James wrote:Let me see if I understand this. If I loose my hardware key, I have literally lost the thousands of dollars on sample sets that I have accumulated over the years? And that my only protection is to find someone to sell me insurance? We are talking over $10,000 here. If I loose my iPhone, or iPads, they can be remotely totally disabled, and no one can use them. I also have a policy with Apple to replace the hardware. I would have thought that Hauptwerk would have a simular system. I travel, and have 3 Hauptwerk consoles, with their own computers, in three different locations. Therefore I am carrying the hardware key in my pocket. If I loose it, what? I loose all those thousands of dollars in sample sets? Some might say that this is totally irresponsible for a highly respected company not to have some system to handle this. It will certainly give me pause when considering a new set.
Hello James,
It isn't technologically possible for us to disable/update a USB key remotely without the person in possession of it contacting us explicitly to perform a licence update. That may give some people peace of mind in case anything were ever to happen to us in the future (not that we expect it to!) -- the key, and your licences, won't stop working. The USB key doesn't connect to the Internet, and intentionally doesn't rely on an Internet connection, which potentially benefits audio performance, and allows Hauptwerk to be used on optimised dedicated Hauptwerk computers, and allows you to move it around freely between computers.
Please also bear in mind that Apple are a rather larger company than we are, with incomparably larger resources available to them. All licensing systems have different advantages and disadvantages, but we feel that a dongle-based system provides a good balance for most Hauptwerk users' purposes (especially real-time audio on multiple and non Internet-connected computers), and it's something that is feasible for us.
A policy with Apple to replace your 'phone, is effectively an insurance policy anyway (just provided by Apple). Musical equipment (or other) insurance policies are readily available (here in the U.K., at least) that will cover computer hardware and software at a reasonable cost.
These things have actually been discussed extensively many times before on our forum, and have always been stated clearly in the Hauptwerk licensing documentation. Also, as I wrote, if you do ever lose your USB key then please contact us privately and we can discuss it. (We're reasonable people.) Thank you for your understanding.
Best regards, Martin.
Hauptwerk software designer/developer, Milan Digital Audio.