Native Access Q1 Update
Comments
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@Matthew_NI there are new massive Korean spam attacks and there is no one on Discord to inform him!
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Any chance on migrating izotope products over? Their product activation software seems old and not being updated anymore?
also it would be nice to transfer or remove products from NA directly
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I second that, if I can't activate software online anymore via NA, then people should have some other way to use the product they paid for.
A lot of online video games have run into the same issues, once the vendors stop supporting the servers, the game is useless unless they open source the server software.
@Hayo_NI Since I have the mic I'll throw in my two cents of feedback regarding NA. In my opinion, these are arguably the 3 biggest issues with NA currently, based on my own experiences as well as reading hundreds of forum posts.
3) Library relocation. There seems to be tons of issues around relocating libraries. The relocate all doesn't seem to always work, or at least gives people the impression that it doesn't work. Some libraries end up needing "updates" after the content folder is moved?
As an example only, I just moved my Content Location physical location and then updated it in NA. Again, I'm not asking for help resolving this, I just did this simply to show the issues a lot of people face.
Some libraries just don't seem to like being moved and need to be repaired?
When I click repair and select the proper path to the new Maschine 2 Factory Library I get this error
Previews definitely doesn't seem to like the move, it wants me to repair it. But for some reason Previews still has the old content location.
Here's where I moved all my content too.
But just like Maschine Library, when I click repair and try to update the path....
2) Uninstall still needs work. Glad that's being worked on! Please continue to fix it. Imagine being someone who bought a Mac because they were supposed to be simpler and easier than a PC, and this is how you're told to uninstall a program on your Mac.
1) More useful error messages. The download failed and installation failed are two that pop up a lot in the forum. Could there be some more verbose messages that can help the user and people in the forum to help the user. If the download failed why did it fail? Did the connection time out or is my disk full? We don't need (or even want) packet level captures, but something more helpful "This didn't work" would be appreciated.
On the subject of "new" libraries and dealing with that, perhaps an easy way to solve that would be to add a sort function. So you could sort by Genre, Alphabetically, Date Released, Date installed? Kinda like Windows Explorer or Finder on MacOS. I think that would be perhaps more useful than making a dedicated function for new content? But I don't always think like everyone else, so I'd put it up for a vote.
Lastly, thank you for taking the time to update us on the status of NA, and for listening to our feedback.
Cheers
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We will offer workarounds to the products that work on older operating systems alternative to Native Access 1 as the year goes on. We've given a one year's advance notice to give you ample time to prepare for this switch, and we'll continue to inform and update you with guides on how to get access to your products before then.
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This work is in progress. I'll have much more to share next quarter.
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Ok. So is the answer “the products will still be usable”?
I.e. : if I want to keep my studio computer on windows 8, will I be able to install (and ACTIVATE, therefore use), let’s say, Maschine and Alicia keys and other programs/libraries? Are the workarounds for this?
Giving one year’s advance notice is a good thing, but it doesn’t mean everyone can or wants to prepare.
Let’s try the straightest question I can put down: will people with versions of windows older than windows 10 be able to use what they paid for? (I mean the same programs/libraries they have previously been able to install on those OS, not new updated versions requiring newer specs of course)
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Hey reffahcs,
This is awesome stuff, I'll send the Locate Library over to the team right away and see what improvements we can make. From initial looks, it looks like the ones you're showing happen to be the most problematic. For Native Browser Preview Library, the installer is causing issues on windows as it exceeds the 260 character limit of file paths, so we renamed the product folder, but this seems to not have been adjusted somewhere. Will get back to you on a fix here. Regarding Maschine Factory Library, there's another issue with us installing it to a folder with the wrong name. Manually renaming the folder to Maschine 2 Factory Library solves the problem there. We'll look into why it's doing this, but at the very least you're right, we should surface better information here.
Regarding uninstall, we support 5 different installation technologies, which means to support an uninstall functionality, we have to do it 5 times over. We're currently chatting about what technologies to limit to and based on that discussion we'll follow up with the uninstallation iterations. This causes problems for other features in the app too, like Locate.
I agree we should look into error messages. We're still monitoring the new download manager behaviors, and as a result of that, we'll follow through with some new errors that aren't being surfaced. I'll make sure to add ones we do surface into the release notes.
Sorting functionality is something we're revisiting soon, though not this quarter just yet. We're looking into it on a design level right now, since we're looking into mechanisms that might be of interest. Things like "Sort by Last Updated" could help with product management as well. Will pass this on to our designer.
Appreciate the feedback here!
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Not via Native Access 1, but yes there will be a way to use your owned products. As we get closer to the deadline we'll provide more guidance.
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Really cool to take the time to explain all of this and giving some insights, thank you for that.
When will be getting some equally interesting insights on products we use to make music, like Kontakt, Komplete Kontrol, Maschine, new or updated hardware,...? Those are the things we are really excited about (I suppose). For the record, I don't want to downplay or minimize your work to improve NA. What great "toys" NI has in store, next to a stable product portal?
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Thank you for the direct answer
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"Thank you for the direct answer"
Hoping we can just go right back to manual installers good ole serial numbers - which have been in our NI Accts since Day 1
But Hayo did say there is a "new" EULA coming soon too - most likely that will spell out exactly what the end user can (and cannot) expect with this change.
VP
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I would like to have manual installers, files to keep and serial numbers back too…
But it’s their business and I can’t tell them how to manage it. If they are convinced that the way to keep us tied and loyal is by not providing installers (or having to ask them to support one by one), forcing customers to use online installers, putting a scanning program like NTK Daemon always running in our computer, not allowing us to manage what gets installed in our computers,… instead of offering valid and innovative new plugins…there is nothing I can do about it…
And I’m sure they don’t mind at all losing some loyal customers that will not buy any new product as long as the vaste majority is accepting all these things without even asking a single question.
What I do care is to be sure that they won’t push the limit of what they feel they can do since customers don’t seem interested in defending their own rights too far.
And having to deal with a company that think they can do whatever they want at the point that they canceled part of the previous EULA that was in favor of customers (the part that was saying that the customer has the right to use the products he bought indeterminately (also in time) and in the case NI isn’t able to provide activation they must find another way to allow users to use the products they paid for) without even saying anything…that scares me a little bit. Hence why every time I see something related I’m asking for clarifications
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Seems like a lot of cool stuff is coming, I am not so big on getting blasted with "check out this new product" type of ads but I guess all similar sw do this but it would be nice to prioritize the main purpose that installation managers are meant to do, which is Install and uninstall things. I don't mean to sound rude, but there's a bunch of stuff I can't just click and uninstall, I don't want to go to a link that guides me thru a scavager hunt on my filesystem across 10 folders to delete stuff.... yet there are 100 other extra features that NA2 can do which are cool, but the basics are more important. Picking if I don't want AXX or AU would also make my life a tiny little bit better, that sort of stuff.
Regardless I do want to say that this ongoing dev log / update log is some of the best communication I've ever seen NI do, I am quite impressed by it! All power to you Hayo, I'm still hoping this inspires the same to happen on other products, because... NA is not really that interesting compared to the creative products it installs.
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"there is nothing I can do about it…"
Well - you could stop using NI products - so there is actually something you can do about it.
VP
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"It would be nice to prioritize the main purpose that installation managers are meant to do, which is Install and uninstall things"
Ya know - after reading reading Hayo's post again from the top - I think this statement really rings true to me.
It does appear (on second and third reads) that instead of doing just that one thing (installing product) and doing it perfectly - Native Access appears to be veering into the weeds and turning into a make work project that suddenly thinks it's the new "NI Town Square" - which (at any other company) is really the job of a well-maintained website.
While I am not outwardly disputing the usefulness of an Announcements section or a What's New section (Mainly because I haven't seen what this might look like) I do wonder if all this extra eye candy and coding overhead (that may or may not have any value to the typical user) - is simple adding more complexity in keeping Native Access lean, mean and accurate.
I mean whatever happened to KISS?
VP
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