Audiobus: Use your music apps together.
What is Audiobus? — Audiobus is an award-winning music app for iPhone and iPad which lets you use your other music apps together. Chain effects on your favourite synth, run the output of apps or Audio Units into an app like GarageBand or Loopy, or select a different audio interface output for each app. Route MIDI between apps — drive a synth from a MIDI sequencer, or add an arpeggiator to your MIDI keyboard — or sync with your external MIDI gear. And control your entire setup from a MIDI controller.
Download on the App StoreAudiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.
My first big MacOS upgrade -- when?
With my iPads and iPhones I've done the incremental updates within a week and the major "new number" updates after a few weeks to months after release.
I got my M1 Macbook air earlier this year and have done the incremental updates.
With my Windows computers I did security upgrades, but waited until something absolutely forced me to do a "Service Pack" upgrade, and NEVER did a "new name" upgrade on a decently-running computer.
So, when do I upgrade the Macbook to 13? I don't need anything in it that I can see, but if upgrading a Mac is as seamless as upgrading an iPad/iPhone then I'm not against it, at least eventually.
Comments
Give it a year. I always wait a while for major OS upgrades. I only upgraded to Monterey like 3 months ago. This ensures lower / no compatibility issues or bugs.
It generally depends on how many different programs you use and how important flawless operation is to you. If your job depends on having a totally-stable machine, give it at least a few months.
I have upgraded my iPhone, iPad, and MacBook to every major OS release on day one since 2014, and I’ve never encountered any bugs or issues that prevented me from making music. But I have absolutely NO revenue concerns tied to these devices, and I use as many first-party Apple apps as possible even though some of them still suck. There are quite a few third-party apps and programs I’ve grown to rely on but I try to stick to a small collection of developers that have a record of stability (Moog, Affinity, Ableton, et al.).
I always update day 1, can only ever thing of one time with one plug in that I ran into an issue and it was solved within a week. I have a robust backup scheme though, so it's not hard for me to roll back quickly if I need to.
You have had good luck. A few MacOS major releases have broken music apps that took weeks to months to be addressed...some requiring costly app upgrades of the apps.
3-6 months delay if you have a production setup that cannot be allowed to fail.
Unfortunately, I jumped on this update too soon for macOS Ventura and am reaping the whirlwind right now. Some software really doesn't like Ventura yet and it's made a bit of a mess of my workflow.
I never update day one. Don't know why anyone would want to inflict that on themselves.
I think part of it is that at this point in my audio career, I really only use software from developers that I know are testing the beta of new OS's fairly early. Pretty much the same with my iOS apps really, I just tend to prefer developers who over time have shown they are on top of things very early when it comes to new OS updates.
I usually wait a week or so. That way you can find out if there is any kind of negative impact to your apps, and updates tend to complete faster once that first week server load has passed.