adamsguitar

:) This has been my point for this entire discussion: they do. The audio industry (particularly hardware manufacturers) are notorious for not being ready for the release of a new OS version. It takes many of them (e.g. FocusRite) months to provide compatibility. This a problem that is typical to this industry (though they are far from alone), and while “mass incompetence” is one way to look at it the reality is that customers do not demand it, it’s harder than just waiting until release (since you have to deal with bugs and the frequent beta update cycle), and it’s potentially disruptive to a software roadmap so these manufacturers and publishers don’t prioritize ensuring updates are ready for go-live. The link you reference does not seem atypical for an OS release that is less than two weeks old. The holidays will push that out, but expect to see items falling off of that list by mid-December or EOY, since they do have to consider compatibility with brand new hardware purchased as gifts (or with bonus money, etc.) that come with the new OS preinstalled. Also, keep in mind that the list is not a list of items that are actually broken. It’s a list of either known incompatibilities or simply that a particular product has not been tested against Big Sur. Many of the items on that list likely actually work fine, but the manufacturer has not yet completed testing.

You said that it seemed like a long time for manufacturers to respond given that Big Sur was released in September and it’s now almost December. I’m pointing out that Big Sur was released on November 12 (not in September), so as if today it has been out for less than two weeks. The gist of my argument the whole time is that manufacturers should be doing this work during the prerelease time (developer and/or public beta periods) but that music manufacturers rarely do that. Instead they wait until official release, so from that perspective no, two weeks is not a long time for a manufacturer to get out an update.

Big Sur was released on November 12. The public beta was made available in September.

Sure, but when is this ever not the case?

This particular back and forth is pointless. The question is not how to continue to use the Helix (though, of course, this particular fallback doesn’t apply to machines that shipped with Big Sur on them). I will never understand why people continue to defend this lazy practice of not being ready for updates. It happens because the customer base allows it, not because it’s somehow noble or “right”.

VMWare Fusion to the rescue for me :)

Sure they are. As a customer, that's something I want. Their actual responsibility (to their shareholders) presumably involves both protecting and increasing revenue, which at the end of the day means satisfying what customers ask for. Whether or not they prioritize it is an entirely different question. But not maintaining their products in a way that is reasonable to expect (test your software and adjust with developer betas and be ready on launch day--if not before--with any necessary updates) is a perfectly legitimate criticism.

I'm all for that! I hope you're right.

Your speculation is certainly just as valid as mine (and I am one of those who chose to upgrade to Big Sur even knowing that these compatibility issues exist in hopes of a relatively quick fix), but in my experience most users are not as concerned about upgrading their computer, phone, or anything else. Most don't even actively keep track of when updates come out. I would think that the size of the user base who: Bought a brand new Mac that came with Big Sur preinstalled (are they doing that yet?) or have chosen to install the update intentionally Just bought a Helix Is probably pretty small. That said, if we're going to continue speculating then I think it comes down to when L6 plans to release 3.0. If it's soon, it wouldn't surprise me if we saw an update HX Edit/Updater as part of that update and not before. If it's a long way out, I would expect (or at least hope) that a patch to the current HX Edit would be forthcoming. But again, it comes down to incentive and what their cost of delay is. Big Sur only came out last week.

I suspect that if the 3.0 firmware entails significant changes to HX Edit or the other tools that they are planning on rolling them all out at the same time (presumably with the Big Sur fixes in them). It will likely just be a matter of downloading and installing the updated version of HX Edit to gain both Big Sur compatibility and update the firmware on the unit. Total speculation, though, obviously.

That's because even small-time developers in the Apple developer program have access to beta releases of new operating systems in order to validate or ensure compatibility. The issue is one of prioritization. Customers in the music space usually fall into one of two camps: They don't object to waiting until long after a major update is released to upgrade and are even willing to blame Apple for the fact that a piece of proprietary software (usually using undocumented API's or using other API's poorly) doesn't work without some refactoring. They want to run the latest and greatest and will just deal with the issues without meaningful pushback (it's only meaningful if it hits the pocketbook in some way) As a result, there is little incentive for publishers like Line6, Eventide, Native Instruments, etc. to disrupt their normal development/release lifecycle to ensure day one (or day two) compatibility. Doing that requires dealing with--as you point out--a beta that is likely buggy. Since there is no financial incentive to do otherwise, they will just tell everyone not to upgrade (because evil/incompetent Apple has broken things again) while they wait for the dust to settle and work these fixes into their next release.