Kontrol 2024 outlook: what was, what now, what next?

I have to agree with all the complaints. Mk3 should have never been released.. I turned it on 20 times since first purchased back in October 2023.. kk soft slow loads faster after the first instance of kontakt libraries.. I never tried any of my plugins because I only bought it to be able to scroll through my libraries on the controller.. it erratic at best.. play assistant not what expected. And to see in my mind wave one of updates in beta is a joke.. we are really looking at 2025 before we see any real improvements and I mean bug fixes and release of what we should have had in 2023.. I like the open communications but it's just talk after spending $900..

I kind of doubt you're going to get much more resolution about their plans for the ongoing corrections simply due to the differences between corporate IT projects and commercially distributed software development because of the need for privacy amongst a field of competitors. That being said I think they've been much more forthcoming with the issues they've encountered and the actions they're taking which in commercial development is all about incrementally controlled releases which personally gives me hope.

What I didn't understand initially, but I do now, is the overall scope of what they were taking on in moving to a new underlying architecture that would be more adaptive to the technical directions of the industry such as improvements in VST architecture in order to incorporate more advanced MIDI interactions and such. All of this having to be done without breaking and still supporting the older underlying technology is an awfully aggressive vision in a single release. It compares in many ways to what Microsoft had to do when introducing Windows NT as a separate operating system then, after several years and several releases, unify the Windows and NT worlds as one system all based on the unified NT architecture. Like this effort it was somewhat painful, but less so because it was spread across time and multiple product releases and was definitely needed in order to have a more robust and modern operating system to be able to do what it does now both at the desktop and in the server room.

Having spent most of my career in that type of environment that's probably why I'm a bit more patient and understanding of what's going on, but I will say NI has been forced to be more transparent with the user base about the mistakes they made in the initial release, but from what I can tell are making the appropriate corrections to get things aligned for smaller but more stable releases. But only time will tell at this point.

That's also why I'm less alarmed by release dates slipping as that would indicate a much more thorough and disciplined approach toward stable releases. I'm not a big fan of the "quick fix" releases they initially came up with to get the last batch of things stable. I understood the necessity, but that's not what I'm willing to endure in a full featured next generation release.

It’s not so much of a lack of understanding of what’s involved, or a lack of patience from me, I do understand, but to me, there’s still legitimate reasons to worry.

In the past it wouldn’t have worried me as I had faith in both the company owners and the size of the work force.

My worry is that over resent years, those who know the software inside out have either

a) been laid off

b) left due to low morale after others laid off

c) decided they wanted a change hence chose to move on.

While c) happens everywhere, unless a company was making the fatal mistake of having only one person that fully understands how their software works, usually, there’s still enough people left to get new programmers up to speed, without it affecting said program’s future development.

While I would rather wait another 6 months for the promised midi templates etc than get a rushed unusable buggy mess, I do get the impression that they are severely understaffed (or understaffed with the staff that have the in-depth skills and knowledge needed for current software and future innovations).

The impression given almost feels like there’s this tiny little team (or only a very small number that understand the software inside out) that have had to put everything on hold while trying to fix Native Access (a problem of their own making that even now, gives me less options than when I could simply download and install individual files) and that this is the main reason midi templates has taken so long, again I do understand how complexed and involved programming is.

I read about the teething problems the mk3 series was having on release, despite that, I decided to buy the S88 in January, looking forwards to all the new stuff hinted about.

It won’t be long until the KK mk3 has been out a year.

That does kind of worry me, because it’s starting to seriously look like that come the anniversary, we won’t have anything new, we should have midi templates presuming beta testers are happy (the absolute worst thing would be if the beta testers weren’t happy, but NI ignored them and went ahead anyway) and maybe they might have restored a bit of maschine control functionality.

But I can seriously see me going into year two of my ownership with a device that, while I know it isn’t, I can understand if others thought it’s been abandoned by NI

I watch a LOT of YouTube during the day due to health issues, a majority being music related, apart from the vids that various people did on release, I hardly see or hear a thing about the S MK3, and the few times I do see it mentioned, a lot of the comments aren’t very favourable.

It worries me that NI got the release so wrong. I’ve seen it hundreds of times, bosses/marketing insisting a product that’s obviously isn’t ready, goes live, and it can kill a product. They (most companies not just NI) never seem to learn.

While obviously only a small amount of users visit forums etc, it does worry me that NI seemed to be so out of sync with what users thought they were getting with the mk3.

While I do have faith in the NI staff and their colleagues who get involved in this forum, and I do believe they are sincere in what they say, my biggest worry of all is, regardless of what you or I want, regardless of what the NI staff in this forum want, I worry that people higher up in NI might decide due to the bad press and time spent fixing what should have been there on release, they order the staff to move to new up coming projects that will hopefully earn them loads of money, and effectively just have minimal staff working on bug fixes etc.

Again, I agree about waiting for midi templates to work properly before release, but, the longer it takes before the people who, for example, say they have their mk3 sat in a corner, start saying how their mk3 now takes pride and place in their studio and is now the awesome midi controller they thought they were initially buying, the more likely my previous paragraph could come true.

I’m still loving mine

I really don't think they're going to release the MIDI template update anymore, it's been a few months of waiting for nothing. My hope is that some brand will release a MIDI controller keyboard, which has precisely these functions (in my case at least 8 MIDI parts), and has an acceptable keyboard (like fatar).

This is too suspicious and difficult to understand.

I can't speak to the ownership since I don't have any real information about them, just conjecture by people that don't know either. However from the information I've gleaned by those involved, the issues tended to be more related to an over abundance of people across the different product teams which is a much more common mistake and leads inevitably toward problems from a lack of clear direction understood by everyone on the team as well as an integration nightmare come integration testing of all components. And that's consistent with what we experienced as users in the initial release of the products..what's referred to as "The Big Bang". The most common practice to avoid this is to schedule intermittent testing cycles at major milestones..in other words a series of little bangs versus one big bang. And that does take more time.

Generally speaking, the size of the team developing a commercial product industry wide is between 20 to 30 depending on the scope of the project. That includes the people that define the features, those the guide and manage the development, the developers, the testers, the documenters and the logistical people that deliver the final product. This case could be different in that it really consists of several integrated products so you need similar teams for each and better consolidation at the product definition and development management disciplines across the projects.

But it also needs to be said that the types of products that integrate a range of different products into a single integrated system (such as Microsoft Office for example) are extraordinarily complex and problematic historically. That's why I'm neither surprised nor alarmed at what's been happening. I'm just an interested bystander hoping for the best in how they incorporate the lessons learned from the initial release of these products. Ultimately commercial product development is about two things at the end of the development cycle, lessons learned and best practices in order to improve on the next cycle.

Sounds good