There was a time where my inner untamed lemming would hammer in reams of verbiage berating the DJ industry for not having their assorted softwares purring nicely in time for the release of Apple’s latest and great version of OS X or macOS. But times have changed, and thanks to a few industry conversations informing just how fraught Apple’s updates are (literally changing something huge at the last-minute is not unknown), my lemming no longer spews shit in their general direction.
And with the impending and somewhat major update of macOS to 10.15 aka Catalina, the first “for the love of God don’t update just yet” PR has arrived. Serato is first out of the starting blocks:
macOS 10.15 Catalina – not yet supported in Serato DJ Pro or Serato DJ Lite
macOS 10.15 Catalina is currently in BETA, but is not yet supported for use with Serato DJ Pro, or Serato DJ Lite.
We strongly recommend you do not update until we announce support
We have been performing tests with BETA releases of macOS 10.15 Catalina, and have noticed significant issues, which we are currently working through.
We hope to announce support for macOS 10.15 Catalina in both Serato DJ Pro & Serato DJ Lite after the public release of macOS 10.15 Catalina.
It may be worth disabling automatic updates, to avoid potentially clicking the “Install update” button in the macOS pop-up notification, via System Preferences –> App Store –> Automatically check for updates (uncheck)
THIS IS A BIGGIE
With Catalina comes the death of iTunes aka that tool that oh so many of us use to play music and manage their music libraries. Not everyone of course (I could feel people about to take to their keyboards to unload hate on iTunes), but it is nonetheless a massive change to manage. In reality it could be a very simple switch and sorted in a few lines of code. Alternatively however it could be a Herculean task requiring much juggling inside the DJ software’s framework.
Needless to say, this is a quantum shift that needs to be managed very carefully. So for this reason alone, even I would recommend holding off throwing your DJ Mac at Catalina, and just waiting a few weeks. It’s not like Catalina is likely to bring anything of significance to your DJ life anyway, so waiting is just a matter of harnessing your own inner lemming rather than actually missing out on anything. If the past OS X and macOS updates have thought me anything, it’s that the thrilled and excited demos dished out by Craig Federighi and his Apple chums at the keynotes never quite measures up to reality.
Obviously some will pay no heed to such warnings and will update anyway. Hell I probably will too, but only if Adobe CC works, because that’s more important to my business. And it’ll be come clear quite quickly if things are fine or truly fubarred. The forums will be littered with update related abuse regardless of the torrent of warnings not to update. T’was ever thus. The collective voice of inner lemmings tends to drown out the sultry voice of common sense.
Using the developers Beta for more than 2 months now I can say the whole iTunes/Music.app is not an issue.
Conversion from iTunes to Music.app is seamless. The only drawback is that the “iTunes Music Library.xml” which is the bridge that many DJ software uses to access iTunes playlists/folders/tracks needs to be exported manually whenever something is changed in the Music collection. But overall no issues to report.
My biggest fear about Catalina goes deeper: it drops support for 32bits software. Which means that some software (drivers/modules/plugins) fails to work under Catalina. 32 bits modules are the source of those famous “the app XXX needs to be updated contact its developer” messages under HighSierra/Mojave.
my mantra remains:
If your mission critical software doesn’t force you to update to the new OS and there are no new features introduced which you absolutely can’t live without: don’t update.
If it ain’t broke.. you got it.
Thanks for sharing this. I had Catalina PB when it was first released but ran into issues with installing subsequent versions after it and ultimately had to roll back to Mojave.
While on Catalina, I also noticed the disappearance of the XML file which severed the connection to rekordbox. My question is, how do you manually export the XML file in the Music app? Is it something crazy easy like in the file menu that I just missed?
it’s exactly that. However you need to name it correct
iTunes Music Library.xml
and save it manually in the correct folder
~/Music/iTunes/
default it saves to Documents. Alternatively you’ll have to change all your apps to look in Documents folder for the XML. Something for instance Serato doesn’t allow.
At least all is not lost even if you have to do it manually each time. I guess I’m the only one finding this as a positive because Apple could have completely done away with the manual export of XML altogether!
Wait, are you saying you need to export your music.app library every time you do something even as minute as loading a new track?
No, just the XML file. It’s lame that you must do it manually. It’s such an easy thing for Apple to implement. Maybe some Automator action will help with that. Or if I write a story pointing out how nuts it is that Apple is actively making life more difficult for DJs.
That’s what I meant. That is ridiculous; I understand they’re making changes to how files are handled and whatnot, but having to do that export ever time is a chore.
Bring on that article.
The export to XML is impossible to AppleScript/Automate reliably, trust me I’ve tried. There is no AppleScript command alike “export to xml at location XYZ”.
The only way to “script” XML generation is using what is called GUI scripting where you record mouse movements/clicks and menu item selection.
While this may sound as a solution it’s not. Because this doesn’t allow you to store the XML at a given location under different languages (long story) and it’s highly susceptible to user mistakes/intervention.
personal speculation:
Of course this is not by accident. Most likely Apple is about to drop the XML export from one of the next major MacOS updates, like the sharing with other apps (XML) in the Mojave iTunes was disabled by default.
Ultimately Apple wants developers to use what is known as the Application Program Interface (API) a black box where Apple can control what is shared with who opposed to the current XML which is human readable to everyone. Needless to say I’m not a fan of using the API.
Mark, you’re the guiltiest of all when it comes to betas and fresh releases. I don’t even think my Ableton Live 9 Suite will work on 10.15…
You say guilt — I say brave.
So courageous.
Real DJs compile their DJ software right before their set. :P
Hmmm, all this time ive been manually removing tracks from the itunes assigned folder then placing it in my own and manually loading the latest tracks into RB and Serato i thought i was doing it the long winded way.
Seems it might have been a sensible move now.