Apple Silicon "Native version"

For me I gets quite a big reputation bump showin the incapability to provide proper apple silicon support after this long time (dev kits have been out since summer 2020).

Same goes for Universal Audio and Izotope. Even Waves have all their plugins native by now.

 

NI has had a year to catch up with the M1 series, and seems only to have a couple of device drivers updated. If you think rosetta compatibility is going to cut it, you are nuts. I just spent $5k on an a machine with an M1 Max. If you think that I am spending another dime on a product line with about 1% of their M1 support done, you are mistaken. I have to assume that, at this point, 1% progress in a year is an indication that NI is either not inclined, or not capable of changing over their many products to support the M1.

I have owned Komplete 10-13 Collectors edition, an investment of several thousand dollars over that time. Until I see M1 support there, I am assuming I will just be writing it off as a complete loss. The Intel Macs were a dead end that I am no longer going to use, along with any software hobbled by needing the intel chip.

Show some progress, or prepare to see Komplete sales drop off a cliff.

 

And will you use K13U CE again, as it becomes native Apple Silicon free of charge, soon?

One year to convert SW to another CPU platform is not that much..... Testing takes much time.... And for example parts of Massive X have to be rewrited.... And tested, tested and tested....

 

We already said countless time that we are working on M1 compatibility. It isn't as easy as you think it is especially if you need Apple's cooperation. There's a reason why a bunch of manufacturer's are still working on it and believe me it's not because they all decided it was not important

I know it's also easy to think it's all about Apple Silicon and that's the most important thing in the world but early M1 adopters are like less than 5% right now.

 

How long will it take before Native Access runs competitively with M1?

 

1 month - 6 years

somewhere in that timeframe is my guesstimate

 

They are working on it - just let them make it right, no rushing - Rosetta works and will work for next few years at least. Chill

If you guys want to see company which doesn't have a clue - visit IK, they still have news about Big Sur all over there, no word about M1 compatibility or Monterey. I like T-Racks, but this is just big joke and lack of any professional integrity towards users...

 

IK fumbling the ball is their own failure.

Hoping that before end of year is an accurate prediction of native Apple Silicon for NI! I can be patient that much longer.....

 

You probably will have to be a bit more patient. We will hopefully have some by years end but definitely not everything.

 

It's clear this is a non-trivial problem, and it's also clear a lot of market players are further behind and some further ahead. I think we'd hope a big played like NI would be nearer the front than they seem to be (though a lot of others are only just going M1 compatible). Spectrasonics made a big play about M1 recently, yet they only have a small number of (agreed complex) products. Waves also only just went M1 and announced everything at once.
Personally I get frustration at seeing Komplete as a vast field of legacy products, delays with Massive X, iMaschine lack of development and speed of Maschine development and wish things were smoother. Of course we get new expansions and play instruments, which I suspect a very different beast to create.
I do hope the legacy elements of various things are being standardised so as to make future iterations somewhat easier to keep working!

 

True, but many NI users are waiting with getting an Apple Silicon Mac until the Kontakt situation is sorted out, so it's a chicken vs. egg situation too.

OTOH, there are people out there who claim that even with a native version of Kontakt, the total read times will only be 150mb/sec, even on the new Macs which can read 2.8 gb/sec. If that's true, this will possibly hold NI users from investing on M1 Macs. In this thread, someone claims that even with a native Kontakt version it will be 'usable like any other version' (meaning; with very slow read performance), and that there won't be much difference between running Kontakt in Rosetta 2 than running it natively. I'm sure this must be wrong.

Personally, I wouldn't invest in Apple Silicon until a native Kontakt version which performs clearly better than Kontakt via Rosetta 2 is available, and I'm sure many others are thinking along the same lines. At the moment, some tests suggests that using Kontakt in Logic with Rosetta results in a lot less trouble-free Kontakt tracks than on old Intel Macs, so I hope this will improve as soon as possible.

 

Let’s hope NI delivers in time and exciting news.

 

"If you guys want to see company which doesn't have a clue - visit IK"
That sounds pretty arrogant.

"They are working on it"
Just as an example, that's out in November 2020:


And today:
"Our developers are currently working on ensuring compatibility with our plug-ins which are not yet HDPI ready. Please check this page regularly to obtain information on any news regarding this topic! We appreciate your patience!"
https://support.native-instruments....77-My-NI-Plug-in-Appears-Broken-on-Windows-10

 

I’m not sure what you mean. “IK” means “IK Multimedia”, that’s what I was referring to, I wasn’t talking about NI, in my post I’m defending NI

Unless you are trying to defend IK Multimedia - in that case, see below.

I’m not arrogant, just “slightly” irritated after spending 500 Euros on T-Racks 5 Max and reading this a year after M1 was introduced:

https://www.ikmultimedia.com/faq/index.php?id=1412

We are on second generation of Apple chips and they offer Rosetta compatibility without any word about future native versions. And they don’t even know about Monterey, still babbling about Big Sur…

You see, that’s the difference - NI publicly declared that they work towards native M1 compatibility and HiDPI, they just need time to achieve that. That’s respecting their customers and having professional integrity.

IK Multimedia, on the other hand…

 

I may have expressed myself incorrectly, I'm not defending IK in any way, I don't have a single product from them.
What's the point if NI communicates it but like the example with hidpi it's been "Our developers are currently working..." for a year.

I hope at least very much that the M1 copmatibility does not last as long as the hidpi topic.

 

My bet would be on it taking significantly longer, after all we got Win 11 coming up

 

I'd bet on Kontakt being Apple Silicon native before end of this year.
iZotope announced yesterday they would have Ozone and RX both AS native before end of this year.

 

Let’s hope.

 

The difference is that NI officially declared that they are actively working on M1 native versions and HiDPI. For me, that’s honest and that’s roadmap and yes, it takes time and I wish they would be faster. If they said they wouldn’t - I would have moved on, by now.

With IK, please show me on their website or their forum any kind of declaration that they work on native versions for M1 and when they are intending to deliver. That’s keeping customers on knife’s edge and lack of integrity in my world.

Izotope just scored a point for me, by presenting the roadmap.

 

I think that eprst's point was, that NI has declared that it works hard on HIDPI already in 2020. And that they expect it will be solved by the end of 2020. And 2021 is comming to its end....

I do not complain. They probably changed priorities, and gave M1 Rosetta and AS the highest priority. And probably HIDPI put aside or slowed down.