Several years ago, I wrote an End Rant [Tape Op #102] about my frustration with software upgrades, and how I wanted a stable recording platform. I received a surprising amount of positive emails from the piece and even exchanged dialogue with a few music software developers.
After spending the last three months on an upgrade of my main DAW — with mixed results — I feel like I'm back inside the belly of the beast. But while inside, I had a bit of an epiphany: I want to migrate away from Apple Inc.'s OS within the next two years. I've been a Mac user since I bought my first Macintosh Plus in 1988. It ran on System 6. I recall the next System 7 being a great update. I'm a bit hazy on 1997's rebranded Mac OS 8, but Mac OS 9 was a very solid operating system. I bought a new Mac right when OS X came out, and I upgraded the software we use to do page layout for Tape Op. Doing layout on OS X was so insanely buggy and slow, that I had to revert back to OS 9. Luckily, my new Mac was a dual-boot system, and I more or less stayed on OS 9 for three more years.(1) Eventually, I had to make the switch to OS X in order to collaborate with the rest of the world, so I bought a new Mac that was supposedly four or five times faster than my old dual-boot Mac on OS 9. Our layout software in OS X was finally less buggy, and it ran at about the same speed as the OS 9 version. Note that it was not running four or five times faster, nor were there any new features. By buying a faster, brand new computer, I was finally acquiescing to using Apple's latest OS, yet achieving a net performance gain of zero. Earlier this year, OS X was rebranded macOS (to better align with Apple's iWorld-centric vision). I'm currently running four macOS versions — 10.5, 10.8, 10.9, as well as the newest "El Capitan" 10.11 — spread across six different Macs. I need the older versions to open archived sessions, as well as to ensure that I have a stable recording platform for my clients. During the recent upgrade process mentioned earlier, our main DAW was repeatedly getting error messages in the middle of recording, and we lost performances as a result. This is clearly not a professional situation. Stability is of the utmost importance in any professional recording environment.(2) Every time any software changes, there is a risk of a once stable system no longer functioning properly, no matter how carefully installations are performed, and no matter what the various software vendors tell you.(3) It's important for professionals to be able to choose when and how they upgrade their software tools. With macOS, this is getting more and more difficult to do, and this is the main reason I want to leave the Mac ecosystem. Apple's current business strategy seems to be based on iCloud integration and near constant upgrades. This may work fine for iPhones, but it's a recipe for disaster when the one thing you need the most from your software environment is stability. I'm mostly addressing forced software upgrades, but let's also consider cloud-based software. How many times a day does your network connection slow down, disappear, or need the router unplugged and reset? Granted, for some types of workflow (e.g., commercial production studios with collaborators all over the world), cloud-based workflow is a godsend — but in these cases, business-class internet service with higher speeds is usually in place. Being forced to utilize an internet connection is certainly not a welcome or safe choice for the rest of us, who are simply making records and capturing performances.