About “ End of Life for iMASCHINE”
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Customers, who bought it, may use it. IMHO they even may reinstall it. So, it affects just those who would like it buy. And old customers in the way, that no more updates....
Yes, they could comunicate it better way. But maybe there was some kind of incompatibility and first they intended to address it. And later on, after financial analysis of costs/profits, management has decided to terminate it.
Maybe simmilar to Absynth EOL, which is IMHO much more "absurd". But I do not mind, till it will be possible to authorise it on Win. It would, probably, cost too much to port it to AS. Or there were legal (licencing) problems....
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And when it won’t be possible to activate Absynth on Windows anymore? Will you care then? You seem to only care about things which affect YOU directly, which is quite myopic point of view, IMHO.
And please do not say that one will be forever able to do something because of Windows back compatibility. NI will simply make a business decision at one point to not let users activate Absynth anymore with NA3/4/5.
I still have NI Vokator license, you know. Very good to have it. Reminds me that software is a disposable commodity 🤣
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@Kubrak assumed
Customers, who bought it, may use it.
Which is not (entirely) true, which is the problem. Even more than the Maschine software, iMaschine is pretty useless without the various sample libraries, especially the free Quantum Collection with 250 MB of samples, which was used by many customers.
With Quantum Collection gone, the Projects referencing sounds from that library cannot even be properly exported anymore. Quite irritating at least.
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I reckon they pulled it first due to what they said then spent some time considering if it was worth working on it or not, then when and how to announce it.
I don't quite get the "better communication" comments, what would be a better way of communicating?
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This time I will answer fastly and directly: HONESTY
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I don't know what that means, when was anyone not honest about iMaschine? Be specific.
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When they said it was being tested for compatibility (you are right, some users could have had problems even if many others didn’t notice anything, but the app was compatible)
When a full year passed after this statement without any other info (did it really take a full year to test something?)
When we asked for infos about all this time gone without news and they answered “an official statement is coming” and almost 3 more months passed (I mean the first time, not last time Jeremy said “an official statement is coming soon”)
And even now with the End of Life statement, with them not saying “is not profitable” or “we don’t want to have an iMaschine app anymore”.
Saying “Because we are committed to providing the best level of support for the music creation tools we offer, we occasionally retire older products, like iMASCHINE 2. This enables us to focus our resources and development efforts on a core set of products and bring new, innovative ones to market.” is only political language.
Leaving iMaschine on the AppStore as it is wouldn’t cost them a penny, since as already said they are paying the AppStore developer fees anyway since Traktor is there. Nor steal “resources and development efforts” on anything, since they didn’t updated it for years (as you say, probably they don’t even have iOS developers anymore)
And if you want to tell me the first part of the sentence is true (“Because we are committed to providing the best level of support for the music creation tools we offer”), I’ll answer you with: where is this best level of support for Native Access, Maschine, Komplete Kontrol,…? And all this commitment? In saying “we know Native Access release has been hurried, that is not working as expected, that it causes many problems…but we will fix it in 6 months (or talking about quarters instead of “we fix it immediately”) because otherwise when we will reach the point were it will be working as we want (which in facts should be BEFORE releasing a product…) the team will have to work double cause they will have to rewrite the patches we wrote now to allow you to use it correctly”? Is this the type of commitment NI offers to their users?
And this is only about iMaschine, since you asked me specifically for this. Let’s not add releasing products like the D2 calling them “the future of DJing” just to deprecate them after a little while. Quite a variable definition of time they have… when it’s “useful” to them, the “future” is so fast as 1-2 years. When it’s about to fix things, they start slowing down talking about quarters…
Cmon…let’s be frank: as I already said, they are a company who is more than entitled to take ANY decision they want with their products. But saying they are honest…😶
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What seems to me is that NI says something HONEST (or partially honest) only when they HAVE TO and users start to ask them, and then ask them again and again cause the first time they said “we’ll keep you informed” they hoped people would forget about it.
Only then, with their shoulder against the wall, they say something.
Or did it really took 1 and a half year to decide (after years of already abandoning his development) the future of iMaschine (future that all users already knew, only the guys at NI didn’t…)
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Which is not (entirely) true, which is the problem. Even more than the Maschine software, iMaschine is pretty useless without the various sample libraries, especially the free Quantum Collection with 250 MB of samples, which was used by many customers.
So the problem is not iMaschine, but Quantum Collection....
Generally, all those cloud things... Are like cloud. They may be gone in fraction of second. But yes, it is unpleasant, I agree.
Maybe good warning to have things stored also locally.
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Which can’t be done on iPads (unless you keep an app permanently installed, reinstalling it needs IAP to be restored and redownloaded). And which is the same direction NI is taking by not providing anymore installation files in their site. But when I say “please give users the ability to download and keep their products and their previous versions in case of problems”, someone always start saying that we live in the past and softwares world don’t work like this. They don’t WANT it to work like this, is not that it can’t
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My personal advice is to not flame the little communication we have, because in the background there are people here fighting to get that communication for you, if we then hold those people accountable for higher-level decisions those people might just give up on nagging whoever makes the calls and greenlights the communication... I'd focus on critiquing the decisions rather than the communication, I shouldn't even be saying this... I said a few times before and won't say it again, it's up to yall. I personally usually figure out what's about to happen by my own means anyway...
I hate to be devil's advocate but I really don't most of these statements.
When they said it was being tested for compatibility (you are right, some users could have had problems even if many others didn’t notice anything, but the app was compatible)
Are you stating that no compatibility tests were actually done at all it and it was a lie? If so, how do you reach that conclusion? Solely based on the fact that the app works fine for you? That's enough for you to state "it's compatible" like it's somehow a scientific fact? IDK if they lied about that or not but I do know that software testing is complicated as well and something working well for you and the devices you own doesn't mean much when there are tons of iDevices, use cases, and workflows. Unless you tested every single feature and tons of devices or have significant data from users that's not a fact.
When a full year passed after this statement without any other info (did it really take a full year to test something?)
When we asked for infos about all this time gone without news and they answered “an official statement is coming” and almost 3 more months passed (I mean the first time, not last time Jeremy said “an official statement is coming soon”)
The total wait time is too much, I agree there, but the last 3 months is OK for me, it means an answer is coming, the alternative would be to not say anything and just announce it when they are ready and see fit, this way people like Jeremy have no risks of being called a liar, personally I really dislike this alternative.
My common sense tells me the full year includes the time it took to test, come up with a final decision, decide how to announce, when to announce, write it carefully, get the approval of all the corporate layers, etc... The last few things were those 3 months if I had to take a guess. I'd rather a target date to fail but till have some idea of when I'll get an answer.
Jeremy did his best to get an answer for us, an answer that tbh I don't understand how anyone could not have seen coming since this SW has been dead for like 5 or 6 years, i knew ahead of time but even when i was told my answer was "Yeah, i already knew it". If the M+ doesn't get a single update in 5 years what do you guys think it means? It will die.
And even now with the End of Life statement, with them not saying “is not profitable” or “we don’t want to have an iMaschine app anymore”.
That's our (the users) assumption as it's sort of logical but it could be for many other factors too, we will never know.
Saying “Because we are committed to providing the best level of support for the music creation tools we offer, we occasionally retire older products, like iMASCHINE 2. This enables us to focus our resources and development efforts on a core set of products and bring new, innovative ones to market.” is only political language.
But what else do you expect from a professional company? "Sorry bros, we killed iMaschine 'cause it's codebase is old AF as well as it's libraries and makes us no dollas so it's not worth our time" ?? You will always have a carefully typed answer that makes the company look as good as possible given the circumstances, expecting anything else is very naive. Perhaps they could have given more technical details but users don't care about that anyway, it wouldn't make the news any less hard to swallow for the few people who still used this app.
Leaving iMaschine on the AppStore as it is wouldn’t cost them a penny, since as already said they are paying the AppStore developer fees anyway since Traktor is there. Nor steal “resources and development efforts” on anything, since they didn’t updated it for years (as you say, probably they don’t even have iOS developers anymore)
But if they leave it there people will buy it! Making it free wouldn't make any sense neither for an abandoned app... Assuming everything works 100% for everyone and that the backend that enables installing expansions, APIs and whatnot is free if they leave it there unattended apple would remove it. And for what? What's the benefit of leaving it there? Anyone who bought can still use it and install it, no?
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You can’t make backups of in-app purchases. They are part of the app installation and have to be re-installed when reinstalling the app. Same as you can’t install Expansions if they are not provided via NA.
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All your points are (or could be) valid. But I continue to think all my points are (or could be) valid too.
Therefore no further need to continue the discussion. Just to thank you for giving me a different prospective for what I see 👍🏼
I just want to make a couple of clarifications to not be misunderstood (starting from the one I think it’s the more important, at least for me):
I wasn’t talking about Jeremy. As I already told him, his job is a though job, putting his face on someone else statements (or lack of). And as I also already told him, I’m convinced someone up there sometimes is lying to him too
About iMaschine compatibility: no, I cannot know if it was working on every idevice existent on planet earth. But I own 6 different models of iPads (from old ones to M1, from small ones to 12.9) and 4 models of iPhones. And none of these ever gave me problems. And also reading the reports here on the forum I’ve never seen a wave of complaints about iMaschine compatibility. Wave that on the other hand comes periodically about other NI products…and I don’t see them that worried about this… And I will also add my usual “yes…testing is complicated…but ALL companies have to do it (even ones that are a one man company) and none of them needs the amount of time NI needed”. As “porting to Silicon is difficult…but all companies had to do it. And none of them needed the time NI needed”. Therefore…sorry to say it…but of the two one: or they didn’t tell us all the truth, or they work worst than many other companies (even the smaller ones with less resources). I don’t know which option is better…
Some of your explanations goes exactly in the direction of what I’m trying to say here: EVERYBODY saw it coming, EVERYBODY “already knew it”, not only you with some more insider position. So why even play this game with their own users? Just say it…
And this last one is just my personal point of view, I admit it, but: “makes the company look as good as possible”…for ME, it is exactly the opposite: the “carefully typed answer” have exactly the opposite result, HONESTY would make me see a company as good as possible
“we will never know”
4 words that resume exactly my problem with companies acting like this. Maybe if we COULD KNOW, we could also UNDERSTAND BETTER
I’ll take anyway your advice, but I must say that stating how their “communications” is seen after we already told them again, and again, and again…and not seeing anything change… is not flaming. And I must answer you once again that no, I don’t want to critique the decision, because as I said it’s their own right to take it. I EXACTLY want to critique the communication…
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You can’t make backups of in-app purchases. They are part if the app installation and have to be re-installed when reinstalling the app. Same as you can’t install Expansions if they are not provided via NA.
OK, I didn't know one may not backup things on iPad.... But good to know, one more reason avoid using it.
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has anyone made a workaround pack of the quantum collection (retitled or something?) so it it may be uploaded into the missing samples and hopefully sound like the quantum collection?
this convo is out of control.
can someone from NI please just fix this on imaschine so I can export my songs so i can upgrade my hardware and keep with NI products, otherwise I dont know why i would start over again with new NI products and not just midi keyboards and ableton or garageband.
IMO, the best entry into the brands' interface is through the mobile, easy peasy, making & saving music, and then upgrading. Just make an imaschine3 and include everyones creations from imaschine1&2, make it exportable, lead it up for someone who is interested in the rest of the product line like me. and INCLUDE THE QUANTUM COLLECTION please.
Dont exile this customer base!
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