Native Access is breaking Kontakt for many legitimate customers

el3904u2094

I have probably more than 1000 Euros worth of Native Instruments products. You may ignore this saying Linux with wine isn't supported, but given the pages of complaints I'm seeing even from Windows users about the apparently shocking state of Native Access, and given Linux is now reaching 10% market share and with Kontakt synths having gone from strong recommend to "avoid at all costs" for Linux, I think you should probably care about this feedback:

Over the time, the synth install went from:

Downloading the ISO yourself, then run the installer using wine, then use the Service Center via wine to authorize after the install. This worked flawlessly, but on Linux required mount -o unhide as an option when mounting the ISO. A really minor tweak that is easy to do.

to:

Native Access 1 isn't smart enough to mount the iso properly under Linux, and just fails after download. However, you can just go to the download folder, mount it manually with mount -o unhide, then run the installer with wine again, and then relaunching Native Access 1 and things worked again from there.

to:

Native Access 2 now apparently is a pain to install, because some new background daemon that I'm guessing nobody asked for crashes or has other issues with wine under Linux (and apparently on native Windows too!), and the UI apparently only can be gotten to work on Linux via some Electron debugger option and a two page dance of workarounds. I've heard that Native Access 2 which I never managed to get to run myself, also instant-deletes the ISO after downloads even when it fails to install, which I find both absurd and shocking, making the manual ISO use even harder. However, Native Access 1 still works.

to:

Apparently, Native Access 1 can no longer download or login. I'm still sitting on a working Native Access 1 install, I guess as long as I stay logged in I might be fine (god knows when that will randomly change and I get logged out). And apparently there was a forced update to Native Access 3 that broke even more with wine on Linux, and apparently also on Windows.

This situation is shocking, especially for a paying customer like me. The product has degraded so badly, even though there was never a limit on the usage communicated at purchase, but I guess you no longer want people to use it, or to ruin the reputation of these synths entirely. Even on Windows, given the things I hear about Native Access, all I can do is strongly recommend people to never buy Native Instruments again.

If anybody at Native Instruments is reading this, if you want to turn this ship around then:

Stop requiring some bloated UI to download products. Offer alternative access via the web page once logged in for the ISOs like you used to.
Allow activation via some simple C++-based UI, not some electron monster with background daemon.
If you have to still have Native Access in the future, at least make it actually work. This ideally would include testing it under wine, and testing it under Windows 7. (Since Electron drops old Windows version like Hot potatoes, this might also mean you should use a more sane UI framework. A baked fake website isn't a proper desktop app, please provide a proper desktop app.)

I hope this feedback is useful to anybody. At this point I might as well look for pirated versions of the synths I already bought, to avoid whatever mess of extra software was added on top of the perfectly working synths, that used to be great value forever ago when you could actually properly access them. Thank you for taking notice.

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el3904u2094

Correction: I intended to say Linux is heading toward 10% desktop market share. It has reached 5% in many territories, including the US.

el3904u2094

(And I'm assuming almost nobody is asking for Linux port. But if you stopped throwing piles of extra UI on top of your synths that isn't what people want to use - we want to use the synths, surprisingly! - then likely nothing of this would be an issue in the first place. Because the synths work great on Linux when using wine, flawlessly. You'd have perfect Linux compatibility if you stopped packaging parts software most customers didn't buy your product for and didn't ask for.)

Matthew_NI

The system requirements for the latest version(s) of Native Access are clearly stated on our website.

It is supported on a variety of macOS and Windows OS versions. We neither advise using, nor test our products with, any environments beyond those that we support.

Installation in any unsupported environment is entirely at your own risk. For our part, we simply advertise (for each product) the systems on which you can expect support and stability.

I'd strongly encourage any paying customer to avoid purchasing products for use in an unsupported environment. All it does it set everyone up for failure. You're disappointed you purchased a product that you perceive as non-functional for whatever reason. We're disappointed that you're frustrated with us on account of you having expected it to work on an unsupported environment.

Matthew_NI

As a point of order, any customer is able to access the installers directly from their account, outside of Native Access, for a variety of troubleshooting reasons:

https://www.native-instruments.com/account/downloads/

But again, to do so on Linux is to do so entirely at your own risk.

el3904u2094

Thanks so much for the direct download link. Am I right to assume however, that without Native Access 2+ they cannot be activated after a download?

While I understand the company wishes not to support Linux, it seems to affect supported environments like Windows 7 too (for synths versions that were released with Windows 7 support, still used by customers today, but that apparently cannot be activated anymore).

What I tried to suggest is that by not making Native Access optional, and my apologies if it is and I didn't know, Native Instruments seems to be basically making everybody lose. It's an unnecessary loss, since the fault isn't with the synths. I am hoping one day Native Instruments will reconsider.

myalteredsoul

I’ve given up on anything NI that runs as a container. The amount of times Kontakt, realtor, and Komplete Kontrol updates have broken projects is kind of insane.

Vocalpoint

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/253919#Comment_253919

Windows 7 is not a supported environment (and hasn’t been since 2020) either.

The reality is that Native Access actually works perfectly for 99.99% of us who are on supported operating systems

el3904u2094

I'm reading different stories online. And Windows 7 is a continued supported environment for old synths that Native Instruments sold at the time, that customers still use.

An obvious fix would be to release a new version of the minimal Service Center that can still activate installed synths, and nothing more. Then the workaround of downloading the ISOs and activating them without Native Access would still work.

Vocalpoint

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/253959#Comment_253959

Again - "online" - just because someone has decided it's cool to fire up Windows 7 - does not mean it's supported.

As with all vendors - as soon as the company that makes an OS (Microsoft in the case) - retires that OS - all vendors retire support for it. In the case of Win 7 - it is retired completely and support ended 6 years ago so there is no need for a "fix".

As NI clearly stated - the system requirements for Native Access are well documented. Run a current supported OS and you are golden.

Maciej Repetowski

The “obvious fix” would be to use an operating system and a hardware platform which is supported by a manufacturer of the software one is intending to use. Presumably too simple solution… 🤣

Matthew_NI

Windows 7 is not supported.

Microsoft themselves dropped support for Windows 7 in 2020.

Matthew_NI

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/253919#Comment_253919

Native Access is still required for activation, yes. This has been the case since 2017.

joeysr20det

@el3904u2094

We're in the same boat. Our studio switched to Linux (namely Ubuntu 24) and we've been blown away by the performance improvements and absolutely love the audio routing capabilities over both Windows and Mac; we'll never go back. While it was quite a migration effort, all (and I mean all over; 1000+ plugins in our setup) of software and plugins have been successfully migrated with the exception of Native Instrument/Kontakt Player based stuff.

I've contacted Native Instruments multiple times, and they flat out don't care and aren't interested; not how you expect to be treated after spending so much money on their stuff :( We've simply begun using replacement plugins and refuse to buy anything from NI or any plugins that are married to Kontakt player. We've even turned away several clients because they just had to use an NI/Kontakt based plugin in their recording.

If memory serves me correct, roughly half of our plugins are currently running using Yawbridge and wine. Very little effort and configuration was needed, they simply just worked. Not a single other plugin had issues. NI on the other hand refuses to work at every turn.

So many other vendors have been responsive to the shift to Linux and offered Linux versions, or at least tested for compatibility with wine/Yawbridge. We're really disappointed in NI, but us and many others we know are just leaving NI behind…

Vocalpoint

"So many other vendors have been responsive to the shift to Linux and offered Linux versions, or at least tested for compatibility with wine/Yawbridge. We're really disappointed in NI, but us and many others we know are just leaving NI behind…"

It's OK to be disappointed.

For every user that chooses to leave over something like this - 4 more are just itching to get started - all running supported OS flavours.

Pretty sure this will turn out fine for all parties.

el3904u2094

Windows 7 is not supported.

My apologies for being unclear, I think my statement was misunderstood: Native Instruments exists since 1996, presumably you have sold synthesizers to people before 2020 when Windows 7 was still supported? Do you throw away old hardware synths? So why are customers meant to throw away their computer because you made a fancier downloader, and the minimum work isn't done to allow the old versions to still install? (Which, outside of the activation, they still would.)

Similarly, I bought the product before even Native Access 1, when it was trivial to run using Linux. I was careful to test this out, assuming I wouldn't be forced to update and would be able to just not buy new versions of the synths if I wanted to keep using the working ones I had.

In my humble opinion, it shouldn't be considered normal for a company to break this needlessly. Sure, Microsoft and Apple pretend it is normal now, but in the past when you bought a piece of software, as long as you kept the OS and hardware around you bought it for, it would work.

I realize some Terms of Use clause allows you to argue this is probably legal on some level. However, it wasn't advertised as a rental and it wasn't sold with a declared expiration date, but as a perpetual license.

(And as a side note, I get an updater might e.g. need a security update, and you can't keep patching that forever. But the opposite extreme of that is evolving the DRM into a big mandatory flashy electron store, complex and error-prone, without a minimal alternative like the old Service Center that may still support older systems. I get an "infinite perpetual license" fever dream has practicality limits, but there's a spectrum of how this could be handled. That's all we're trying to get across.)

(And yes, I realize Native Access 1 kept working for some time. However, it wasn't very long.)

Sorry for the wall of text. I hope that clarified where I was coming from.

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