OSX Lion -- Out Now For the Brave -- Discuss!

kingmetal · Post by **kingmetal** » Thu Jul 21, 2011 9:04 am

In this thread, we talk about OSX Lion. Mostly geared at the brave few who upgraded way before we should have.

I upgraded my home-rig, which has gotten pretty basic so far. Haven't had much of an oppurtunitity to test yet. Things that are broken so far:

-My Western Digital Mybook Live that I was using for Time Machine backups (wirelessly). DOH! Got instantly fed up and went out and bought a Time Capsule, like I should have in the first place. Thanks, credit card! Western Digital says that a fix is on the way for this, but I've decided I'm not willing to clown around with backups any longer, plus my previous wireless router has been nothing but problems since I bought it. Two birds, one stone. A very expensive stone, but a stone.

-Splashtop Desktop Streamer doesn't seem to work at the moment. Boo hoo.

Native Instruments is reporting that some of their 64bit apps crash, I'll have to see if Reaktor gives me any trouble. I work mostly in Maschine on my home rig, which I believe is still 32bit. Hopefully they get some updates out the door ASAP.

EDIT: Looks like all NI products except Kore 2 and Traktor are 64bit at this point. Luckily it seems easy enough to just run the apps in 32bit mode, and I won't lose much performance. Battery is good to go in 64bit!

Read more: http://www.native-instruments.com/en/su ... rc=newsbar

Other than that, no drama. I love the full-screen app switching business. Put Ableton or Maschine in full screen mode and swap between them. Things are even better if the app supports it, like Mail. It helps me keep focused and use up all the real-estate on the laptop screen.

For the record, I'm running:

15" MBP (2011) w/ 8gb of RAM
MOTU Microbook[/url]

iamthecosmos · Post by **iamthecosmos** » Thu Jul 21, 2011 10:19 am

Anyone tried Logic 9 with it?

RoyMatthews · Post by **RoyMatthews** » Thu Jul 21, 2011 11:28 am

iamthecosmos wrote:Anyone tried Logic 9 with it?

It's not compatible with Logic 8. Oh well, I needed to upgrade anyway...

mrclean · Post by **mrclean** » Thu Jul 21, 2011 1:06 pm

Got an email saying that UAD software won't work with it yet...so if you rely on those plugs - don't upgrade yet...

lysander · Post by **lysander** » Thu Jul 21, 2011 6:51 pm

I'm surprised how well things are going. Logic (9.1.4) is working fine -- you can even use it in full screen mode, which is cool.

My MOTU Ultralite (first version) worked right away. My Tascam FW-1884 wouldn't show up as available, however, and that was the biggest hitch. But I found the solution!

If you hold down the 3 and 2 keys while you boot, it boots the kernel back into 32-bit mode. I did that, and the FW-1884 appeared and I could use it as normal.

When you reboot, it automatically boots you back into the default 64-bit mode.

I still haven't updated my main machine, but I may just make a backup of the drive and do it since everything else seems to be okay. I just have to check out my midi controllers keyboards and things should be good to go.

John Jeffers · Post by **John Jeffers** » Thu Jul 21, 2011 7:39 pm

I upgraded the four Macs in the house, but no way in hell am I touching my recording computer. I don't play around with the shiny newness on that one. Anyway, I'm running Pro Tools, and I know for certain it's not compatible. If history is any indication, it'll be several months or more before there's a compatible version -- though things seem to be different/better since Avid took the reigns and dropped the Digidesign name, so maybe I'll be surprised.

jhharvest · Post by **jhharvest** » Fri Jul 22, 2011 12:29 am

I've got this rule when it comes to Macs: never buy the first revision of any Apple product and never upgrade until the .1 comes out.

At home I'm still happily running 10.5.8.

kingmetal · Post by **kingmetal** » Fri Jul 22, 2011 5:28 pm

Just spent the day with Lion doing audio-related tasks. Here are some things I've discovered:

Maschine -- seem to work just as well as it did in 10.6 and below. I have issues with Maschine crashing on OSX when dialog boxes pop up inside plugins that Maschine is hosting, but I had this problem before I upgraded to Lion. Plugin support is pretty new for Maschine and some wrinkles need to be ironed out.

Melodyne Editor 1.2.1 seems to work just fine

Pro Tools 9.03 does NOT WORK AT ALL. It pops up a handy little message that let's you know that it won't even attempt to run. Bummer. Luckily, I do almost no PT9 work at home, but this is a pretty big deal all things considered. Avid: get it together please!

iLok.com seems to have trouble connecting to my iLok, but it was a little goofy in 10.6. I'm using Safari 5. iLok.com has always been a little wonky for me.

My MOTU continues to work great and the rest of the system seems pretty stable. Had one goofy little crash, but the machine came back up and opened up all my apps again for me. Cute. I should note that the video hardware in my MBP is suspect and I believe that is actually defective, so I'm not going to use my system as a benchmark for stability. Lion has overall been a welcome improvement, but I am running into the usual problems that early adopters do. Would never ever ever do this to a 'real' production computer.

I am also using the whole disk encryption on this machine (whatever it's called, FileVault?) and it works great, although I suppose I haven't tried to break into my own computer. I am sort of just trusting that it works. Performance-wise, I mean, it's great -- and it supports Time Machine (which is also working great).

Snarl 12/8 · Post by **Snarl 12/8** » Sat Jul 23, 2011 12:18 am

jhharvest wrote:I've got this rule when it comes to Macs: never buy the first revision of any Apple product and never upgrade until the .1 comes out..

Is that rule still true? I came up with that one after I bought my Quadra, but I haven't really been on a mac in ages.

jhharvest · Post by **jhharvest** » Sat Jul 23, 2011 1:21 am

Snarl 12/8 wrote:
jhharvest wrote:I've got this rule when it comes to Macs: never buy the first revision of any Apple product and never upgrade until the .1 comes out..
Is that rule still true? I came up with that one after I bought my Quadra, but I haven't really been on a mac in ages.

Oh yeah, very much so. Recent Apple gear launches:
*Macbook Air 1st gen overheated and crashed. Only the recent model has Thunderbolt.
*Macbook 1st gen heatsinks had been installed incorrectly. Plastic bevel around the keyboard disintegrated after a year or two. Core 2 Duo model launched six months later. Pro was the same but thanks to the metal shell it just ran really hot.
*iPhone original had no 3G. This and the original iPod Touch can't install new iOS versions. The iPod touch didn't even have any speaker or mic or external volume controls, which the next version fixed.

Software releases:
*10.6 Snow Leopard 'This application unexpectedly quit'
*10.5 Leopard had blue screen of death in installation!

I can't remember beyond that. Hardware problems are mostly in the laptop side of things. Maybe the Intel chips were too hot compared to the PowerPCs for really be of use in mobile applications. We have some Mac Pro 1,1's that are still going strong.

johnllvt · Post by **johnllvt** » Wed Aug 17, 2011 11:17 am

More confirmation of the "wait for .1 rule:"

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/ ... y-wifi.ars

chris harris · Post by **chris harris** » Wed Aug 17, 2011 12:53 pm

I've been using Lion and loving it on my laptop. It should be common knowledge that it takes a while for audio apps to get compatible, so it would be foolish to install it on a work computer. But, it's great to be able to learn the new features on my web surfing computer. There really are some incredible new features.

kingmetal · Post by **kingmetal** » Wed Aug 17, 2011 1:27 pm

FYI: http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=30 ... gle+Reader

Pro Tools 9.05 just dropped and it provides "beta" support for 10.7 (Lion). It is not fully qualified, but should at least allow the program to launch. I haven't had a chance to try this at home yet, but I'm downloading the full installer here at work and will see if I can get it on my system before I leave for Chicago tomorrow (still haven't decided if the 'puter is coming with me).

Other than a little flakiness in Maschine (which was an issue before Lion) and what appears to be some hardware issues with my graphics card (which also predated the update to Lion), I've had no other problems with Lion.

goose42 · Post by **goose42** » Mon Sep 26, 2011 9:57 am

I just bought a refurb Macbook Pro, which came with Lion pre-installed. However, I'm lucky that I use Digital Performer with MOTU and Focusrite hardware most of the time, and they've both released Lion updates.

After a little futzing this weekend, I was able to use the following without a problem:

- DP 7.24
- latest release of MOTU Audio System controller and CueMix
- Saffire Mix Control 2.4

paid plugins
- PSP OldTimer/OldTimer ME (can't get the Register window to open, I hope it will prompt me for my code when the demo period runs out in 2 weeks)
- PSP sQuad - which doesn't make sense, because PSP's documentation says it should only function in 32-bit, and I booted in regular 64-bit mode.
- SoundToys DevilLoc

freebie plugins
- Valhalla FreqEcho
- Voxengo Span 2.4
- Flux Stereo Tool (I think it's 2.2; it's a recent update)
- Lowcoders/Bitplant KingDubby
- Togu TALDUB-II

When I bought my computer, I also bought a new LaCie FW hard drive, and I had trouble getting it to mount until I read this:
http://www.lacie.com/us/more/?id=10121#SA

kingmetal · Post by **kingmetal** » Mon Sep 26, 2011 10:04 am

Glad to hear you had success. I think at this point I've resolved all my Lion-related issues. Had some trouble with Ableton Live over the weekend, but a patch solved that. Even iLok.com seems to work.

Still wouldn't recommend it go on anyone's studio computer, but I'm pretty happy with the update overall. My machine has some wake-from-sleep issues that predate Lion, but other than that nothing to report other than I'm already so used to the new gestures and the revamp of Spaces that it feels weird when I'm on a Snow Leopard machine. Plus, I like the peace of mind that FileVault affords me when I travel.

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OSX Lion -- Out Now For the Brave -- Discuss!

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