Native Instruments Apple Silicon M1 Compatibility

It's good to hear there's finally some traction on native M1 support. I've seen a lot of back and forth on the merits of native support ("Rosetta works fine", "Rosetta is buggy or uses too much RAM", "why add support for existing customers", etc) but the simple fact is it's becoming difficult to get a new Intel based MacBook (phased out entirely in new MBs) and without native support NI is alienating new customers who would have to dig up an Intel or take the performance hit with emulation. I've been looking at pulling the trigger on a MacBook (getting tired of high DPC latency with windows based laptops) but it seems I've missed the boat on selection and M1 is all that's reliably available (with customization). As a K13 Collector's owner, I'm basically stuck between an old windows laptop that can't handle the newer NI instruments or a newer portable rig that can't run NI reliably in general (sounds kind of common for NI plugins to have some UI or recall issues on Rosetta). Until M1 is natively supported there'll be that trade-off. I know someone personally who passed on NI due to this.

That's really great to hear there's tangible progress towards native support.

I'm running a Mac Mini M1: Kontakt stand-alone runs, but the VST plugins don't work using Ableton Live.

I’m running Apple Silicon M1 iPad Pro with 16g RAM and I can’t get Maschine or Kontakt to install! Somebody heeeeeeeeelp!!!😩😂

Jokes aside, I’m going to keep screaming this from the roof tops. I get it, NI doesn’t want to develop touchscreens on their devices like MPCs crumby ones. Don’t have too or change the hardware for users who don’t care about touch. Apple did all the heavy lifting and no one’s gonna come close so why not just port M2 over? Very least stop ignoring your own software (imaschine). In meantime, make mk3/micro class compliant so we can control what’s there in iMaschine already. No one wants to tap on glass all day and you guys have already made the best midi controllers just need you to turn on the lights with a firmware update (class compliance). Thunderbolt can probably power mk3, jam and a keyboard freeing us from the wall. LFG!!!

FYI, Moog, Roland, Korg, Steinberg, and others are already doing this very well. Love you NI! Please step up your M1 compatibility game. The future awaits and I believe you guys have the best eco for it. I know you know because iMaschine and Traktor were great apps when you cared about them.

I thought this was the main reason to want M1 versions over Rosetta in that M1 will use the new memory architecture better. Last year when I got my M1 Macbook even things like the anti-virus killed the memory management. I'm still waiting for One Drive client to get ported as well (office has been done).

I understand several manufactures (at least Spectrasonics, and I think Arturia though I may gave mis-remembered) have reported far higher instance counts once they port their apps across from Rosetta.

Kontakt will need about the same amount of memory regardless x86 or Apple Silicon, I guess. Most of the memory needed is memory for data. On Win part of RAM may be swapped on disc (mainly SSD) on Apple there is "unified memory" which is also swapping to SSD, but hopefully faster than on Win....

If 16GB of RAM will do on M1 in case when 40 GB of RAM needed on x86 is hard to say. Maybe yes, but still it is better to have enought RAM and avoid excessive swapping to SSD.

Thanks for this opportunity, Jeremy!

It´s 15 months since Apple comes with first M1 chips Macs … and great NI still says sorry we need more time … as many musicians with products depends on your platform I can say: Please do not ignore us and help us with something real …

I'd like help you. So please join me to the Beta program. I works usually with Dorico, now at version 4 and latest Logic.