Sad state of Native Instruments

[machinesworking]

I have a wonderful new M2 Macbook Air. I love it, so I'm not an Apple-basher, but there wasn't a single thing in the last OS worth updating for.

I am not an Apple-basher either but do get very tired of reading about typical Mac users ALWAYS assume the world revolves around Apple and then blames every third party vendor when something does not work.

I cannot even begin to ponder how you guys put up with this every bloody year. It is insane.

VP

Because it’s not close to every year. Apple
have changed chip twice and rewritten completely their OS once in 23 years. So in 23 years it could be said every 7 years there might be a shake up. The issue is seen as more frequent on platform agnostic forums like KVR because developers get to hang their dirty laundry out and complain about the process. I would be pretty shocked if there was another huge disruption anytime soon considering their success with their own chips, but security tightening and breaking of workarounds developers implement will still happen.

IMO partially this is all due to the main cross platform plugin format being third party not open source in VST, the “competing” format AU is owned by Apple, and I somehow doubt that makes the Steinberg Apple relationship great. At least here VST3 in DAWs that support both AU and VST often fail evaluation at a much higher rate than AU. The only advantage is rarely does any plugin fail all three formats AU, VST and VST3.

IMO CLAP could solve all of this, since Apple and Microsoft could guide the spec to full cross platform compliance without any obstructions etc.

[noiseboyuk]

Because it’s not close to every year. Apple
have changed chip twice and rewritten completely their OS once in 23 years. So in 23 years it could be said every 7 years there might be a shake up.

Eh? It's literally every year. Yes the silicon update was a big and warranted change, but Sonoma is utterly pointless and redundant. All it does is break stuff. And they do it every September, regular as clockwork.

[Vocalpoint Studios]

And they do it every September, regular as clockwork.

Thats what I thought.

Seems every September the entire audio community goes into anaphylactic shock in order to take their entire product lines back to the bench and either recode, tweak or test every single thing over and over again so "it runs properly" in whatever the Apple flavour of the year is this time.

NI is a vendor with a giant stable of product - I would not wish that annual effort on even my worst enemy.

VP

[Kypresso]

Because it’s not close to every year. Apple
have changed chip twice and rewritten completely their OS once in 23 years. So in 23 years it could be said every 7 years there might be a shake up.

Eh? It's literally every year. Yes the silicon update was a big and warranted change, but Sonoma is utterly pointless and redundant. All it does is break stuff. And they do it every September, regular as clockwork.

So why update immediately then, what is it you use that suddenly stopped working and needed an os update to work again?

[noiseboyuk]

Because it’s not close to every year. Apple
have changed chip twice and rewritten completely their OS once in 23 years. So in 23 years it could be said every 7 years there might be a shake up.

Eh? It's literally every year. Yes the silicon update was a big and warranted change, but Sonoma is utterly pointless and redundant. All it does is break stuff. And they do it every September, regular as clockwork.

So why update immediately then, what is it you use that suddenly stopped working and needed an os update to work again?

I don't. As, in fact, I said.

The problem is that new computers ship with the latest OS. As a dev you just can't ignore it.

[Vocalpoint Studios]

So why update immediately then, what is it you use that suddenly stopped working and needed an os update to work again?

This is the other part of the Mac experience I simply do not understand.

As soon as there is the slightest hint of a blinking light that says "update" - the entire Mac community updates - thinking the rest of the world has caught up by the time they hit that button.

As mentioned - not much you can do about buying a new machine - but it's much more efficient to consider an upgrade once it makes sense to do it (AKA software world has caught up).

VP

[aMUSEd]

Because it’s not close to every year. Apple
have changed chip twice and rewritten completely their OS once in 23 years. So in 23 years it could be said every 7 years there might be a shake up.

Eh? It's literally every year. Yes the silicon update was a big and warranted change, but Sonoma is utterly pointless and redundant. All it does is break stuff. And they do it every September, regular as clockwork.

There is no need to update immediately, it's smarter to wait a bit, but Sonoma is the best version for M series chips. I think the Os has matured to make better use of their capabilities. I can see huge improvements in how it is balancing use of performance cores and in particular my GPU cores, which were not being used very well in some of my graphics apps (especially Painter) in Ventura. As for breaking stuff, I don't think it broke much at all for me, 99.5% works as it did before, some better

[rod_zero]

So why update immediately then, what is it you use that suddenly stopped working and needed an os update to work again?

This is the other part of the Mac experience I simply do not understand.

As soon as there is the slightest hint of a blinking light that says "update" - the entire Mac community updates - thinking the rest of the world has caught up by the time they hit that button.

As mentioned - not much you can do about buying a new machine - but it's much more efficient to consider an upgrade once it makes sense to do it (AKA software world has caught up).

VP

Apple users have been abused with this for ages and they keep buying. nothing will change their minds, it is a cult. apple can increase the prices of laptops for more then 500 in a generation and people keep buying, they keep buying replacement for their broken power cables, they accept expensive hardware as audio interfaces becomes obsolete with a OS update, same for software.

The sad part is that since it is the most popular OS for music developers have to please the Apple crow, but I wonder where software would be if developers hadn't to dedicate so many resources to keep their products running on MacOS

broken-mackbook-charger.jpg

[Double Tap]

The “MacOS updates break everything” is overhyped I think. Everything I have seems to work fine on Sonoma, even some pretty old stuff.

[Vocalpoint Studios]

The “MacOS updates break everything” is overhyped I think. Everything I have seems to work fine o Sonoma, even some pretty old stuff.

Well - I have been trying my darnest to help some folks on the NI forums latety - and almost all of them made the mistake of moving to Sonoma too fast and chaos ensued.

Some however - seem to be immune to this - which is even more odd. You think that Apple controls the hardware AND the OS - that alone would put everyone who uses a Mac on a even footing and everyone would either be good - or not good.

Guess it comes down to exactly what software you are using.

VP

[nanostream]

I wish I could find a way to shoehorn complaining about iLok into this. It would be the holy trinity of grievances, all in one thread.

Anyway, Sonoma has been rather uncharacteristically buggy on my M1 Mac, at least plugins are crashing Live far more often than ever before. That’s unusual, in my experience.

But who cares, I want new Reaktor ensembles from NI. That’s all that counts.

[machinesworking]

The “MacOS updates break everything” is overhyped I think. Everything I have seems to work fine o Sonoma, even some pretty old stuff.

Well - I have been trying my darnest to help some folks on the NI forums latety - and almost all of them made the mistake of moving to Sonoma too fast and chaos ensued.

Some however - seem to be immune to this - which is even more odd. You think that Apple controls the hardware AND the OS - that alone would put everyone who uses a Mac on a even footing and everyone would either be good - or not good.

Guess it comes down to exactly what software you are using.

VP

I Love and hate NI. They’re the absolute worst in terms accruing technical debt then abandoning or being the most blatant example of what happens when you always chase the new Play library over VST3, Apple Silicon, resizable GUIs, MPE, and we can be certain MIDI 2 when it becomes standard.

Of course NI have issues, we’re talking about a company that presents great things then never fixes them for modern computers and OS’s, or at least takes forever.

[elxsound]

Why is this about Mac and Sonoma? Native Access has been a shit program on both Windows and Mac.

Native Access is a crap experience and I’m not on Sonoma.

So while it must feel fun to talk about cults and Macs. Native is still a mess except when it magically works right.

Hoping it becomes less buggy in time. I’m still using NI stuff and still have my S88 mk3 preordered (pushed back to 2024 Q1 now).

[machinesworking]

Because it’s not close to every year. Apple
have changed chip twice and rewritten completely their OS once in 23 years. So in 23 years it could be said every 7 years there might be a shake up.

Eh? It's literally every year. Yes the silicon update was a big and warranted change, but Sonoma is utterly pointless and redundant. All it does is break stuff. And they do it every September, regular as clockwork.

So why update immediately then, what is it you use that suddenly stopped working and needed an os update to work again?

I don't. As, in fact, I said.

The problem is that new computers ship with the latest OS. As a dev you just can't ignore it.

Ah, I’m not a developer, I don’t have to update. When I bought a new machine I didn’t toss the old one, it’s 13 years old with an appropriate OS etc. If anything doesn’t work on the M2 it lives on the old Mac Pro.

Again KVR is special, people hear developers like Melda and Image Line who didn’t even code for Mac OS until the Intel transition rant here all the time, plus all the PC users that stupidly wish only Windows and Linux existed etc. Like I mentioned initially some of this is due to each developer coming up with their own scheme on how to port a VST3 to AU, and that VST3 isn’t developed in house. Basically competing platforms can cause issues where someone develops a workaround that works for years then gets broken.

I’ve used Mac OS forever and I’m not unhappy with it. I don’t hate Windows, in my experience Windows can have more crippling issues, but it’s anecdotal and I realize I’m asked to fix machines that are broken and by friends and relatives not audio people who know better. There’s little reason for me to care about Windows at all, except acknowledging when I come here how many PC users are weird about the only competition out there to Windows.

[thecontrolcentre]

Get on over to Windows 10 and the most recent Native Access (3.8.0 released today) and I can almost guarantee smooth sailing.

VP

Of course I realize "working" is not the same as "supported", but in practise every other plugin, program, downloader or installer I use works fine for me (I have a lot of software installed). Only the latest Native Access fails to install and run. I don't really want the hassle of installing a new OS just to run 4 or 5 NI plugins ...