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Can the new XaraX CD be installed on Macs, if not, is there any future plans on this. This question is because most all graphics & design agencies use Macs for there work, and I'm sure XaraX would be more popular if we extended it to all the platforms necessary, thanks for your help
Steve Newport
Can the new XaraX CD be installed on Macs, if not, is there any future plans on this. This question is because most all graphics & design agencies use Macs for there work, and I'm sure XaraX would be more popular if we extended it to all the platforms necessary, thanks for your help
Steve Newport
good question Steve,
if XARA X was ported to Linux maybe it would be goodbye to crashes?......erm ok maybe not.
Are Macs as prolific as they once were in the graphics industry or are the PC's taking over the share? I am led to believe that $ for $ PC's are superior to macs...yes? no?
cheers
Eric
I believe PC's are cheaper, but I guess it's an unwritten rule for the graphics industry that Macs are the way to go!? However, 3D applications are almost entirely PC spawned and used.
Steve Newport
I use macs and pcs here at the university where I work. I've spread the xara word around through work I've done thats seen, so we're getting education bundles of the program, and other faculties are waking up too. The devout scotsmen in my midst do look rather glum when I say that a mac version of xara is nigh impossible, and become incensed when I suggest they sully their eclesiastical hard drives with windows emulation software. Sigh. Computers are tools, not religious icons.. but I've spent some time warring with service bureaus (all mac) trying to get a fair suck of the sav (antique antipodean expression) when dealing with them. I'd get comments like "oh, we leave all the ibm pc (read=corel) files until the end of the week because they are done by amateurs and usually need extra time. Get Freehand, its the industry standard".
Hallelujiah web.. no need for service bureaus and their snobby imagesetters. Freudhand?? get a life!!
Q.
http://www.Qdesign.co.nz
Maybe someone can enlighten me. In my few years experience of computers and graphics I have always heard about Macs being better for rendering graphics. Is this true? What is this based on? I have always had a PC, that is a windows based computer. I have no exposure to using a Mac or apple computer so I do not understand the differences. There are some good programs for UNIX/ Linux too. Does the operating system really make a difference ?
OS does matter..
When crashed, if I see a smiley face onscreen (or some cute disclaimer) I'm likely to hurl..
<font size="1">(.. computer, OS, EVERYTHING.. out the window)</font>
macs can be injurious to your health, equipment, career.
Q.
I guess I *have* to reply to this thread seeing that I am a Macintosh! My first computer was a 8mhz MacSE - I still have it along with the first powermac (a 6100/66). These days the macs don't get turned on much. Sometimes my three year old turns on the MacSE and uses the clunky one-button mouse to locate and open the games he likes. The 6100 gets even less use.
At one time I was a Mac-addict. I was in love with a vector illustration program called 'Dream' which was a pumped up variation of the original MacDraw. (Little known fact: the guy who wrote MacDraw is the same guy who created EBay). I was probably one of just hundreds of users worldwide who used 'Dream'. It was a good intro for me to vector object-based illustration software.
I still like Macs but am happy using a pc. I find the biases of both camps too extreme. I have no doubt that the skills someone like Steve is developing using a pc will serve him well no matter which platform he ends up working with in the future. Sure, get enough exposure to macs now (before the job interviews) to see for yourself that they aren't that different. To me the platforms themselves aren't important, its the ability to use your brain to develop a illustration. Of course, the software you use can make things easier or harder. IMHO the operating system is even less important. A good designer like Gary could probably develop quite a nice illustration with a program as crude and limited as Microsoft Paint.
Although there are still many die-hard mac-based graphic design firms out there, I believe pc users aren't completely shut out. If it seems like the whole graphics world uses macs - open your eyes wider and expand your perspective. Thinking that macs dominate graphics is falling into a stereotype that doesn't reflect reality. There are so many different opportunities. The world is your oyster - go out and find some pearls.
Ultimately what matters most is not what school you went to, the style of clothes you wear, or the computer you use - it is how good you are. How good you are depends on *you*. Push yourself, absorb knowledge, seek out mentors, and, open your eyes wide and see the wonder of life itself.
Regards, Ross
<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>
[This message was edited by Ross Macintosh on July 04, 2001 at 20:02.]
I think the most important is the perfect and skilled user, not the perfect system.
I know that it's my mistake that I can't get used to pshop and "industry standard" illustrator. But since I've got Xara everything looks so dumb and inefficient to me. Where is the problem? Please is there any serious article comparing possibilities and efficiency of Xara X and "Industry standard software" ?
[img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_frown.gif[/img]
I suscribe to Macworld and have owned Macs in the past. I say this because in spite of what people tell you about Macs and how stable they are, they crash just as often and even more disasterously than Wintel computers.
In the early 90s there was not comparrison between the Mac and the PC. This is when most designers and design professionals began using computers. Apple had the smarts to give Macs to schools so when the kids got out of school what kind of computer did they want to work on?
Basically there is no difference between platforms anymore. The major applications are written for both platforms and the files can be inerexchanged betweeen platforms more or less seamlessly.
The main difference between platforms these days is perceptual. Most Mac users still think we on the Windows side type in commands at the C:/
prompt.
Finally, and Thomas will probably jump in and post this before I finish this long-winded rant, Xara X can run on a Mac using a Windows emulator and Windows 98. It would run better if there was a native version, but the last I heard, and this was years ago, the effort to convert Xara to the Mac would require a lot more manpower than Xara currently has so I don't think we will see a Mac version soon.
On the other hand, the Mac has almost become extinct, compared to the number of people using Windows-based computers.
And finally, to paraphrase an old saw in Playboy, circa 1960, it is not the size of the wand that puts the rabbit into the hat but the skill of the performer (whatever that means ;-)
Gary
Gary Priester
Moderator Person
Be It Sever So Humble...
I seem to remember seeing a thread similar to this one a long time ago.
From what I remember, the Xara guys pointed out that much of Xara 2 is written using very Windows specific graphics routines highly optimised for using Windows and PC device drivers (which gives it its high performance) and that an attempt to create in the Mac would effectively mean a complete ground up rewrite.
Presumably this is the same situation with XaraX.
In my opinion we'd end up with two average products rather than one superb one if it was decided to create a mac version too.
James Frost
Gary's right. Xara X will run under a Windows emulator for the Mac (and although not as fast as when in a native PC environ, it's still damn quick). As for creating a native Mac version, the main difficulty is that the basic engine of Xara X is written in Assembler (very mac unfriendly). This is what keeps X compact and fast..and easy to use.
To do a native Mac version would literally call for a redesign from the ground up, engine and all. And once we get to that level, we would be talking about two fundamentally different programs, and the Mac version would prbably be slower due to the engine redesign...and cross platform compatibility between X pc and X Mac would be very difficult due to the different prgram architecture. In other words, passing files back and forth may be impossible to do without any errors/bugs.
The development team would literally have to double just to focus on a Mac version and they may never catch up to the PC version in terms of features since the lead time to completion would be stretched passed the horizon (verbal gibberish that means it would take a lot longer to build a new Mac product than it will to add more features to the current version of X, so the two products may never reach parity in terms of feature compliments).
Unless of course, you want us to stop future development of Xara X for the PC and focus on the Mac only product???
T
I might point out that the Mac version of CorelDRAW 10, which was supposed to be released some time ago, has not been released, nor do I have any idea when it will be released.
Maybe it's time for the Mac users to see the light and come over to where the action is :-)
Gary
Gary Priester
Moderator Person
Be It Sever So Humble...
Great responses guys! Some very good points. The whole reason I asked this is because I was at my Moms work the other day, she works at an advertising industry, and I was observing one of the artists for the day (Great job, isn't even work!!).
After seeing him work for a while I asked what vector program they used... He said freehand. So I was trying to sell him to Xara: I brought him to xara.com and showed him the works of Vladimir Konstantinovich then brought him here and showed him all you guys's stuff. After seeing him work in Freehand, it seemed sooo... unorganized and weak, and just knew Xara could do better, but this opinion was completely biased. So I wanted to let him try X out for a while to see if he liked it better and eventually get the company to start using that. Problem is, the whole company uses Macs [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_frown.gif[/img] ! Oh well, guess he'll have to waite. Thanks for the great discussion
Steve Newport
Steve
The problem with most design professionals is they are not computer and software enthusiasts. The use a computer to get their job done and what their software cannot do, they don't do.
I think in terms of keeping up with the state of the art, FreeHand (including FH 10 which I reviewed for Communication Arts Magazine--next issue) is light years behind. DRAW, Illustrator 10 and of course Xara X have much more evolved features. On the other hand, for someone in advertising, FreeHand is probably a good choice. It's text tools are very good, although maybe not as thorough as DRAW and Illustrator.
But more to the point, these guys don't spend time in conferences like this. They don't read computer magazines and most of all, they don't want to (god forbid) learn any thing new!
If the art director was creating web graphics, you probably would have had a better time getting his attention.
Gary
Gary Priester
Moderator Person
Be It Sever So Humble...
Question for Thomas: Sir, I read a while back that Xara was the result of 45 person years of programming. Do you know (or can you find out) what the current count is? I presume you folks put in a few hours creating the X version - hours probably not included in that old 45 person year number.
I have one more thing to add to my earlier post. When I used my powermac 6100/66 I had a 486mhz dos compatibility card in it running windows95 (I think). I used to run the first corelxara with the application residing on a scsi zip drive disc. Remarkably it performed reasonably well - all the problems I had related to the poor compatibility (ie weak printing) between the mac and the dos card. Because I couldn't print any of my xara creations it got me interested in web graphic development bacck in 1995.
Regards, Ross
<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>
nice to see comments from you sensible chaps to balance my rant.. actually vid editing on a mac is sweet, and I first started with photoshop 2.5 on a powermac. But like Gary says, macs crash spectacularly, you learn all sorts of new words.. and as for Freehand which I use for offset and some flash, (and I've done some very good work in it) - freehand vs xara is like stereo compared to a tinny little tranistor radio... you have the scenario of an expensive monitor, fast computer etc and the screen displays in freehand are antique.. crinkly, fuzzy, erratic zoom views.. you have to have faith that the design you see onscreen will actually look sharp, smooth, print beautifully.. and thats the problem. I dont have the faith. I dont think Steve Jobs is a god and I dont care about Bill Gates business deals. For a groucho marxist, OS devotion is one step away from flat earth enthusiasms for me.. Freehand, Illustrator, even draw, drive me nuts compared to xara. Freehand is more correctly called Freudhand.. Xara has this remarkable characteristic where you can seem to find your own way to do just about anything your design needs in the program. Just using the core toolset.
And as Ross says, its you the idea generator that matters not the computer you use. OS doesnt matter but often your choice of software does.
My first animation, me destroying the computer with a sledgehammer.. I did it in windows paint. I still think thats a cool program too. (not really but you get the point..)
Q.
Thomas: "Unless of course, you want us to stop future development of Xara X for the PC and focus on the Mac only product???"
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
I wish the Mac would die. It's a good OS and machine, but the existence of that platform is largely only a source of trouble - as anyone knows who has ever dealt with a service bureau. Just imagine all the duplicitous man-hours Adobe, Macromedia and Corel must spend just to make dual platform software. So I'm mighty glad that Xara is not wasting its resources on a Mac version.
K
Ooooooooooooooooooooh, wonder how long before this post is deleted FFS
Just lock the damn thread if you dont want anybody to reply
Take it easy please Frank.. ;)
You just got caught up in thread merging.
The other post was moved to the current 'Please Give to Mac Xara products' thread.
Your post then became irrelevant.
Moderation goes on all the time at TG, sometimes you notice it, mostly you don't :)
It's just very annoying when you see your own posts disappearing without any reason given.