Dev Talks: Native Access Startup Journey and Next steps
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The answer probably is “Never”. They don’t want you to use the older programs, but to buy the new ones since you can’t use the ones you already own
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How about supporting the provision of archived/legacy product downloads and updates? It can be "hidden" in a less conspicuous tab not too visible on main page.
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Sorry. I started with all the good intentions. Criticizing, yes, but to make things improve. But the more answers I read, the more they sounds like a polite (or political) way to say “We don’t want you to use the programs you already own and we want you to be dependent on us 100%”.
You are so concerned not to “cause a lot of unnecessary load on the customer support side” for many things, unless it is for providing users with installation files in case everything goes really wrong cause NA is not working and you have to. Files that could be available in other ways, without charging the customer support. Having an installation files repository on the site like it was before is not an option at all? I’m sure if NA will be working correctly, we the users will continue happily using it in any case, but having an alternative would be welcome.
NI programs get cracked anyway, since it is not IMPOSSIBLE to have the installation files, just INCONVENIENT. So the inconvenience just falls on NI users shoulders, not on the crackers.
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@Hayo_NI Another quick question:
Does your team push backend updates often, as in every other day? Because most of the time I start NA on separate days it always needs to "install dependencies", I find this odd as I doubt there's 15 updates per month on the daemons or whatever the other dependencies are. Is it a bug?
I also find that very odd compared to my personal experience but the other day I sold an NI HW I don't want anymore and assisted the buyer to install things on a Windows laptop from 2020 which he says was about 900$ and it took like 10mins for NA to start...
For me, it's always between 20 secs to 1 min.
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This has been my experience with NA with the M1 Mac Studio & Monterey. Every time I launch, it prompts for admin credentials to set itself up again. So I try to avoid using it.
For me, that's a priority 1 problem. As an end-user, I should not need to think about a Daemon etc - it should be transparent.
Thanks for the opportunity to provide feedback! And for the efforts in trying to improve the experience.
Neil
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Woooooo… NA in these days isn’t in good health at all. Probably it wasn’t the best moment to have a devtalk about it for Hayo_NI 😶
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For me it's always been decent, and I have 3 computers, one of them with both Mac and Windows... I have no idea what other folks got going on in their systems.
I'm actually pleased with NA's rate of evolution, a rare thing in NI land.
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I’m actually pleased with some of the ideas. Not so much with recent rising of installation/serial registration/updating (main tasks of NA) issues, obligation to use it (no other way to have installation files) and obligation to have Daemon constantly running on my computer.
And also the fact that all this focus on NA points exactly in the direction of…subscriptions…
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Well, I have no issues so can't criticize NA for problems I never had, been using it even before it was released publicly, worst case scenario I get an installation failed and just try again but it's rare.
NTKdaemon takes 0.1% of my CPU and 12mb of ram, I'm personally absolutely fine with that, I'd take those tiny numbers over iLok all-day long! I waited 7 days to get Decapitator removed from an account tied to a computer I longer have access too so couldn't open any projects with it for a while, super duper annoying.
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I agree…but my personal experience doesn’t seem to reflect what I see here on the forum.
Maybe the secret is not running after every update, letting a little time go by and having other users facing the inconveniences. Then chime in and update when it has already been tested and fixed on other users skin 😂
In any case, I largely expressed my opinion, so I think I’ll let Hayo_NI breath a little bit…at least for the moment 😏
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I think there are some interesting points here. I'll leave my thoughts, admitting I haven't read to the end of this thread in its entirety, so I may just be echoing others' thoughts.
First I'd like to echo a huge THANK YOU for this transparency and initiative. NI went through a bit of a "dark period" let's call it 7-5 years ago and this sort of proactive community outreach is an important step in bringing us all around again. I wouldn't be surprised if a disproportionate number of NI users also have some connection to software development, so it's a bonus to have this level of conversation.
As one of the users who experienced > 60s load times with Native Access, I for one am very grateful for the improvements, however to LIT's point, it was only a problem a few times a month when I'd install yet another expansion or library (Man, NI Komplete CE is huuuuuge). The main issue was a UX one, not necessarily a startup one. Someone mentioned "wondering whether it was broken or stalled out" and that for me was the heart of the issue. I'm okay if a process has to take a long time, as long as I'm being constantly reassured that things are happening and that the software is not hung. These days with a lot of asynchronous event-driven code, the core software can be hung while, e.g. an animated spinner continues to spin.
So there's a real opportunity to provide more, uh, transparency, around what in fact is happening - perhaps even a "bytes transferred" indicator can reassure us that data is still being transmitted and processed etc.
I guess I'm saying that further improvements to NA performance should focus on user experience and user feedback, rather than micro-optimization of the startup code, which now seems to be in a very reasonable state (I'm still experiencing north of 60 second startup times, but it's a known issue now and I'm ok with it).
Finally, I want to echo another thought, which is dev participation in the forums. Actual support has gotten a lot better in the last 3 years I'd say, so I'm often more likely to just submit a support ticket rather than post a question in the forums, but there is nothing more frustrating than Googling an issue, seeing that exact issue cleanly documented by a user in the forums, and then seeing no response other than other users saying "me too". Speaking of the forums - with the recent switchover, a lot of the Google results lead to broken 404 pages, which is a real bummer when the Google result seems to be exactly what you're looking for!
At any rate, thanks for this outreach. It's a smart move on your customer experience team's part and shows that you're listening and working hard. Keep it up!
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Looks Exciting, thanks for the update on future versions of Native Access. I've been with Native Instruments since my first purchase of Colossus back in the day and I must say that I still use that library all of the time. I'm glad there will be a way to uninstall certain libraries as that will not only save space but reduce unwanted clutter in Kontakt. I really like the ability to purchase only the libraries that I need from Native Instruments and also if there is a problem with my studio PC or laptop the ability to quickly get reloaded and back on track with music making. So Glad there is no Ilok-type system with Native Instruments that's one of the many reasons we are so happy with your platform. Anyone that has experienced Disk Drive Failure and tried to re-coup software licenses knows the nightmare I'm talking about when I say Ilok. Thanks for letting us decide what titles we want and thanks for keeping track of our purchases and a big thanks for not doing the Cloud Thing! Thanks for being a solid company that music makers like me can rely on to get the music made with little worry. PS: I've been slowly removing all Ilok vsts from my studio computers I'm finding replacements for all of them using Native Instrument titles and not looking back.
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Thanks NI for being so transparent!
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I just discovered that my Native Access was long out of date and installed the latest.
Features seem good. Inclusion of reinstall is nice (I was on version 1.xxx)
The only problem for me - and its massive - is the dark theme. I find that the background is so dark that the white text is difficult to read. Gives me eye strain.
Might be because I wear glasses, and my room is quite dark, not sure, but it is unpleasant and difficult to use as a result. The extreme contrast causes the text to blur at the edges and makes it difficult to focus.
Reaktor is fine and also has a dark background, but it is no where near as dark - more of a medium grey, and it's mostly not bright white over it... It's just the more extreme contrast in NA.
Really not sure why this change was made. There is a reason why every big corp. uses dark text on light background - Amazon, Google, look at any big online presence. Dark should be a secondary option for the minority who prefer it. It is a tool after all, not a design statement. Accessibility should be a priority over how 'cool' it is.
I hope also that this version will tell me when there is a newer one to upgrade to. The last one didn't which is why I was stuck on version 1.xxx for so long ;)
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Of all the things to give an amazing level of detail on the path and development...
Of all the software, expansions, Of all the millions of megabytes on our systems, the updates, the legacy products...
All of it.... of Alllllllllllll the things we have endured, the One thing that I bet is LAST on what NI customers want such an in-depth case study, details and pathway for is Native friggin' Access.... 😆
It's absolutely appreciated and the update is actually refreshing but I bet there are a few other things that people wouldn't mind an update with that level of detail about. 🤭
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