Sadly that NI thread turned into the proverbial dumpster fire. Irritating because people have a right to be annoyed, NI need feedback and that was the place to do it. But direct aggression towards NI stuff, and the ensuing fights between members get us collectively absolutely nowhere.
I think it's unlikely NI will ever make KK useable, hence the thread. They've had a decade to get it into shape, and they seem exceptionally skilled at engineering ever more wrong turns and blind alleys. At the heart of it - and the reason why they are currently so reviled - they seem to have lost all focus on ux. The basic browser they now have rolled out across various products isn't fit for purpose, but it will take such a huge effort now to backtrack or start again that it is tempting to conclude it is a lost cause.
And yet. They've made some serious blunders in recent releases of Kontakt 7 and have subsequently rolled back. I get the impression that - very belatedly - they are starting to question their own sense of (mis)direction, wondering what they've done to deserve all this animosity. And I'd love to see KK itself - and all the other products that share the browser - made useable, rather than rely on 3rd party. So many of their other products are excellent, it is possible under the current NI umbrella.
I think the browser team need to take a close look at Arturia's Analog Lab and u-he's browsers. The latter feels closest to what NI currently have in terms of style, with the big difference that they've made it useable. The former has its own problems, the integration across the different screens is very haphazard, but the basic Explore view is usefully functional.
If NI bought the bullet and allowed browsing without the huge instrument tiles that take up 80% of the screen real estate, the rest might not be all that hard.
I think it's unlikely NI will ever make KK useable, hence the thread. They've had a decade to get it into shape, and they seem exceptionally skilled at engineering ever more wrong turns and blind alleys. At the heart of it - and the reason why they are currently so reviled - they seem to have lost all focus on ux. The basic browser they now have rolled out across various products isn't fit for purpose, but it will take such a huge effort now to backtrack or start again that it is tempting to conclude it is a lost cause.
And yet. They've made some serious blunders in recent releases of Kontakt 7 and have subsequently rolled back. I get the impression that - very belatedly - they are starting to question their own sense of (mis)direction, wondering what they've done to deserve all this animosity. And I'd love to see KK itself - and all the other products that share the browser - made useable, rather than rely on 3rd party. So many of their other products are excellent, it is possible under the current NI umbrella.
I think the browser team need to take a close look at Arturia's Analog Lab and u-he's browsers. The latter feels closest to what NI currently have in terms of style, with the big difference that they've made it useable. The former has its own problems, the integration across the different screens is very haphazard, but the basic Explore view is usefully functional.
If NI bought the bullet and allowed browsing without the huge instrument tiles that take up 80% of the screen real estate, the rest might not be all that hard.
Statistics: Posted by noiseboyuk — Thu Dec 21, 2023 2:54 pm