Native Access

[noiseboyuk]

Why are you leaving out the cost of the continuing per-year support plan? And the cost of reinstatement if you don't renew within 30 days of expiry?

OK, fair enough, buying perpetual = one year of support. So costs over 3 years for vanilla:

Buying outright:
£500 inc one year support +
2x £80 support pa
=£660.

Subscribing:
3x £250 pa
= £750

And obviously ongoing, the annual costs are £80 vs £250, so it gets progressively worse and worse value. Of course if you only ever intend to use Pro Tools for two years or less, or you only use it very occasionally so can just buy monthly subs as you need, or you are cash strapped right now but won't be in three years time, the subscription model makes more sense. (caveat - PT Ultimate can only be rented per year, not per month). All fairly standard stuff for subs vs permanent licenses - see also house rental vs purchase or indeed pretty much anything else you rent rather than buy if you need to use it ongoing. And kinda the core reason why a lot of people aren't so keen on the rental model for software.

We are waaaay off topic here, but to summarise how we got here in the first place....

1. Native Access does not allow offline licensing / installation. Suggestion made that all pro audio software is going to subscription only, so offline rigs are dinosaurs. Subscription is "progress" and "the future".
2. Pointed out that, in fact, there are only two known audio products who in the past 5 years have become subscription only - Adobe Audition, and Roland Cloud.
3. Point made that in fact Pro Tools should also be considered as subs-only as permanent licenses are priced punitively.
4. Pointed out that over 3 years Pro Tools vanilla perpetual is cheaper than subscription (even including support), getting more so with each passing year.
= in no way can Pro Tools be considered subscription only, and such a notion is merely a wildly fanciful debating line.

Anyway, great fun though that all undoubtedly was, very happy at this point to end this increasingly tangential tangent and get us back onto Native Access.

[Gamma-UT]

That's a lovely calculation. But all you're showing is that there are two ways to pay annually - ie a subscription in all but name. One gives you a discount for giving Avid money upfront though you do get a permanent licence if you step off the conveyor (though with an added penalty should you need to get any future update).

[noiseboyuk]

That's a lovely calculation. But all you're showing is that there are two ways to pay annually - ie a subscription in all but name. One gives you a discount for giving Avid money upfront though you do get a permanent licence if you step off the conveyor (though with an added penalty should you need to get any future update).

(sorry, but absolutely the final tangent as I really have said all that there is to say on this, but I don't really know what you're arguing here. If you are going to use Pro Tools seriously over a number of years, there is simply no contest - each year beyond 3 you haemorrhage £170 on subs (vanilla pricing). I'm no fan of Avid's pricing quirks, but - again - in no way can Pro Tools be considered subscription-only, either literally or effectively. And having pointed that out once again, continued banging on about in on a Native Access thread is absurd, and precisely the sort of thing that gives forums a bad name).

[Aloysius]

... continued banging ... and precisely the sort of thing that gives love a bad name.

[Mushy Mushy]

At least it isn’t as bad as the abomination that is Komplete Kontrol. This is the worst piece of software I’ve used in my life, and that includes Lotus Notes.

[noiseboyuk]

At least it isn’t as bad as the abomination that is Komplete Kontrol. This is the worst piece of software I’ve used in my life, and that includes Lotus Notes.

Quite. Native Access makes you sigh, Komplete Kontrol makes you uninstall. Angrily.

[MachineClaw]

Native Access hosed all my NI and 3rd party libraries. Native Access keeps timing out, dying, and keeps failing on updates.

Tonight I have to spend so much time fixing and trying to update.

just for the record I have never had any issues with NI or updating through the old service center at all, even when others were jumping round and screaming mad by system was always clean and just did what it's supposed to.

Now everything seems ....broken and messed.

I spend more time updating and patching and moving/organizing than I do creating music of any type.

I'm so mad and frustrated I'm beginning to think a clean fresh install of everything is in order. start from zero but not looking forward to a week of patching progress bars as installs are going. UGH!. inKomplete and OutofKontrol.

[chk071]

Just wondering, but... did you contact NI about it? That way, there's a good chance you solve your issues, AND you will actually inform NI, if it is a general issue.

[EvilDragon]

Ok if I do install NA and it causes problems will you jump on a plane and come here to fix it ?

I won't, but we can always try to troubleshoot via TeamViewer if push comes to shove (Unless you're on Mac, I'm useless on a Mac. )

[Guenon]

Just wondering, but... did you contact NI about it? That way, there's a good chance you solve your issues, AND you will actually inform NI, if it is a general issue.

That's good advice, and added to that, people who also care to write about experiences like that on forums like this are doing a nice service to other users, as in, they can warn of potential problems in transitioning onto a new license platform. Contacting only NI, through support contact means, would leave those experiences unpublished for the rest of the userbase.

[chk071]

But, what if those issues are related to a single, potentially misconfigured computer? You would have informed everyone about a non-existing issue, thus making false claims. That's not a big help really. If i had sever issue with a software manager like that, i would contact the company, first and foremost.

Just an example: I can't at all comprehend the issues stated by people here. There was exactly one issue i had with Native Access, and that's that i couldn't update Kontakt Player recently (it always said that there was an issue with removing the former version). Therefor i uninstalled it, and reinstalled it via Native Access, and now it works fine. Of course, what i totally missed out on was that i didn't cry my lungs out in a forum about it, saying how NI sucks, and what a piece of crap Native Access it.

[Guenon]

But, what if those issues are related to a single, potentially misconfigured computer? You would have informed everyone about a non-existing issue, thus making false claims.

If the issues are as plentiful as they are in, for example, this case -- it's probable it's actually the developer's fault not making the product fault tolerant enough, designing it badly for probable use cases, communicating its use badly, and most likely a combination of all of these. When that happens, it's nice to have those reports out in the open.

[Rockatansky]

I had one hell of a time getting that tw@ to work behind a corporate firewall. Had to allow all the weirdest connections to and from native-instruments.com and turn off content inspection.
Now it runs a smooth as butter in the sun.
No clue what kinds of plagues it brings into the network...

[LeVzi]

But, what if those issues are related to a single, potentially misconfigured computer? You would have informed everyone about a non-existing issue, thus making false claims. That's not a big help really. If i had sever issue with a software manager like that, i would contact the company, first and foremost.

Just an example: I can't at all comprehend the issues stated by people here. There was exactly one issue i had with Native Access, and that's that i couldn't update Kontakt Player recently (it always said that there was an issue with removing the former version). Therefor i uninstalled it, and reinstalled it via Native Access, and now it works fine. Of course, what i totally missed out on was that i didn't cry my lungs out in a forum about it, saying how NI sucks, and what a piece of crap Native Access it.

More like an issue brought on by NI themselves, as everything used to work fine under service centre, being forced to install their latest manager that, in fact, causes the issues is more than enough reason to rant about it. As I said, NI solved the problem through support, but why break something that wasn't broken. Service Centre had it's faults for some, probably, but I never had an issue with it, it downloaded the installer to a place you knew about and if it didn't update automatically, you could do it manually, and then delete the installer.

[MachineClaw]

UPDATE: I managed to get Native Access under control.

If I used the Update All button then Native Access froze, blue screened, timed out, half downloaded and quit. Spent many hours hitting that button with all resulting in failures.

if I hit update on a specific product it would download and install, if I did not hit the green successful popup and just moved to the next update then it froze, quit etc.

so I had to manually hit update.....wait....hit the green X on the successful popup, then I could move to the next update.

with 37 updates this was quite the pain. After 2 hours of baby sitting it all got updated.

this is not an improvement over Service Center but it did eventually work.