no details or update even though they sort of promised they would keep us up to date. Third, “there is no ETA” seems rather like they’re just not that interested in fixing it. I’m sure that’s not true, but it just makes me wonder what they’re really up to.

But the upside is that they say, “no ETA on when we will be supporting El Capitan”. Not “we will not support it”.

Don’t know anything about software development and third-party dependencies then? They probably cannot fix it on their own.

If a problem with software arises, and it’s not clear whether the problem lies with one’s own software, or the third-party one, then it requires some joint, and separate, discovery processes.

Now if one is a relatively small fry dealing with a mega enterprise that may not necessarily have a vital interest in your software working with their product, then you are largely, if not totally, at the mercy of that enterprise’s timing priorities.

And one cannot always isolate by oneself exactly what it is an OS is doing that may be upsetting the cart. While your software may be doing the same calls to the OS it always has, if the ‘magic’ happening in the called OS function’s logic has changed, and it doesn’t provide a return code that indicates why the difference in the treatment of the call, then you are TOTALLY dependent upon the OS maker for resolution.

This is what happened with Windows 10 and MS changing how MCSS operated. MS fixed it, and suddenly everything across all SBs programs is OK, and SB gives the thumbs up. Even though the MS audio team lead is highly engaged in making things work, it still took the time it took to discover where the problem lay, work out the solution, and get the fix through their patch process, all nothing SB could do a thing about, until it was a fait accompli.

Certainly, once the patch dropped, SB was able to quickly test and certify that all their programs were compliant, which probably means they had already done all the rest of their regression testing, except for those bits affected by the outstanding issue. I suspect that SB would have done much the same with El Capitan, and once the issue is fixed, things may well move quickly here as well. That is, unless Apple has done one of their ‘line in the sand’ ideological cutoffs (such as with Firewire audio), for which SB may have to redesign the program to achieve its same functionality in other ways, with its consequent delays, though at least they could then have something to report to us.

Of course, MS might need to have, for their own priorities, not ‘fixed’ the changes in MCSS functionality, and SB would also have just had to do a functional redesign around it.

I do know that Office was crashing like crazy until Apple did an update. The demand was too great and the impact on revenue streams was real - so Apple worked breakneck to produce 10.11.1 and things are much better although not fixed. So I do think Apple has really screwed the pooch on this upgrade. This being said, I don’t let Steinberg off the hook completely. They could give us more information instead of being essentially silent. I also know from past experience, there have been issues that they refused to fix. And one of the most simple fixes to a problem I had they couldn’t figure it out. I later found a vague reference to it and fixed the problem myself with a simple terminal command. I went into this recent purchase knowing these things about Steinberg but liked Cubase too much to change. Second guessing my decision to stay with Steinberg on this one…

What I find frightening is that Steinberg is going to drop C8.5 on us fairly soon. Since their dot 5 versions have been traditionally a few feature additions/bug fixes built on the previous release version, I can’t wait to see how much they’re gonna charge us for the privilege waiting around a few more months before they sort out getting it to work on El Capitan.

Unless, they have sorted it out for 8.5…in which case, we’ll see a fix for 8.0 released along with it. Wait 'n see.

If we are to learn anything from the release of Yosemite (10.10), Cubase 8.5 will be compatible, and be released in the beginning of December. A fix for Cubase 8.0 will follow at the end of January.

At least that’s what history suggests.

hope that’s not accurate seeing as how I have Artist and can’t even open the program.

I didn’t. Read my response again. The part “we don’t need your…” etc – was obviously addressed to people coming in the thread about 10.11 issues to scold people for having updated.

You wrote: “There are lots of other reasons why equipment needs to be replaced. Why is it so hard to respect that others may simply want to keep their system up to date?”

And I added about those people that: “The funny thing is that an update to the software to support the new OS would also benefit THEM (the people who stayed with Yosemite), or at the very least will cause them no harm at all. And they still feel the need to chime-in on a thread where people complain about the software they paid for not working on the new OS.”

The last part about “If you don’t have El Capitan installed, stay away” etc, is obviously targeted at the same people that find it “hard to respect that others may simply want to keep their system up to date”.

This is not the army to have seniority rank. I’m a person who paid good money for Cubase, and the related Steinberg/Yamaha ecosystem, over the years, and this is their product forum for paid customer. Besides, I don’t even frequent this place, just come for a few issues like this.

Same as it’s not their place to tell people whether they should update their OS or not?

People that don’t have the issue, and don’t have a solution, but just come to scold people for having updated (as if they know everybody’s use cases), shouldn’t do it. That’s basic sanity for a forum.

So? It’s not like I got any great help or insight from this forums in the first place – we don’t even know any dates for the update or further announcements. That threat is quite moot.

Besides I’m not 20 years old, so I don’t particularly care about such things, if I wasn’t annoyed of some cliched responses from people not minding their own business, I wouldn’t have participated that much…

On the other hand, if 5 other DAWs managed to get to work with 10.11 or 10.11.1, then Cubase should be able to do it on its own too, with a workaround.

It’s not like it’s doing any arcane magic that the other’s DAWs don’t ever need to do and there’s no way of doing it in 10.11.1

If Apple, capricious as it is, never fixes this, then Cubase will just stop supporting OS X?

Not a criticism of you, but writing generally here.

Holding discussions, such as these, on a public forum IS inviting comment from all and sundry, no matter how relevant, nor how much they are critically interested in the topic.

Before the widespread use of the internet, such discussions about problems with a product were typically held in relative private between the maker and the aggrieved. But now, these forums, while allowing you and others to try to gather support for action on your issue, also open it all up to ANYBODY who holds other opinions, including those who disagree with you, or just plain ‘blow flies’, being those who have nothing better to do than annoy others.

It is all free game here, with only a few provisos about staying on topic, and HOW discussions shouldn’t be conducted.

This is modern life, where people hold loud private conversations in full earshot of anybody, treat Facebook and Twitter like their private diaries, expose their most private discomforts (and body parts) on programs like Embarrassing Bodies, and feel compelled to make disparaging comments about others as if being and thinking different from them was a travesty of creation!

As I partially hinted at previously, in that case, SB would have to either:
a. develop an alternative way of achieving the same outcome
b. drop the particular functionality that is dependent upon the changed parts of the OS
c. drop product support for the OS, just like they did with iC Pro for Android.

Now, unlike iC Pro, Cubase is their flagship prosumer product, and not being so ideologically driven as to ditch half their users like Apple did with Logic, the last option will likely be avoided, if at all possible.

FYI - ProTools 12, the industry leader, certified El Capitan just last week.

Depends upon HOW Cubase uses the OS compared to the others, verses how much time (of critical interest here) and effort they would have to use to disassociate Cubase from dependencies upon those OS functions.

Since neither of us seem to know either of those things, then we are just p!ssing in the air if we think we can make factual categorical statements about what they can do.

How do YOU know ANYTHING relevant about Cubase upon which to base that statement? Speculation isn’t proof!

There can well be some ‘arcane magic’ going on in parts of Cubase, but which has now hit a snag. While it may be Apple that provides the fix, in due couse SB might need to re-factor some parts of Cubase, because what Apple changed may indicate a development trend. That doesn’t mean they were doing anything wrong per se, but MIGHT now need make changes. Of course, Apple might well have made a faux pass in how they implemented their changes.

After all, Firewire was ‘de rigueur’ for audio, but now Apple has dumped it. Was Firewire wrong? Of course not, but was becoming less relevant. At least, while Windows still supports it, and likely to for a while, I still have a market for my Firefaces!

Hi,

Has anyone seen the knowledge base article promised in the last official correspondence on this thread topic?

Until that shows up maybe I can put forward the idea that instead of all the moaning I am seeing we could all maybe help just a little… Maybe it could help speed up the process to resolve the issues being experienced. Odd concept perhaps but let’s give it a try…


This is what I have been finding with my “studio”.

Hardware / Drivers

Yamaha have certified the USB device driver as being compatible. As an end user I can agree that it is indeed working to specifications and from my experience and testing to date has not crashed on my system. Other programs are able to hook into the driver at all the supported sample rates without problems. Cubase * Elements is the only product that is not working correctly on my system.

The Creative Labs 0404 Driver and hardware works correctly from my testing. This is only since the OSX-10.11.1 update was applied. It supports all the modes the hardware supports. Something Apple did fixed this devices issues.



DAW

Cubase 8 Elements boots successfully and loads projects for editing on my instance. I cannot record or play anything using my Yamaha Mixer without re routing via line to an external and working “DAC”. Less than Ideal but at least a workable situation.

It appears that there is an issue with the program interfacing with the “internal” Yama Steinberg sound driver. The driver configuration appears to be read along with calculating system latency of the driver but the program does not connect or report any CPU load as a result of playing or attempting to record. This appears to be the only issues I have seen with the product not performing as expected. For my situation it looks like the “hooks” from the program driver are not connecting to the Yamaha USB driver.

I hope this helps

Ron Southworth

Hi Ron,

Unfortunately, I think a lot of us are completely dead in the water. I can’t even start up the installer to try a re-install over the top of my Cubase - that crashes immediately. Cubase itself won’t start either. I get the license key dialogue if I forget to put the dongle in, but other than that, there are no signs of life. Maybe that’s helpful in it’s own right.

I don’t have to know something about Cubase in particular. I’ve been a software developer for 16+ years (CS degrees et al). What I’m saying is based on how things work with software in general. I understand that they might have some code inexorably tied to some OS APIs, to the point that it’s very hard to fix it. But if that happens while other 5 DAWs with the same functionality work just fine, then it points to either “technical debt” or them doing something very special that those others don’t (and I don’t recall that there’s any completely unique functionality at that level).

And again, that would understandable. It’s the “no communication” / roadmap / “keep users in the dark” thing is what’s troubling. That’s what makes Logic users worried about its future, for example, when new versions stall and nobody knows if they will even ever land.

Also troubling is the “don’t bother testing and starting thinking of a fix when the betas are out, we’ll do it only after the final release”. If that indicates lack of resources (instead of indifference) that might make it understandable, but it doesn’t make it any less worrying.

If that was the case other DAWs would have hit the same snags. Paths were a userland app has to talk to the OS and underlying libraries are not that many – if Live, Logic, Pro Tools, BitWig, Studio One, and can push audio, sync, draw their GUIs, talk to MIDI and record, so should Cubase.

I just think this whole thing is a matter of communication. I would like to hear from Steinberg about the progress even if its not ready yet.

Exactly this.

If nothing else, they should have the professionalism to update their customers. Their total lack of communication smacks of arrogance, indifference and a complete lack of respect.

Rightly or wrongly, Apple can get away with being uncommunicative because, well, they’re Apple. Steinberg are not Apple. We keep hearing how we shouldn’t be too hard on Steinberg because they’re only a little company, with limited resources. Well, if that’s the case you’d think they’d like to keep their existing customers!

This issue would make a simple yet clear case study on how not to do business.