Why can't NI keep up with Apple updates, especially Silicon Sequoia 15?

"Quite frankly I've never understood the driving need to upgrade an operating system unless there are compelling features that you really need. I'm still on Windows 10 simply because I saw no compelling features in Windows 11 for my uses.

+100. You would think that once any user (regardless of skill level) has arrived a known good working state (regardless of OS) and they are able to make music, do work or whatever their DAW is doing for them - they would simply leave it alone.

This is a DAW after all- I want the OS to disappear and simply run my apps and that's it.

As I have client work to deliver - I treat the gear here like any big studio would. Maturity and stability leads to billable hours and sanity. When I walk into any Mac based studio here in town (where work is actually occurring) - all I ever see is Ventura (or older) on 3 year old Macs holding down the fort and doing the work.

I sometime ask about why they are not on this or that - and almost without fail I get the old "Well - this is working for us now. We will look at "that" some other day"

These guys clearly do not care about an Apple keynote every September. They are focused on stability without interference.

Now - don't get me wrong. I schedule appropriate downtime for upgrades, hardware tuneups and the like - but this occurs on my schedule - not when some vendor tells me it's a good idea.

"That's probably going to change with my next computer upgrade due to some improvements they've made in the memory management and thread allocation parts of the OS"

Ironically - when I built my new DAW in the last weeks of Jan 2024 - this was the exact reason (Thread Director) I bailed on Windows 11 (23H2) and went right back to Win 10.

Even with cutting edge parts (as of Jan 20, 2024) - and three complete Win 11 installs - it took me two weeks to figure out where all these glitches, pops and who knows what else was appearing in my work files. I finally snapped and yanked it back to Win 10 22H2.

Smooth sailing is literally priceless.

VP

There are many things you can criticise NI on, but this is not one of them.

I'm not sure what Apple's developer event horizon is for their new, annual OS updates, but I don't imagine it's very long (probably under a month before the final OS is released). And until developers get the final, released version, there's really not a lot of point in spending time seeing whether anything other than key programmes work. And 2 - 3 weeks is really not a lot of time to do both extensive testing and software correction. I would much rather wait until NI and other music software companies sorted out their compatibility properly than have them do a half-ars*d job and pretend everything was fine.

And note, this is an issue that is absolutely not limited to NI. Every single music software developer is in the same position. Some will certify sooner, some much later.

With Maschine 3.0 I would assume that it has been tested on final Sequoia Macs, because they've been out for at least 2 weeks.

As with most music software, the best thing to do it not update immediately, but hold back, let other people expose any flaws and join the party when it's clear everything is working fine.

I agree. This is beyond ridiculous. THE music platform to use. The platform used by probably most of their serious professional users and they can’t get anybody on the inside of Apple to work collaboratively on releasing updates in a timely manner. How much is your company worth? You aren’t a company that can get ahold of somebody at Apple to make this happen? If I was on your executive team, darn sure I’d find a way. We didn’t pay these ridiculous prices for this kind of low level operation. Figure it out, or I’ll go back to pirating your stuff like I used to in my starving days.

I got a brand new M4 mac mini and so far Native Access 2 and what I have installed on it (Traktor 3, Maschine 3) have been working without issues. I also updated my older mac to Sequoia and that too seems to work fine, for now.

As for all the "why mac users update? Stop being sheep LOL" comments, yes, every mac user knows not to update their OS too soon, but the thing is, when you buy a new mac it always comes preinstalled with the latest "beta" OS, there is no option in those cases to use an older OS. And like I said, I bet these M4 macs will become very popular in no time at all..

Luckily it seems that things are OK for the most part this time.. If I had to guess which systems will end up having the most issues, I'd again bet my money on those Max versions of these chips (M4 Max etc), simply due to the fact that Max CPUs have had probs before..