Komplete Kontrol S series MK1 keyboards End Of Life

I do not say whether NI should or not issue vouchers or whatever...

I jus want to share my experience of vaguely similar case.

Eventide, company that makes hardware and SW for musicians has decided to stop selling their pedals H9 Core and H9. They went on selling H9 Max. And at the same time they put down the possibility to buy algorithms (plugins) for H9 Core and H9. H9 Max has all of them. And at the same time still left possibility to update H9 Core/H9 to H9 Max (in fact buy all missing agorithms). And decided not to add any algorithms to H9 Max. It was not EOL as they were still selling H9 Max for few more years.... But it was end of device development.

To make bitter pill for customers less bitter each user of pedal could receive bundle of plugins worth 500 USD. Which was really, really greatly generous. That bundle was NFR, but could be used as base for future upgrades of Eventide plugin Bundles....

It may may be reasonably well reflective for some cases, and pretty biased for other cases. Mainly those marginal. I do not say, it is biased, I do not know, but one would have to check, before saying it is representative.

In this case for example to check if there is similar percentage of KK Sxx MK1 registered in the both groups (sharing data and not sharing data).

I may have missed something, but if this decision was not only for money grab, kill a device that works perfectly fine, invoking the "10 years old, old tech, too complicated to maintain both worlds, understand us"

Could someone explain me why A25 ( around 2018 ) , A49 ( 2018 ), M32 (around 2019), A61 ( 2018 )....

Are NOT discontinued ?

same tech, so you'll have to maintain versions for them, no ?

the complication must come from the little led lights and the after touch, that are COMPLETELY different.

Sorry NI, but that pill is hard to swallow....

thousands in hardware and software to a chosen company and now this...

I'm sorry but When I place thousands on a guitar, I don't have to put it into the trashbin because you want money, All the expression pedals will work for ever on every hardware, every piece of gear, etc....

Now you are sending the proper signal:

Future users, do you want to RENT for thousands, because it's not a one shot purchase....

I was looking for buying more NI stuff, upgrade soft$, gera etc.... I even upgraded to the big Ultimate thing... BECAUSE I had mey KEYBOARD ALREADY, that is the reason why I stayed, because I took into account that I had this already, well done, planned well.

But clearly this was a move that absolutely throws something that stinks over the NI Sphere for me.

I just can’t understand the infantile reactions of many to this announcement. NI have made a perfectly reasonable commercial decision as all businesses do, have handled it professionally and to read some of these posts NI are murdering babies in their cradles.

Just for comparison Mac OS Catalina released in October 2019 is no longer supported and in fact reached end of life in September 2022.

Yes - it does blow my mind how some folks are 100% bitter and miserable about a keyboard that had a decade long support window - yet say nothing about MacOS or their way overpriced Apple hardware.

These buyers are completely complicit and bent over hard by Apple and have no issue whatsoever in dropping 2 or 3K on a new M2 machine knowing full well it will be the most expensive paperweight ever in 3-5 short years. And then because it's Apple - they do it all over again.

VP

I agree, overall with your statement (as I've used the reference to Apple (iPhone evolution) as an example), however I disagree with the "3-5 year M2 Mac paperweight" reference. I've been using the Mac platform since 1992 for music production and my mid-2011 Mac mini served me for 9 years in that arena before I upgraded to a 2020 M1 Mac mini (now 3 years old and still working perfectly fine in studio, on Catalina), and just purchased an M2 Mac Studio for the same purchase. I plan to get at least 9 years out of the latter - it all depends on your use case. My iPhone 12 mini, purchased new, is also serving me fine. That said, NI is doing nothing different than Apple, Microsoft, or any major tech company who advances their products. Ceasing to invest another penny in NI products is a personal choice, but it won't stop the process people are wailing over....all these reactions make zero sense to me too.