PSA for Mac Reason users: Hold off on updating to macOS 10.15 Catalina

[Atlatnesiti]

This is funny but very true post by Chris from 9to5Mac:
“ If only Apple announced their new operating systems four months ahead of release, and provided beta versions of that software to developers. Even better, Apple could announce the new operating systems at the same time every year, like clockwork, so that developers could allocate their resources accordingly. If they wanted to be really helpful, they could do it at a massive developer conference, and make hundreds of their software engineers available to developers to offer detailed explanations of what’s coming and how to prepare. Not everyone might be able to make it to the conference, so they could put videos from the event on a developer section of their website so literally anyone with a developer account could see it.

Then developers might be more prepared when new operating systems ship. Heck, they might even have a working version of their software ready from day one.”

[mgw38]

As far as I understand the issue, the Catalina release has two significant changes that create a bit of havoc. First the complete drop of 32bit support. Many developers still have 32bit helper apps in their distributions even if their plugins are 64bit. IK Multimedia is a good example. While all their plugins should work, the IKM Authorizer app still seems to be 32bit, so you can't authorize any plugins on Catalina.

And the second one is the notarization requirement in Catalina. I personally appreciate the fact that any program that will run on my machine has to go through some sort of checkup to make sure it follows certain security standards. But looking through some of the developer threads here and on other places, I do understand why developers are frustrated. This notarization is far from being a straightforward process.

I think what DDMF sent out today sums it up best:

Dear DDMF users,

as always, I hope this email reaches you in good spirits! I just want to share some important information about the upcoming Mac Catalina update... so if you are exclusively using Windows, you can now stop reading .

As you may or may not have heard, with Catalina, the new Mac operating system that will be released this month, support for 32 bit software is abandoned. This has important consequences for a number of DDMF products: Bridgewize and Metaplugin, which both offer the possibility to use your old 32 bit plugins in a 64 bit host, will no longer be able to do that under Catalina. There is no technical workaround for this, also none of the competitor products that offer bit bridging will continue to work under Catalina. So if you want to keep using your old and beloved 32 bit plugins, you will have to stay on OSX 10.14 or lower! This, of course, also applies to the 32 bit version of Plugindoctor, which will no longer work with OSX 10.15.

A second change that will come with Catalina is that all software that is not being sold directly via iTunes (such as DDMF and almost all other non-Apple audio software) will now have to undergo a process called "notarization" in order to continue to work under Catalina. The exact consequences of non-notarized software are, I have to admit, not yet entirely clear to me; also, in reaction to a lot of developers complaining about this new requirement, Apple has decided to relax the restrictions a bit until January 2020, but anyway, be prepared for some unforeseen issues with not only DDMF software, but 3rd party software in general when updating to Catalina.

To summarize, if you plan to keep using 32 bit software (plugins or otherwize) you cannot update to Catalina. Even if you are all set for 64 bit exclusively, I'd advise you to not update immediately, but first wait a few weeks until it has become clear whether the new notarization requirements lead to significant issues.

That's it for the moment, thanks for listening!

All the best, Christian

[teilo]

And the second one is the notarization requirement in Catalina. I personally appreciate the fact that any program that will run on my machine has to go through some sort of checkup to make sure it follows certain security standards. But looking through some of the developer threads here and on other places, I do understand why developers are frustrated. This notarization is far from being a straightforward process.

Not only is Notarization not straightforward, Apple has been incredibly obtuse as to just how this all plays into plugins. It came as a shock to most developers that AU components are now subject to Gatekeeper and will crash if they try to load. Unlike with Applications (.app packages) where you can right-click and choose Open to bypass Gatekeeper, with AU components, you have to fix them on the command line by removing their quarantine attribute.

For example, none of the AirWindows AUs will load in Catalina if you install fresh versions. (To be clear, they will still load in hosts that use their own AU loader, vs. the macOS one, but they won't load in Logic, Hosting AU, and many others.) Thankfully, that is fixable with a single command in Terminal.

To make matters even more complicated, if your component or app is signed after some arbitrary date that Apple has not revealed, but is not notarized, you cannot run it even by right-clicking, nor by fixing it in Terminal.

[Tj Shredder]

Catalina is not an operating system. Apple stopped creating an OS... I wonder how developers would be able to test their software. With these restrictions its not possible unless they have a way to allow this, but then they could skip it completely because everybody would be forced to be a developer...
If developers would go strike, that would change those politics... I think they should...

[mgw38]

For what it's worth, I did install Catalina on my secondary machine, which I do not use for music production, and given the current panic the upgrade went surprisingly uneventful. Almost disappointingly so. I was prepared for a little "fix your OS" fun but it just upgraded and that was it. Everything continues to work the way it used to.

Having said that, I never upgrade my music production system until there is official confirmation that everything works as expected. That usually happens late December/early January.

[EnochLight]

UPDATE 10/6/2019:

Reason Studios Product Manager is still strongly urging people to NOT update to Catalina if you're using Reason until they complete their testing and release a statement:

I really should re-iterate that we don't recommend updating yet, regardless of a user report. There could be things that user isn't doing that doesn't work (like installing Reason or running plugins). We'll update our compatibility statement as soon as we have more information.

https://forum.reasontalk.com/viewtopic. ... 99#p470399

[Halonmusic]

Better switch to Windows then

[Johnny!]

For crying out loud, how long can it take them to put Catalina on a disk volume, install Reason, couple of RE's and say "yeah they work" or "nope something is wrong"? I did just that few days ago on (then) latest Catalina beta - Reason 10.4 installed and run without any hiccup. It's really not that hard.

Yeah I know, they have a bit more responsibility as a company than me, but hell - it's not like they couldn't start testing their own damn software a bit earlier.

[EnochLight]

For crying out loud, how long can it take them to put Catalina on a disk volume, install Reason, couple of RE's and say "yeah they work" or "nope something is wrong"? I did just that few days ago on (then) latest Catalina beta - Reason 10.4 installed and run without any hiccup. It's really not that hard.

Yeah I know, they have a bit more responsibility as a company than me, but hell - it's not like they couldn't start testing their own damn software a bit earlier.

Counterpoint: the same could be said for the plethora of other devs that are also saying "don't upgrade". It's just that properly beta testing stuff takes time.

[Atlatnesiti]

Same thing happens every year. All devs are not prepared for new macOS release and yet it’s been available for them to test and have their apps ready since beginning of June, that is 4 months and counting...

[mgw38]

Same thing happens every year. All devs are not prepared for new macOS release and yet it’s been available for them to test and have their apps ready since beginning of June, that is 4 months and counting...

In all fairness, the under the hood changes in Catalina seem fairly substantial. And one of the developers posted in another thread that the beta version was a bit more lenient when it came to code security. So they thought that everything worked ok but that ended up not being completely correct.

[Johnny!]

I could understand, that for some products that are indeed incompatible with Catalina, it might take some time to come up with a fix. But hell - most devs didn't even bother to check whether their soft works - and many apps do install and work just fine.
But instead of some proper info, all people get is "halt and wait until we bother to check" which is really lame.

[sprnva]

To be fair, I assume most developers are going to wait for the final release. The beta period is for Apple to iron out bugs, not for developers to prepare their software as features can change during the beta cycle, even at the last minute. That's why you often hear the line from support channels about not providing support for beta operating systems.

[fmr]

I could understand, that for some products that are indeed incompatible with Catalina, it might take some time to come up with a fix. But hell - most devs didn't even bother to check whether their soft works - and many apps do install and work just fine.
But instead of some proper info, all people get is "halt and wait until we bother to check" which is really lame.

Lame why? Do you think they have nothing else to do except testing macOS? The vast majority even have more Windows users than Mac users. And while they are wasting time and resources on the "upgraded" macOS, they aren't developing their own products, correcting their own bugs, etc.

And this scenario repeats EVERY year. I second developers position about advising users to hold on upgrading. How would you feel if they charge you for the time and resources wasted to support the "new" OS? Be thankful they do it for free.

After all, it's the software you use and with which you produce something that's important, not the OS. If your machine is working perfectly, why the urge to change the OS and raise potential problems?

[fmr]

Same thing happens every year. All devs are not prepared for new macOS release and yet it’s been available for them to test and have their apps ready since beginning of June, that is 4 months and counting...

Does Apple pay them for the testing? Why would they test? It's not their fault if Apple breaks compatibility EVERY YEAR.

It's "that" time of year when Apple f*cks everything, and users turn to the developers, as if they were responsible for that.