El Capitan GM Candidate: A-OK with DP 9.01.

[Shooshie]

Amblin Entertainment just released Jurassic World on iTunes yesterday. I watched it last night. Now I'm here in this thread, and the parallels between that plot and this one are... well... interesting. Seems that Apple wanted a bad-ass OS that stood towering above the old ones, so they created it, and now it is rampaging around the Mac eating all the software. A few brave souls have stuck it out finding plugins it can't kill. Even the venerable old MIDI Timepiece can't contain it! It eats old MIDI and Audio apps and hardware like potato chips.

It's the X-OSaurus. From Apple.

Shoosh

[mikehalloran]

Amblin Entertainment just released Jurassic World on iTunes yesterday. I watched it last night. Now I'm here in this thread, and the parallels between that plot and this one are... well... interesting. Seems that Apple wanted a bad-ass OS that stood towering above the old ones, so they created it, and now it is rampaging around the Mac eating all the software. A few brave souls have stuck it out finding plugins it can't kill. Even the venerable old MIDI Timepiece can't contain it! It eats old MIDI and Audio apps and hardware like potato chips.

It's the X-OSaurus. From Apple.

Shoosh

You're right.

The cosmetics for those of us who can't take advantage of Metal ... it's not that different. Under the hood is a different story.

Although it doesn't look it, El Capitán is a major leap from Yosemite. Reading the Ars Technica review, it is clear that the twin goals are to make software as compatible with the OS and each other as possible and to increase security. 10.11 is the most significant release since 10.2 in my opinion. Apple is telling developers that the days of messing with the system and hiding files everywhere are over. TheToolkit will no longer just be a good suggestion -- it's the new law. Many old reliable Terminal hacks will no longer work even at the Root level.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/09/os ... -review/1/

If your primary use is music production, there is no need to upgrade yet. Yosemite 10.10.5 is quite good -- the best Apple OS since 10.4.11 for most users in my book (I am deaf to the continued praises of 10.6.8 and 10.8.5 -- they're ok but your needs aren't the same as mine). OS 10.11 is the next step in trying to ensure that new apps just work when installed and it's huge.

I'm liking it a lot especially in conjunction with iOS 9 (as long as iTunes is left out of the discussion).

[Morpheo]

Apple is telling developers that the days of messing with the system and hiding files everywhere are over. TheToolkit will no longer just be a good suggestion -- it's the new law. Many old reliable Terminal hacks will no longer work even at the Root level.

Mike, you can still disable rootless:

sudo nvram boot-args="kext-dev-mode=1 rootless=0";sudo reboot


I haven't installed El Cap yet so I can't test it myself, maybe later today if I have time.

[bayswater]

I've been running super solid on DP 8.07 and 10.8.5 for so long, I can't remember. I just don't understand the rush to a new version of DP and/or OS, especially with a dedicated studio machine. Every time I'm tempted, I read threads like this one and get back to making music.

That combination was good for me too, but I couldn't resist the new toys. When DP 9 came out I updated the test partition and it was good to go almost right away. As for 10.8.5, the Ars Tech article suggested that it will now be dropped by Apple for the purpose of security updates. You might want to keep that in mind.

[dewdman42]

Microsoft sorta did that with XP. But we were able to use XP totally supported for how many years? Or should I say decades? I do have an old pc I've been using effectively for file server duties which now has to be turned into a Linux box unless I want to just run xp and take my security chances, which I probably will.

Same goes for older macs, Apple just does this far quicker and more often then MS has in the past. But me personally I update OSX as slow as I can get away with it and if they depricate my hardware I will run it into the ground with whatever older software I have to use until I just can't stand it anymore and finally have to spend a few grand to upgrade to a new system. Hey I wanna get a used tower soon. I have a bunch of motu hardware connected to a pci card. If I get a new Mac I have to buy new audio hardware too. It will be expensive. As long as I can keep getting it done with what I have I am not switching. As the hardware gets older and older it becomes riskier and riskier to upgrade OSX each time as Apple introduces one little thing after another that won't work with this hardware. Eventually they will write off the old pci towers completely. For a while the software I need to use will work just fine on older versions of OSX, but I eventually I will be forced to literally give that box away or run Windows 14 on it in boot camp or something or use it to host Vienna ensemble or whatever. Which is kind of ridiculous since it has a lot of power right now and there is no reason to have to upgrade other then Apple imposing new unsupported frameworks on us for gamers or for app store big brother control or whatever. Ok that is starting to sound like a rant. Sorry. I still love OSX! Will keep crossing my fingers and hope to squeak as much time out of my existing hardware as I can.

[HCMarkus]

For those with older Mac Pros, this may be of interest…

http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/06- ... n.1922266/

[dewdman42]

Thanks for that excellent info!

[SixStringGeek]

For those with older Mac Pros, this may be of interest…

http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/06- ... n.1922266/

Wow. I still have my 1,2 (I took it home and setup a mini studio there when I upgraded the one at my studio) but haven't done the mod to run anything newer than lion.

I might have to dig into that just so I have full on twins.

[James Steele]

The cosmetics for those of us who can't take advantage of Metal ... it's not that different. Under the hood is a different story.

I read that my ATI 5770 can't take advantage of Metal. Does anybody know what is the minimum graphics card that does? Be great if I could find something that doesn't break the bank on eBay and take advantage of the Metal thing. Although, I guess to be practical... I'm probably not doing anything where Metal would affect my day to day that often. Although, I do remember seeing that it might be a boon with FCPX.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Be great if I could find something that doesn't break the bank on eBay and take advantage of the Metal thing.

Hadn't heard about that before. Now I can't wait for Finale and DP to catch up. I hope I don't loose Final Cut Express or CS5 stuff. I'd hate to have to start paying Adobe a rental fee. From other info at that link it does sound like an amazing upgrade. Should be able to upgrade my 3,1 8-core. Maybe that's the way to go? I can afford to test out the system on that and keep working on my 6.1 trash can.

Yeah, that's what I'll do. I'll pretend the 3,1 is a heater for the winter... maybe by then things will have shaken out.

[dewdman42]

hey maybe more people will freak out and sell off their mac pro towers, then the price will come down and I can finally snag one!

[Morpheo]

So........ I just installed El Cap on my 5,1.

DP runs perfectly fine and all my plugins are here. I just opened a project we finished 3 weeks ago to make a few corrections - everything is ok.

Pro Tools 11.3.1 didn't complain either.

@MIDI Life Crisis, I still have Photoshop CS 5.5 on this machine, no problem either. I just had to reinstall that damn Java Runtime because it seems every OS upgrade deletes it or something, anyway no big deal.

I had to disable SIP because my SSL driver wasn't recognized and was declared incompatible by the Finder... I knew the SIP was the cause, so until SSL releases a new version or I buy a new interface, I'm going to keep it that way.


After a few minutes, I have to say that applications/documents/projects open slightly faster than before, including DP. It's nice because it's noticeable, and consistent with what I read about El Capitan a few weeks ago. I really like the new system font, yes it's (very) similar to helvetica but at the same time quite different, characters are better defined for my non-retina screens. Sometimes the biggest difference is in the smallest details

Anyway like I said, I've just installed it so I can't comment much right now. But it does work, and DP (I have Komplete too and NI plugins did load as usual) doesn't seem to have any issue with the new OS so far.

[Morpheo]

The cosmetics for those of us who can't take advantage of Metal ... it's not that different. Under the hood is a different story.

I read that my ATI 5770 can't take advantage of Metal. Does anybody know what is the minimum graphics card that does? Be great if I could find something that doesn't break the bank on eBay and take advantage of the Metal thing. Although, I guess to be practical... I'm probably not doing anything where Metal would affect my day to day that often. Although, I do remember seeing that it might be a boon with FCPX.

The "lag" many people reported regarding Yosemite was for the most part for laptops/iMacs, *from what I gathered*. Since 10.10.3, Yosemite has been pretty smooth for me, and both my 5,1 and 1,1 MacPros use the 5770. I'm not even sure we would notice such a big improvement with a Metal compatible card. Having said that, any 7xxx card will work with metal. Some of them are pretty cheap on ebay...

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Thanks, Morpheo

[James Steele]

hey maybe more people will freak out and sell off their mac pro towers, then the price will come down and I can finally snag one!

That would be nice. My next Mac is going to be a 5,1 8 core that I'm going to upgrade to a 12 core. (I think that's the model that doesn't need de-lidding?)