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DP 9.5 under OSX 10.13 GM

Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2017 11:00 am
by Gravity Jim
I'll report here if I see any glaring problems, but after running it for a couple of days, the good news is...

The combination of the OSX 10.13 Golden Master (full release coming in a week or so) and Digital Performer 9.5 feels so solid, so stable, it recalls the "what, me worry?" days of DP7.2.

Speedy response, smooth graphics handling, quick load times... this combo rocks pretty hard.

On my cheesegrater MacPro 5,1/12-core, the GM installer informed me that my machine required a firmware update to run 10.13, which it did successfully and quickly. The result is fresh firmware, fresh OS, fresh DP... and a super clean data path.

So, good things are coming.

Re: DP 9.5 under OSX 10.13 GM

Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2017 11:25 am
by HCMarkus
Great news Jim; thanks for reporting. Glad the EFI Update was painless for you.

One question: Did the High Sierra installer do any drive reformatting on your 5,1? If so, was the conversion limited to SSDs or were spinners also moved to the new Apple disk format, APFS?

Thanks again.

PS: As is my custom and practice with OS updates, I'm probably going to hold off on the move from Sierra to High Sierra until we hit .2 or .3 of the new OS.

Re: DP 9.5 under OSX 10.13 GM

Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2017 11:41 am
by Gravity Jim
HC, I was doing the public beta, so I jumped at the chance to run the GM.

No drive reformatting that I am aware of, and the update didn't break the kids of things that broke during the last great drive reformatting (was it Lion or Mountain Lion that rendered Time Machine backups useless by changing the disk structure?)

Oh, wait.... on closer inspection, the boot drive format reads "APFS," but the other drives are unchanged. This hasn't affected access to Time Machine backups, however. I suppose that if I reformatted any drives under High Sierra, it would format them to APFS, which is optimized for SSDs... that might explain the fast VI load times I'm seeing.

My internal drives are all SSDs, and all four were formatted Journaled HFS+. The installer did change the boot drive. On all drives, S.M.A.R.T. status verified and TRIM is ON, just like before.

Re: DP 9.5 under OSX 10.13 GM

Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2017 3:21 pm
by HCMarkus
Gravity Jim wrote:HC, I was doing the public beta, so I jumped at the chance to run the GM.

No drive reformatting that I am aware of, and the update didn't break the kids of things that broke during the last great drive reformatting (was it Lion or Mountain Lion that rendered Time Machine backups useless by changing the disk structure?)

Oh, wait.... on closer inspection, the boot drive format reads "APFS," but the other drives are unchanged. This hasn't affected access to Time Machine backups, however. I suppose that if I reformatted any drives under High Sierra, it would format them to APFS, which is optimized for SSDs... that might explain the fast VI load times I'm seeing.

My internal drives are all SSDs, and all four were formatted Journaled HFS+. The installer did change the boot drive. On all drives, S.M.A.R.T. status verified and TRIM is ON, just like before.
Good info Jim. Cool if VI loading is faster, but it would seem the data drives would be where we'd see a significant difference. Do you concur? Thanks!

One more question... what type of SSD is your boot drive... PCIe or SATA?

Re: DP 9.5 under OSX 10.13 GM

Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2017 3:50 pm
by Gravity Jim
SATA. They're all enclosed in a 2010 MacPro 5,1 that's been upgraded to a 3.33ghz 12-core. Still haven't felt a compelling need for drives faster than this.

Re: DP 9.5 under OSX 10.13 GM

Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2017 4:55 pm
by HCMarkus
Gravity Jim wrote:SATA. They're all enclosed in a 2010 MacPro 5,1 that's been upgraded to a 3.33ghz 12-core. Still haven't felt a compelling need for drives faster than this.
+1 on that. I'm all SATA SSD (except backups), too.

Re: DP 9.5 under OSX 10.13 GM

Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2017 6:26 am
by JSmith1234567
Gravity Jim wrote:I'll report here if I see any glaring problems, but after running it for a couple of days, the good news is...

The combination of the OSX 10.13 Golden Master (full release coming in a week or so) and Digital Performer 9.5 feels so solid, so stable, it recalls the "what, me worry?" days of DP7.2.

Speedy response, smooth graphics handling, quick load times... this combo rocks pretty hard.

On my cheesegrater MacPro 5,1/12-core, the GM installer informed me that my machine required a firmware update to run 10.13, which it did successfully and quickly. The result is fresh firmware, fresh OS, fresh DP... and a super clean data path.

So, good things are coming.
Thanks so much!

Do you think "a good clean data path" is an important thing to do?

I could do that I think, though I kind-of shudder at thinking how many things I would have to re-install or re-authorize!

Thanks.

Re: DP 9.5 under OSX 10.13 GM

Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2017 8:15 am
by 1280bregs
Hi Jim, great to hear this. Preliminary testing has shown that there could be a problem authorizing DP on High Sierra. I recommend proceeding with caution until official support is announced.

Re: DP 9.5 under OSX 10.13 GM

Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2017 10:17 am
by mikehalloran
were spinners also moved to the new Apple disk format, APFS?
Apple has announced that HHDs and Fusion drives will not be upgraded to the new file system since it works on SSDs only.

So why can't they disable App Nap globally on desktop Macs?

Another Apple announcement is that 10.13 will be the last OS where 32bit apps work "without compromise"
https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=06282017a

Whether this means that an app like 32lives will be available to ensure compatibility or not is unknown. But the writing is on the wall for those of us who use certain old Adobe and Microsoft products. We have a year.

Re: DP 9.5 under OSX 10.13 GM

Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2017 1:21 pm
by Gravity Jim
I can confirm the authorization problem.

If I quit DP for the day and shut down my the studio for the night (including the Mac), when I reboot and relaunch the next day, DP will ask me for all the authorization information again.

If I quit DP during the day and reopen later, it's fine. It seems to only happen when I shut down the computer.

Both Apple (Feedback Assistant) and MOTU TechLink) have been contacted... and holy cow, I already got a response from Andrew at MOTU, who confirms that this happens when power cycling the computer. "Watch the website after the Final Release of 10.13 is made available." I guess I'll start leaving it on at night for a while. :)

Re: DP 9.5 under OSX 10.13 GM

Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2017 1:39 pm
by corbo-billy
I feel that there will be "sports" with High SIERRA.

Re: DP 9.5 under OSX 10.13 GM

Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2017 2:14 pm
by Gravity Jim
corbo-billy wrote:I feel that there will be "sports" with High SIERRA.
What do you mean?

Re: DP 9.5 under OSX 10.13 GM

Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2017 3:57 pm
by mikehalloran
(was it Lion or Mountain Lion that rendered Time Machine backups useless by changing the disk structure?)
Neither.

Intel Macs required different formatting of hard drives to HFS+/GUID to boot while PPCs required HFS+/Apple Partition Map /Journaled. This did not affect Time Machine, introduced with OS 10.5.
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3003

I used TM to move apps and files created in OS 10.5 to many Intel Macs including the one I'm using now.

The original Time Capsule Seagate drives, OTOH, were problematic and this caused a great deal of grief. These problems were misinterpreted by many till we all figured out the problem (heat). Apple later had a recall and replace campaign for those drives — the replacements were usually just as bad. Once I discovered WD Green drives, those problems went away.

Re: DP 9.5 under OSX 10.13 GM

Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2017 4:19 pm
by James Steele
DP users might want to hold off on installing High Sierra. I wrote a contact of mine at MOTU about this and got this response:
Testing is still ongoing but it appears that there is an issue with the auth file getting deleted (this can happen when the computer is restarted) in 10.13. If this user doesn't regularly shut down the computer, they might not be seeing this. Users should update to the new OS at their own risk until we release an official statement.
Emphasis above is mine. So if it was me... I wouldn't do it until there's an official okay from MOTU. Or... unless I have a disc image of my boot drive and am prepared to restore. (And I don't know how the new disc formatting of the boot drives might affect this).

Re: DP 9.5 under OSX 10.13 GM

Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2017 5:17 pm
by Gravity Jim
Yeah, that's what I said, too, also quoting a guy at MOTU.

I'm not advocating instant use of 10.13. I'm simply reporting what I find happening as I run the GM. Thought it might be helpful.