[New Feature] macOS Big Sur Support

[jimlandowski]

Since my new Mac just arrived, it has the latest MacOS 12 Monterey on it, so I think that is the show stopper why LV won't download onto it. NI is forbidding it as being unsupported with all the problems you talked about. From your description, you have not tried this, only speculating. Until you upgrade to 12 and prove it, I don't buy it. In the beginning of lock down, NI was making all kinds of changes and having VR events in high gear. Now like everyone else, NI is burned out on C19, so nothing happening there. Lots of activity in the beginning, now nothing. Human nature. Back then, I did put LV19 on my old Intel Mac to use no problem. 

I am a minimalistic, simple guy. All I need to do is program Hello World; no hardware, VISA or complicated stuff. I only want and need 1 large Mac in my life for everything. No external monitors, laptops, phones, etc. I like to keep my life as simple as possible. 

You have your more narrowly different definition of "toy" computer compared to mine. I am referring to all the of the worlds people who have and use any device with a screen. That's everything there is existing.   

[sth]

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@jimlandowski wrote:

NI is forbidding it as being unsupported with all the problems you talked about. From your description, you have not tried this, only speculating. Until you upgrade to 12 and prove it, I don't buy it.  

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Just used a system running Monterey and a new non-SSP email address to login and download the MacOS community edition.  Now you can buy it.  It downloaded a 644 MB dmg file as it should.

[Christina_R]

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@sth wrote:

Possibly NI can comment (Christina???) on the support of M1 or Monterey in LV21SP1 that should be out soon?  

I apologize that LabVIEW 2021 SP1 will not officially support macOS 12 (Monterey). There was some miscommunication within NI because SP1 releases don't usually add new OS support, and we didn't complete all of the expected release tasks. The offline readme erroneously states that macOS 12 is supported, but the installer warns that it isn't.

However, preliminary testing has not found any issues with LabVIEW 2021 or later running on macOS 12 (Intel). I anticipate adding official support in the next release.

I can't give a timeline for native M1 support, but I can assure you that NI sees the benefits of providing it.

I don't, unfortunately, have any information regarding hardware support on macOS 12.

[sth]

Christina,

Thanks for the update and clarification of support for MacOS 12.X (Monterey).  As I have said, I have rolled it out and LV works fine (VISA has an issue) for my uses.   I am used to NI being a bit behind in officially labeling OS support.  But NI does a lot more quality testing than I do which is mainly for my own VIs and doesn't thoroughly test all features.

I just finished a discussion that said that SP1 releases might not be a no cost update given that they do sometimes introduce new features.  My counter was that SP1 releases usually do not have new features and that I could only think of one new feature in an SP release and that feature was hidden and had to be enabled with a secret wizard handshake.

I am surprised that NI has seen the benefits of supporting the M1!  That is encouraging insight into NIs decision making!

[jimlandowski]

Success. Thanks for all of your detailed information and help. User error and getting past the Mac security restrictions and NI warning popup. Now I am good to go on the newest Mac.

[sth]

Glad it all worked for you!  Enjoy LV on a Mac.  It is so much more pleasant an experience.

[jimlandowski]

Here is what happened. Because Apple is overly paranoid about security, they blocked and would not allow NI to download LV because LV on M1 Monterey is not officially released and signed by NI. The Mac message given to me was LV cannot be downloaded because it was not gotten from a recognized source in their App Store. What saved me was finding the work around where Apple was so kind as to be able to go around their blocking by providing a way for me to force the LV download anyway. Because Apple installs are so complicated and convoluted, it took me some time to discover this. Apple on Chrome was not user friendly for once.

For another example, I want to disable 2 factor authentication, but Apple won't allow that once I allowed it for the first time. And they don't warn or anouce this at any time. I had to call tech support to learn this tough restriction. Apple doesn't pussy foot with the worlds hackers. They want to retain their reputation as beating all hackers in the arms race. 

[sth]

Ok.  I have never seen such a message on Monterey, Big Sur, Catalina etc.  This really can't happen at the download since there is no way to tell if a DMG image has signed software or not.  The signature is in the embedded executable and/or the installer.  These can be over ridden by simple work around.  But the DMG is not signed by the software authors.

The executable (since LV 19) is now signed by NI as an official developer.  I believe it was LV 19 that had a faulty signature and to run it, you had to first remove the signature from the executable and then run it as unsigned.  But that was fixed in LV 20 (and LV21).  I believe these are fully signed executables.  I assume you are downloading from the NI support site.  I think that saying that they are unsigned software is a bit of FUD.

Whether Apple is overly paranoid or not paranoid enough is a bit of a value judgement that I am not sure I am qualified to make.  I got hit with one of the first virus programs out there (Jerusulum 1417) back in early 1988.   I wasted about a week of time that I didn't have to spare stamping that one out and vowed I would go through that again. With that experience I may feel it is not paranoid enough.

I have almost exclusively used Safari for my interactions with NI and it mostly works...  🙂 I certainly have not had any issues downloading Mac, linux or Windows software with Safari.

[jimlandowski]

I don't recall the exact verbiage of the popup that Chrome was providing. It said that only recognized, approved or some software like that could only be downloaded from the App Store. At first I thought what the hell, is NI putting LV in the App Store as an app to download now. But taking it literally, and not know what else to do, I was gullible and searched the App Store for LV which of course does not exist. It was because I was using Chrome, which I have shifted to from using Safari, that I could not find the installer. User ignorance. Later I found the installer in my downloads folder and succeeded. Maybe words of wisdom should be don't mix Apples with Googles.  

Wow, 1988 is before the internet age. I only began using the internet in the Windows 95 time frame. That was also before I became a switcher. I had a few minor MS virus attacks then that I recovered from in minutes. Later I had a more serious ransomware attack when the phone range minutes later demanding money. I said I know thank you, and hung up. That attack took me a day to recover from. 

Of course me saying Apple is too overly paranoid is my opinion. But their overly protective steps have resulted in me never having 1 hacker attack on any of my 5 Apple platforms other than once a Russian voice came on my iPod briefly. I quickly shut down the iPod. 

[UrsL]

Despite the expressed difficulties and constraints I would like to thank the LV developers within NI to still provide us contemporary LabVIEW for the MacOS as well. I really appreciate the efforts!

Keep on pushing this support onwards! I furthermore really do beg on you to offer us some basic measurement hardware driver capabilities as well!

Happy wireworks

Urs