Or an effort on Adobe's part to get you to move over to the more lucrative (for them) subscription model.
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Will Catalina finally be the end of Lightroom 6?
- Thread starter FredT2
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Or an effort on Adobe's part to get you to move over to the more lucrative (for them) subscription model.
Yes, it is especially odd because I think Adobe updates the Application Manager to something newer shortly after install. Ironically, this near worthless program won’t detect the 6.14 update if you start with the base 6.0 install (I just did this recently). You have to go retrieve it manually now that LR6 is unsupported. LR6 is 64bit. It would need to be to accommodate processing large files that would bump into the 32bit 4GB memory limit for some pros.
It appears that Adobe never updated any of the Lightroom support apps. From the link a few posts back:
Old products use 32-bit licensing components and installers and therefore cannot be installed and activated after upgrading to macOS 10.15. While upgrading to macOS 10.15 with these products installed may allow them to function in some capacity, you will not be able to reinstall or activate the software after the upgrade.
There are many Adobe bits and pieces that are 32 bit. You can find them if you go Apple logo->About this Mac->System Report->Applications (second subheading under Software). When the table opens, scrolll right to the last column which is labeled "64Bit (Intel)". Click on that column heading and it will resort to put the 32 bit apps on top.
How you know how many drivers, installers, and other apps are 32bit and will need to removed or replaced on Catalina.
How you know how many drivers, installers, and other apps are 32bit and will need to removed or replaced on Catalina.
If the trends for the last several maOS/OS X releases holds true, after Apple releases a new version they continue releasing security patches for the previous version. Assuming Apple continues the current macOS release cycle, the last security update to Mojave will likely be shortly before 10.17 drops in October 2021.
Since I'm allergic to the subscription model, I will stick with Lightroom 6.14 as long as realistically possible. My next camera will likely be a Nikon D850-once the new price has come down a fair bit-so I should be set for a while.
I'm no stranger to maintaining old hardware. I do some photo work on a PowerMac G4 because that's the newest computer that can easily use SCSI and I have two scanners that need it. I primarily run OS 9 since that's where Nikon Scan 3 is happiest. I also maintain a computer running 10.6.8 to run Nikon Scan 4 for my Coolscan V and 8000.
Since I'm allergic to the subscription model, I will stick with Lightroom 6.14 as long as realistically possible. My next camera will likely be a Nikon D850-once the new price has come down a fair bit-so I should be set for a while.
I'm no stranger to maintaining old hardware. I do some photo work on a PowerMac G4 because that's the newest computer that can easily use SCSI and I have two scanners that need it. I primarily run OS 9 since that's where Nikon Scan 3 is happiest. I also maintain a computer running 10.6.8 to run Nikon Scan 4 for my Coolscan V and 8000.
Why not just virtualize your old computers? Run Mojave through Vmware Fusion or Parallels and keep your main computer updated with the latest. Sure, there would be a bit of a hit to performance when virtualizing, but if someone is sticking with an old computer to run the old software then virtualizing on a newer computer might still result in a performance improvement. Seems a bit limiting to prevent yourself from taking advantage of the latest features and security (because security does matter) all for one or two old programs.
Granted, if you don't already own Parallels or Vmware Fusion, or if you don't have a use for them beyond virtualizing old software, then you might want to figure if it's really worth the cost. Even though they release software updates every year for each new OS version, you can usually go 2-3 years between updates... but it's still a cost, and it's still virtualized performance. As others have said, the longer you wait, the more painful the transitions can be; it may be worth it to just spend the time and money going with a modern solution.
I've never run virtualization software. I was thinking that I could just set up a partition or another drive with Mojave and boot to it when needed. Is there any advantage to virtualization over that?
I forgot to mention virtualization as an option.
The big advantages to virtualizing over booting off a separate partition are that you can run the alternative OS without needing to reboot, and also that older, less secure OSs are nicely "sandboxed" within the VM. Also, virtualization is a good option if you need to run an OS older than what your computer supports. The biggest disadvantage is the performance hit across the board-both on the VM and the host system. Generally, the VM ties up some amount of RAM and some CPU cycles, slowing down the host system, and the VM itself usually doesn't have the same resources as running natively(graphics are often a big sticking point on this).
Also, this is probably only relevant to a handful of people these days, but VMWare does not support "pass through" of FireWire connections/peripherals. This is important if you want to run something like a FireWire scanner(Nikon Coolscan IV/4000, 8000, and 9000) with PPC native software like Nikon Scan. This means that you MUST use a computer that runs Snow Leopard or earlier natively, which means ~2011 and earlier Macs.
I have a nice collection of virtual machines in VMWare on my main computer, including OS X Snow Leopard Server, a couple of versions of Windows(XP, 7, and 10) and even a Linux install(CentOS) that I never use. Snow Leopard is used to run PPC programs in newer versions of OS X, while the various Windows versions are used to run Windows software-the age of the software determines which version I use, and I generally use the oldest version that will run the software I'm running to minimize the hit on resources. CentOS was installed to run a specific piece of software that has now been made open source(vNMRj, or now OpenvNMRj), and the good people who maintain build a macOS native version. There are also programs-games in particular(I'm not a big gamer)-that will not run in a VM and instead require booting natively into Windows because the GPU resources are limited. I also have DOSbox, mostly for running old DOS games, which is in fact a virtual machine although its resource requirements are quite low.
If Apple transitions to ARM as has been rumored, we may find ourselves in need of an emulator at least until Adobe and other developers develop ARM-native OSs. Apple has really good track record of seamless integration of emulators when transitioning architecture. You didn't know Rosetta(the PPC emulator) was running once installed. Meanwhile, the 68K emulator in the classic Mac OS was so tightly integrated that parts of the core operating system depended on it being there even in OS 9.2.2(which was a couple of versions removed from 8.1, the last that would run on 68K systems).
bunnspecial gave the explanation; the biggest thing is that you don't need to reboot. There are other advantages to virtualization but for our purposes, simply running a piece or two of software that is no longer supported, that's the biggest one. Rebooting isn't the big hassle that it used to be, but it's still nicer to be able to multitask instead of rebooting into another operating system and feeling like you had to leave your other work and programs behind.
As for the performance hit, it depends on what you're doing and what system you're running. I wouldn't have any qualms about running Aperture or other photography software through my virtualization software. It's more CPU- and RAM-intensive; I don't think the performance hit would be noticeable on modern computers.
One final note: the virtualization software you choose can also have an impact. Virtualbox is free, and might be worth trying out (if it supports macOS - I haven't really looked into it). I don't know how it performs compared with the commercial options, though. Between Parallels and Vmware Fusion I don't imagine there would be a huge difference for photography software. Parallels generally receives higher marks for graphical performance, though, and might provide somewhat better performance. (I started with Parallels early on, then moved to Vmware Fusion, and have been back with Parallels for the last few years... kind of prefer VMWare as a company but at the time that I switched there was a significant performance difference that I think has since closed.)
Wouldn’t a VM add latency and possibly break GPU acceleration? LR checks what GPU you have to enable hardware acceleration.
As for VritualBox, it’s harder to run macOS on it, at least on non-macOS operating systems.
As for VritualBox, it’s harder to run macOS on it, at least on non-macOS operating systems.
If it adds latency, it's not really noticeable. I've played games in virtual machines, and while they weren't the most system-intensive games in the world, that's an application that is sensitive to latency and I didn't notice any. The virtual machine has full, direct access to your processor and memory.
The graphics card is something that the virtual machine does not have direct access to. It emulates one, but that performance will never be as good as having direct access to the hardware. I use Capture One rather than Lightroom, and Capture One does use the graphics card for acceleration but I don't know how extensively it's utilized compared with Lightroom. Subjectively I'd say it doesn't feel like it adds a tremendous amount... I've used my Macbook and iMac with Capture One pretty extensively, and while the iMac is faster it's barely noticeable for most tasks. Still, while there's a difference in graphics card capabilities between those two systems you could argue that Capture One still has direct access to them; maybe running through a virtual machine would make for a noticeable difference. It just seems that most processes are more heavily processor-dependent at this point, and so I'd predict decent to good performance through virtualization (assuming enough RAM is allocated to the virtual machine, and processor cores).
I think the lack of GPU acceleration is washed out by a stronger CPU with more cores and threads, as the GPU is handling the parallel-heavy work. The issue for many Mac users is that the GPU upgrade is the easiest, either through direct upgrades like the cMP, or from a breakaway box with an external GPU for MacBooks and minis. I think LR6 isn’t the most optimized for GPU acceleration, even though it supports it.
To add to this, I seem to recall not all mac OS versions can run in a virtualized machine. So check the specifics if you want to dive in. Given how frequently Parallels does paid upgrades I would think it cheaper to just subscribe to Lr/Ps than Parallels, but YMMV.
I think OS X 10.5 "Leopard" was the first one that could be virtualized; I'm not sure if support for older versions was retroactively added. Either way, for the software being discussed here it shouldn't be an issue.