Native Instruments Apple Silicon M1 Compatibility

Jeremy_NI

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/18646#Comment_18646

I reached out to the responsible team for an official statement on this matter. Here is what they said:

"We’re committed to making sure our plug-ins are compatible with Apple Silicon Machines and balancing compatibility updates with feature development for new and existing products. While we are planning on porting Battery 4 to Native Silicon & VST3, we can't make any commitments to the timeline."

Artcutech

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/18744#Comment_18744

Thanks Jeremy and NI!

very classy of you guys to respond! I feel much better about the whole situation now that someday it’ll be here, sooner than later hopefully but it’s all good.

Alexander Stross

Ok so we have Kontackt it works great! But Rosetta 2 Ableton crashes all the time with Komplete Kontrol so much that I cannot work. It has been a year and we have gotten 1 product that is actually optimized. Has NI forgotten about us? The new M1 Macs are so much more powerful than just about anything you would think a Universal Binary would be very high on the list of things to complete?

I have and M1 Max laptop and M1 Ultra Studio and my for flow is trashed and it has been trashed for a long time.

I know you guys can get this thing done. I know there are complications but they can be overcome you can build an emulation layer with your applications to make up for the instructions that you do not have with the high end Intel chips and it would likely run 10x the speed.

Come on, y'all can do it!

Alexander Stross

I would love to pick up a maschine+ but if my KK can't work why risk even more investment in hardware that will just sit or just controlled via MIDI and forget all the bells and whistles. Universal Audio ported everything! It works perfectly with Ableton 11.1. I have invested so much money in NI over the years I can't just dump your products. Almost a decade of purchases!

Are you just waiting to have everything done for a grand release?

Kubrak

@Alexander Stross

I know there are complications but they can be overcome you can build an emulation layer with your applications to make up for the instructions that you do not have with the high end Intel chips and it would likely run 10x the speed.

Rosetta 2 is emulation layer that does the job. If that does not work for you, do you think NI would make better emulation layer than Apple?

They may be many technical and possibly also legal things that NI has to sort out. It takes time, support from Apple is needed (if things do not work as expected) and also lots and lots of testing has to be made.

Dan

On my new Mac Studio Ultra, Battery (AU) does not remember sample paths for saved sessions. Instead, I need to open the GUI and "find" samples again every time I load a saved session. Fortunately Spotlight is lightening fast, but it's pretty annoying. I don't care so much about it being "native" or not, but the whole point of Battery (for me) is to have a low-friction drum instrument - and right now, in its buggy condition, it is anything but that.

fractal zombie

Native Instruments, all software is already support natively arm architecture.

In native mode it’s very fast and responsive, resetta mode is slow for pro software. Plz release your software for arm, maybe beta version.

Oliseo

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/11873#Comment_11873

Why should it be a paid upgrade? Right now NI are charging full price for what is actually incompatible software.

Perhaps they should give a discount until they can provide software that actually works on the hardware.

Oh, and BTW, I won't be spending a penny more on any NI software until they do.

And if enough people feel the same, that's NI's problem, not yours.

Be careful what you wish for. If this continuing embarrassment continues for long enough, we all will suffer, including Windows users like yourself, as NI will have a reduced budget to spend on Devs.

There is still quite a big and substantial market for music production in the music industry. The same people who use Macs in the studio, may also use Windows at home.

Then you have the reputation of a company to consider. It takes a long time to build a good reputation, but only moments to destroy it.

A poor company that undervalues some of its customers, is likely to undervalue all of them at some point.

Try not to be so smug about us Mac users having issues, as it may be you in the driving seat one day, and I get the impression if the shoe was on the other foot you'd never shut up about it.

Kubrak

"Why should it be a paid upgrade?"

The plugins were developed and sold for x86 processors (Mac and Win). And still are. Majority of people bought it two years ago or more, before M1 came.

One should pay, for what he consumes. Apple users have decided to move to M1, they should bear the cost of their decision, It would be fair.

Imagine. You have bought a car that runs on petrol and few years later you change mind and decide to have a car that runs on electricity. You do not claim, that producer of the car should redesing your car to electricity and for free.

But you expect exactly the same from NI and other SW companies. And on top of that keep complaining it takes sooo horribly looong.

PS.

If I were on Mac, I would not move to AS till all SW I need is ported to native AS. Moving to AS before that is for hobbyists or someone who does not mind to take the risks....

The same applies to Win. Noone serious moves to a new version of Windows before it becomes clear all things work. It usually takes at least 2 years since the release...

Early adoption brings problems regardless platform/OS...

Maciej Repetowski

I do not always agree with Kubrak, but when I do, I really do 😉

I would gladly pay for M1 compatibility and for HiDPI. I think until the software is compatible, better not to upgrade to Apple Silicon - hence I’m still on Intel Mac mini.

I have to however add that NI’s slow transition to M1 native is putting people off and this whole situation is becoming a common joke on KVR, Gearspace and V-Control forums. Which is sad, because I love Kontakt and Maschine.

Anyway, I am still patiently waiting, but many don’t and they seek alternatives.

Damn

Sorry but I don't agree at all... I'm a software developer and it's NI fault to not use platform-independent code.

If so they would be able to compile their software for any architecture without rewriting major code parts of the software. At some time years ago they decided not to jump on this train and remain with their old code without rewriting it. well that costs money but they also get a lot of that from all of us... but now they have the result of being so ineffective in changing things.

That's not the fault of the customer. Also I don't agree to Kubrak's comparison to car technology, let's say if windows 12 has major changes which makes it impossible to use NI products anymore. In that case the customers should be charged again?? No! There were always changes in compatibility, if NI wasn't compatible with the latest x86 version in the past, then NI had to change their code to not lose their customers. So why should this be different for M1 users.

NI could take the money they got from us to hire some more developers to speed things up - they should have done that years ago. What do they do with our money? Buying mansions and expensive cars? There are so few major improvements to their software in the past years that they should have enough money to speed this process up.

And nearly all other developers of audio software were able to get the compatibility going in less than a year, NI is nearly the only one which is struggeling so much.

So why NI isn't able? They couldn't blame others for their corporate risk which any company has to deal with - that's market economy!

And on the other hand they don't get tired to send us tons of newsletters to make us buy more software... would be nice if they would put the same effort in developing compatible software!

Maciej Repetowski

I understand that you are upset about it and I agree that this is NI’s fault. Still doesn’t change the fact that because their code and libraries are so ancient, it takes considerable time.

Damn

...you're right, maybe NI will be able to deliver at some time ;)

But you can't milk the cow forever without delivering hay and water to it.

Kubrak

@Damn

I'm a software developer and it's NI fault to not use platform-independent code.

Why should they use platform-independent code? They did not need it, they have developed just for x86. Untill Apple has changed mind and AS came. NI even made intentional decision to use AVX instructions in Massive X, so that it did run only on some x86 CPUs, not all....

Some code is easier to port, some harder. And it is not only ARM instruction set, but also big.little what has to be adressed... And probably antipiracy code, antidebugging code, that cannot be platform-independent...

Completely different CPU is like changing engine in the car. That comparison holds. Fact that SW companies do the change for free does not change it. If few would not, the rest would happily join....

Changing CPU type is not the same like releasing new OS version, by far....

Also we do not know anything about licences for 3rd party libraries that NI may use, availability of source code, legal procedures, and so on.... Those are things that may slow down the things considerably... And each company is in different situation, concerning this.

And if Win12 will make troubles to use NI products? First it is pretty improbable. But even if that would happen.... I still happily use Win7 (13 years old OS) on older computer and quite recently Win10 (7 years old OS) on newer one. I'll stay on Win10 at least five more years. Then I will be five-seven years on Win11 (1 year old). By the time I will move to Win12, it will be mature OS many years (5+) in use and all compatibility issues, if any, will be solved...

I am SW developer and nontrivial SW that I made 25 years ago still works fine and is used on current Windows. I did not have to change a line of code because of Win compatibility during those 25 years and about 10 releases of Windows....

I do not want to say Win is great and macOS is not great. Each has its advantages and disadvantages. AS users now face some disadvantages of early adopters. It may be unpleasant, but it is pretty common that things like that happen. Such a big change takes several years to settle down so that everything works. Expecting that all major developers do they work within months, year is way too optimistic and completely unrealistic...

In any field, SW development including, things may go wrong, even very wrong. I have seen SW projects delayed several years, delayed and cancelled, and so on... It is easy to complain...

Damn

If you're an soooo awesome developer like you stated I guess you must be right ;) I think I need a break to recover from your overwhelming genius thoughts... I think you should be our new messiah - hail Kubrak!