Apple Silicon "Native version"

What he said

The whole ideology of “faster, more GHz, more power, 400W PSU, 10 fans” is typical for small PC builders/tinkerers/gamers subculture in Western countries, normal people want “computer as an appliance”, not to build their own PC…

Here in UK, if people want cheap computers, they buy Chromebooks and are happy with them.

If they have more money then either MS Surface or MacBook Air or iPad Pro. If they need cheaper PC laptops, they buy ASUS or Acer. For work/business: Dell, Lenovo or HP tower. Nobody, except for hobbyist and gamers is building their PCs from scratch here

And, coming from Eastern Europe myself - it has shocked me initially. But now, it’s other way round - time is money, I buy Mac, I plug it in and it works flawlessly for 4-5 years. Then it goes on eBay and I buy another one.

 

Mutis, but we speak about computer for music production, I guess... Not telephone, not video, not super security.

And why Apple did not jump to AMD, instead of Intel? There are two reasons.
1) At the time of Apple decision (say 3-4 years back) AMD did not have competetive CPU and was close to bancropcy... AMD made miracles in past several years....
2) Money. Why to pay AMD or Intel for chips and not to grab the whole stack?

2) may work, or no. We will see in comming years. I seriously doubt Apple is able to keep pace with AMD and Intel for longer time. I may be wrong. But if Apple will not come with something like AMD chiplets, it is either lost, or the production costs of bigger CPUs will be enormous. And enormous means hi thousands just for CPU.

 

Well, I did build my PC, it took 3 hours, or so. And I could get it done by eshop. It would cost me 50 USD at most.... But I wanted to build it myself. Just wanted to try, if I can do it....
I am pretty sure it will work fine for many years. And then it wil become secondary computer. I use about 5 computers for my work....

 

I see Arturia has just gone native M1 (and Big Sur) on most/all of its plugins, joining Spectrasonics and Waves

 

I'm lucky because my most essential software runs natively on M1. Meaning I now appreciate the difficulties developers generally have with the transition.

 

Many instruments in the Komplete 11 bundle, except the Scarbee MM-Bass. I tried maybe 7 others but didn't have more time before I went travelling. I attempted to install from SSD and via web download. Problem is it only fails after (down-)loading the data, so it takes a long time to get feedback.

All Spitfire Audio Instruments run. Seemingly most of the NI Instruments do not.

 

Thanks for sharing these insights. Quite revealing. I kinda ignored that legacy audio code might use assembler The testing to me does not count since that's part of every release. Of course it's also part of (re-)writing code.

 

Prob because people don’t have the skills to build

I build every machine I use and I’m no hobbyist. I play some games but I use all my 8 machines for work, every one built including server.

I also have a MacBook and an Asus laptop.

reason for building is I get 10 years of high performance and reliability from a machine using high end selected parts and if I need to upgrade or replace a part, it’s simple as I know what I have and have all the documentation for what is compatible.

most serious people I know would NEVER buy off shelf any system because you pay for ****. Laptops are overpriced, I mean my 2019 MacBook was $2100 and I give that 6 years before it cannot be updated and sorry to say, while it works fine it is so underpowered compared to a desktop tuned to run at 4.8ghz and cost less than that.

each to their own but I like to really get the most out my cash and will DIY everything, that’s how I manage to make income from that diy experience.

 

Well, if one makes a new release with few changes/fixes, or just new installer, testing is way easier, than if one needs to port code to whole new platform. Even without rewriting the code. Many things may go wrong, and often go wrong.... There may be a bug in compiler, or just code starts behave slightly differently (it should not happen, but can happen) or bugs that were in legacy code suddenly show up, as code and data are arranged in different manner.
Such a change needs very robust testing, not just few tests indicating it somehow works......

I do not know about Australia, but in my country one even does not need to built PC personaly. He may choose parts (or e-shop personell will help him) and e-shop puts parts together. So, one may have benefits from the both worlds. He may have PC to his taste, and does not need skill to put it physically together.

 

It`s kind of absurd that there is still no native support for apple silicon, or even a status update on it.(At least for Kontakt)
And keeping in mind that m1 was released in Nov 2020, which is over a year now.
Especially considering that NI is one of the bigger and better funded companies compared to most of their competitors.

 

Eventide has released their plugins for M1 few days ago. And AAX only Rosetta 2.
https://www.eventideaudio.com/forums/topic/latest-os-compatibility-info/

Simply, things take time. There is Rosetta 2 compatibility for NI plugins and within weeks might be the native port.

 

Eventide has about 120 employees, while NI has 500+
Even if you are refactoring code for your main product, it shouldn't take a year.
That`s just bad R&D practices or bad management.
Obviously not much to do besides waiting, but definitely expected a more agile dev from a company as big as NI.

 

And Eventide has 30 plugins, and NI 130 or so....

And what about Arturia? Most of plugins became native AS a week ago?

Things may take time. Mainly if cooperation of Apple,is needed.

 

Arguing that other companies are the same or not, doesn't make it better.
I worked in many high tech companies, and telling customers "Well it takes time" without a window frame of a roadmap. and then taking a year+ on top of that is not reassuring, and makes me question the quality of the R&D team on NI`s side.
And as I said, any modern company that works in an agile development methodology(as every company should now days) taking a year for refactoring is pretty laughable.

 

OK, in that case, most of companies in plugin business are pretty laughable. Few did it in less than one year...

If you have developed something personaly, you would know, that roadmaps are nice. On flipcharts. But one does not rule the things. They go its own way. And if you have worked in SW, you would know that programmers are special kind of folks. NI knows that, I guess, and so no public roadmaps.
Programmer may have problem with partner, dog, cat, rat, fish, bicycle, car, .... and many other things, and is not sort of able to work, more or less.

How would you include partners, dogs, cats, rats, fish, bicycles, cars, .... and many other things in SW development roadmaps?

 

Well if that is the case that`s pretty sad for these companies.

As a developer i know what are designated goals for each quarter or a development sprint.
Suggesting that roadmaps "are nice to have" just shows your lack of knowledge in an agile development cycle.
The only features that can be scraped or pushed out of the current development goals are usually minor features that DOES NOT affect the overall integration and functionality of the product.
And the reasoning that developers might be sick, dead or suddenly mute. does not hinder development. most scrum master build schedules and prioritize each feature with headroom especially in case some developers are suddenly unavailable for any reason - be it sickness, holiday or focus switch because prioritization changed.
All of this is done in any modern company to make sure that development sprint cycles push out the features intended for each sprint.
And refactoring would take one of the highest priorities in any development cycle.

The "example" you gave, if you can even call it that, is a situation that if a dev or couple of devs have some reason that stops them from working on a project/feature that pushes back the due date of the feature to an "unknown" date. which is insane and doesn't ever happen in any normal capacity or scale.
That situation might happen in a really badly managed R&D team relaying on any specific person in particular to push features.
And that is considered very bad managing and extremely bad development practices.

 

It also depends what SW is developed. One may have DB, SAP, ... applications, where coders are easily replacable. And super special applications where not many skilled people are available.... Plugins require good knowledge of math and also very good hearing....

And as I wrote, most plugin industry companies needed year or so to update their SW to AS. If NI was the only one, you could say, thei failed. But it is not the case. You may wish whatever you want, but things take time. And the real state of plugin industry proves it.

AS has the highest priority, it just takes time.

 

Sprint and agile development cycles by prioritization is 101 in good development practices, and has nothing to do if the product uses a db, SAP or any other ERP systems which are totally unrelated to Plugin software.
1. Any developer, and I mean ANY developer is replaceable(As sad as it is for us developers, that is the truth).
2. Labeling software as "Super special app" is not really professional, and no professional would ever refer to any development as such.
3. Every development requires some math, and every developer should know good math, that is a given for any software development side, be it algo, backend or frontend.
4.Like I said, even if all the plugin industry companies are only releasing native support now it doesn't make it ok or logical. and like I said it is bad development practice, and not at all the standard in software development in general.

 

Hi Folks...

I have absolutely no luck installing some parts of my Komplete Package on my new M1.
The native Access Software constantly says, that installing failed.

Special Pianos are important for me, I use them every day.
Seems not everything is running under Rosetta with Big Sur?

Cheers
A.

 

And what is the standard in SW development? To release poorly tested SW? And make users sort of betatesters? How do you know, it is not more or less done within planned timeframe?

Your explanation of situation is, majority of plugin industry does it wrongly, my explanation is, it simply takes time. I cannot proof it, you cannot proof it. The best will be if each of us keeps his opinion. ;-)