Native Instruments has backtracked on its decision to discontinue a raft of ‘legacy products’, promising to reevaluate and try and come up with “possible workarounds” for people who wish to continue using them.
As previously reported, NI originally stated that the products in question would be discontinued on 31 May, after which owners wouldn’t be able to install them on new computers due to the company’s Service Center activation tool also being deactivated. Said products will continue to work as normal on machines that they’re already installed on.
In response to user feedback, an NI representative known only as Matt has now posted on the KVR forum, saying: “Just wanted to let everyone know that we have been following the discussion on here and across multiple channels closely and feel it would be essential for us to engage with you guys on what is happening here. We sincerely appreciate everyone's feedback on this and this is now driving some changes we made today.
“As a result, we updated our end of life article with some additional information but also went back to discuss this internally. As you would be able to read at the bottom of the page, we will spend more time investigating this topic and look into possible workarounds to address the end of life of our old activation mechanisms.”
What does this mean?
The “additional information” can be found in the FAQ section of the article. This states that the decision to discontinue the Service Center was taken in light of security concerns and that, because of changes both to operating systems and NI’s own ecosystem, “It is not possible to update our listed products to work on modern operating systems within reasonable effort.”
It continues: “In regards to 3rd party instruments and our own content products, we are currently looking into possible workarounds.”
In response to the question of whether NI is looking into any other solutions for affected customers, the FAQ states: “Yes, in specific cases we might be able to provide at-your-own risk support for our end-of-life products. We can’t promise anything at this point and technical feasibility needs to be evaluated. We will share more information about this as soon as possible.”
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