There was not one to Roon software.
I bought my first Mac in 1979 and have used them exclusively, for better or worse, ever since. I update iOS right away, but for Mac OS, I always wait at least 6 months before updating. There are always bugs and compatibility issues across the spectrum. By waiting 6 months, sometimes longer, I give everyone plenty of time to fix them before I dive in.
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I updated to Catalina a week or so ago. I use an external drive to an iMac Pro for my music files. Catalina has deleted 800Gb of music files out of a +1TB of my Music Library. That’s 80% of my library, the FLAC files are untouched. Fortunately, I have a back up on a NAS drive and I am rebuilding the Library. Until, Roon Labs have a solution, I am not letting either Roon or Mac’s music anywhere near the rebuilt Library. Also, my movie library has disappeared which is backed up on the NAS drive. Roon is an excellent product but this has been an oversight of monumental proportions and, hopefully, the fix will come soon. By the way, the missing music folders have been replaced scores of empty folders in a new folder in Music called “Offline”.
There is also the loss of Photoshop, Lightroom earlier Microsoft versions of Office and other applications that may be recovered by the purchase of monthly subscription services. Catalina has cost many Apple users a lot of money.
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My temporary simple side-fix to this is to redirect Roon to the backup of my music files kept on my NAS (from the USB media drive on Roon Core iMac). This serves me until the fix is done by Roon.
I’ve gotten mine to work the way I want it to (finally). What I needed was for Roon to run on startup, my Mac Mini runs as a headless server and I turn it on and off based on usage.
I ended up using the Automator app and some tips on how to run Roon(Server) through the terminal. This seems to work fine for now until Roon fixes things.
But is this the work-around that Roon advises not to use? IDK.
I have no idea about the specifics of the not advised work-around, only that it uses a specific command, they have scrubbed it out of the threads which makes it impossible to know which one it was. Probably not the best thing to do if you want to advise people not to do it, how can one know not to do something they don’t know anything about.
Anyway I’m not running mine using root permissions (sudo) which seems to be the issue with the work around you had mentioned, and if worst comes to worst it not a big deal for me to rebuild my library (I’ve also made a backup of it elsewhere).
There is a support thread about what not to do here;
So yeah dont run Roon with the Terminal Command workaround is the crux of it I think.
Has Roon reached out to anyone for a compensation? Or has anyone already asked for a compensation? It’s not even a month so not sure if that is interesting.
Any updates on a fix aside from “working on it”?
With Catalina still getting updates from apple to fix things it broke…
every time this happens Roon will have to go back a retest any fixes they are making too…so its a cat and mouse game for a bit I guess. Roon will be wanting their fixes out there ASAP too so I assume its coming sooner than later but only when its tested in the real world.
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The older software probably does not work anymore because they are 32bit. Catalina no longer supports any 32bit software. They have been warning for that for two years.
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I have seen that thread, but I visited it too late as the commands themselves were already deleted from other people’s posts.
Not defending my choice of using a work-around for it but Roon has not really been vocal about what’s wrong with the app so one is left to their own devices if their setup is not able to run Roon.
Compensation? From Roon? That’s a stretch. Apple would be a more likely target. But that is too big of a stretch too…
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Some of the work going on here may be out of roon control as they may be using underlying products from open source or third party vendors.
I’ve been in the situation where we couldn’t launch because the underlying libraries or products hadn’t tested and kept in step with the OS changes. So our release was dependent upon the last of the vendors doing their updates plus our testing and assurance cycle on top.
No idea if this is true for roon just pointing out that no one owns their own stack anymore it’s a composite.
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Going to Settings/About in Roon and scrolling down shows a long list of third party software used in Roon. In addition, Roon also uses these open-source components.
I never had to treat Apple software updates with kid gloves but after Catalina I will have to.
I had to do this with Windows so I’m pretty disappointed in Apple.
Too many bugs and broken apps all around.
It’s wait for Service Pack 1 time for Apple it seems.
Which given their tightly controlled hardware ecosystem is really a poor showing.
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I think you have been lucky, I have been burnt by MacOS before. Not for a while admittedly but I always proceed with caution.