The last 2 days I fought painfully with the installation of NI Komplete 11 on my 2 PCs. Native Access is really a good example for those terrible, novel installer programs. A real PITA!

1. Even if you have the software on HD, you are obliged to download newer versions (no choice).
2. There is no option to save the downloaded files to reuse them on your 2nd PC. They are removed automatically. Even if you manage to copy them quickly before the installation is finished and copy them to the download folder of the other PC, they are simply ignored. And hell, I do not have such a fast internet connection that it makes fun to download gigabytes a 2nd time. F...ing developers!
3. Some of the products that I had installed once before, either with an own serial or as selection product, had made trouble so that I had to download them a second or even third time on the same PC (after I used a cleanup program of NI and restarted Native Access).
4. And not to forget the funny new Kontakt version where you cannot add existing libraries. Don't laugh, but the developers removed this functionality and forgot that it is necessary, so that NI suggests now to install the former version, add the libraries and then update the Kontakt version again! No really this is no joke, this is modern software development!

In the end I succeeded in installing the products I wanted. But somehow the whole joy about the new stuff has been spoilt by nowadays installation pain!

Marc

Wow!! I can understand.
 
But it may not be developers fault. Someone somewhere wants to keep the software tied down to prevent pirating. This way they control what happens to the installation files.
 
Anyway, that's my take on it.
 
It's great when it works as expected. But all that BS you went through sounds....especially #4! 

marled
The last 2 days I fought painfully with the installation of NI Komplete 11 on my 2 PCs. Native Access is really a good example for those terrible, novel installer programs. A real PITA!

1. Even if you have the software on HD, you are obliged to download newer versions (no choice).

Marc

I had exactly the same thing when I bought the komplete HD so paying extra to have the HD was totally pointless and the support was worse than useless. Nobody would even answer my question as to what was the point of having the HD if I still have to spend 2 days downloading it all anyway. They just kept marking the ticket as solved without making any comment. I understand that some software may sometimes have been updated since the HD was sent out, but surely they could just make a patch rather than having to d/l the whole thing again? Again nobody would answer this question. 
 

Grem
But it may not be developers fault. Someone somewhere wants to keep the software tied down to prevent pirating. This way they control what happens to the installation files.

I do not believe that all this is in conjunction with pirating and that the developers are so unblamable! Today there is just a trend to create these installation monsters and some developers and managers really believe that they make the users' life easier by hiding and obfuscating the installation details. And they believe that like that they have less support issues. But I am convinced that it is exactly the contrary! (as user and as developer)
 

paulo
They just kept marking the ticket as solved without making any comment.

What? I feel with you, this is really poor and disappointing!
 

paulo
I understand that some software may sometimes have been updated since the HD was sent out, but surely they could just make a patch rather than having to d/l the whole thing again?

Sometimes they download only a patch and use the disk, too. But most of the time the code seems to be so poorly organized that they have to download mega-patches or even the whole thing.
But in general, why not let the user decide? There are 1000s of users out there running much older versions!
 
By the way, today I found another problem with the installation. Some of the Reaktor Players (Prism and Spark) were not registered properly. It seems that they have not properly managed the dependencies. Again, I had to use another of their help programs to fix the issue. So I really wonder what's the benefit of this "intelligent" installation garbage called Native Access? I am sure that a "hand"-installation would have been much more pleasant.
 
Marc

Forgot to say that IMHO the old "Cakewalk Command Center" is really the best installer program I know. It lets the user decide which versions to install and you can even go back to older versions. Also all the downloaded installers can be run by itself. The only thing they could have improved is to make the downloads more visible for the usage on a 2nd computer.
 
Marc