Support of older versions of macOS with Maschine and Komplete

Duistere Bardo

Recently I noticed a new version Maschine was released, but to my dismay it is not supported anymore on the current version of macOS I am running on my production machine, which is the latest version of Big Sur (11.7.10).

I am rather baffled with this limited support for older OS's, especially considering the minor improvements this new update contains. More importantly, the latest software from other companies such as Arturia, Renoise, and even Ableton are not limited to only this recent version of macOS.

As a comparison, I recently purchased the Arturia MiniFreak, which is accompanied with a VST version, which has been released in 2022. The latest update (2.0) from December 2023 supports macOS 10.13. For the inattentive reader, that is not Ventura (macOS 13.0.0), but High Sierra, which has been released in 2017, five years before the MiniFreak was even released. Meanwhile, the Maschine MK3 has been released in 2017, and the latest version of the software only runs on macOS from 2020 or later, while having a GUI that looks like it hasn't been updated since 2013.

To add insult to injury, although it is besides my main point, NI is teasing a subscription based model for their entire software suite. I am already not a proponent of subscription based models for creative software, but with this 'market leading' limited level of software support for older OS's, there is literally no reason to pay a monthly fee for me able to use anything new being released by NI, as it won't even offer the option to use it on the OS I am currently running.

Sorry for being so grumpy about this, but if anything, it is because I care about the products that I have from NI. I really like the Maschine workflow, especially in combination with Komplete Kontrol, and use many of NI's software synths in all my projects. It's painful to see a once great music production company decline year by year, and pulling their intellectual property down along the way.

D-One

No need to apologize for being grumpy, your post was sensible and polite.

As far as I can remember NI only officially supports MacOS 3 versions down from the latest. If you never noticed it then it's likely it never affected you until now... Some things work in non supported MacOS versions albeit if not officially, depends.

This is kind of the unfortunate reality of owning a Mac, you gotta upgrade every 7-10 years or so if you want the latest SW/HW, old+new simply does not combine and eventually something you use will support. Life on Windows is much, much better in this regard.

Normal instruments plugins don't usually have that many issues with OS compatibility, like your mini freak plugin example but for things more complex like Maschine, KK, etc its trickier... Ableton Live evolves at a much, much faster pace than Maschine does and still only support Big Sur through 14 Sonoma, just 1 version better than Maschine. :(

Duistere Bardo

I must admit I noticed quite some time ago already that support for older macOS versions is rather limited, but didn't comment on it until now that it has actually become an issue for me.

Honestly though, I when I first noticed it, I already thought it looked like an outdated support window, as nowadays OSs are updated much more frequently than in the past (a trend that Apple started some time ago, but now Microsoft is also adopting with Windows).

I gave MiniFreak as an example, as it also incorporates deep software / hardware integration (if you have the hardware synth), so it is to quite an extend comparable to Maschine / KK, albeit limited to only the MiniFreak hardware/software. However, I also mentioned Renoise for a reason, as it is a tracker based DAW with much more bells and whistles than Maschine (such as Rewire support, OSC and Lua scripting), that nonetheless supports macOS all the way back to 10.11 (El Capitan) in the latest version, and even Windows 7 and Linux.

Renoise even introduced support for HiDPI resolutions already in 2019, only *checks notes* 7 years after Apple introduced the first Retina MacBook Pro!

Again, I love Maschine, so I will keep on using it for the time being, but without any new updates I guess for quite a while, as I will currently have to stick with macOS Big Sur.

PS: sorry for the late reply, clearly I am much less interested in the latest news and developments on NI and Maschine, so I don't check so regularly here anyomore.