If you use ARCHICAD on a PC, you can skip this article. But then again Microsoft is speeding up their OS release schedule, so this will be educational for you as well.

Hopefully all ARCHICAD users got an e-mail from GRAPHISOFT this morning. If not, or if you deleted it without reading it, here it is:

Alert: Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan & ARCHICAD

Apple will soon release MAC OS 10.11. As part of our standard process, GRAPHISOFT actively researches all upcoming Operating System releases to maintain compatibility with current products.

Until further notice, please do not update to Mac OS X 10.11. Our official tests and compatibility information will be available after Mac OS X 10.11 is publicly released. Update notifications appear within ARCHICAD as soon as they are available.

In the meantime, click to check in here to learn more about known issues and get updated information.

For my extended thoughts, read these two recent posts:

• Compatibility notes: ArchiCAD on Mac OS X El Capitan Beta (10.11) and Windows 10 Beta
• New ARCHICAD, New Windows OS, New Mac OS, repeat

The second post goes really deep into the history of ARCHICAD and OS upgrades, upgrade best practices, and upgrade horror story examples. If you haven’t read that article, you really should. Especially if it’ll keep you from doing something stupid, like upgrading to OS X 10.11 tomorrow. Just don’t. The list of issues is pretty crazy. Now remember a few things while you’re fuming that you can’t upgrade to OS X 10.11 on day one like everyone else (which in fact isn’t true because I’m sure plenty of other software companies are telling their users to hold off on upgrading too).

• These issues will be solved.
• This is the world we live in now.
• Deal with it.
• Don’t upgrade tomorrow.
• Be patient.
• Read the list of issues and realize that they will only be fixed for ARCHICAD 18 and 19. If those issues are also present in ARCHICAD 17 and earlier (I’m sure they are), and you use ARCHICAD 17 and earlier for production, do not upgrade to OS X 10.11. You will break your version of ARCHICAD. And you will  be sad and angry.
• Remember, at least we can run natively on Macs. Here’s the list of Revit 2016 compatibility issues for running natively on OS X 10.11: does not install or run. Buy Windows 10.

Is that all clear? Upgrading to OS X 10.11 before GRAPHISOFT gives the okay will be a huge mistake. In previous years we could hobble along. I often upgraded on Day One without much issue. But not now. And probably never again. We all need to wait for the next Hotfixes/Updates for ARCHICAD 18 and ARCHICAD 19.

Apple is making more and more changes to their OS each year and that’s causing all sorts of havoc with software developers. But of course it doesn’t matter whether it’s GRAPHISOFT’s or Apple’s fault that we are facing Day One compatibility issues. What matters is that we can be patient and not make it our problem tomorrow.

Make sure to follow Shoegnome on Facebook and Twitter. If you’re not a social media person, RSS feed is also a great way to never miss anything either. For previous posts on ARCHICAD compatibility, click here.