Re: Are people losing interest in Xara products?
I've been looking at the surface pro and the main reason is that I'd be able to install and use Xara software on it. My thoughts are it would be great for sales calls, I could show a client their ad on the spot and make edits as we discuss them. Its difficult to carry around and set up a full sized laptop for a quick meeting with a client in a store. Right now it's the price tag $999.99 CAD and other expenses that keep cropping up that are holding me back
Re: Are people losing interest in Xara products?
My stepson came down today from Hollywood. Talked about this with him. In the entertainment world, it's smart phones and tablets. He says computers are used in post-production, but tablets are doing the job for most everyone else. And, he says, why not, since most people have no need for an actual computer? Which set me off on a rant about how if younger people don't have skills, they'll lose out... and he replied that they all believe they have the skills, since they can look anything up on Google, and this works OK until they actually have to produce something. And he replied that our manufacturing sector jobs have gone from 24% to 8% over the last ten years, so it's not like they have to learn very much to get the service sector jobs that are left. Just get a degree in Communications or something equally meaningless, like Gender Studies.
We both agreed that our most popular tools say something about our society, and as long as we can get by selling little electrical gadgets to each other, we can keep the ball in the air. As for Xara products, here's hoping the Surface Pro drops in price! Too bad they didn't put real Windows on the cheap one.
Re: Are people losing interest in Xara products?
A lot of non-manufacturing jobs are also moving east. I know that in the creative industry a lot of 3D and special-effects houses have been downsized or folded in US and that comes from a mixture of drop in demand/increased efficiency/moving to lower cost economies outside the US.
There is a huge dependence on on Asian economies in manufacturing these days by the west.
Communication skills may be more applicable than manufacturing skills at the moment in the US. There's little point in anyone coming out of education these days with a manufacturing skill if the manufacturers are all in Asia.
3D printers look like they will provide a bit of a manufacturing re-birth - bringing down the costs involved in creating prototypes. The world is changing fast.
Gender studies? Hmm. I thought everyone did that as a hobby.. ;-)
I think the west needs to get it's manufacturing mojo back and this is all now heading far off-topic.
Re: Are people losing interest in Xara products?
Well, I am certainly not losing my interest in Xara, but I have been somewhat busy lately.
I sort of rebuild my house: stripped my living room and my bathroom - put in new wiring, plumbing (yes even in the living room, to get hot and cold water upstairs), installing a new bath - with jets :), plastering, wall and floor tiling, new ceiling in the bathroom and restoring the ceiling in the living room to show more of the old wooden timber (old-ish farm house :) ) et cetera. Still need some time to paint and have to put in a new wooden floor.
Next to that, I have a 40 hrs/week job, am the family cook (yes, that includes groceries ;) ), accountant, part-time housewife (e.g. I wash and iron my own clothes), dog trainer, janitor, handyman, gardener of a 1000 m2 garden, poolboy, father of 5, husband of 1 ;), volunteer at a Buddhist institute in the Netherlands (helping out on stuff like rebuilding their new place, designing decorations, attending work shops)... oh and of course digital thangka painter ;)
In my spare time, I redecorated my thangka work shop, just for the fun of it ;) so I can now use it as a small meditation centre as well.
In the near future, I might be giving some courses on digital Thangka drawing, using Xara. Will keep you posted!
I know, not much of an excuse :P
Re: Are people losing interest in Xara products?
Isn`t a part of the new users in Magix sites? Since they have 'taken over' Xara. So the same line of product also exists now under the namebrand Magix. Or are these new users redirected to this site too?
Re: Are people losing interest in Xara products?
I believe that without taking a fairly comprehensive survey, it’s impossible to definitively state that people are or aren’t losing interest in Xara products.
On one hand, if you judge a product solely on how effective the marketing is, I’d venture that the design software we call Xara is in stronger hands with MAGIX than it was with The Xara Group, whose core competence can be argued to be engineering, although they did very, very well all on their own for more than a decade. Marketing—selling a product—has its own skill set, and all you have to do is look around at other products to accept this. Many, many terrific products have fallen by the wayside due to lack of marketing muscle.
On the other hand, with only a few exceptions such as Poser, a software that has survived four ownerships, most products have a life as strong and as long as the company that makes the product. And companies, like governments, exhibit one of two growth models over time. There’s the ebb and flow model, which Microsoft goes through—first they’re popular, then they lag behind, then they come back stronger. Then there’s the life cycle model: the rise and fall, typewriter companies, companies that depended on carcinogens in their recipes, and companies that just did a slow-motion suicide due to inept management. Looking back to the first day I used Xara in 1995 (I think), I’d say the company is in a stronger position today, and that it appears to have a long-term ebb and flow model as businesses go.
Do I think people are losing interest in Xara? Me? No. I wouldn’t be writing this if I felt disinterested. Xara has two very strong things going for it: price, and speed. The world is never going to run out of novices, or “accidental art directors” at small businesses. For these people, Xara is top shelf when they’re comparing it to image software at Walmart or in the Tiger Direct catalog. And for people who have been using a PC for more than 20 years and know their way around programs, Xara fills a “bang per buck” criterion when you’re looking for a design program that isn't in a suite that costs thousands of dollars, that has good community support and documentation, and that has more than 75% of the tools you need to get a day's work done. You stay in a program=you get work done faster.
Finally, the new coin of the realm is Time, not Money. When you have more time, you can always make more money. But you can do neither if a program has “feature-it is”. You don’t have to dig through submenus and sub-submenus in Xara, and you don’t need three different tools to create a curved spline.
I think “The Press” might be eclipsing the interest in Xara, not in reality, but in the amount of advertising a company with the resources like Adobe Systems can throw out here. It’s very hard to hear the quiet voices of artists who earn their daily bread with Xara, when Photoshop has become a verb (to create an illusion in a photograph) we hear in movies, read in newspapers, and accept as a mainstream software, like Windows.
I’ll wait patiently until MAGIX gives a serious public reply to the ugly true-ism a lot of us use to describe Xara: it’s the greatest little design program no one has ever heard of.
—g
Re: Are people losing interest in Xara products?
Initially I had been impressed with the easy of use, cost and quality of Xara WD 6-7-8 but the program is turning me off because to keep up with stuff like Wordpress and Joomla you have buy updates and add-on tools. Also, no Mac version is ridiculous to say the least. A huge number of Mac Based Designers would jump on board and add XARA to our tool list. I use it under Bootcamp and Parallels but Windows is so clumsy for graphic design I keep looking of alternatives.
Don't get me wrong I want to love XARA, but I feel unrewarded for my loyalty so far. Why can't I get occasional free updates to WD premium for instance? Why isn't WD9 around $20 for customers who have upgraded each year?
Re: Are people losing interest in Xara products?
I want to love XARA, but I feel unrewarded for my loyalty so far.
Loyalty? I think you might have bought it because it's good software at a good price.
the program is turning me off because to keep up with stuff like Wordpress and Joomla you have buy updates and add-on tools.
What updates and tools do you need to buy?
Windows is so clumsy for graphic design
That's something I've never heard before, from anyone. I run Xara under parallels.
Why isn't WD9 around $20 for customers who have upgraded each year?
Probably because their developers like to be paid.
Re: Are people losing interest in Xara products?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
fostermedia
...Why isn't WD9 around $20 for customers who have upgraded each year?
Maybe a sliding scale of costs, to reward those who purchased previous versions?!
That way, you keep loyalty, if that's worth something to the company.
Re: Are people losing interest in Xara products?
Xara already discounts upgrades, isn't that incentive enough to "stick with the programme".
Software development is expensive and $20 - what can you buy with that?
If I was at Xara HQ and heard that users thought the efforts of their development over the last year was worth $20, I'd think that was pretty insulting.