Getting weary of "updates" breaking things

mmltaylor

I just spent over an hour fixing yet another problem with NI apps when I should have been working on music.

Dear NI: Please stop breaking things with "updates" because it wastes our time, makes you look foolish in the process, and is giving me second thoughts on whether to keep my loyalty to your product line.

For clarity this is my setup: 2018 Mac mini i7 and MacBook 2019 Pro i9, both running macOS 13 (latest rev). I DO NOT need to upgrade my OS because everything else is working with ZERO issues. Upgrading when not necessary is a time waster and frankly, I don't need the risk of updating breaking an app or for a piece of expensive hardware to become unusable due to an OS update. I DO NOT need a new M(whatever) Mac. The ones I have work and frankly, new Macs are not in my budget at this time.

I have experienced the following issues over the past three years which I believe are completely avoidable and unnecessary:

1. NI updates forcing users to do an OS update or their apps or even Native Access will become unusable. Why?! NI needs to build in backwards compatibility. There are a LOT of users out there with older hardware that will only run certain OSes that you are leaving in the dust.
2. Offering alternate installation paths, but telling users that they shouldn't do this. Yep! I had issues with apps loading and got a hold of NI support. When they found out that I had installed products on an external volume, they told me not to do that. The problem is that my machines only have half-terabyte drives and cannot be upgraded. This is why external media exists, is it not?
3. Kontakt 8 installed on what they reported as a compatible OS (macOS 12 at the time) and it not working correctly until I was forced, yet again to update my OS to 13. So to use ONE APP, I had to upgrade my entire macOS and hope to God that nothing else broke or my Mac got slowed down by the upgrade.
4. Komplete Kontrol got a recent update and when I went to use it in Ableton, it was gone. I spent over an hour searching for a solution. This happened in the middle of a writing session. So I had to stop making music to play IT guy for over an hour.

Your zeal to "remain current" is becoming a problem. I have been witness to several Reddit threads regarding similar issues that users have to deal with, so this is far from an isolated issue.

Please consider what I stated above, or you're going to lose at least one customer, and I see more in the future. Think about it: if fewer people can't use your products because their machines and OSes aren't up to whatever you consider "standard," that means fewer users and therefore lost revenue, not to mention lost respect and integrity. Is that worth it?

JesterMgee

Stress testing of updates seems to have fallen off from their process because as you mention, each update seems to release a swag of new issues and the procedures for things like FW updates is just not made clear enough because the same issue crops up over and over again on the forums, it's strange because even tho the finger is pointed by NI at the USB side of things in computers, I have dozens of other controller and hardware that do not have any of these same issues so not sure why so many have issues updating a keyboard.

Users, however, also need to be aware of the fact they do NOT have to just blindly update things. Sure macOS users are kind of forced after a while but I try and never update until I have to because I prefer stability and reliability over features any day of the week, that is why I am STILL running Komplete Kontrol v2.9 and not v3 which is still in a pretty bad shape.

Other issue is in the "less convenient" days where you would download an update and run it manually, I would always archive versions on my server so if I did have an issue I could simply roll back and get on with things. Now, if you have an issue it is almost impossible to get a past version without some major digging.

NI updates forcing users to do an OS update or their apps or even Native Access will become unusable. Why?! NI needs to build in backwards compatibility. There are a LOT of users out there with older hardware that will only run certain OSes that you are leaving in the dust.

Sorry, but that is not an NI thing and all developers have to develop for the latest macOS versions, you want to use mac then this is something you have to deal with. This is something Apple imposed on the macOS and iOS systems as a way to "keep things current", it's more part of forced obsolescence really since you can't run old software on a new system nor new software on an old system and there comes a day when every mac stops receiving updates. This is one of the biggest differences between mac and Windows, even old programs from 1992 can run on a modern windows PC if you can install the required dependencies however this can also lead inexperienced users to causing stability issues in their system so in a way, it saves average joes from themselves.

Offering alternate installation paths, but telling users that they shouldn't do this. Yep! I had issues with apps loading and got a hold of NI support. When they found out that I had installed products on an external volume, they told me not to do that. The problem is that my machines only have half-terabyte drives and cannot be upgraded. This is why external media exists, is it not?

Strange you were told this as it is common for people to install their content on external drives, however if you were installing the actual software (like Komplete Kontrol or the plugins) on ext drive, then no this is not something anyone should do. Software always should be on the internal drive with samples and libraries on external storage. It's the biggest gripe I have with macbooks, they offer terrible internal storage for anything useful and have no way to upgrade.

Kontakt 8 installed on what they reported as a compatible OS (macOS 12 at the time) and it not working correctly until I was forced, yet again to update my OS to 13. So to use ONE APP, I had to upgrade my entire macOS and hope to God that nothing else broke or my Mac got slowed down by the upgrade.

Yeah again, that is a mac thing. I have a mac but on my windows machine running W11 latest version I still use Kontakt 5 because I do not have any new instruments for it and I like the simple and lite/efficient way K5 works since the new releases are becoming increasingly bloated for the sake of a new GUI.

Komplete Kontrol got a recent update and when I went to use it in Ableton, it was gone. I spent over an hour searching for a solution. This happened in the middle of a writing session. So I had to stop making music to play IT guy for over an hour.

NEVER do updates when in the middle of projects, this is what I was saying at the start about users needing to take on some of the responsibility. Usually updates would occur at a specific time with the expectation you may have some issues and need to troubleshoot. If you have new instruments that require the updates first, forget them until you have a chance to work through the updates. I would also suggest highly to take a system snapshot before updating especially if you have any important things to do, if you have any issues you can then note things down, revert back and look for a solution while still working. If you don't do backups regularly, I would seriously consider spending time to do this because you will be more than upset one day.

With a little planning and some organisation, you can alleviate much of the problem you are having.