No M1 support's forced me use products from *other* music software makers
Dear Native Instruments,
I have been a user of NI products for the past 10 years. I use numerous software products, purchased Komplete 9 and own a Traktor Kontrol S4 mk3, Maschine mk3 and even the recently feature-update-abandoned Maschine Jam. I've made and sold lots of music using your products. Proceeds from music sales have even enabled me to purchase a MacBook Pro M1 laptop, with the intention of using an efficient, robust machine to make even more music.
SO, it's kind of a bummer (understating this on purpose) to find out that proper support for M1 computers won't happen until the Fall - assuming that things go according to plan. Not sure why that is the case, but I felt you should hear this from a musician in the NI Community:
Your company's inability to keep up with current technology is forcing me to further rely on products made by OTHER software & hardware vendors.
And I don't mind naming them either - in 2021, I purchased Ableton Live 11 and the Novation LaunchPad Pro as a controller. And as a user of Logic Pro since 2004, I've delved deeper into the software instruments it has to offer. In working on multiple projects at the moment, I can't and definitely won't wait until the Fall to make more music.
I will give credit where it's due and give mad props to the Traktor Pro 3 designers, since they've offered beta versions earlier this year, and a recent update enables more/better use of their software and hardware with an M1 machine (I recently had my first gig with the new laptop and things were flawless - THANKS TRAKTOR DESIGNERS!)
But the rest of your products - with Kontakt the other exception - are not supported and current versions malfunction or just plain crash.
If you're short-staffed due the world-wide COVID pandemic, that's unfortunate (my heart goes out to everyone struggling with COVID), but it's not a good look that celebrating new business alliances with superstar musicians is more important than providing support to current users.
Comments
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Hey @More Or Les, thanks for sharing your feedback.
I understand the frustration, the compatibility transition of our products to M1 processors definitely takes a considerable amount of time and effort. It is nonetheless something we allocate the maximum available resources into, we don't prioritise something else instead.
Which products you would like to see natively compatible soon? Is using Rosetta not a valuable option for you?
Feel free to let us know 🙏
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I don't have more information about Battery 4, but Massive is definitely on the list of upcoming compatibility update 👍
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@Nico_NI How about starting with Komplete Kontrol so we can at least use our keyboards. this is kind of ridiculous that even the hardware doesn't work without Rosetta. For me, all may third party software works natively so having to run stuff in Rosetta just to use NI makes no sense. Happy Kontakt works natively, but come on. How is it most of the izotope stuff works and the plugin alliance stuff works. now that you're connect perhaps move this along. Hell, even Pro Tools works natively and we all know how long it takes Avid to work on stuff. Kind of sucks I have sit here and use my S88 MKII that now is no better than any other midi controller.
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Kind of sucks I have sit here and use my S88 MKII that now is no better than any other midi controller.
Maybe the reason to use Rosetta.
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Rosetta is temporary. Apple will deprecate it as soon as they will transition last Mac model to Apple Silicon. I want to run my DAW in native mode to take advantage of other plug-in vendors being native. I will not run DAW in Rosetta just for NI.
As for priorities, something to run expansions with, so either Battery 4 or Maschine.
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"Rosetta is temporary."
Maybe, but, before I couldn't use my plugins, I would use it.
Funny how people turn things around BTW. "No M1 support forced me to use other plugins." Well... you weren't forced to buy a M1 Mac in the first place, right? Nobody forced you to not use Rosetta when you could either.
Mac users are a funny bunch. Entitled up to their throat. Almost every audio software company I know are or were up to their neck in work due to Apple's architecture change, yet Mac users think they're all lazy.
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"Rosetta is temporary."
Yes, Russians came to "liberate" my country in1968 and proclaimed to stay temporarily. They left 20+ years later, in 1991 or so. Temporarily may last pretty long.... :-((((
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I have no doubts that Apple will remove Rosetta at some point. But, again, before my plugins won't work, I would use it, especially as the performance impact seems to be small.
Only a matter of time until the current NI products will be M1 native. Until then, I don't know why Mac users hesitate to use Rosetta. It's surely better than crying that they switched to alternative products (however that is possible anyway).
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Optimizing the overall performance of your music production rig benefits from having M1 native software... speed and less glitchiness.
Also, even if KK is not M1 native in current "beta" stage testing, it would be wonderful to participate in a KK beta group to see the progress on things like its browser.
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Hey man, I don't think it's unreasonable for NI to develop solutions to address these situations, and at a faster pace than their current level of progress. And while in my case I chose to buy a new computer, some people are not in the same situation - maybe they're making music for a living, had a catastrophic failure with their current (old) Intel-processor-based Apple computer and found themselves with no choice but to buy a new M1 to keep up their business.... only to discover their NI products don't work. I've even had issues with NI hardware connected to a DAW in Rosetta 2 mode, so it's not like that chart they have of green checks is accurate...
Is any of this earth-shattering? No. Is any of this on the level of world-wide armageddon? No. But that's not what I'm talking about: I'm talking about a music-tech company failing to keep up with their tech. They would've had access to Beta versions of macOS Monterey - they could've ordered hardware the minute it was available. Hell, Adobe has such a strong relationship with Apple, they probably had access to hardware the minute a market-sale version was created - NI is so popular with musicians (and by extension, Mac users) that you're telling me they couldn't see any of this coming and prepare far enough in advance that they could have better fixes than band-aid solutions to only one or two items out of (at least) 30, SEVEN months later than several competitors? I don't get it.... My MOTU audio interface works with a DAW natively, so does my Novation LaunchPad Pro mk3. I've heard from DJ friends that Serato works natively with old hardware, no glitches, no issues - I'm currently running a version of Traktor that NI considers a beta, that mostly works.
I don't think asking for something to work when competitors are already up to speed is acting "entitled up to my throat", but hey, maybe that's my entitlement showing through.... 🤷🏾♂️
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Hey man. If NI could do it faster, they would do it. Simply there are some obstacles. Probably obstacles that others do not have to adress....
What comes to my mind, one of differences is NI antipiracy protection. Maybe even anti debugging (part of anti piracy) protection.
And many competitors have released their AS native plugins quite recently. And also, before there are AS native DAWs (major ones from NI point of view) NI cannot test their plugins in enviroment it will run.
I guess it is better to have plugins thoroughly tested in target environment (DAW, OS, CPU) than released soon, but not working as expected.
And HW compatibility. There may be problem on side of NI... But there may be also problem on side of DAW, or OS, or HW... So, unless you have tested it under different DAWs and different M1 CPUs and different computers, you cannot say it is the fault of NI, that it does not work....
Also, if computer of professional fails and he buys computer that is not compatible with SW that he uses. One should blame himself and not company that makes that SW.
The situation is not pleasant for NI, but simply there are obstacles to address, I guess. And also NI portfolio is pretty large.
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You're pretty new to the world of NI aren't you :)
Waiting is the game we all have to play. It is an endless waiting game for things to happen, has been for a decade, no end in sight, but while you wait you are welcome to browse the extensive library of ever growing expansion content, that never has any problems working.
Wish I could sympathise with your situation, but I use Windows so never have to worry about these kinds of problems which is a strange turn of events from the early 2000's that my Windows machine is more reliable and compatible than my macbook.
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Win were OK (similar like now) even in 2000's. But one had to use Win2k, WinXP and not Win95, Win98, ... which were not very good. That time there were two branches of Win one for professional use and one for home use.
Advantage of Apple alqways was and still is that OS and SW may be tested with all HW it runs on. That is impossible for Win as there are millions of HW combinations.... Components should be compatible, but slight differences might create problems under certain conditions....
But I had never problems with HW or SW on Win in past 30+ years.
I wish NI brings AS native support soon and focuses again on SW development and not just on SW maintaining.
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