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Comment by pier25 | Hacker News Reader

I owned a Push 2 and sold it after a year. Never got into it because the pads weren't very good. Soft touches sometimes triggered notes at max velocity which drove me nuts.

The Push 3 has more sophisticated pads with MPE and I'm very skeptical Ableton could pull that off with good QA.

The other thing that I find ridiculous is they sell you a barebones computer for $1,000 with an i3, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB SSD. A computer which you cannot use for anything else and you're dependent on Ableton to fix/replace.

For that kind of money you could buy an M2 iPad Pro with more performance and a lot more battery time than 2.5 hours. An iPad can be bought and repaired on any country. If you're touring you can travel with a backup iPad or even buy one pretty much in any big city on Earth.

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>For that kind of money you could buy an M2 iPad Pro with more performance and a lot more battery time than 2.5 hours

This has a strong https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 vibe to it.

The computing-part hardware specs don't matter at all, the same way you don't compare the cpu specs of a phone or a synth to a laptop or tablet. This is about the interface, pads, firmware, comprehensiveness and convenience as a Live controller and as a standalone performance sequencer/drum machine/instrument.

The part that gets me is that it’s x86, and not even very recent x86. This CPU model was released for retail in Q3'20. It’s 10nm. I would have much preferred to see something like a 4nm Zen4 Ryzen or ideally, some combination of ASIC / ARM there.

The other annoying thing is that it doesn’t even include a Live standard license at this price, only Live Intro. That’s just being cheap on Ableton’s part.

The big benefit I see of this over something like a Linnstrument + iPad + iConnectivity AUDIO4c is portability and Live compatibility, but I’d personally wait and see how stable the software is before pulling the trigger. Relying on a brand new software stack on x86 to do the exact right things in perfect time for live music is a bet I wouldn’t take. I hope it’s amazing, and I’m sure lots of folks worked very hard on this, but the proof will be in the pudding. There’s a reason that you don’t see Pioneer and Denon decks / mixers or really any other live audio gear rocking x86.

> The computing-part hardware specs don't matter at all

Except when you're trying to run dozens of VST plugins which are extremely CPU hungry.

I'm pretty sure the Push 3 has been calculated to be able to run the plugins it needs to run - and without interruptions or other apps taking over the OS.

> to be able to run the plugins it needs to run

What does that even mean?

How many Diva instances can it run?

Edit:

And BTW, AKAI MPC users hit CPU limits all the time. And that's not even using heavy VSTs like Diva but the ARM optimized plugins included.

It can run zero diva instances. No third party plugins.

>What does that even mean?

It means that it has enough specs to run the plugins and use cases Ableton designed it for, and tested it with.

It's not a complete studio or meant to replace a desktop studio computer for all uses. It's a dedicated standalone thing, and has its own capabilities and limitations. So, like any other "groovebox" style device.

I think this take is also a bit shallow, given the maker touts the specs as a selling point. Arguing about the specs for the price shouldn't be shunned upon in these circumstances.

From the marketing piece:

> Intel 11th Gen Core™ i3-1115G4 processor with 8GB of RAM Built-in lithium battery with up to 2.5 hours play time Built-in 256GB SSD hard drive Replace processor, battery and hard drive as technology improves

Point is not the hardware specs. The point is that the iPad Pro makes an excellent portable musical workstation on the go as well (GarageBand comes with it, and Logic Pro has been ported over). So if you had to choose one this becomes a relevant comparison point.

The other thing about the iPad is that it’s pretty stable and predictable, with a very mature OS and very mature hardware. It’s also commodity, so if it gets stolen on a tour or smashed or beer spilled on it, it’s not hard to find an Apple Store anywhere in the world and pick up a replacement. That’s huge for touring musicians.

They don't matter at all to the market, but they do matter to the quality of the product.

If I can trivially make a better version of the thing you are selling at 1/3rd the price, then something isn't right.

you remember individual comments from 15 years ago?

That one in particular is somewhat famous and gets trotted out as an example of a bad, wrong take, highly upvoted and missing the point of the product because the audience here is so technical they can barely perceive normal users' problems

It's sort of ironic now, though, because Dropbox has not been doing very well the last few years, because their product wasn't novel enough to compete with the better-integrated solutions from Microsoft, Apple, and Google that Dropbox inspired

>It's sort of ironic now, though, because Dropbox has not been doing very well the last few years

Yes, but not for the reasons that famous comment thought it wouldn't (people ...trivially rolling their own with Linux+FTP+SVN or whatever). If anything, for the opposite reasons: because even more turnkey/integrated solutions than Dropbox became available as you say. Which makes that comment appear even more off now!

(Of course the point of that comment was already obliterated when Dropbox turned on to become a multi-billion worth company, even if it's "not doing very well" 15+ years after the comment was made. We could only wish we have that kind of "failure"!).

Well, the original comment made 3 distinct arguments which can basically be summed up as:

1) Its feature-set is easily duplicated (from a technical perspective)

2) It doesn't solve one particular use-case (that it wasn't designed to solve)

3) It's hard to imagine it catching on, let alone making money

Point #1 was widely mocked after Dropbox caught on, but turned out to be kind of correct - it just wasn't end-users that mimicked its feature-set, it was other companies.

Point #2 is irrelevant.

Point #3 was hilariously wrong. It went viral as hell, and the founders could've rode off into the sunset with a boatload of cash if they sold the company to Apple when they were approached. In the alternate universe where that happened, Apple devices just have a Dropbox feature instead of iCloud, a la Siri and Shazam.

Regarding #1, being easily replicated by end-users was the whole point of Point #1 in the original comment. It rested entirely on how easy it is to just slap such a thing together, and how people will just do it and skip using Dropbox which would mean the product would fail.

Whether it could be duplicated by other companies (with billions in the bank and thousands of engineers and OS/device access for integration) is irrelevant to the original comment's point.

This comment is unusually well known. If you google the url wrapped in quotes, you'll see it referred to as "the famous/infamous dropbox comment".

It's become something of a symbol for how hackernews commenters sometimes confidently miss the appeal of products/services. It's relevant here because the Push 3 doesn't compete with iPads on processing power.

It's a rather notorious HN comment, pretty much our equivalent of "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame."

Wow, I had forgotten about that! Could just as well replace it here :)

The linked comment is something of an in-joke on Hacker News. BrandonM famously provided some quick, critical feedback on a Dropbox announcement. Dropbox of course went on to see a lot of success.

Edit: it looks like a few other folks responded with a similar comment as I did. Sorry to spam you.

No, it's a famous comment that has become sort of a HN/hackerspace meme.

Oh, yes, I know one of those comments too

> No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.

(iPod launch, CmdrTaco, /. 2001)

“But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.” —Carl Sagan

(Though I'd prefer Galileo in the top spot instead of Columbus; if anything Columbus could replace Bozo: the people that laughed at him were actually completely right, not failing to recognize his genius.)

> For that kind of money you could buy an M2 iPad Pro

Swap real pads and knobs for a touch screen? No thanks, even if they would give it to me for free. Not judging Ableton stuff prices, and I'm also not into this kind of devices (aside my Korg Padkontrol) because as a prog rock wannabe musician I would probably have little use for them, but when using electronic instruments, nothing comes close to real things you can manipulate, read state, and get tactile feedback from. Touch screens can look indeed cool, but they're way behind real controls when it comes to input capabilities.

I only meant the computer part, not the controller.

As an electronic musician, I will gladly pay a premium for any device that reduces the number of boxes and wires I have to set up at every gig. (As well as reduce the number of things I have to turn on, which might decide not to turn on.)

Is redundancy when touring something you value as well?

I don't tour, only gig locally, so redundancy of anything > $15 isn't worth it. But when you have 20 minutes to set up, 10 minutes to tear down and no roadies, not having an additional device + stand + power + MIDI + audio cables to mess with / trip over / forget is worth spending money on.

If I did tour, yes, I would want backup equipment where feasible.

This is...completely missing the point. It honestly blows my mind how often exemplars of the Dunning-Kruger effect make it to the top on HN. You know that feeling you get as a programmer watching, like, two people code on the same keyboard on CSI or whatever? That's the feeling anyone with expertise in a domain other than programming gets when reading comments on HN regarding said domain.

The most fundamental appeal of the Push is that it is a very nicely-integrated hardware controller, and -- this is the big thing -- has physical knobs, buttons, pads, etc, a massive selling point to loads and loads and loads of musicians.

An iPad by definition lacks the latter, and will never approach the integration of the Push no matter how much work you put into whichever controller app you're using (TouchOSC, etc). And that's even before you consider the fact that the Push also doubles as an audio interface.

Literally no one in the Push's audience is looking to replace/upgrade the Push's hardware. No one cares what CPU it has. I'm honestly surprised that Ableton published the specs, because it just doesn't matter. It's not a "computer" (even though, yes, technically it is indeed a computer). Depending on which model you buy, its raison d'etre is as an accessory to a computer, more specifically a very specific application; or an appliance designed to run one app and one app only. You might as well be saying that you'd rather buy an iPad over a Tesla because the iPad has a better CPU.

Obviously I meant replacing the computer part with an iPad, not the controller.

> No one cares what CPU it has

Good luck running a dozen instances of Diva if you don't care about the CPU :)

> Obviously I meant replacing the computer part with an iPad, not the controller.

> Good luck running a dozen instances of Diva if you don't care about the CPU

Good luck running...most plugins, u-he or otherwise, on an iPad.

That said, the question of which plugins will/won't work running directly on the Push is an interesting question. It runs Linux, no? u-he is one of the few "big" plugin devs that supports Linux, but if I had to guess, the standalone Push 3 will run first-party Ableton plugins only.

> Good luck running...most plugins, u-he or otherwise, on an iPad.

Yeah that's a good point. OTOH all the U-He stuff is already ARM native for macOS.

But my point about the iPad was more about comparing the cost. If Ableton had chosen to sell the computer part at a more reasonable price (say $300) I would't have even mentioned it.

> Yeah that's a good point. OTOH all the U-He stuff is already ARM native for macOS.

Right, the problem is not a technical one, it's an app ecosystem one. Urs has spoken about this at length on KVR. This IMO is a great reason for Ableton to have not gone the iPad route, because it's a problem that doesn't look like it'll be solved anytime soon.

That's the nice thing about this, you don't need a dozen instances of diva for a live set. If you're traveling and using this, you can freeze the tracks. Otherwise if you're at home you can plug in to your real computer and run as many instances of Diva at Divine quality as you want.

But also this likely won't support Diva, probably just Operator, Analog, etc.

You:

> Literally no one in the Push's audience is looking to replace/upgrade the Push's hardware.

Ableton:

> Replace processor, battery and hard drive as technology improves

And why do people want to throw around the Dunning-Kruger effect in so many discussions. Does it help your point ?

Can an iPad run Live?

Ableton could have made an app to run the Live engine controlled by the Push.

After all, they are probably running some Linux distro in the Push 3 so they had to invest in that anyway.

>Ableton could have made an app to run the Live engine controlled by the Push.

And it wouldn't have pads, dedicated dials, MIDI, inputs and outputs, MPE, and everything else. It would be just a big screen with a iPad-like touch UI. So nothing like this.

I never meant for the iPad to replace the controller. Just the computer part.

Well, but the comparison was for it as a substitute for (or better value than) Push. Well, as we conclude here, Push does something different.

iPad does MIDI. You can do Bluetooth MIDI and if you want cables you can buy a dongle.

If anyone’s interested, the Oxi One is pretty awesome for sequencing bluetooth gear as well as midi and CV devices. I didn’t have super high hopes as it was a Kickstarter device, but they’ve surprised me by continually updating it, and it’s a pretty fantastic machine now.

I believe it. They could also update Live to support the Tesla Model X, since it has an x86 Linux computer inside too.

It's a lot of work though. And the pay sucks, especially on iPad/iOS where Apple refuses to let you make a profit without letting them take a bite. On MacOS it's a sustainable practice, but unless Apple changes something architecturally I wouldn't anticipate Live coming to iOS anytime soon. At least any sooner than Linux support, which is apparently(?) finished internally.

>Linux support, which is apparently(?) finished internally.

By the grace of the flying spaghetti monster, please let this be true... Ableton is the last program stopping me from leaving Windows behind.

Not right now, but they have an app called Note: https://www.ableton.com/en/note/

As of today it can run Logic Pro. The feature parity is there, most people consider using one or the other a matter of personal preference.

>The feature parity is there, most people consider using one or the other a matter of personal preference.

For musicians (professional or semi-pro) that use Logic on a laptop the feature parity is nowhere there. They depend on tens of AUs ("VSTs") that aren't available on the iPad for example, on top of lots of other stuff.

Those VSTs won’t run on a push 3 either.

Of course ableton comes with a pretty good array of instruments and effects, so maybe this isn’t that big a deal.

Yes, the VST's won't run on a Push either.

But the context in this subthread was addressing the parent's claim that Logic on iPadOS has complete parity with Logic macOS and can replace it in its use - not Push.

Logic definitely has more plugins for way less money though.

FL's default plugins embarrass them both. I haven't used any Image-Line software in a dog's age, but I really miss the Fruity Loops compressor sometimes...

I found FL's plugins (default and extra) to be cheesy and too mainstream-EDM/trap/etc based.

I haven’t used it on iPad yet, I meant in regards to desktop.

Biggest issue on iPad is lack of device drivers. Class Compliant audio only gets you so far.

FabFilter? Eventide? Pianoteq? Sugarbytes? It’s starting to get decent out there.

Does Logic Pro support controller extensions? If they do, they could add "support" with an unofficial plugin like Bitwig or Reaper does. Something tells me the iPad+Push experience wouldn't really be a gamechanger though, at least right now.

Agree, I think it will be limited. However, I could see a niche where it’s a good way to play your tracks live. Maybe you’d have to bounce some tracks in advance if they aren’t iOS compatible for whatever reason.

I want to interpret this charitably, but I've travelled with touring musicians before (even Mac-obsessed ones) and none of their setups are iPad-ible. You might be able to get it to work with a 1i1o DAC for clean audio output, but... genuinely nobody I know would bother with that. The requirements for live performance are brutal, even this standalone Push would be borderline suicide to rely on for a show.

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