What's taking so long with updates?

We are going on 6 months now arent we? Isn't this the million dollar discussion? The online mpc community is getting just as dead as Akai's product support waiting for this thing to improve.

im guessing anyday now.....

1.3 came out in February if I am not mistaken.

1.4 has plenty of bug fixes, features, and work flow enhancements. Making sure it is right obviously is a priority.....

We are going on 6 months now arent we? Isn't this the million dollar discussion? The online mpc community is getting just as dead as Akai's product support waiting for this thing to improve.

Clearly Akai are still ironing a few things out, otherwise it would have been released - they are not going to release it unless they are 100% happy to do so. People need to realise that when someone is asked 'when is the new update out', and they say 'around 30-45 days', that is purely an estimate. There is no way Dan Gill could know what issues may arise that could impact that desired release window.

It's like asking someone 'when's your album going to be ready?'. You cannot answer that definitively, it's not possible, even with the best intentions you simply do not know what lays in store.

I do however agree that generally speaking, the Ren 'buzz' has definitely died down. Not just here on MPC-Forums, but all the other music production forums as well. It's been 4 weeks since someone posted about the Ren on Gearslutz or FP. I don't see much chatter on social media either.

Hopefully 1.4 is going to re-ignite that interest. Hopefully we're also done with the over-hyped marketing - the best marketing Akai can do now is simply let the MPC Software do the talking.

This is a common issue between developers and other staff. What some may estimate takes a day to fix may actually take a week for a developer. Also, they have multiple OS and plugin environments to support. I'm learning that some plugins may be poorly written and causes the software to crash. Handling these types of plugins I'm sure is a priority.

Following Pete's Twitter feed, I've seen him mention a few times that he's had to work on some "last-minute bugs" – which is only a positive thing, of course, because we all want a product that has as few bugs as possible.
We all know there's so many bugs, and those little feckers need to be squashed, and personally I don't mind waiting as I know that a delayed update only means a more stable product.

Akai should have hired me before releasing 1.0.
That would have saved them alot a trouble.

Yesterday Pete was sayin how 3rd party developers plugins are causing crashing and making them look bad. I said that only makes you look bad if the plugins work on every other platform

Someone suggested releasing a listed of tested plugins and getting to the others ones as time goes on.

In all honesty though developing software and having to deal with all of this stuff really is a HUGE task. So I understand the delay. I just wish we could get incremental bug fixes .. Or when they fix something let us update the fix.

Even new features could be added like that, if each was properly tested. The benefit would be that they could tackle one task at a time. Just some ideas / brainstorming (I'm not hating on akai, Jah)

AnSolas wrote:Akai should have hired me before releasing 1.0.
That would have saved them alot a trouble.

You code software?

es-k wrote:Yesterday Pete was sayin how 3rd party developers plugins are causing crashing and making them look bad. I said that only makes you look bad if the plugins work on every other platform

Someone suggested releasing a listed of tested plugins and getting to the others ones as time goes on.

In all honesty though developing software and having to deal with all of this stuff really is a HUGE task. So I understand the delay. I just wish we could get incremental bug fixes .. Or when they fix something let us update the fix.

Even new features could be added like that, if each was properly tested. The benefit would be that they could tackle one task at a time. Just some ideas / brainstorming (I'm not hating on akai, Jah)

I agree that it should be released with a list of what still is being worked on. I would rather use my ren with the changes that Dan has shown such as the shift lock and double clicking to select bank features. I could work around 3rd party plugin crashes by just syncing the Ren to Logic or another host DAW and using the plugins in the DAW until the fixes are worked out....

es-k wrote:Yesterday Pete was sayin how 3rd party developers plugins are causing crashing and making them look bad. I said that only makes you look bad if the plugins work on every other platform

oh Snap

I would've responded sayin, exuses are like assholes nobody cares for them

Jahrome, I know you've been beta testing it.
Except that list from djworx.com/review-akai-mpc-studio-music-production-controller/
Are there any other features / workflow improvements?

I know you can't say which, but are there any others? Or that's the final list and they want to make that bulletproof.

I agree its most important that they release a stable update.

It just seems as though Pete is the only one working on it.

Hopefully, whatever vacuum they're testing in includes some
knowledgable MPC heads, to point out bugs and workflow problems.

when they drop it or should i say if, it will still have bugs and problems, so why wait. i'd rather they did little bits more frequently. it;s like being in a traffic jam you'd rather be moving slowly than not moving at all

and of course they still gotta shoot all that video s***te aswell.

JJ-style linear development works well in a small, one man project. JJ wakes up, sees a bug report, sets about fixing it and uploads it immediately when done.

The MPC Software is a much bigger, more complex project, so the JJ apraoch does not scale very well at all. It has many developers working on it and each developer is assigned a specific part of the project to deal with, be it bugs or new features.

When bugs are fixed or new features added, there is a very real potential for it causing issues elsewhere in the software, so this has to be throughly tested and if required, remedied (again, without causing any further problems). Plus other issues are being reported all the time.

It's far more complicated than most of you think. This idea of the entire team working on a single bug is simply not practical.