I will not debate about dongles, this is a long-time and passionate controversy, almost as famous as "analog vs. digital" or "software vs. hardware synths", or even "my synth is better than yours". There are pros and cons, and the fact is that this protection system has gained adoption from some major editors in the software music industry, and Arturia selected it as well, balancing on previous experiences (challenge response, original CD + license number).
On top of that, we cannot, as a user base, expect much change from Arturia in the future as their support for upgrades is horrendously slow
We are willing to change that, and wish to release bug fixes more often instead of rare, big & strong updates. Don't expect one version per week, though.
their actual support to other people (looking at the problems in the forums) is often sarcastic, unprofessional and unhelpful,
Probably because:
_ The forums are *not* the good place for technical inquiries (longly debated elsewhere), as each case often requires individual data that have not to be displayed here, among other reasons. However most common errors have their responses here.
_ Most of the inquiries could be easily solved in minutes by some users if they only dropped an eye to their User's Manual, or available docs in Resources sections, or in the Knowledge Base;
_ I assume sometimes to get slightly irritated when unfriendly words are pronounced, and use the right to calm down a topic with the adequate means, even possibly with a hint of acid humor. As a reverse consequence, you will notice there is a nice touch of free speech here, as even strong negative messages are let, and only 2 messages deleted in 2 years (strictly because of explicit insults).
and their development plans appear to be highly secret or non-existent.
We do not want to display our plans to the whole world, full transparency is not really desirable in an industrial context.
Hope this clarifies a bit.
