LabVIEW on OSX Yosemite

[Firas_M]

Hi!

I'm having trouble with my LabVIEW after updating my Mac to Yosemite . Has anybody gotten it to work and did you have to do something to get it to work?

More specifically, the program freezez when I try to choose VISA resource in my program which worked flawlessly (spelling might be wrong) before the update.

[natasftw]

Which version of NI-VISA are you running?  5.4.1 was the newest I could find for Mac with the readme being here: http://download.ni.com/support/softlib//visa/NI-VISA/5.4.1/Mac/Readme.html

NI-VISA 5.4.1 for Macintosh supports the following platforms:

• Mac OS X 10.7.x x86 and x86-64¹
• Mac OS X 10.8.x ¹

^{Are you using a newer version?}

[Firas_M]

Yes, unfortunately im now using 10.10....

[dmsilev]

NI-VISA 14.0 for OS X ( http://www.ni.com/download/ni-visa-14.0/4913/en/ ) supports up through 10.9.x (Mavericks). It works, kind of, under Yosemite.

The "kind of" is that the software that does the on-demand loading of the VISA kernel extensions doesn't work properly under Yosemite when run with normal user permissions. There are a couple of workarounds that I've seen, none of which are particularly palatable (but they do work). The first, which is very definitely a "use at your own risk" solution, is to launch either LabVIEW or NI-VISA Configuration with root privileges (via sudo on the command line); the on-demand kernel extensions load and unload properly and VISA routines work. The second is to use launchd and kextuitl to force the extensions to load on boot and keep them loaded. That's not the security nightmare that the first solution is, but does require some mucking around with the guts of the system.

The third, and ultimately preferable, option is to wait for NI to release an updated version of VISA where they've worked around whatever oddball permissions issue is keeping the current version from working as designed. 

[constellationlabs]

Thanks for the info.  I'm running into the same problem on Yosemite.  Hoping for a fixed version of NI-VISA soon to deal with the "fixed" version of Mac OS X.

[Dennis_Knutson · Accepted solution]

Version 14.0.2 was released on November 20. Is that the version you are using?

[constellationlabs]

Thanks, Dennis, for the heads-up on the new version.  I installed it and it seems to have fixed the problem.  Thank you!

[Firas_M]

Thanks! It works now!

[NERDmaster]

I feel your fustration.

I started using LabVIEW 2 on a Mac while at MIT and have been using LabVIEW since.

It is very fustrating that NI has lagged developing or porting their products to the Mac, specially given the fact that it started there!

I teach and use LabVIEW and many other NI products for classes and research and it is embarrasing that I cannot demostrate most of them on my MAC!! C'mon NI, get your act together and commit to the Mac!!!

Why does NI feel that I need to use a cumbersome OS to work with their products?? Really?

I'm close to giving up! I know Dr. "T" and Jeff and know Jeef likes to play with the iPad. Can NI get serious about this?

I see every semester more and more students on campus with Macs. I guess NI doesn't care that they use MatLab instead of LabVIEW?

Sorry for the ranting! .. but it is FUSTRATING!

[natasftw]

Instead of ranting, wouldn't it make more sense to try to understand the decision?

It started with Mac.  But that's relatively meaningless.  You started by eating baby foods.  Does that mean you should always make a point to ensure you have those around?  At some point, they moved towards Windows as the market share was much larger.  I can see where that makes sense.  There's been a LOT of development since the original LabVIEW.  They had the choice to split resources to develop for both Mac and Windows or be more focused on gaining functionality.  The latter likely was determined to have a greater ROI.  It still makes sense to this point to  me to neglect Mac.

Fast forward to today.  Mac is picking up a  larger market share.  As a result, it's worth re-evaluating the benefit to focus efforts into providing more support to Macs.  What you'd like to see is a diversion of R&D assets to get Mac's functionality caught up to Windows.  This would slow down adding functionality, but potentially get more users that want to avoid Windows.  However, most power users of Macs already dual boot.  They already have Windows installed on their Mac.  That means it's unlikely there's a large number of users that will only use the Mac side.  The ROI likely isn't there.

You're also ignoring there are third party groups that are involved as well.  Take the FPGA as an example.  Without a compiler existing for Mac, how would NI be able to bring the FPGA Module to Mac intelligently?  You could program the code using the module.  But, a quick Google search will tell you the compiler or the FPGAs NI uses doesn't support Mac.  You still wouldn't be able to use the Mac without a third party also adding support.

What does an iPad have to do with anything?  Nonsensical logic is more frustrating than booting over to my Windows installation.  I'm sure he likes TVs as well.  Should we suggest they make LabVIEW for smart TVs as well as the iPad?

And please, just spell "frustrating" correctly once? If you're embarrassed you cannot present a tool on a Mac, I have a hard time believing you're in a tech field.  Many tools are that way.  It is hardly embarrassing.  That's why so many tech inclined Mac users have the Boot Camp partition.  If you know Dr. T, wouldn't it make more sense to bring this up to him rather than throwing a tantrum on an old forum post?