Xara LX a dead project ?

**eobet** · 08 January 2007, 05:34 PM

I just want to chime in and say that I'm also a non-coder, Mac owner and I'd just as well pay to get a commercial Xara to OS X.

I don't trust Paralells, but Vmware Fusion has a beta out so I guess I'll put my money to a new XP license instead and use my old Xara X1 via that.

**ictmanager** · 10 January 2007, 10:50 PM

I am a Graphics teacher in the UK. I am also in charge of IT in my school. I have bought multiple licences for products from Xara Ltd (originally Computer Concepts): Artworks, through Xara, Corel Xara (sic!), Xara X, Xara X1 and Xara Xtreme. We use PCs in school, as do probably 98% of UK schools. Colleges are something different. In Art departments, generally Macs rule, for good reason. Xara, in all its forms, is the most capable and intuitive product of them all. No wonder (in my mind) that Corel did not distribute it widely. For my own use, I have a Mac, and absolutely love using OSX. The one thing that is missing, and I have tried ALL the other big Adobe, Corel, Macromedia etc progs, is an intuitive program for vectors. When I want to do ANYTHING, I use my Mac (17" Powerbook), until I need to do a vestor drawing, when I have to load up my PC to have the pleasure of using Xara, which I know so well. The fact that Xara now works with bitmaps and allows the use of Photoshop plugins is incredible to use. Some of the contributors here have suggested that Mac users are a different breed to PC users as there is a much lower interest in the community developing a program. Mac Users ARE a family type community with a mutual love of the technology, and I am absolutely in full support of the fact that if Xara did the conversion from PC to Mac, and sold it at the same price as the PC version, they would find a huge market for it. PLEASE find some time for your software engineers to do this, Xara, and let us know that things are moving!

**Steve Newport** · 11 January 2007, 03:10 AM

One look at www.iusethis.com will show the abundance of open-source projects available to mac users. A quick look at my most used apps reveals a few as well:
cMap [concept mapping program]
Desktop manager [key-activated desktop switching]
Disk inventory X [visual disk usage utility],
Google earth [free]
myNotes [intuitive note-keeping/writing app]
Quicksilver [launchpad, one-click style access to commony used folders, apps, etc.]
Sidenote [quick, drawer-style notekeeper]
Vienna [RSS aggregator]

These are all programs I use literally every day to some extent. But if you'll notice, they are all 'life' things; things to make a computer truly all you need to store thoughts, ideas, memories and access information and media.

Where open-source becomes less popular for the mac mind (and understandably so) is for the more complicated, R&D-driven pieces of software, or, Work software. When we're working on a project [of any kind] we want the creative process to flow without us thinking about the work it's taking to do such. The second we have an idea that's complicated to accomplish with our current toolset is the second we are dissatisfied with the tool. Using a drawing program should be as easy as using a pencil, that way we don't have to 'master' the program, only master our minds (that's the ultimate goal, isn't it?).

As of now, there are groundbreaking programs going in the right direction for 3D (Zbrush), Architecture (Sketchup), and 2D/Bitmap (Painter/PS)... all available for Mac and Windows. There is NO groundbreaking, easy to use, intuitive, well-thought out Vector program for the Mac. I've been lightly using Illustrator now for years now, and I can honestly say it hasn't gotten any easier. You have to formulate ways to accomplish tasks in Illustrator, instead of just being able to accomplish them. Xara is the Zbrush of vector, and the mac community would appreciate AND INVEST in the option of Xara. With Xara, I don't have to really think about what I'm doing, I simply do what feels natural and it somehow works. Anyone who's ever used sketchup extensively knows how I feel!

Granted, the average user of ANY machine spends $400+ to browse the internet and write documents. But I can assure you that what previous posts said are true, WE WILL PAY FOR SOMETHING THAT WORKS THE WAY OUR MINDS WORK, it's well worth it for me. I wish I had the interest to develop my own software, but code has never done it for me, give me some paint any day!

I did the whole 'switch OS's' every time I needed vector work done for years to use Xara, but I'm too spoiled now and just can't stand to work with windows anymore. So in the mean time I slave away in illustrator, checking back every once in a while to see if Xara's made the [smart] choice to put some R&D into a mac version.. I'd pay ever cent.

**Soquili** · 11 January 2007, 03:34 AM

Hello Steve,

It is good to see that you did not fall off the face of the earth

I cannot speak for Xara Group Ltd.

The decision to make a commercial Mac version may still have the same issues that were mentioned several years back. The cost in man hours would not be cost effective.

The Open Source initiative may have a Mac version in time, but from the development archives there was I believe one Mac developer working on testing and finding resolutions to reported issues.

When development of the open source project continues, we can hope that more support from Mac developers may be available.

**Steve Newport** · 11 January 2007, 03:56 AM

I do remember the issue years back. But I can't help but think it's bad business. I've seen one or two ads in my graphical browsings on the web for xara EVER. I haven't used xara since XaraX1, so I don't know where the program is at now, but the compatability then with other popular apps wasn't that great either.
Xara is a superior product, so my only assumptions is that not enough effort has been placed on marketing, universal compatibility, and variety in platforms... and I can only assume that if they did go out on that limb, the profits would well be worth it. I know windows dominates the UK, but market it in the US, that's the great thing about the internet! But I am neither a marketing nor business major, so I guess I'll leave that to those that are and I'll go back to making pictures and forgetting xara exists :-)