Ableton Forum

Well i just visited http://www.touch-able.com/ and it seems they completely removed user forum. This made me worried. Let me explain.

I am seeing this as a sign of a Titanic case. Why?

Well Touchable is amazing (so was Titanic ship) but last three months at their official forum users reported increased numbers of issues mainly non existent user library on Ableton 9.6 and above and Touchable loosing connection. It was reported widely and even experience users confirmed it and peeps with iPad Pro as well (me being one of them).

And there was increased rate of angry people asking and providing refund from App Store.

IMHO that was best interface for Ableton but now with forum being completely gone and sunken i believe that company went to "milk what we can" so they removed forum to remedy bad public appearance and that touchable path is set to be dead as titanic ship - in not near future.

I hope i am wrong.

p.s. for curious forum was here: http://forum.touch-able.com/ and no there where not any sign of spam or something like that. Just increased number of issues..

That’s a shame. Maybe it became a development money pit. As somebody who started with the iPhone 1 I’m not really enamored with iOS apps anymore. Toss in iOS oversaturation and Windows touch screens and I think iOS apps have plateaued, or are about to and maybe revenue is on the decline. Not a lot of new buyers coupled with complaints from current users you will probably never see another dime from on an already low asking price platform. Plus I can't imagine many small developer iOS apps generate enough revenue so that they don't need another job on top of that.

beats me wrote:That’s a shame. Maybe it became a development money pit. As somebody who started with the iPhone 1 I’m not really enamored with iOS apps anymore. Toss in iOS oversaturation and Windows touch screens and I think iOS apps have plateaued, or are about to and maybe revenue is on the decline. Not a lot of new buyers coupled with complaints from current users you will probably never see another dime from on an already low asking price platform. Plus I can't imagine many small developer iOS apps generate enough revenue so that they don't need another job on top of that.

That is actually very good and realistic point of view.

...actually the touchable forum was never really active...the best way to get in contact with the devs was/is via facebook...i had some problems and got prompt replies!...there's not much going on nowadays though...i'm also waiting for some bugfixes...

scheffkoch wrote:...actually the touchable forum was never really active...the best way to get in contact with the devs was/is via facebook...i had some problems and got prompt replies!...there's not much going on nowadays though...i'm also waiting for some bugfixes...

Sorry man i think you are wrong. First of all i don't have FB and never had one. Why would i need to create one just to be able to have support? that is joke.

It's nowhere under their page that requirement. Nowhere they say: in order to receive support you need FB account. I would never buy such product under this condition.


But there is contact on their web/email. And i sent them email on two occasion. One was pre-sale email - they never answered me. Never. But i ordered app anyway and i like it to the point where i realized some features are not working. Then i sent them second email asking for support. I never received any answer. Two emails no answer.

I am calling this a really bad support and i am not speaking lies. Why would i?

And yes you are right their forum was inactive but since i was there i am calling them to blame for this. I saw at least 5 threads where users are asking developers why no activity why no contact nor any response from developers? Why do you expect these people would return to forum. They simply abandoned it since they where not getting any response.

Other rare threads where mostly issues reported. I must admit guest users would find place scary - which is why they Touchable staff removed it eventually and probably.

Again don't get me wrong - i use app and would want it to survive. I even sold Push 2 because this was better to me. Far better. But it does have unresolved issues - unresolved like for more then half a year.

Touchable and Conductr is all i need. Conductr is perfectly stable (no connection issues). Touchable still not. And there are other issues.

Well i still hope.

...i think you got me wrong...i wanted to say that the support on their site was always slow / non existent...but when i contacted them directly via facebook i received a prompt reply...once they also sent me a special version of their server software to test it with my system and after that everything worked flawless (again)...

With regard to minimum specifications, there comes a point with the development of Ableton Live that these also relate to the maximum specifications for version numbers....

Cheers
D

They used to be quite responsive when people asked touchable questions on the Ableton forum.

The app can be pretty expensive, especially when you upgrade to the device gui.

Things beyond their control are, what kind of hardware people's computer have, and what kinds of things Ableton implements in each update, plus any surprises in iTunes.

The more favorable aspect is how iOS pretty much works the same across a limited variety of devices.

So I don't know if any of the things beyond their control would eventually get to them, or if their app sales have slowed to a point where it is hard to find time to give full support. Etc


The other thing is that they have a whole other app, Modstep, which is pretty impressive for what it does. This is kind of a step closer to the Live ideology but without requiring Live. I don't know if this is their baby or if it too has sort of been dropped from the developers. At least with Modstep it is all on one controlled environment. The factors beyond their control are which apps people use in conjunction with it via au/iaa/Audiobus, and how well programmed those apps would be.

Can or do these controller apps benefit from Link? Seems the biggest issue with controller apps is reliable connectivity, but obviously there is a lot more involved than keeping tempo and transport functions synced.

Anybody using the Lemur app? Was the gold standard of touch screen controllers before the iPad came along but seems like it might have been too little too late by the time they came out with an iPad app. Don't hear it mentioned much.

That sucks. I use it every day & love it dearly. Ableton should just buy them out. Or create a version of it themselves, crazy that there's no remote/touch option at this point. So helpful even for stupid little stuff, like when I'm playing guitar & can't get over to the desk to hit record or whatever, I just keep my iPad near my guitar & have full control. Hopefully we don't lose it completely.

It is kind of weird that Ableton of all people never made a dedicated controller app.

stringtapper wrote:It is kind of weird that Ableton of all people never made a dedicated controller app.

Possibly because Live users wouldn’t be happy with the limitations acceptable on other proprietary DAW controller apps. The Logic controller app doesn’t really do anything fancy but that’s fine with Logic. Given things like racks and M4L, Live users would probably want something fairly sophisticated and deeply customizable. That takes some serious development time with little financial reward.

They also probably have the same problem NI has, don't want cheap iOS apps eating into their proprietary hardware sales. I fully believe NI holds back on features on their iOS versions of Traktor and Maschine for that reason.

If NI implemented Link in iOS Traktor without a computer needed you’d have a pretty sick and versatile DJ setup with just a couple iPads and a basic mixer.

I thought Link was in Traktor DJ?

Cheers
D

yur2die4 wrote:
Things beyond their control are, what kind of hardware people's computer have, and what kinds of things Ableton implements in each update, plus any surprises in iTunes.

Again i agree and disagree. This just seems like excuse to me.

Yes things can get out of control but Conductr is working on same principle yet it is absolutely bug free for me all time, any time - it just works - flawless - over same wifi,

Lemur - just working - same wifi

I mainly had connection issues. I could live without User library and some minor quirks but i had connection issues with Touchables. I reported them in forum and other older users confirmed it. I don't think it is my computer nor my tablet or something in between because a: i did exactly what Touchable manual told me and i had touchable connection working but with random drop outs from time to time. Conductr on the other side just works all time forever. So does Lemur. So how for them this is not out of control?

IMHO (this is offtopic) i think next 10 years will became more "touch" for users on Win and Apple. Seeing Surface Studio i can imagine Ableton being operated by touch gestures. And then indeed these apps will be dead forever.

Roll back to a version of Live that's supported....?

With each new iteration we've had to update and fix things that get broken, its a reason that the Control Surfaces aren't documented as things change....

Cheers
D