Dev Talks: Native Access Startup Journey and Next steps

True dis.

I would pay money for a long internal discussion on Battery 5 or anything NI makes that actually enhances my music making.

VP

I have already reached out to support a few times about the issue, and their reply is always "we don't support that application anymore." I've started researching how to crack software, hoping in the future I might actually get to use the software I paid for.

Ok. Probably you need to free up space or something else so you don’t keep them all installed, I do understand it.

So…wouldn’t you be more concerned about being sure the libraries DO GET installed without any problem than having to wait 20 sec more to open NA?

Maybe I was misunderstood: I appreciate NA being fast as lightning too…but in my book there are other priorities. This is all I wanted to say

First, thank you for offering these spaces where we can learn more about how things have developed and where they're going, and give our thoughts.

I bought a new much more powerful machine in late February, so I can't say how much startup improvement is due to that, but NA had already appeared to be getting faster on the old machine. This improved startup time is much appreciated. It may be something only opened occasionally, but that's no reason it should be slow. Generally speaking, and given the roadmap shown here, I am happy enough with how NA is working. There are improvements I'd like to see that aren't listed, but they are low priority for me, and, I think, for most people (like being able to hide things I am not going to install, for which I can wait).

Most of my thoughts here are about the use of NTK Daemon. Despite what has been presented for why it is reasonable to have it running at all times, I'm skeptical. I appreciate that for some users the ability to continue interrupted installations will be welcome. But even that can be achieved by reopening Native Access, triggering NTK Daemon to start up and continue.

It may seem a small thing and why should I care? Because the more services I have starting on boot, the slower that happens. So I do not look kindly on services that are not truly needed on a regular basis, even if I chose to install them. I have just removed one that I used every day but no longer do – on those days I want to I can run it manually. For me, and I would argue many other users, NTK Daemon is an occasional need, when we run Native Access.

I have set up my system so that NTK Daemon will not run unless I want it to, and will close when I want it to – and everything in NA is working as expected, quick startup, installations work, etc. I hope NI doesn't make it a requirement that NTK Daemon runs when NA is not active, and allows users like me to continue running it the way we want.

I'm still open to being convinced we should all have it running at all times, but so far I'm not seeing it, and I think it should be an opt-in during installation: 'do you want to enable this background service to run constantly when Native Access is not open? This is what you will get if you do (mention installations continuing automatically, etc.). Yes/no?'. Coupled with starting it (from what I read above the 'install' is to be replaced with 'start') when starting NA, and terminating it when no longer needed (so if it needs to finish up some installations, let it run until that is done and then self-terminate), for users who said 'No'.

I may be an outlier with this request, and I won't hold it against you if you say 'no, NTKDaemon is going to be set up in one way only, always on.' In part because if I wish to I can easily bypass this, as I already have. But also because while I may not agree with the decision, the transparency on offer here means I can expect that the decision will have been taken with due consideration for what you think is best for the majority of users as well as development priorities. Doesn't hurt to ask, though :).

About one more thing proposed in the thread:

• "have Native Access be able to close without quitting" – please don't do this how iZotope did. I had to remap Cmd-Q so their installer will actually quit because they hijacked the standard key command to close but not quit. It should be a different key command. I know how to deal with things like this, and for me they're a minor annoyance, but not everyone will know how to get back the standard Cmd-Q behaviour.

Hello, thankyou for giving us the opportunity to comment.

Are you going to require us to be online/have NA running when ever we use any NI products? I dont ever want to be forced to do this in order to use the products I've paid for. I dont want NA running unless I choose to check for updates or do other similar tasks. If this is to do with licenses then I fail to see the necessity of verifying the authenticity of the products we've paid for everytime we use them on a day to day basis. For new purchases, re-installs and the like, of course no problem with that.

I asked ages ago and still haven't had a clear answer about telemetry. Can you verify that we can still opt out of usage tracking? This is one of the main reasons Im still on NA1

Thankyou for starting work on the uninstallers. This will really make a difference and is so needed especially for owners of many libararies like UCE's.

Please provide us with installers. I agree with others about this. My own example: Recently I updated an NI product and it completely rendered my system unusable if I used any Kontakt instruments. By the time I was supplied with the previous installer it was days of downtime. If people had immediate access to installers it would greatly alleviate the stress and inconvenience to your customers when these can get you up and running in the meantime.

We shouldn't have to install other programs and use workarounds like getting into the terminal and running commands in order to get NA to run smoothly so we can use the products. This is not conducive to being user friendly at all and is a big turn off to more non tech users.

Looking forward to dark mode when I update NA but hopefully its not too contrasty. It would be nice for people to have an option to choose light mode who dont prefer dark. I do think if the font is bright white on a very black background that can be real hard on the eyes. Off white font on dark grey seems to be what people prefer.

Thankyou.