Is there a fix for Native Access 3.4 yet?

Dermot McD · 2023-05-30T09:18:11+00:00

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After the bugs in NA 3.2, I was hoping that 3.4 might have been better. But no, it's probably worse.

The dependencies problem, once fixed, remained OK for a few days. However with 3.4, whatever I do, I am required to confirm installing dependencies (whatever they are) every time I run the program after a failed install, even though I quit and restart immediately after confirming.

However, that's not the worst problem. After shelling out for a Komplete near-ultimate upgrade, I have to download new instruments one by one because NA fails to install and reports an "issue" with something requiring a restart, reconfirming the dependencies and then apparently restarting the whole process, even though there are over 20 GB of iso install files in my downloads folder.

Honestly, I couldn't give a toss about a new corporate identity, I would just like what I paid for to work!

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LostInFoundation

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/77628#Comment_77628

Just a suggestion: give to the user the previous last working version, remove the last problematic ones from the site (so no new user will even notice all the mess it causes now) and fix the things that are not working INTERNALLY.

Ever thought about this possibility instead of leaving users with a malfunctioning software? (since it seems the bug fixes are not an urgent thing…People buying a software expect that if it has such serious bugs things are gonna be fixed in some days…maybe they can accept some weeks…but here we are talking about “quarters”…)

Using users as beta tester is not a good policy, imo

Vocalpoint

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/77743#Comment_77743

Not a bad suggestion - however - that would only make sense if every single user was having issues with 3.4.0.

I am not - everything is working normally (with my minor workaround in play). And I am certain I am not the only one.

For everyone else out there struggling with this - there are infinite possibilities as to why these issues are occurring - stemming from the infinite states of each user's workstation, Windows/Mac system status and on and on.

My money is still on specific parts of the NTKDaemon service being poorly written but that a DEV thing to find and fix.

No two machines are alike out there and for every machine like mine (where I believe everything is working properly) there are 10 others who have something obvious (or obscure) going on. Any of which coudl be impacting NA2.

NI definitely needs to work the kinks out here as this software has been problematic for over a year now - but they cannot build software that is 100% trouble free when installed into a less than standard install.

LostInFoundation

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/77757#Comment_77757

I agree. Todays amount of different systems makes thing difficult. But other companies don’t have this amount of troubles. Probably they test thing more extensively before releasing. And when they have some issues, they fix it faster, not in order of quarters, feeling it’s their duty to give every user the right experience. The number of reports here is frankly too high to think “it’s only a couple of guys with very strange and unused systems”

If you really want to release things without extended testing (which in my opinion is anyway not a good policy), you can do 2 things: 1. Clearly state it when you sell it (“this is tested working on X, Y, Z systems. For all other users you buy at your own risk”) or 2. Using users as beta testers but then be fast as lightning in fixing things

Kubrak

But the question is, how many users have problems. It may be few tens to hundreds of several hundreds of thousands.... Say one in 10 000 to one in 1000. And it may be unclear, what the problem is, in their case....

It is difficult to fix the "bug", if one cannot reproduce it. Sometimes it is difficult to fix it even if it is possible to reproduce it... Sometimes the bug is not in code of the programmer, but in certain third party library. I have encoutered severe bug in Microsoft standard library for C++ compiler. If printing number in certain format it overwrited memory and thus caused hard to track strange errors, depending on, what it has overwritten... One would not expect such a bug in standard library used by milions.... It took me week to track it... :-(

I have never had problem with NA2 (on two computers), except the period that antivirus kept refusing to let installation of certain downloaded SW install. But it was not problem of NA2, but problem of antivirus....

Sure, the problem with download is unpleasant and has to be addressed.

Hayo_NI

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/77743#Comment_77743

We've discussed this internally. Our concerns are multifold, but I'll use one example here to illustrate as many of our concerns here.

Recently our backend team did some security upgrades to a user's account session, which forced users to have their sessions reset as they did that work. However, users were still trying to take action in our app without know what was going on, and Native Access wasn't responding to such an experience appropriately, as we knew user sessions should never deactivate. What would end up happening is that even if a few users use older versions of our app and try to make use of functionality, it would fry the backend servers. We released a fix in 3.4.0 to address this happening on short notice again so that it wouldn't fry our servers and take it down for everyone, which could be accomplished by a handful of sessions. Granted that it unintentionally also logged people out when their devices fell asleep, but we're working on it and that's beside the point.

Native Access needs our users to be on the most up-to-date version as possible to reflect our business state, hence why we force updates. Granted though that this isn't being done as gracefully as we'd like, for which we have a few measures in the works to improve things here. If users lingered on the latest working version, it means we need to maintain those versions of the product for security reasons. We want older versions to die down. If users are on older operating systems using older products that are no longer being maintained by Apple/Windows or us, then we work to cut support for those OSes. Maintaining products for unsupported versions is a losing battle and slows us down enough as it is.

As VP pointed out, it's also not worth the amount of money to maintain a version a small fraction of our users use. Ideally we release fixes that fix things for everyone, even those who haven't encountered the issue. If an issue exists for a few users, we can assert there's an issue that potentially everyone can run into. While we'd like to fix as much as we can, we're missing a key piece of our issue tracking that's preventing us from gathering technical insight as to why users are running into this issue, as we can't reproduce them in-house. A release is coming with this key piece of infrastructure missing soon, which was a lot more complex than we had planned, so apologies about the delay. As soon as that's in, we should have the context we're missing to learn why users run into these issues.

The goal here is to have one Native Access. No longer an NA1, NA2, or NA3. The number doesn't matter to us. The goal is to manage your products and get you into our ecosystem, and address bugs as we go, and I agree with you that this needs to speed up.

Hayo_NI

And to respond to Kubrak, it's not a massive amount, but the amount of users facing these issues is not of a negligible quantity, so we definitely need to address them. Like my above post says, we're missing key infrastructure that helps us track down these bugs, so we're working on getting that in, and then hopefully we have all the information we need to track where those bugs are occurring and why.

LostInFoundation

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/79147#Comment_79147

Nice to have some infos about what is happening.

After this Reading, another suggestion comes to mind:

“users were still trying to take action in our app without know what was going on”

Why not making a beforehand announcement: “We are taking this and that steps. This or that could happen. Stick with us till we solve everything”

But also…

“Native Access needs our users to be on the most up-to-date version as possible to reflect our business state, hence why we force updates”

“we work to cut support for those OSes”

…those 2 doesn’t sound good at all 😶

I’m also sure that if NA 2 would be programmed and tested properly, therefore being released in a full functional state, no user would ever think to keep the old versions and everyone would jump in to the brand new product to take advantage of its functionalities

AA9

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/77628#Comment_77628

is this maybe why I am unable to see / use Kontakt 5, or 6 in my DAW. it all worked fine before that update. I have contacted support about my issue and no one has replied. it's very frustrating.

LostInFoundation

@Hayo_NI I have a further curiosity coming from a recent thread posing a legitimate question: if NI will cut support for determined OSes, will you provide to the users wanting (or having) to keep those OSes the installers and registration keys for the products they bought as stated in your EULA?

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/14307/ni-said-it-will-provide-a-key-so-how-does-that-work

Vocalpoint

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/79157#Comment_79157

LIF

This clause is basically an "end game" statement that reads (to me anyway) that if NI cannot provide ANY ability to deliver "working" activation - by ANY means (like say the company folds) - then and only then would they provide some mechanism to get our stuff working.

Cutting support for Windows 7 or whatever does not qualify whatsoever to this clause. 100% "working" activation methods are well and good on all any supported OS (be it Win or Mac).

However - if you choose not to run a supported OS - that will be on you. All vendors do this and all vendors are well within their rights to make that call.

There was a spirited battle over on the Presonus forums about Studio One v6 not even installing on older versions of Windows 10 and that scenario caused massive out cry. But the bottom line remained the same as it will be with NI - stay current and stay activated (enjoy your stuff) - OR choose to live in the past and use none of your stuff.

Your call but certainly not NIs (or any vendors) problem to fix.

LostInFoundation

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/79162#Comment_79162

This is your interpretation, nor what EULA says.

Selling you a product stating “it works on Windows XX” and then cutting this OS support is their right. But it’s also users right to continue to use the product they paid for and was stated working on that OS. Maybe without support or further updates, but being able to use it.

And the Eula says “Should Native Instruments for whatever reasons no longer be able to fulfil its obligations to deliver the activation key”. Their installation and registration manager changing and not supporting that OS anymore IS a reason (and one they chose to apply).

To be clear: is not that I’m asking them to be forced to give everyone everything (also the new features and all the bells and whistles). I’m just asking a company to be fair and allow users to use what they paid for (and following their own EULA). I really don’t understand why users THEMSELVES every time someone raise such a request try to find any way to state companies can do what they want…

Bottom line: stay up to date as much as you want. But if other users must keep an older OS, why shouldn’t they be able to use what they paid for? (Since also the EULA they wrote to convince you to buy is stating that you can use your product anyway). Does it disturb you so much?

Edit: I see you edited your post. So I add: it’s not a fix they have to do…it’s a promise they have to maintain

Vocalpoint

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/79163#Comment_79163

"But if other users must keep an older OS, why shouldn’t they be able to use what they paid for?"

Who is saying that a user on an older OS cannot use what they paid for? If their products are installed (on say Windows 7 right now) - what's the problem?

And why would any user "have" to stay on an older OS? Are they only ever going to own one computer for their whole lives? I suppose it's possible - but this user will have much bigger issues in short order as the rest of audio world drops (if they haven't already) support for any old OS. This is not something unique to NI - every vendor has dropped Windows 7 (for example). How would anyone navigate that minefield if everything they use is unsupported or discontinued. I mean cmon - there are limits here.

" I really don’t understand why users THEMSELVES every time someone raise such a request try to find any way to state companies can do what they want…"

One big reason is that you and I own nothing here (AND have no say either). All we bouhgt is a "right" to use the software under a very specific set of circumstances - which usually amount to staying current on a supported OS and using the tools provided by the vendor.

NI can (and will) change these circumstances as they see fit - NOT to be punitive to us but to be practical for the long-term stability of their products. They cannot support an OS that Microsoft has deemed "retired". If you want to run that - that is your business, but they do not need to support you (or me) in any way. I fully understand this going in and have no issue with it.

What blows my mind is why anyone would want to stay on some old broken down unsupported OS and then complain about it? Or expect installers to be sent to them or special activation routines.

Software ages out (permanently) daily and no other vendor is making any efforts to support some tired version of a VST issued in 2002.

As far as the EULA goes - any lawyer reading this line back to you:

"Should Native Instruments for whatever reasons no longer be able to fulfil its obligations to deliver the activation key"

Will tell you straight up there is NO problem "delivering" an activation key - every user that has purchased an NI product already has an activation key for every product listed in their NI accts.

As long as that key has been "delivered" (and it has) - NI has fulfilled its obligation.

Now - "using" that activation key is a different story. And one that NI may need to provide answers on.

But if you think NI is going to suddenly start supporting OR sending out custom installers etc for every user that refuses to use a current OS OR the latest Native Access - you will be disappointed.

LostInFoundation

Ok. As you want.

Only fault in your reasoning is NO ONE here asked for supporting users on older OS. Just to allow them to use what they bought. I already said it, but it seems that to prove your point you forgot you read it. They don’t have to do anything to let users use what they already have.

For one time that an EULA comes useful to users…

I’m out of this

Vocalpoint

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/79167#Comment_79167

LIF

I get it. No support - that is obvious and understood.

But you really need to better define "using what they bought".

I am visualizing a user on Windows 7 that has all their NI stuff installed for a long time and it's all good. What exactly is the problem?

Seems like you are visualizing something completely different - a user (on Windows 7) who is attempting to add/readd/reinstall/rebuild (in some ongoing, never-ending way) - their DAW - where NI is expected to be at their beck and call with some "method" to ensure they can "use what they bought"? Do I have this right?

If this is NOT support - I am at a loss as to what it would be.

Apologies if I am missing your use case - this is the best I can come up with right now.

LostInFoundation

Very simple: give users their installation files and registration keys and they can do whatever they want, for whatever reason they have…without you moving a finger. As it has always been.

But as I said, I’m out of this

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