Has anyone tried SketchUp on the newly released macOS Monterrey? Any issues encountered? I don’t want to upgrade if it will cause problems with SketchUp or Layout. thanks.
We have an M1 mini that I just upgraded to 12, haven’t seen other than the known stuff (tag panel issues and material savings)
Known to whom, Jack? Not me. Maybe I need to get out more!
What are those issues? Like @slbaumgartner, I won’t upgrade until I am pretty sure I won’t suffer.
Tag panel that can’t be dragged to display long tagnames, all the quirks of using the native color panel, not being able anymore to simply type the tag in the entity panel, scale picking in LayOut.
These are already there in Big Sur (11)
We suffer…
But since those are already present running Big Sur, they don’t raise a new concern about Monterrey.
I’m worried about a repeat of the long-standing pattern of sudden problems because macOS and SketchUp upgrades aren’t coordinated. I know Trimble can’t tell Apple what or when to upgrade, but it seems multiple times SketchUp has been caught unprepared for changes even when betas of the next macOS have been available for many months. And then we have to live with bugs or crashes until the next SU update.
I think this highlights something that @DaveR tried gently to warn me about quite a while back. That is, that SU/LO is designed primarily to run on PCs and the Mac version is an imperfect attempt to make it play nice on a different platform.
It’s understandable that software developers concentrate on their biggest market, I guess. Mind you, I guess there is an argument that you shouldn’t try to make your software work on a different platform if you are not going to spend time making sure it does so just as well.
I think you misunderstood me. If anything I told you that I prefer using them on the PC over Mac.
It does seem to me that Apple almost delights in making changes to their operating system that breaks 3rd party applications. No proof, just anecdotal. Their changes do keep the 3rd party developers busy.
I have always understood, between the lines, that many of the SketchUp developers use Macs but I really have no idea which comes first in their workflow.
I’m on 12.0.1 and not seeing any problems.
Macs are robust and give great bang for the bucks, My daughter is now using my old Macbook from 2013 after I used it in the shop and on the jobsite for more than 5 years. Bought for €1400 or so, still running and worth €300 when I would return it. It can run both platforms, btw, easy for developers.
I believe the main concern for Apple to push things into the future is security and recently to get control over their own (integrated) chips. Old OS-systems are more vulnerable.
I used to compare Macs and Windows like this:
I might be needing some new pics when I get my new MBP.
other than the known issues?
Fair enough. But why? Not just personal preference, surely?
Maybe but that’s like turkeys voting for Christmas. Why would a company risk so offending its client base? It makes no sense unless Apple were selling their own software, but AFAIK, they don’t offer any CAD programs.
I think any reasons I give would have to be lumped together as personal preference. I prefer the user interface with the default tray on the side and the dockable and customizable toolbars. Back when I was running SketchUp on Mac too, I set the main modeling window narrow enough that I could put the inspector windows over on the right side instead of having them covering the model space. I did that on Windows before the tray feature was introduced, too. I prefer the way the Materials panel works on the Windows version. It is consistent with the Components and Styles panels, too.
Other people seem to really like their Macs though. We all have our preferences.
Good question. Why is it that every year, late in the year, Apple releases a new operating system that has 3rd party developers (not just those at Trimble) scrambling to make updates. In the case of SketchUp and LayOut it appears that when the developers should all be focusing on the next major version, some of them get pulled away to make fixes to the current version to compensate for changes to the Mac OS. If I remember correctly, late in 2019 the SketchUp developers had no more than released an update when Apple made changes to the OS that broke things again. From here it’s like a gardner filling mole holes. They just finish filling the last hole when the moles create 10 more. As I wrote before, this is just anecdotal. It’s coming from what I see from Mac users on this forum and elsewhere with other software.
I also like that I can update my graphics drivers independently of the operating system and choose my own hardware.
True.
I guess if money and space were no object, I would probably have a PC dedicated solely to CAD running SU/LO and possibly a separate renderer. It would not be connected to the internet, so I wouldn’t have to worry about viruses but it would be networked locally (I presume that is doable…). Everything else would be done by the Mac.
My MacBook Pro is now dedicated to an old scanner since it’s not worth its weight as scrap.
Of course now I’m expecting that a bunch of diehard Mac users will get their knickers in a twist because I expressed my opinion and told you of some of my preferences.
<rant>
I’m a Mac user and I have no issue with your preferences or opinions. I got here because for years I used UNIX and then Linux at work. MacOS is actually a visual wrapper around a customized UNIX variant. When I realized that I quickly felt right at home. Yes, I’m one of those dinosaurs who are comfortable opening a terminal window and typing impenetrable text input commands at the OS. I never reached that level of comfort with Windows internals. Just as you wrote, that’s just my opinion and I’m not interested in debating it.
That said, any frequent reader on the forum will know that I’m pretty vocal about my dislike and frustration with how some SketchUp features were implemented on Mac vs on Windows. I know they were just building atop OS libraries and conventions on both platforms, but there are too many cases where it seems like the two development teams don’t even talk to each other and the macOS side took an easy way out. Given the proportions of SketchUp users on the two platforms, it’s not a surprise and probably a sound business position, but it sometimes seems like there must be only a small crew devoted to macOS and that they are focused mostly on the back end, with little ability to make even minor tweaks to the GUI panels. From experience it also too often has seemed like they got caught unprepared when Apple finally released a macOS upgrade that had been in public beta for months before the release date of a new SketchUp version.
That’s why I started this topic.
<\rant>
We would be here all day if we went through those.
IMHO: Apple is a moving target to improve, separating the wheat from the chaff in the process. Things break more easily if they weren’t designed well to begin.
Plenty of cross-platform developers keep up. Trimble is big enough to do the same, but perhaps it’s hard to find good help.
Yes, you’re surely cancelled now!
But could it be to do with, you know (whisper it), money?? SU is hardly Trimble’s flagship product.