Native Instruments Apple Silicon M1 Compatibility

Thanks Jeremy and NI!

very classy of you guys to respond! I feel much better about the whole situation now that someday it’ll be here, sooner than later hopefully but it’s all good.

I would love to pick up a maschine+ but if my KK can't work why risk even more investment in hardware that will just sit or just controlled via MIDI and forget all the bells and whistles. Universal Audio ported everything! It works perfectly with Ableton 11.1. I have invested so much money in NI over the years I can't just dump your products. Almost a decade of purchases!

Are you just waiting to have everything done for a grand release?

On my new Mac Studio Ultra, Battery (AU) does not remember sample paths for saved sessions. Instead, I need to open the GUI and "find" samples again every time I load a saved session. Fortunately Spotlight is lightening fast, but it's pretty annoying. I don't care so much about it being "native" or not, but the whole point of Battery (for me) is to have a low-friction drum instrument - and right now, in its buggy condition, it is anything but that.

Why should it be a paid upgrade? Right now NI are charging full price for what is actually incompatible software.

Perhaps they should give a discount until they can provide software that actually works on the hardware.

Oh, and BTW, I won't be spending a penny more on any NI software until they do.

And if enough people feel the same, that's NI's problem, not yours.

Be careful what you wish for. If this continuing embarrassment continues for long enough, we all will suffer, including Windows users like yourself, as NI will have a reduced budget to spend on Devs.

There is still quite a big and substantial market for music production in the music industry. The same people who use Macs in the studio, may also use Windows at home.

Then you have the reputation of a company to consider. It takes a long time to build a good reputation, but only moments to destroy it.

A poor company that undervalues some of its customers, is likely to undervalue all of them at some point.

Try not to be so smug about us Mac users having issues, as it may be you in the driving seat one day, and I get the impression if the shoe was on the other foot you'd never shut up about it.

I do not always agree with Kubrak, but when I do, I really do 😉

I would gladly pay for M1 compatibility and for HiDPI. I think until the software is compatible, better not to upgrade to Apple Silicon - hence I’m still on Intel Mac mini.

I have to however add that NI’s slow transition to M1 native is putting people off and this whole situation is becoming a common joke on KVR, Gearspace and V-Control forums. Which is sad, because I love Kontakt and Maschine.

Anyway, I am still patiently waiting, but many don’t and they seek alternatives.

I understand that you are upset about it and I agree that this is NI’s fault. Still doesn’t change the fact that because their code and libraries are so ancient, it takes considerable time.

Why should they use platform-independent code? They did not need it, they have developed just for x86. Untill Apple has changed mind and AS came. NI even made intentional decision to use AVX instructions in Massive X, so that it did run only on some x86 CPUs, not all....

Some code is easier to port, some harder. And it is not only ARM instruction set, but also big.little what has to be adressed... And probably antipiracy code, antidebugging code, that cannot be platform-independent...

Completely different CPU is like changing engine in the car. That comparison holds. Fact that SW companies do the change for free does not change it. If few would not, the rest would happily join....

Changing CPU type is not the same like releasing new OS version, by far....

Also we do not know anything about licences for 3rd party libraries that NI may use, availability of source code, legal procedures, and so on.... Those are things that may slow down the things considerably... And each company is in different situation, concerning this.

And if Win12 will make troubles to use NI products? First it is pretty improbable. But even if that would happen.... I still happily use Win7 (13 years old OS) on older computer and quite recently Win10 (7 years old OS) on newer one. I'll stay on Win10 at least five more years. Then I will be five-seven years on Win11 (1 year old). By the time I will move to Win12, it will be mature OS many years (5+) in use and all compatibility issues, if any, will be solved...

I am SW developer and nontrivial SW that I made 25 years ago still works fine and is used on current Windows. I did not have to change a line of code because of Win compatibility during those 25 years and about 10 releases of Windows....

I do not want to say Win is great and macOS is not great. Each has its advantages and disadvantages. AS users now face some disadvantages of early adopters. It may be unpleasant, but it is pretty common that things like that happen. Such a big change takes several years to settle down so that everything works. Expecting that all major developers do they work within months, year is way too optimistic and completely unrealistic...

In any field, SW development including, things may go wrong, even very wrong. I have seen SW projects delayed several years, delayed and cancelled, and so on... It is easy to complain...