H3lx wrote:the people who are going to upgrade to every model will do it anyway, regardless of whether akai keep supporting older ones or not tho. thats the most annoying thing about this, theyre not encouraging anyone to move to the 5k by not opening up the 4ks code, theyre just pissing people who have the 4k off
right, and in fact by not supporting a unit that was barely in our hands 5 years ago, and for some of us (me!) only a couple of years ago, it tell all the potential buyers of the 5000 etc that Akai will not support your machine past a few years. What they must realise is these things are musical instruments, not washing machines. Some folks stick to the same instrument for life! Learning to use one of these things and really getting to grips with it is not some 5 minute endeavor, and generally it sucks for creativity to be chopping and changing all the time.
Hopefully some of the encouraging noises and increased AKAI rep interaction on this site will let these feelings be known. A much longer term business model for support will do the company nothing but good, as folks are still rocking 60's, 3000's, 2000 etc as well, and it's not like these machines just get thrown away, almost all are still in use! There is a massive userbase of machines out there, some of the machines over 20 years old and going strong, and AKAI should be proud of that and be doing everything in their power to support everyone, to the best of their ability. No one expects free support forever, but at least making the possibility of updated drivers and software, spare parts, and even integrating and supporting the 3rd party people will all help foster an atmosphere where everyone sticks with the company and upgrades when they need to.
