Native Access 2 (Intel Mac) Application Location setting Error Flag in Preferences

MarcLarcher

Ok. It means case sensitive. I give up.

Jeremy_NI

@MarcLarcher If your downloads and content folders were the same before, you need to look for old installer files that still could be in the content folder, like in this article: Native Access Error Message: Download Failed: "Unknown error"

If that does not help, get in touch with my colleagues here: http://bit.ly/NIsupport_install

victorp.sg

@MarcLarcher, your external drive was formatted with the wrong APFS option. Sad to say you have to reformat your drive as just plain APFS. I don’t know of any macOS app that uses macOS case sensitive file system—current apps, not just those from NI, will exhibit all kind of weirdness when accessing any macOS case sensitive file system.

Jeremy_NI

@MarcLarcher Yes, @victorp.sg is absolutely right here, I overlooked this detail. Please check the french version of the article: https://support.native-instruments.com/hc/fr/articles/214134545--Remarques-sur-les-formats-de-disque-dur-sur-les-ordinateurs-Mac

"Sur les systèmes Mac, les disques durs peuvent être formatés de différentes manières. Si un disque dur est formaté «sensible à la casse» (Case-sensitive), le système fait la distinction entre les lettres majuscules et minuscules qui sont utilisées pour les noms de volume et de dossier. Les disques durs sensibles à la casse ne sont pas pris en charge par Native Instruments."

MarcLarcher

Most of my drives are not case sensitive, and yet I cannot get to download this thing— Analog Dreams, while everything else is installed. So nevermind, I would probably never have used it anyway 🤷

shmimpton

There's just no way that users should have to deal with this level of pain. The reality is that the Native Access app KNOWS the reason that the download or installation is failing. If, for example, it finds a permissions error, it knows the path to the folder where the permissions were incorrect, and what the correct permissions should be - and it could tell you that information in an error message. If your drive is formatted incorrectly, it could also tell you that.

Yet, by adhering to modern software development practices, where NOTHING is ever told to the user for fear of confusing them, potentially useful error messages are not passed along. All we know is that the application failed for some unknown reason - even when we've done everything correctly.

I've tried all of the fixes in this article. I might get to a solution, I don't know. But the real problem is that I'm several hours into a process that I should never have to deal with, and I scarcely remember what I was trying to get done when I bumped into this problem in the first place.

Again, NI, this is really sad. You can and should do better. Give users some info so they can attempt to solve their own problems.

shmimpton

Here's what ultimately solved the problem for me.

• Native Access would fail to install, for example, the Duets library
• So I'd go into Native Access preferences/File Management and choose "Restore Defaults"
• Now it should work, right? The new path is /Applications/Native Access. That path exists and has the correct permissions. I've even given it omnipotent permissions, so there's no way that permissions are the problem. And yet the installation still fails.
• The problem, as it turns out, is that the only path that will succeed is /Applications/Native Access/Duets. So until I MANUALLY create that folder, this process will fail.

That is patently ridiculous. Applications are installed in standard locations on the Mac (and PC). The installer is expected to create the 'Duets' directory if it doesn't already exist, and to simply use it if it does. That's a very old and established practice that actually goes back to UNIX - you know, the beginning of programming.

I'm sure someone will tell me there's something wrong with my installation, that this isn't expected behavior, etc. But, expected or not, this is the behavior that I observed. Creating the directory solved the problem. Installers have handled this problem since about 1994.

shmimpton

Lastly, God help you if you previously had, for example, a hard drive where you kept all of your NI stuff, but now want to keep it on the main drive.

• Go into Native Access preferences/File Management and choose "Restore Defaults."
• Choose 'Reinstall' for the library you want to reinstall.
• Process fails because Native Access is still looking to reinstall the library on the old hard drive, even though you've reset the default path in preferences.

OMG. Why have a default path if the app isn't going to use it? I've got about 100 libraries. Now for each one, I need to click 'Repair' and manually reset the path.

• Each time I do, the Native Access app forgets the base directory where all of these libraries will now reside. It could remember this path.
• After manually resetting the path, the app doesn't automatically reinstall the library, even though it says "Moved your library? Point us to the new location." I then still have to manually click update after a several second delay. There is no reason for such a delay. Seems like a nitpick, but it doesn't take several seconds for any computer to resolve a path - that process is instantaneous. I have 119 libraries to go.

I'd LOVE to be wrong about any of this. If I'm wrong, please tell me! If I'm not wrong, please acknowledge that this is lazy, user-hostile programming.

You have been making this app for years now. This is a new version that you have clearly put time into. It looks pretty! Well done on the aesthetics. Very poorly done on user experience. The fact that every action needs to be done "one at a time," that nothing can be batch processed, that no paths or preferences are ever helpfully inferred by the app - all of these things contribute to user frustration (obviously!) and were figured out by software companies decades ago. Their installers were super ugly, but they were idiot proof and I'd have been done with this process in a few minutes.