Everybody is making a really big deal about a thing that, yes, shouldn’t have happened and shouldn’t be being ignored, but is in the end easily fixable albeit with some petty annoyance (an extra dongle). However, this is par for the course with most high tech, especially Apple.
A very long explanation for why this is actually normal and not a terrible evil thing
They discard old connectors and protocols as fast as they change marketing campaigns. If you haven’t noticed that they were the first major company to get rid of floppy drives in all machines, get rid of CD-ROM/DVD drives, eliminate the VGA port, eliminate the DVI port, eliminate any vestige of a standard serial port, eliminate the printer ports, embrace USB before most everybody else, embrace Thunderbolt, switch the main connection on their smartphones from one proprietary standard to another, etc. etc. etc. then you haven’t been paying attention.
The point isn’t whether or not Apple should be doing these things, or whether it’s ‘good’ or ‘bad’. The point is that it’s in their nature to always and only be best supporting the latest interconnection technology and nothing else.
Fortunately the latest interconnection tech is effectively as good and versatile as giving us a PCI backplane, so we can easily use very high quality adapters as @dansimco has found out, without compromise, allowing us to remain in whatever decade we wish when it comes to our outboard gear. And RME (among many other vendors) continue to fight the good fight to keep their equipment interoperable with both the major changes in Mac hardware/software and of course the absolute zoo that is Windows driver development as well. It’s turtles all the way down on both sides, don’t forget.
So, instead of complaining bitterly that change happens in high tech, do what anyone who uses high tech as a profession does, and keep using the gear you know and trust for as long as you can, and when it comes time to upgrade look at what other pros are using and make your choices from the most robust options that fit your budget, then stop upgrading until you have to. Pros don’t upgrade on a whim, or buy budget interfaces that are likely to lose support quickly, and there’s a reason for it - they have to put the bread on the table every day for decades and the only way to do that and stay sane is realize that tech will always change and will always have these hiccups and isn’t always changing for the better, so they find a system that works for them and they ride it as long as possible, keeping the old system around even well after the new one has come online, just in case.
There are pro engineers and producers who are using decades-old software to make killer tracks today, because they know it and it just works for them. Sure that ancient hardware requires TLC and the occasional eBaying of parts to keep running, but that’s just the cost of doing business for them.
I say this because I think a lot of people here act like Apple “owes” it to them to be perfect and always compatible (and let me be clear, the situation can be and has in the past been just as frustrating on the Windows and Linux sides in their own seasons) with everything. But if you embrace the new with Apple hardware, you’re going to deal with these sorts of issues from time to time. Firewire audio did have this problem before too (Firewire as protocol had a lot of problems, but it was still the best in it’s time for video transfer), as did nearly every kind of audio interconnection before it, from time to time, on certain brands or others. This story is as old as computing is, in many senses.
And yes, Apple should fix what are obvious bugs in their products, but sadly, they’ve made a history of marking technology as effectively “end of life” as soon as they have anything to replace it with, and it gets no further support. I’m not denying that, but it’s the reality and complaining bitterly won’t change it.
So, my recommendation is, everybody calm down the old computers still work great and the new ones still function perfectly well to make music, but the new systems and the old systems together need a little interoperability assistance in the form of a dongle. Big deal - it’s been this way for at least two decades across various connections and industries. Apple isn’t being ‘evil’ here, they’re being big, slow, and remaining on the same course they always have - dropping “old” tech like a rock and not even bothering to give it a backwards glance.
