Apple is about to release their latest OS update. OS X 10.11, dubbed El Capitan, has been in developer hands since June, and went to public beta September 1st. So obviously today has seen a slew of panicked DJ companies saying not to update because stuff will be bent a little out of shape, if not entirely broken. If only they’d had some sort of notice… maybe an announcement months in advance, and a beta version being made available for companies to test.
Here’s my theory on what happens when a new OS is announced — instead of devoting some resource to the important task of installing and running it under pressure for a few weeks with all current hardware, it seems more likely that a senior person immediately tasks a marketing type to draft a press release saying “don’t install it yet — it breaks stuff”, and that PR is ready weeks in advance. And once again, we appear to be in that same cycle, as my time line is littered with companies saying that El Capitan isn’t supported yet. Bugger.
Here’s the thing — not all of us have the luxury of a laptop for work and for play. We keep our lives in one usually expensive place, and by not having apps and drivers ready, we are deprived of having the cool stuff that OS updates delivers, especially when the advice we keep getting is to keep things up to date. I don’t do well with being told what to do, and especially struggle with being restricted in any way, so you can see why I’ve pulled out my soapbox.
My lemming credentials are well established, so I’ll just install it and then moan very loudly that everything should be working, something that I’m sure the industry depends on to get valuable feedback from users that they can then use to fix the issues. Are lemmings and guinea pigs related?
For me, there are no excuses, unless…
DEAR DJ INDUSTRY…
I ask a question because of my lack of in-depth knowledge about your internal processes. But given that you’ve all got developer accounts to test stuff out, why does it take weeks and sometimes months after GM release to make things work? Do you wait for the GM to drop and then throw resource at it? Do you feel that so much can change that it’s not worth doing anything before that point? Feel free to respond in the comments, or via email at the usual address if you wish to drop some knowledge on me to share anonymously. Please help us to understand.
So take this sarcasm-laden post as a warning. Check with the usual suspects before leaping in the update abyss. You’ve been warned.