I fee like the news section of the new Home Screen is just mainly ads. I mean that’s really what all “company news” is. It’s something to tell customers or potential customers about your company and/or your products.
I am aware of the fact that I can stop the Home Screen from opening on startup and can just opt to not use the Home button from that point on. But I’d prefer to be able to mute Steinberg/Yamaha and just generally stop them from spamming me in my plugin regardless of which features I use.
I want the deal to be: you make a product, I buy it, and then you STFU until you have an update at which point you can contact me via our agreed upon method of communication. Which is probably set to “none”.
But everyone seems to be adding news pages (and e-stores – I have an Arturia plugin that displays a shopping cart button at the top) to their plugins now. And since I use Cubase, I’ve already been subjected to company news earlier when I opened Cubase. Like seriously, shut up.
I’m probably just getting old. For example, I also wouldn’t want Steinberg to connect my products to TikTok either, but I’m sure there are probably people reading this who think that would be wonderful and are hoping Steinberg adds that feature in their next update. (and don’t you dare, Steinberg!) 
Is this happening? I guess I should go back and read all the fine print in those ‘user agreements’.
I agree…I don’t want this sort of thing in ‘producer’ suites. It’s one thing if it’s ‘free software’ aimed at ‘content consumption’. It’s a whole different beast if that junk is packed into ‘production tools’ and any parts of it are ‘enabled by default’.
I’m not a fan of the cloud/web when it comes to production software. Distribution, cloud backup, and marketing are best left to ‘other complementary products’ that are OPTIONAL to buy/install/use.
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No, I was giving an example of something that an old person like me would not like. You must be old too.
- I’ve edited for clarity now.
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I guess I’m ‘old’.
I don’t see why anyone of any age would want social media ‘back doors’ as a compulsory component to a content production suite though. It’s a security nightmare…
I’m still a bit miffed at needing to be connected to the internet at all times to keep getting ‘permission’ over and over again to run stuff. Also pretty annoying that plugins that used to ‘open instantly’ when I stomped a foot pedal for them now cause ‘busy cursor’ and take like half a minute (I suppose they’re getting ‘permission’ to open from the internet first? Weird, because if I roll back to the old dongle versions they open ‘instantly’.)
I’m with you 100%. I’m talking about age because I do think that as companies look towards developing and marketing to a younger and younger customer base, that age group seems to be more and more “born into it”. Being connected to the internet at all times is just a way of life and not a big deal to them. So I think that’s how it’s going to be and I’m just going to complain about it – like a grumpy old man – forever.
The thing with news and e-stores is that I doubt it’s hitting their servers anonymously. (though I have not inspected the packets, so this is just speculation) So when it loads the company news, it’s likely sending your unique ID in its HTTP (assuming that’s the protocol being used) request for news, which is itself probably collected as analytics data for the Marketing, R&D, or whatever departments need it. In other words, now Steinberg is watching whenever I open HALion. Which is creepy. But that’s the world we live in now. I’m old enough to remember a time when everyone wasn’t constantly collecting data about my every move on my computer, phone, and car. The younger ones are just like, “Whatever old man. Who cares?”
Side notes: a colleague from work told me that his teenage son’s friend got in his 2012 Jeep Wrangler (base model) and couldn’t figure out how to open the window because it had a manual lever that you have to turn, and when they showed him how it works he thought it was the funniest thing he’d ever seen and took a video of it.
In the 90s, I listened to my dad’s “old music” from the 70s. But the 70s was only 20 years ago back then. 2003 was 20 years ago now. I thought I’d always be on the cutting edge since I like electronic music, then I heard dubstep and realized I like “old people electronic music”.
I’m realizing that it doesn’t take as many years as we think to become the old guy in the room.