Hi all,
A small update on the audio interface driver situation now that Snow Leopard has been released.
I hope you don't mind this getting a bit technical, if you do, feel free to skip to the bottom line
The big question is if TC's products work with Snow Leopard.
Short answer is that they do work, however there is the question of whether you are running in 32-bit or 64-bit kernel mode, and let my try to address that.
32-bit or 64-bit?
The current MAC drivers for Konnekt are not 64-bit; there is still work for us to do before we release the first beta.
If you look at our friends in the industry, this seems to be the situation for almost all manufacturers.
However, please know that 64-bit drivers are not necessary to run Snow Leopard. It seems to be a common misunderstanding that you need 64-bit drivers to run Snow Leopard. You don't.
Why don't I need 64-bit drivers to run Snow Leopard?
* Snow Leopard will default to the 32-bit kernel on all of Apple's consumer models (the Xserve defaults to 64-bit).
To make Snow Leopard boot in 64bit kernel mode, users have to hold down "6" and "4" at the time they are booting the MACs or do very tricky things using a command line tool to edit the boot procedure.
* Only the most recent Apple models support booting into the 64-bit kernel.
* Unlike Microsoft Windows, the Snow Leopard (and Leopard for that sake) is easily able to run 64-bit applications while the kernel runs in 32-bit mode, and this allows a user to run a 64-bit application and take full advantage of >4GB memory and the 64-bit instruction set.
So what's the point of 64-bit, anyway?
* A 64-bit OS X kernel is only becoming a necessity as the kernel's own need for more RAM is growing to deal with graphic cards with ever increasing memory (1GB+) and to store increasingly larger memory paging tables on large RAM systems (32GB+).
* 64-bit applications can address more ram and use the 64-bit instruction set. However, still beware that you don't need to run in 64-bit kernel mode to make use of 64-bit applications. And therefore you don't need a 64-bit driver to do it.
The Bottom Line
We're in good shape with our current 32-bit drivers.
Not many users will run in 64-bit kernel mode for a long while, simply because most users don't have a Mac that can do it and even if, it's both tricky and doesn't provide many advantages since applications can run in 64-bit mode.
Beside that, there are really no 64-bit audio applications, anyway, at this time.
With all this in mind, we're fully aware that users will inquire about how to move up to the 64-bit kernel, and we are working hard to get 64-bit kernel drivers ready for both PowerCore and Konnekt as soon as we can.
Within a few days, we will release driver 2.2.2 for MAC, and this version will officially support Snow Leopard running in 32-bit.
2.2.2 is the driver we've been testing with Snow Leopard, but I actually see no reasons for why the current release (2.2.1) wouldn't run. And it would make no harm whatsoever to try it out.
Hope this brings a bit light over the situation.
on va laisser murir la pomme.
