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Compatibility notes: ARCHICAD on Mac OS X El Capitan (Day One)

If you use ARCHICAD on a PC, you can skip this article. But then again Microsoft is speeding up their OS release schedule, so this will be educational for you as well.

Hopefully all ARCHICAD users got an e-mail from GRAPHISOFT this morning. If not, or if you deleted it without reading it, here it is:

Alert: Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan & ARCHICAD

Apple will soon release MAC OS 10.11. As part of our standard process, GRAPHISOFT actively researches all upcoming Operating System releases to maintain compatibility with current products.

Until further notice, please do not update to Mac OS X 10.11. Our official tests and compatibility information will be available after Mac OS X 10.11 is publicly released. Update notifications appear within ARCHICAD as soon as they are available.

In the meantime, click to check in here to learn more about known issues and get updated information.

OS X El Capitan but not yetFor my extended thoughts, read these two recent posts:

The second post goes really deep into the history of ARCHICAD and OS upgrades, upgrade best practices, and upgrade horror story examples. If you haven’t read that article, you really should. Especially if it’ll keep you from doing something stupid, like upgrading to OS X 10.11 tomorrow. Just don’t. The list of issues is pretty crazy. Now remember a few things while you’re fuming that you can’t upgrade to OS X 10.11 on day one like everyone else (which in fact isn’t true because I’m sure plenty of other software companies are telling their users to hold off on upgrading too).

  • These issues will be solved.
  • This is the world we live in now.
  • Deal with it.
  • Don’t upgrade tomorrow.
  • Be patient.
  • Read the list of issues and realize that they will only be fixed for ARCHICAD 18 and 19. If those issues are also present in ARCHICAD 17 and earlier (I’m sure they are), and you use ARCHICAD 17 and earlier for production, do not upgrade to OS X 10.11. You will break your version of ARCHICAD. And you will  be sad and angry.
  • Remember, at least we can run natively on Macs. Here’s the list of Revit 2016 compatibility issues for running natively on OS X 10.11: does not install or run. Buy Windows 10.

Is that all clear? Upgrading to OS X 10.11 before GRAPHISOFT gives the okay will be a huge mistake. In previous years we could hobble along. I often upgraded on Day One without much issue. But not now. And probably never again. We all need to wait for the next Hotfixes/Updates for ARCHICAD 18 and ARCHICAD 19.

Apple is making more and more changes to their OS each year and that’s causing all sorts of havoc with software developers. But of course it doesn’t matter whether it’s GRAPHISOFT’s or Apple’s fault that we are facing Day One compatibility issues. What matters is that we can be patient and not make it our problem tomorrow.

Make sure to follow Shoegnome on Facebook and Twitter. If you’re not a social media person, RSS feed is also a great way to never miss anything either. For previous posts on ARCHICAD compatibility, click here.

 

Comments

  • September 30, 2015
    reply

    Jody Keppers

    Thanks for the timely reminder, Jared! Very good advice.

    Being the cutting-edge, devil-may care kind of guy I am, I upgraded to Yosemite last week. Never did move up from XP on my PC (it’s retired from ArchiCad now, of course).

  • September 30, 2015
    reply

    Jody Keppers

    To keep ArchiCad’s compatibility issues in perspective, note that I know of at least one Mac-only cad software package that still hasn’t been given a clean bill of health on Yosemite. Graphisoft has a pretty good track record of timely compatibility updates.

  • October 2, 2015
    reply

    ag

    ArchiCAD 9 through 19 are listed as running on W7 pro, officially supported to the year 2020. Perhaps even earlier versions may run in XP compatibility mode?

    Is that a standard (and sanity) worth striving for?

  • October 16, 2015
    reply

    Hi Jarred, Been following your blog etc for a while! Great stuff. Have they solved the El Capitain issues? Today seems to have been released an Archicad update and I am wondering if anyone has found Archicad is now fixed for the new OS X 10.11?

  • January 9, 2016
    reply

    Cameron F

    Hi Jared
    Unfortunately didn’t see this post before I updated – any news about a fix for this ??
    Thanks in advance

      • January 21, 2016
        reply

        Cameron F

        thanks for the reply Jared. I am however on archicad 17 (luddite did i hear? but yes – its a sad state of affairs. anything i can do to combat this or am i wasting my time ?
        Thanks.

    • January 26, 2016
      reply

      Cameron F

      Thanks Jared you’re a star.

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