Yes it is. You only drive ssPin low when you are communicating with the MAX5487. That's why I queried your choice of driving it low in setup().
If your MAX5487 powers up in an oddball state, then the change in state of the /CS line resets the SPI interface inside the chip to a known state ready to accept data.
In my opinion, the way you have it in your sketch, the first message you send to the MAX5487 may not succeed as /CS is already low at the start of the data.
EDIT: Looking at the MAX5487 datasheet, I think you may need to use SPI mode 3.