[New Feature] macOS Big Sur Support

[jimlandowski]

Thanks for letting me the the status of LV on the new Mac M1. However, all of the posts on this topic are 10 months old from last year. Apple is now on macOS 12 which is called Monterey. The guy that posted said he could install it on MacOS 11 and M1, so he is also out of date. He also conflicts with what NI claims. So I will just remain confused until NI can get all of the Apple bugs resolved. I don't know what Roseate 2 is, but at this point it is irrelevant to me. My machine does not even download LV. All I get from NI is a readme file which helped a lot as to why the download failed.   

[jimlandowski]

All of the posts on this topic are 10 months old from last year. Apple is now on macOS 12 which is called Monterey. Your post then said that you could install it on MacOS 11 and M1, so that is also out of date. You also conflict with what NI claims. So I will just remain confused until NI can get all of the Apple bugs resolved. I don't know what Roseate 2 is, but at this point it is irrelevant to me. My brand new machine does not even download LV. All I get from NI is a readme file which helped a lot in understanding as to why the download failed.   

[sth]

Jim,

I am not sure who and what post you are quoting.  But I can give an update.

I am successfully running LabVIEW 21 under Mac OS 12.2 (Monterey) on Intel.  There seems to be a bug in VISA that causes a crash when using USB-GPIB intensively and continuously for a few days.

I believe that I even have NIDAQmxBase running on such systems using a PCIe card in a Sonnet PCIe/Thunderbolt (2 or 3) extension box.  There is sometimes some weirdness to actually approve the loading of the kernel extensions (kext).

None of this is Officially supported and you will not see NI telling you that it works.  LV 2021 is not listed as supporting Monterey.  Possibly SP1 will support Monterey officially.

VISA/NI-488.2 does not support Monterey officially.

And NIDAQmxBase doesn't officially support any LV version past 15 and certainly doesn't support an OS past 10.11??   NI will probably deny that such a software component every existed.  However with the right edits to the installer you can install it with LV2021 and Monterey.

As for the M1, I have found LV2021 will run just fine.  Do NOT have any VISA controls or anything else that would require operation of the kernel extensions since Rossetta 2 does not apply to them.  I am not sure about the graphics tweaks listed earlier and if I have removed them on my laptop.  But I am fairly sure they are not needed for LV21 which incorporated a fix for that issue.  That was only temporary for LV 20 which hadn't been designed for the M1 chip.

It would be nice if LV22 supported the M1 natively.  Especially VISA and the NI488.2 drivers.  If they were using the Xcode IDE it is a simple switch.  However even there it is a LOT of reliability testing.  If they are using the C#/MS dot-NET IDE, who knows how long it will take for a reliable driver and LV version from NI on the ARM64 architecture.

I hope this gives sort of a status update on LV on the Mac Platform.  It works.  It takes a little more user knowledge than I would like, but it runs for me.  I am continually hoping that more support for the Mac OS will be forthcoming but after years (decades?) of disappointment I am wondering.

Possibly NI can comment (Christina???) on the support of M1 or Monterey in LV21SP1 that should be out soon?  Maybe someone from NI can comment on M1 driver support (Craig??).  Just wishful thinking.....

Hope this gives some insight, what I post is not official and will conflict with official statements from NI that are more conservative.  LV worked for me early on in the Beta but others had issues saving files.

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@jimlandowski wrote:

All of the posts on this topic are 10 months old from last year. Apple is now on macOS 12 which is called Monterey.   

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[jimlandowski]

Thanks for your help. I assumed you were reading my post yesterday on the community page and saw NI's quick reply. As you say, NI is conservative and cautious with M1 and Monterey support statements. Currently they are saying no go. 

You are more expert than I. I don't even know what Rossette 2 is. Never heard of it until now. I think you needed to it get LV21 on Mac M1 to work from what I understand. 

My M1 Mac would not even download LV21. As a temporary workaround until NI solves the Mac problems, I will look into using an old Windows box stuck on win10 to see if it will support LV21. 

Jim

[sth]

Rosetta 2 is the code that takes an Intel X86_64 executable code and translates it into ARM64 instructions for the M1 processor.  Thus you can run intel compiled applications on you M1 system.  It is an actual translation not an emulator of taking complex instructions and substituting a series of more simple (but faster) M1 instructions.

Rosetta 1 was the translation software that allowed running powerPC code on the new Intel machines back around 2000 when that transition occurred.  That was an actual emulator where they emulated the Intel hardware.

I had no problem downloading the MacOS version for the M1.  But I have a active SSP license which might make a difference.  You should be able to download the Mac ISO onto the windows box and transfer it to the M1.

[jimlandowski]

Thanks for all of your explanation. Now I know what you meant by wanting native code. I am just too nieve to think and assume NI would not write native code and dispense with intermediate code like Rosette. 

Since you are a paying customer with an SSP, that is probably why you had no problem downloading it. Or I could just use my Windows machine and forget about using my new Mac instead of transferring it. As an interim solution until NI makes a native one in next years LV22 as you wish for. 

[sth]

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@jimlandowski wrote:

Since you are a paying customer with an SSP, that is probably why you had no problem downloading it. Or I could just use my Windows machine and forget about using my new Mac instead of transferring it. As an interim solution until NI makes a native one in next years LV22 as you wish for. 

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I am not quite sure what you mean.  If you have a valid license for LV then you should be able to download that version for all OS (Mac, linux and Windows.).  If you don't have a license to download LV then you won't be able to download newer versions either.

If you are running the community version then you should easily be able to download the Mac OS version as well.

[jimlandowski]

I have nothing. No paying customer, so it would be the free community version we only are talking about. Duh, I forgot that I have an old MacBook stuck on Intel Big Sur 11, so that should work fine with no problems and not have to use my even older Windows 10 laptop machine. I will give that solution a try and forget my ARM M1, macOS 12 Monterey and intermediate code. 

I am kind of weird because I consider MacBooks, iPads, laptops, and iPhones, "toy" computers because they lack large screens. Whereas most developers and consumers are in love with and hooked on their phones and laptops. Even for their home deck tops. I don't get it, and will never understand the rest of the world, but that's just my problem. 

[UrsL]

Hi Jim,

We all are weird and that's why the world is a weird place. However, I don't think that Apple's hard- and software topology blend has "toy" character. After all the MacOS is build on the UNIX foundation and this is a much more robust and open system compared with e.g. omnipresently used but completely proprietary MS tangled software patchwork.

You should be able to download the LV community edition for MacOS through this link, even if you are not a paying customer:

https://www.ni.com/de-ch/support/downloads/software-products/download.labview.html#411208

You may have to register though but that's normal practice these days because the corporations all track user behavior.

I do confirm my successful LV2021 installation under MacOS Big Sur 11.6 on a M1 machine. So far I have not upgraded to Monterey for other than LV reasons. I don't have any sort of driver capability in the M1 environment and I really do hope to get some of it back with a LV2022 solution for the new Apple chips. The later should not be too hard to implement because I assume Apple to provide some pretty potent tools to recompile code to their new topology. Testing may be the biggest efforts but we would help with that!

[sth]

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@jimlandowski wrote:

I have nothing. No paying customer, so it would be the free community version we only are talking about.

I am kind of weird because I consider MacBooks, iPads, laptops, and iPhones, "toy" computers because they lack large screens.

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As such you should be able to download the Mac OS community version and it should run under Monterey on an M1.  Not officially and it will warn you that this is not an approved installation, but warnings are for wimps!  🙂

VISA will not work so connecting to hardware will be an issue.

As to weirdness, almost all my colleagues just plug a large screen onto their laptop for serious work.  And a decent keyboard.  I do almost all my work on a large screen iMac which I prefer for the CPU power compared to a more thermally limited laptop.  But most Apple laptops have the graphics engines to drive a huge screen these days so I would not put them in the "Toy" category on you definition.