NI have announced they will no longer activate discontinued products

[Sascha Franck]

A good business treats customers as friends. There is no contradiction...

Except that NI doesn't. And even less so since quite a while.
I also don't feel treated like a friend at all, owning three hardware devices rendered unusable by their apparently incompetent development team - or by the folks behind that team who weren't even remotely able to display a little more than a short term vision. The latter being a general issue with NI as it seems. Products are abandoned left and right since years, existing products are treated like unwanted step childs.
Sorry, but all that is in no way like being treated as a friend. And yes, I like people donating to charity and I also believe they are friendly persons. But all that a) doesn't mean they're my friends and b) doesn't make it any more fun having a business with them. And it also doesn't make me enjoy their (il)legal stunts more.

[AnX]

https://www.musicradar.com/news/native- ... y-products ......... So let's simmer down now .

nothing has changed, they are looking into it

they might be able to do something, but can't promise anything

so best to keep hassling them until they actually do something

[AnalogGuy1]

NI probably wanted users to stop using deprecated products because those old dinosaurs with the non-resizable GUIs make the entire company look bad.

[darsho]

Well they can treat me like a friend all they want, who cares. Not interested.
I am their customer who uses numerous products they make.
That's all.
Which I have been doing for 15 years and they are making me to not use their products anymore.
I have vented a little and in fact moved on already.

Now that they are backpaddling, I am however curious what they come up with.
It might make me continue to use what I have from NI instead of selling it, but I am experiend enough in being myself, to know that I will never ever give them a single penny again. That's just the typical behaviour for me in such a situation.

[machinesworking]

NI probably wanted users to stop using deprecated products because those old dinosaurs with the non-resizable GUIs make the entire company look bad.

So basically only Massive X makes them look good?

[DrGonzo]

NI probably wanted users to stop using deprecated products because those old dinosaurs with the non-resizable GUIs make the entire company look bad.

You mean like Komplete Kontrol where you cannot expand the window if the plugin UI is small?

I've spoken to NI about that with plugins with a small compact UI you can barely see more than a few presets in KK. They acknowledged the problem and said they would look into it.

That was two years ago

/C

[Sascha Franck]

The entire GUI resizing issue is a joke of epic proportions, especially when dealing with something like Kontakt - which *does* actually resize so much to become a space wasting monster once a developer made use of the option to design their own GUI (look at Kompletes "Analog Dreams" for an example). But even with those, once you click the edit button, you're back at the super-fiddly mess that Kontakt is since ages.

[noiseboyuk]

Komplete Kontrol is unfathomable. There's been a user hack for many months to make it a sensible size, for reasons that pass understanding NI have never properly added it, so you have to manually hack it after every revision. That's just one aspect of KK that makes it, for me, barely a 1.0 product.

ANYWAY. Matt has said he'll report back today after an internal meeting, let's see how that goes.

[Aerio]

I am pretty sure that NI has a master unlock key but does not want to hand it over because it would also unlock products that are not obsolete...

[chk071]

Ok, cool. So, you're pretty sure about that. Noted.

Maybe we should stick to facts though.

[AnalogGuy1]

NI probably wanted users to stop using deprecated products because those old dinosaurs with the non-resizable GUIs make the entire company look bad.

So basically only Massive X makes them look good?

Yes, that was sarcasm. Everyone's different, and for some folks, losing some products that haven't been sold for many years (maybe because they're used in old projects, or maybe because folks get emotionally attached to them, or maybe because folks are worried about a slippery slope argument affecting more recent purchases) was frightening. That bugs me far less than not being able to use CURRENT versions that I've paid for because I can't see them on my laptop's 4k monitor. All I use now are Massive (old) and Kontakt, and if someone can make a viable alternative to Kontakt then I'll start the painful process of moving my patches to a new system. I'm a gigging musician in a covers band; I just need sh** to work.

[chk071]

Just so that I understand it: You can use Massive on your 4k display, but you can't see Massive X?

That surprises me, because, MX's GUI is bigger, and, AFAIK, Massive 1's GUI isn't resizable? Maybe I don't understand you correctnly.

[EvilDragon]

I am pretty sure that NI has a master unlock key but does not want to hand it over because it would also unlock products that are not obsolete...

What is the source of your assuredness? Because it just as well might not be the case.

[kenny saunders]

lol

another one tricked to think they are your friend, not a business.

you would agree they are human beings right? Are you not one?

The NI managements main priority are the shareholders. Perhaps if it was owned by a person you can think in such a way. Shareholders ONLY concern is squeezing more money from customers for less work/cost year on year.

[sacer]

The most amusing about NI is the backward compatiblity - If you have used kontakt 3, guitar rig 3, maschine 1, absynth 4 or reaktor 5, battery 3 etc. all newer versions are not compatible to open the older versions in the DAW. So you have to manually select the newer major vst version in your DAW, import or select the preset and it sounds the same than in the older version, there is no reason for the compatiblity soundwise. It doesn't matter if you open monark in reaktor 5 or 6 or a Kontakt library in kontakt 3 or 6. But the problem about that userfriendly innovation is, that you have to keep all older versions like kontakt 3 or guitar rig 3 installed, otherwise you can't edit them again and don't know which preset or sound you have used. I have lot of battery 3 and maschine1 used and i worry about maschine 2 sw, which was also used very often and will also be abondaned soon.

I think this was also the shootout for KORE because it wasn't compatible to every new Komplete Version, when first versions have used kontakt 3 and later kontakt 4 and the same for guitar rig. They learned nothing about it.

Other companys like steinberg, omnisphere, Tone2, U-He, UVI, newer Arturia Stuff and even Nexus think about it and the major update can be opened in older daw projects.
Now they cut older activations, harware support and i think maschine 1 and kore2 will follow very soon. They don't think about customers, they are miles away from their old customers and think they can do what they want like Apple.