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Sampletank & ios12
Greetings to all. It is now over 5 weeks since Sampletank was rendered unusable in ios 12. I posted on the IK forum suggesting that since the app is useless (cannot alter any parameters without crashing) that a refund was in order & I would not be buying anything from them in future. IK deleted my post & there has been complete silence from them as to a fix.
Am I being unreasonable or do I have a legitimate complaint?
Comments
I also booted up this app to access a specific sound (pipe organ -- I was getting audio glitches from ThumbJam's similar sound). Touching any parameter immediately crashed the app.
It’s known. They have acknowledged that they’re working on a fix.
When is AUv3 coming to ST? I think ST 3 for iOS will be unbelievable..
It will likely be the whole thing just jammed into a single AU which will eat CPU and increase load times.
This is what they did with Syntronik, it was remarkably shortsighted, we don't need 4 voices in an AU, just one, then we can create more if needed.
IK will delete even reasonable comments from their forums if they don’t like what is being said. They’ve deleted mine before. And their customer service is pretty terrible. Robotic replies will be followed by rude and condescending replies. It’s a pity since they make generally useful tools (when they actually work) and many of us have sunk a tonne of fiscal resource into their products. They have destroyed a lot of trust with their existing customers.
@AdamTomlinson , I wouldn’t mind that so much being that I would probably stay within it in that case.. MYbe just add Xequence a d AB3 and AUM.
Is Peter still a forum moderator there? He was the one who made me give up on IK. They’re a bit better here, but then they have no power of control that they can abuse...
The crashing in iOS 12 is a known issue, a fix will surely come. Only IK knows how long it will take though.
The best way to get traction for problems like this is to leave an app store review. At least that way potential buyers will be aware of the bug.
Moderators here?
LOL
What moderators.
We are a self policing group ruled by our fearless leader his majesty MT
One should also contact the developer via their official channels. Even if they aren't good about responding, the emails they receive count more than just about anything. The clearer the description of the problem the better. Tone matters, too. If one sends angry, insulting it may feel emotionally satisfying but makes it harder for the person reading it to give it the attention that it deserves,
I’m done with IK. It’s not only a waste of money but a waste of time dealing with them too. They send automated answers in less than a minute and have some guys posting in some forums, Facebooks, etc but there’s nothing real behind that. I prefer to spend my money in smaller companies or independent developers that are honest and put some love in what they do. IK used to be the company that paved the way for amazing IOS music apps but not anymore. I don’t know what happened, but I suspect it’s an economic issue since IOS music apps development is hardly a profitable business for big companies.
I meant IK are better here than on their own forum.
@ikmultimedia is there a fix on the way for SampleTank? How bout auv3?
I have a issue with Synthronik (it doesnʼt apply midi channel filter when open the app) that @ikmultimedia confirmed the bug, but in the last update the problem was not solved :-(
Ik multimedia in a class with retronyms imho
I have always maintained that @IK_Multimedia take to long to update and address issues with their apps and also they abandon app very quickly.
For example look at iLecteic and iGrand just for starters.
FWIW, last time I tried to report a bug via the official method their site wouldn’t allow the ticket to lodge! I had to mention it here and of course the IK guy here didn’t acknowledge it. My manners have run out with them. There is no way they could not know of the issues with their products and any fixes come too late - if at all. Then there was that time they charged me to D/L software I owned a licence for. And the time they refused to assist with a faulty device as it wasn’t purchased from an ‘authorised’ dealer.
It seems to be a recurring theme with some big-name developers these days. In particular my pet peeves lie with these companies:
-iConnectivity (Yes, it’s broken and we don’t have any plan to fix it but thanks for your money);
-IK Muktimedia (if it’s broken we’ll maybe fix it 12 months from now in an update that will break another key aspect of the software...thanks for your money...do you have any more for us?);
-Positive Grid (We know we’re addicted to releasing ‘broken fixes’ but those metal guys won’t notice so it’s cool...hey, rebuy our apps on virtually the same platform so we can pay ourselves again!);
-Fractal Audio (Yes, we know that a key function of our former flagship product doesn’t work perfectly but we refuse to fix it - or publicly acknowledge it...blame Apple! And thanks for those thousands of dollars you paid for our almost perfect hardware solution!)
-Yamaha (What? Our MIDI device doesn’t transmit/receive SYSEX...that’s strange. We’ll be sure to pass on your observation to our email trash.)
Rant over.
Any and all of these occurrences with IK's customer support, if they're true, should be reason enough for Apple to suspend their developer account.
I only have a single experience with IK's customer support and that was a positive one. When the Imperial piano for SampleTank iOS was first released, it kept crashing the app when I held the pedal on my digital piano down and played a moderate amount of notes. I reported the issue, they asked me for the steps to reproduce, I sent them a video showing how it happened every time, and pretty soon there was an update that fixed this issue.
This is an unnecessary comment, Alexander. I don't think heaping insults on people is likely to have any good outcomes.
I have had ok interactions with their support also. It took a couple of emails. I think that people imagine that developers have larger support staff than they do. Most support departments are understaffed and so it sometimes takes some persistence to get an answer--and the key is often being respectful. A lot of the time, a support person has so many emails to respond to that they can lose track of them. Companies (not just developers) invest less and less on support these days than in days gone by.
Customers often write really angry emails as if the support person reading it somehow can wave a magic wand and make the bug go away -- not realizing that the support person is sympathetic and possibly powerless to do anything but pass the information on.
Persistent respectful emails (no mater how maddening the developer may be) get a lot more attention and are more likely to have an impact than venting at support.
And in cases where you know a developer or support person's handle on a forum, a respectful direct message can often go much farther in getting the right attention than calling someone out in a thread.
I know you are trying to protect your site and the good will with companies, @Michael , but what was said by @SevenSystems was not something bad. It was simply an assertion that, “if ‘A’ is true”.... then ‘B’ could result.... there was no insult involved. I don’t think anyone would think there was an insult involved. I think there are times when even if you were trying to protect your site, you shouldn’t be too heavy-handed with the censorship. You are a good guy @Michael, and I love the site. So, I hope you won’t censure me for speaking my mind.
I think it just requires a little patience, IK will resolve the issue in time. Most years when the new iOS drops things are a lot worse than this, I think this has been the smoothest transition ever. Normally it takes about 6 months for all the issues to get cleared up.
I also get the feeling there's a bit of bandwagon jumping with the IK hate. They're actually a good company and they provide some pretty decent products for iOS. Give them a chance to fix this bug.
It’s not really IKs fault. The iOS update broke the app. This is why Apple won’t do a damn thing except maybe refund new customers if they’re savvy and lucky enough. In a perfect world there would be checks on this kind of thing but Apple is waaaaaaayyyy to preoccupied with emojis and biometrics to care about third party apps.
On the other hand Sampletank has been sitting in my offloaded app pile for sometime. They bungled the UI when they gave us a sequencer with no piano roll and the process of midi setup is dog you know what.
There are >2 million apps in the App Store. Are you suggesting Apple should check them all before sending out an update? This really is the task of the developer/publisher. And I'm saying this as a developer.
I’m saying that Apples IOS 12 broke the IK app. So IK is selling a broken app on Apples App Store but it’s Apples fault that it’s broken. Instead of Apple producing updates to give us more emojis they should give us updates that make apps work better instead of worse.
I see how it may seem that simple, but it’s not that black and white. I remember when iOS10 was in beta there was a little bug in my code for Ruismaker causing a crash. iOS9 had less strict checks so the bug wasn’t apparent, but the issue was definitely on my end.
In fact, the Garageband team was kind enough to notify me, so Apple was really helpful in that case
A lot of OS updates (not just Apple) these days seem to just change things for the sake of changing things rather than actually improving things - let’s put this on the left instead of the right, let’s change how this is accessed, etc - which means that years of learning how to do something simple then has to be relearned, for no apparent reason. And they break stuff in the process and don’t seem to care. It’s like the people working on an OS see it as a thing in itself that people use - its not, it is what is needed so that you can run the applications that you want to. And if it stops doing that, they have broken it.
Agree with this.
As someone that used to do OS testing and has friends that program at Apple, I can say that these ideas about changing things just to change them and not caring if stuff gets broken is simply factually incorrect.
One may not agree with the reasoning behind changes, but the changes are rarely done for no reason. Testing these massive OS is a monumental task--especially when you realize that lots of apps take advantage of OS bugs and loopholes.
No OS company has a sufficiently large QA department (almost no developers of any sort do) to find all the bugs or even all the significant ones.
Apple relies a lot on developers doing their own due diligence ahead of a new OS release--and many simply can't or choose not to for a variety of reasons: some good and some bad.
The people I know in Apple QA and development care a lot even if it doesn't seem like it to you.