Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard Information

[Avid]

At this time, Pro Tools LE and Pro Tools M-Powered systems are not yet compatible with Mac OS X 10.5 ("Leopard"), but please be assured that we are committed to bringing Leopard support to you as quickly as we can. We are currently working very closely with Apple in order to ensure that when the fully compatible versions of Pro Tools LE and M-Powered are released, they’ll adhere to the same levels of performance and stability that you have come to rely on day in and day out. We understand your frustration and apologize for any inconvenience this delay may cause, but we ask that you please bear with us and wait to upgrade your OS until we announce compatibility. Thanks for your patience.

As always, we appreciate your ongoing support and will do our best to get you up and running on the latest Mac platforms as quickly and reliably as possible.

[Avid]

Hello Everyone,

I'm Dave Lebolt, general manager of Digidesign. I wanted to take a moment to talk to you about what is happening with Mac OS X Leopard and support in Pro Tools. Some of you have commented that getting Leopard qualified far earlier than now would seem like a "no-brainer," or that Digidesign is often far too late in coming on line in support of newer OS versions. Some have hypothesized that we will charge for an upgrade just to offer you Leopard support. Some people have even said that it's possible that Apple may be causing problems for Pro Tools on purpose. And some folks have said all of these things at once!

The first thing I want to say to all of you is: I'm sorry. I'm sorry that getting here is taking so long and that we have not been able to communicate more about it, and also because we really do care about your experience as customers... People working here are passionate about Pro Tools, a lot of us here want to use our product with Leopard too, and most of all we care because we genuinely want to do anything we can to help you be creative and successful in what you do. So I'm sorry if we're letting you down by not getting things released sooner.

Lack of Leopard support across our product line affects many of you (and affects our business), so I wanted to give you some insight into what's been happening and where we are in the process. Some quick answers to the above statements:

• We have an excellent working relationship with Apple. I have regular communications with senior folks there, as do many others in our organization with their peers (especially engineering and test). The people I talk to at Apple want Pro Tools to be compatible as much as we do; they know that a lot of you are our mutual customers. Ultimately, Apple considers Digidesign to be an important developer on the platform.
  
• Rest assured, we will not charge Pro Tools 7.4 owners for an update to support OS X Leopard. In fact, it is not our policy (nor has it ever been) to charge for a "dot release" where the only change is support for a new OS version.
  
• We'd love to have the new Leopard compatible version out to all of you, and it's very painful not to have it for everyone right now. We start work on the qualification (and development process as required) early in the cycle. We begin work on the "seed" versions of the operating system as soon as they are available and sometimes things are changing even as the initial OS release goes to market. If anything changes after that (i.e., a dot release), we sometimes have to start over in addressing any problems that may be newly introduced and go through entirely new rounds of testing to ensure quality.

What's The Current Status?
We have been working hard on supporting OS X Leopard since its introduction to developers at WWDC in 2006 for many months (including some period of time prior to Leopard's release). As is often the case with entirely new major OS versions, there were some quick "dot" releases after introduction. Many of the problems that Apple addressed in these dot releases were critical to improve OS X Leopard operations (you can read about some of them on the support section of Apple's website). These improvements and fixes were very valuable to a broad base of Mac users. Unfortunately, the currently shipping OS X Leopard release, 10.5.2, contains some changes that actually caused problems with Pro Tools (and some other apps as well). In our case, the problems included audio interfaces not being recognized by the computer, track counts dropping to near zero, and errors coming up during normal operation. Some of you who may have experimented with Pro Tools and OS X Leopard 10.5.2 may have encountered some of these problems.

We have worked closely with Apple's engineering group, who have been working very hard in cooperation with us to get the problems ironed out. The good news is that we're getting close to the home stretch, but we have to do a lot of testing of the fixes that have been implemented in order to be sure that we're in good shape. We need to make sure that our product works well and you're not just getting something that's marginal, and it takes time to exercise all of the newly changed code.

What Works on Leopard? Anything At All?
Currently, only Pro Tools|HD systems running Pro Tools 7.4.1 software are officially qualified with OS X Leopard 10.5.1 running on the new generation Mac Pro 8 core desktop machines (with "Harpertown" processors). This means no support yet for Pro Tools LE and M-Powered, and it means that users of the new Mac Pros need to stick with OS X 10.5.1 for the time being.

Why this Message?
We have posted this information along the way (just a couple of weeks ago our head of customer service posted information to the DUC), but the amount of time that is passing combined with our concern within the company prompted me to want to reach out to all of you. We work cooperatively with Apple, and want to respect the process that we have in place for fixing problems; but I wanted to give you a bit more information about what's been happening and why we're not there yet...

When Will It Ship?
We hope to have the new release within between 1 and 2 months from now; some of that timetable is contingent on Apple. We'll keep you posted as we get closer. Normally, we don't want to give specific dates because that can cause problems in expectation and it's better not to have negative surprises, but I'd like to share this info with you in the spirit of keeping closer to you as our customers.

I hope that my note gives you a better idea of what's been going on — thanks for listening.

- Dave L.

[AvidCS]

Hi All,

I'm David Gibbons, the VP of product marketing for Digidesign. I'm happy to offer an interim update on this issue (we'll ensure it gets cross-posted to other relevant threads too).

Since before our general manager Dave Lebolt's post in early April, we've been working in a very focused way on completing Leopard support. In fact, it has been our #1 priority as a company. We have placed no limits on the resources we're willing to apply to this task < every person capable of helping to resolve the issues is actively working on it every day. A few posters on the DUC have noticed that we intro'ed a public beta of a virtual instrument plug-in called ³Transfuser² this week, and some have speculated that we were spending time and resources on something that is not consequential < that Leopard compatibility is way more important... I want to reassure everyone that Transfuser was in development far before the Leopard issues came to light, and is developed by a separate R&D group based in Germany: the Digidesign ³A.I.R.² (Advanced Instrument Research) group.
These guys are dedicated to making virtual instruments only, and unfortunately their skillset can't add anything to fixing the operating system-related issues we're experiencing with Leopard, other than ensuring their plug-ins are Leopard compatible (believe me, we asked them!).

So how is it coming along? Well, together with Apple we have fixed almost all the outstanding bugs at this point, and expect to be able to provide another update very soon with details of the actual ship date. We're cautiously confident of beating the schedule Dave outlined. In fact, I wish that we could simply give you our best guess at the release date right now, but we want to be sure of the exact target date (very soon) so that you folks won¹t have any surprises.

I'd also like to say that we really understand and empathize with the annoyance and frustration being expressed on this thread: we take it very seriously when we can't deliver a fully compatible version of Pro Tools to any section of our user base, and consider meeting the needs of LE users to be vital to our long term ability to keep making cool audio software. So feel free to keep voicing these concerns loudly, and look out for another update from either Dave L. or me in the very near future.

David Gibbons

VP Product Marketing

[AvidCS]

Update: Information on Pro Tools Compatibility for Mac OS X 10.5.3

Over the last several months, we have been working closely with Apple on fine tuning Pro Tools for OS X Leopard 10.5.3. Now that Apple has released version 10.5.3 we can enter the final stages of performance testing and quality assurance before making fully qualified versions of Pro Tools HD, LE and M-Powered software available to our customers.

As a convenience for our customers who may wish to begin their transition to Apple’s latest Leopard release as soon as possible, you can get started with pre-release versions of Pro Tools 7.4.2 that we will make available in the next few days. While the pre-release version of Pro Tools 7.4.2 has passed core internal testing requirements, the process for manufacturing fully qualified Pro Tools software normally takes up to several weeks to complete depending on performance and stability.

Stay tuned here for the latest news and updates on our progress.

Please note, however, that Pro Tools HD® 7.4.1 software is currently fully compatible with Mac OS X 10.5.1 (Leopard) when running on Apple’s current 8-core Mac Pro computers. For details on Pro Tools HD compatibility with Leopard on the 8-core Mac Pro, please visit the Pro Tools HD 7.4.1 Intel Mac Support page:
www.digidesign.com/support/hd741intelmac

As always, we appreciate your patience and we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this delay has caused.

Important — Please be aware that some currently shipping plug-ins and virtual instruments are not compatible with Pro Tools running on Mac OS X Leopard and some require that you update your plug-ins if an update is available. Be sure to review the plug-in compatibility and update information here:
Pro Tools Plug-in Compatibility with Leopard
www.digidesign.com/741plugins

[Avid]

Leopard Pro Tools Pre-release Now Available for Download

Digidesign is pleased to announce the immediate availability of a pre-release version of Pro Tools® software that provides expanded Mac OS X 10.5.3 Leopard compatibility for many Pro Tools users. Pro Tools 7.4.2pr software is provided as a convenience for Mac-based Pro Tools 7.4 users who may wish to begin their transition to Leopard before a fully tested and qualified version of Pro Tools becomes available.

Pro Tools 7.4.2pr software is available as a download only, and requires Mac OS X 10.5.3. Pro Tools 7.4.2pr is not compatible with earlier versions of Leopard.

Pro Tools 7.4.2pr is a free download for all Pro Tools 7.4 owners. You will need your Pro Tools HD 7.4 iLok license, Pro Tools LE 7.4 authorization code, or Pro Tools M-Powered 7.4 iLok license to authorize Pro Tools 7.4.2pr.
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Updated 06/19/08
The Pre-release is no longer available. The Pro Tools 7.4.2 official release is now available:

Pro Tools 7.4.2 Announcement
Digidesign Releases Pro Tools for Leopard

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Digidesign Customer Support