Status on m1/m2 update?

1679111215

Comments

  • J Tracks
    J Tracks Member Posts: 5 Member

    To be honest this is an issue with most software companies. Most user gripes are usually met with silence. Most companies rarely tell you what they are working on.


    I think also the larger the company, the more likely you will get the silent treatment. To be fair though in a large company, who should reply to posts, the programmers (who might not be socially adept, or might give out too much information), marketing (who might not be able to answer much of the technical questions), management (should their work be monitoring user forums).

    I've seen some companies become more vocal and it still can pose problems when goals are not met.


    My guess is too software programming is pretty complicated and is met with various successes and failures, and probably some of the stuff they are working on is probably pretty boring too at times because they are probably in the weeds alot. And M1 support is obviously a very technical matter. Reaktor is most likely using very old code base and even if they knew 3 months prior M1 support was coming out, they probably needed like 3 years. But yes there is a price of using old code base as it often can be harder to adapt to future technologies. I doubt in 1996 anyone knew Apple would come up with an M1 processor. Just like in 25 years from now, it would be almost impossible to try to guess what will be going on in the future CPU market.

    The answer would be to try to stay current but that is a challenge with a company as diverse as NI. I think to Reaktor is such a popular program, if they tried to change it too much, it would most likely make many users upset as well, so they also have to make their changes with care (not breaking backwards compatibility, changing stuff in a way it will throw veteran users off too much).


    NI isn't the only company though with issues porting to M1, Reason (another program with an old codebase) is probably having similar issues. Ableton (which seems to be further along compared to the other two as they have a beta version) has been in beta mode for awhile. Some companies will support these things faster than others and alot probably has to do with the Availability/resources of company, codebase, skill of programmer, documentation, luck.

  • colB
    colB Member Posts: 984 Guru
    edited August 2022

    A lot of what you said here may or may not be true, but either way, it's not directly relevant to this debate - We're discussing Reaktor's transition to AS. You seem to be having a one man argument about Native Instruments general business strategy, and how they should have used their crystal ball to look into the future of Apples roadmap... spicing it up with complaints about historic decisions regarding other products...

    It's interesting for sure, but maybe deserves it's own thread in a more general section of the forum?

    Reaktor is it's own thing, unique in various ways. It also seems to be something of an oddity within the current Native Instruments catalogue... so it really is useful to discuss the transition from a Reaktor centric perspective. Lets do that on the Reaktor forum :)

  • Monochrome
    Monochrome Member Posts: 1,343 Expert

    After (silently) reading the past few pages of this thread, I strongly wonder what warrants the thread to remain open? Serious question because I feel like all we do is just spinning around in circles since... dunno... page 3?

    What else does need to be said (apart from the usual blame games and "what could've been")?

  • KoaN
    KoaN Member Posts: 136 Advisor

    This seems to be the most popular and active thread in this new forum...it seems to attract attention.This forum is often too quiet and usually the same people commenting so i see that as a good thing...hehe.

  • Kubrak
    Kubrak Member Posts: 3,067 Expert
    edited August 2022

    @Maciej Repetowski

    What would happen if AMD would create Zen ARM processor and Microsoft would make new Surface laptops with it, running WinARM on it and forced developers to provide universal binary Win software from now on? Total market disruption. Sci-Fi? We will see ;)

    Well, AMD proclaimed they are prepared to make ARM CPUs, if there is demand.... So, far there is demand mainly in server sector, as power consumption plays role and there is heaps of money there.... But it runs Linux, I guess, so no real transition cost....

    There are Win ARM 2in1 PCs for years. I guess Surface X. Not much success, so far. Maybe one day. MS cannot make severe disruptions like inforce ARM. People and most of industry would stay on older Win versions.

    It took many years effort to make people convert from Win7 to Win10. Most serious users have ignored W8 and W8.1. And now, 7 years after release of Win10, there are still 11% Win users on Win7, which is several years EOL (without support and security patches). And new Win11 (1 year old) has only 11%.

    Win market is rather conservative and things that does Apple are not absolutely possible....

    Maybe that ARM or similar CPU will penetrate to Winworld more than homeopatically one day. But there is not real reason for something like that to happen. Nobody is probably eager to rewrite/recompile milions of proprietary applications worth multitrilions USD.... And at least AMDs are not much more power hungry than ARMs. And now, when there is real competition with ARM platform, x86 will focus more on efficiency...

    AS native and VST3 for most of NI SW is comming in 6-11 weeks. Hopefully also Reaktor....

  • Mutis
    Mutis Member Posts: 474 Pro

    @colB Since new forum all tipics are mixed up so I thought Reaktor discussion was bcause is part of the engine for most NI catalog. Sorry if I derrail too much the conversation.

    Said that, look at recently post about Traktor roadmap (is linked from Traktor Plus announcement) and take in consideration that some NI employee stated “it could be an extensible model for other products” aka testing the waters.


    Traktor Roadmap post (image source)


    Announcement post (source)


    The AS discussion is relevant for the whole catalog meaning even the possibility of legace some part of it. That could be one of the reason making this post “the most popular in Reaktor forum” alongside the new forum format mixing all the discussions.


    Cheers.

  • nightjar
    nightjar Member Posts: 1,322 Guru

    Nice that the Traktor area provides so much more roadmap vs Komplete.

    However, that graphic was a bit oddly constructed, with timeline flow "backwards" to my expectations.

    Nice to see stem separation on the map... but shame that browser improvements are in the "last" column.

  • KoaN
    KoaN Member Posts: 136 Advisor
    edited August 2022

    I hope we get to see a Reaktor road map! I like the visual lay out of this,it's a nice idea i think.

    We are so used to speculate on Reaktor's mysterious destination...that would create a big change if they started using this,it could help being more patient on certain things.

  • colB
    colB Member Posts: 984 Guru

    It's a nice idea, but I'm not sure if it's a realistic proposition.

    It seems to me that for some years now, Reaktors development path has been mostly reactive (as opposed to proactive). Front panel patching looked a lot like a reaction to the big splash made by arrival and popularity of VCVRack. More recently of course, the thread topic of porting to AS... Any existing roadmap would have to be torn up and thrown out in the context of those events. And we all know how customers react when companies announce features and make promises, then scrap them - it's not pretty.

    It makes sense that Reaktor is reactive at this point in it's life - it's very old/mature. The idea that NI have a small Reaktor team providing maintenance, that can slowly add features and make updates at times when there is less external pressure, and then switch to 100% firefighting when new OS versions are released, or a new hardware platform is dropped on them from a great height. That makes total sense to me. Just enough to keep it ticking over. So the product can continue to be financially viable. The downside is that big changes will take longer than they would for a younger product that still has a larger dev team with more resources, because it is being actively developed at a much faster pace.

    If NI did give us a road map, it's quite possible that they would just end up dropping things from it or changing the time-line as much anticipated milestones approached.

  • KoaN
    KoaN Member Posts: 136 Advisor

    Hmm yah you might be right.

    From that panel cable thread where the developers chimed in "Again i am mentioning that!" I remember having that impression there were a very small team actually,a lot smaller than i thought.

    This would explain a lot of things yes.

    Compared to Traktor...trying to be a DJ and play the most popular style of music for the masses is for sure more popular and the team probably bigger as well.

    Although NI puts a lot of efforts on selling Reaktor based products and this seems important,everybody knows about Razor,Monark and a few others...but still not enough revenue for making the team bigger?

  • KoaN
    KoaN Member Posts: 136 Advisor

    Edit:If anybody wants to read these threads i am talking about on the old forums...2-3 developers chimed in to say interesting stuff here and there about the team,developement. That was 3 years ago though...

    And maybe they didn't like the brouhaha very much and decided after that to never intervene again...hehe.

    https://www.native-instruments.com/forum/threads/6-3-released.355009/page-7

    And the second one...

    https://www.native-instruments.com/forum/threads/why-and-why-not-yet-racks-user-blocks-etc.355161/

  • Kubrak
    Kubrak Member Posts: 3,067 Expert

    @nightjar

    Here comes 3nm....

    Pretty expensive node, mainly for such large chips like M2 Pro. And there might be incompatibilies again....

  • Milkman
    Milkman Member Posts: 277 Advisor

    After working in this industry for over 30 years, supporting win, mac, *nix, networks and systems, I honestly wish Apple didnt exist today or was just an OS or software vendor.

    The Personal Computer was always enough, and we never had to have a second and competing ecosystem that overlaps the more inclusive one and causes chaos like *the above* on so many vendor social spaces. The innovation that Apple brings, since the day Jobs and Gates fell out and decided to build Microsoft and Apple, isnt distinct enough or innovative enough to justify this entire wasteful second ecosystem, imo. This is bigger than 2 competing tech companies, and our earth's ecosystems reflect that.

    This same argument plays out everywhere and leads to angry, dissatisfied people. Much of the dissatisfaction springs forth from expectations set by tech-lite marketing hype, pop culture product placement & bourgeoise lifestyles, rather than real tech specifications and human ability. Its a shame, but under an economic system like this one, energy is wasted as a matter of principle, not by accident.

  • Maciej Repetowski
    Maciej Repetowski Member Posts: 674 Guru
    edited August 2022

    That's a lovely sentiment but competition and having a choice is a good thing. I do not want to use or build PC computer and I do not want to use Windows operating system or Google's Android, for that matter. So thanks, but no thanks ;)

This discussion has been closed.
Back To Top