Windows user here, I'm going to need a laptop so I'll probably be purchasing a Macbook soon, most likely the M3 Pro. I'm currently trying to learn as much as I can about how cracks work on a Mac machine and a big thing that I've been seeing is the version your laptop is on might make the plugins become incompatible and stop working. I always thought it would be like updating your iPhone to the newest version. So that is my question, is updating your Mac bad for cracking plugins and software? Will it make some stop some plugins from working if I do so? What is the best version to use, and can I even choose what version I want installed? Thanks!

 

Even if you have all the software licensed, it does not guarantee that after the release of a new version plugin developers will release updates the next day. It will take some time to update all plugins to work on the new version.
There are companies that have closed down and they will no longer release updates.

Some older versions of macOS will not support newer versions of plugins

 

It depends. I've waited at least 2 years to update to the next major version because back then we had the drop of 32 bit support and lots of shenanigans going on.
I suppose these days your only problem would be code running on Rosetta instead of natively?
My rule of thumb was to look at what others were saying on MSJ. If people stop complaining most issues are fixed, duh

 

What is MSJ?

 

Check DMs

 

Updated to macOs 15 yesterday. Everything works fine.

 

Just take the sensible approach and update a month or so before the next MacOS update (i.e. I updated to Sonoma about 6-8 weeks ago and have zero hassle) - by which time all the plugin vendors have usually sorted all the shit out and you have a pain-free experience and I say that as someone who runs fully legit audio software nowadays.

 

biggest problem is/was when Apple completely removed 32bit support, and another major problem when Apple jumped from Intel to ARM architecture (with M1 few years ago), since then you either have functional software, or not at all - no matter if legit or cracked,

every major version of MacOS breaks tons of things (Apple calls it innovation) and it gets really tedious after few years, nowadays it's not even possible to run legit older software without hacking certificate signing or run audio interface drivers without booting into recovery and lowering kernel security,

frankly you cannot choose to install older version of MacOS that what the Mac was shipped with, and you cannot keep updating forever because of artificial Apple limitations (though community found a way with hackintosh and opencore, it's not likely to happen with Apple Silicon Macs), on the other hand you are not forced to keep upgrading (unlike Windows) and most studios and professionals are usually one major version (=1 year) behind or at least few months, because they can't afford to be Apple's betatesters (just like what Microsoft does with Windows nowadays),
oh and you can't even reinstall Mac from scratch or boot USB stick like Hiren to recover data when things break, because Apple security lol

so to simplify answers:
1) yes
2) yes
3) you can't choose

 

aand this is another fuckery, I know only Reaper DAW can run natively while bridging legacy plugins into Rosetta, all other DAWs require you to choose whether to run entire DAW either natively or in Rosetta mode, effectively cutting you off from half of the plugins,
and I think latest DAWs may not even support Rosetta anymore

 

anything iLok only protected isn't cracked, so do make sure you don't need such plugins, it's very unlikely to happen since R2R is focusing on Windows scene mostly

 

If you have a fast Mac, you can run a good percentage of them via Crossover/Audiogridder/Crossgridder, or I have seen mentioned Metaplugin from DDMF. Or Parallels desktop. Maybe laggy, not perfect but serviceable. Some can be tricky and some not working at all, but luckily there is a (somewhat outdated) spreadsheet which shows wether you can at least expect something to work that way.

But really, losing a few old plugins due to an OS update/upgrade really shouldn't be a big deal; if someone knows what they are doing. The list of plugins you cannot find an acceptable substitute for, is a very short list. Whatever it may be.

My vote goes to creating a backup time capsule before updating, if any of this even a concern to the user.

 

Last edited: Sep 22, 2024

The backup is a good idea I'll look more into when I get the Mac, thank you.

As far as I understand, you also need a Windows computer with that VST open and be on the same connection/IP in order to use it on Mac? Am I getting this wrong? In that case it would be kind of pointless for me since I want to be able to use the Mac wherever I go.

 

You are getting it wrong. Crossover allows you to run Windows applications, inside what is called a "bottle" (term borrowed from Wine). So the bottle is it's own little Windows environment where we can install things into, just like Windows. Normally, Audiogridder uses a client and server to communicate between the two machines. But with the Windows plugin running inside Crossover, directly on the Mac; Audiogridder is loaded in the Host daw as a Plugin and it communicates with the Windows Audiogridder.

They are both running on the same Mac. It's like running a VM, but a highly stripped down one.

 

Bitwig can load legacy intel plugins (where you don't have arm version) on macos

 

From my experiance, it is always good to wait some time and (ideally) make sure on each developer site that their software is up-to-date with latest macos. I know that everybody wants using the latest OS but believe me - it is worth to wait

 

Every "major" daw support Rosetta mode, for now..

 

Are you just talking about what you have read about it or are you actually working with it? I never made AudioGridder work inside CrossOver on Apple Silicon, but it works quite well inside Windows 11 arm via Parallels Desktop.