Dongle is not working on MacOS big sur (M1) Topic is solved

[Riyart]

Hello everyone,

I have this problem with my new MacBook and can't run TVPaint on it, I install the newest version with its drive, I'm not sure if the problem is Big Sur or the the m1 MacBook.
here are my specifications attached with dongle issue,

hope someone can help soon,
thanks

[Thierry]

Hi Riyart,

The old dongles no longer work with macOS Big Sur and higher.
Please use our Contact Form so our team can help you migrate to the new dongleless system

[Dean]

Hello, I just responded to your email

[D.T. Nethery]

The old dongles no longer work with macOS Big Sur and higher.

Please use our Contact Form so our team can help you migrate to the new dongleless system .

In my experience I think this has not been communicated widely and effectively. I believe that many (most?) TVPaint users don't frequent this forum. Many users only discover this when they update their MacOS and find to their horror that their TVPaint dongle is no longer recognized. Over the last year (or maybe longer) I have had a number of friends and associates contact me asking me how to fix this problem (I am known as being a "TVPaint evangelist"). Of course, I explain that TVPaint is now dongle-less ("It is ?! That's great, when did that happen?" is the usual reaction) and I direct them to contact TVPaint Support to get switched over to the dongle-less system. But it is interesting to me how many people seem to be unaware that the dongle-less TVPaint is a thing now.

The truth is , many artists -- myself included -- have a policy of "if it's not broken, don't fix it" with regard to software updates ... especially MacOS which is notorious for breaking things which previously worked. If we are in the midst of a production pipeline where everything works just fine with MacOS High Sierra or MacOS Mojave, there is no way we are going to update , at least until the production is finished. (for example, I myself am still running the now abandoned MacOS 10.14 Mojave. However, at this time everything in my system functions smoothly, so I have no reason to tempt the computer gremlins to mess with my pipeline). In the meantime a year ... or two ... or three may have passed by and when they finally get around to updating their MacOS they discover that their new MacOS (Big Sur or Monterey) will not let them open their TVPaint. The last time I think I can recall having an email newsletter from TVPaint is maybe in 2018 ? I don't recall ever receiving an email announcing that the Safenet dongles are now unsupported on Big Sur and Monterey and that the dongle-less TVPaint is now available , so all users should switch to WIBU if they are on Big Sur or Monterrey (of course, I know all about this because I am on this forum frequently, but in my experience only a handful of TVPaint users actively follow what is posted here on the forum.) Maybe a general email announcement was sent out to all users regarding the new WIBU system, but I don't remember it. (of course, some users may ignore an email , there's nothing you can do to make them read it , but at least you can point back to a specific announcement that was made so no one can complain they were not informed about the change.) I also would not necessarily count on people reading about it on the TVPaint Facebook page ... indeed I don't believe that the situation with the dongles and the existence of dongle-less WIBU security has ever been mentioned on the Facebook page. (?)

No_mention_of_WIBU_on_Facebook_page.jpg (54.01 KiB) Viewed 84000 times

I was also going to look on Instagram to see if any announcement about WIBU dongle-less TVPaint was ever posted there , but it seems as if the official TVPaint Development Instagram account is now deleted.


Speaking of the Facebook page , did anyone notice that all of these links to TVPaint's Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube are DEAD LINKS ? -

.

[Thierry]

Hi David,

Thank you for your post.

There are several reasons why we did not openly communicate on this yet. Let's go over them.

First of all, the context.
We knew beforehand that macOS Big Sur would not recognise the dongles, but its launch was being delayed times and times over, to the point where we had to launch Wibu in emergency at the end of October 2020, one or two days before we had to be on mandatory working from home (2nd lockdown in France). We know that people upgrade their OS instantly (even if that's something you should never do) so we had to have something ready.

Telling all our macOS users to migrate to the new system was simply not an option, and it still isn't, even now.
I obviously cannot go into specifics in a public forum, but we have many users.
The logistics behind migrating to the new system are more complex than what you might imagine. We've improved our process based on the feedback we've received, and we're more confident now than before.

For studios, we obviously cannot migrate them to Wibu when they are in production (and as I'm sure you know, production takes years). We did migrate and help many studios already, but of course, not all of them.
For schools, that can only be done during holidays, and we have to be extra-careful when migrating schools to the new system to not derail classes.
And of course, with the pandemic still going on for 2 years now, some people are working/studying from home, others in the studio/school, others are doing both... (some don't even want to migrate to the new system..)
For both studios and schools, we do follow-ups to make sure everything works fine. That takes quite a bit of time.


One other thing is that regardless of what information we publish, it's going to get misread and misunderstood by a minority of users, who also just happen to be very vocal about everything (just our luck).

Social medias are echo chambers, and sometimes people will cycle through and spread incomplete information, even if it differs from what's on our official documentation (some of the comments on our posts regarding technical advice are ... wild).
For example, a few months ago, our website was down for a night, and a group of people interpreted it as us updating the website for a v12 release, then started spreading their belief to others, and we had to debunk that...

Even if the migration process seems a bit opaque, our team managed to find a good compromise between the speed of the process, making sure that the user has its license working as soon as possible, while checking that everything is good on our side.
We have more resources than before, we completely rewrote the installation and activation part of the documentation (we'll soon add video tutorials for this).


Believe me, I would love to fully communicate on Wibu, the whole team would love this, but it just isn't the right time yet, sadly.


------------------------------------------------

We'll fix the links on our social medias

[D.T. Nethery]

Well, maybe I've said too much ? Please delete my post above (and your response, so it is as if I never commented; I probably should have communicated by private message). I hope you understand that what I wrote above was well-intentioned (to get information out about the changes in TVPaint that I think are positive changes). I should not have commented openly about things I don't fully understand and are none of my business.

[Xavier]

Well, maybe I've said too much ? Please delete my post above (and your response, so it is as if I never commented; I probably should have communicated by private message). I hope you understand that what I wrote above was well-intentioned (to get information out about the changes in TVPaint that I think are positive changes). I should not have commented openly about things I don't fully understand and are none of my business.

David, no worries we understand
There is a little communication on the website and also on this board.