Will there ever be a Mac version?

[Ken Anderson]

Hi there!

I've been using Xara products for years, starting with Extreme, and then obtained the original Web Designer in 2009. After ten plus years of hand-coding, it was a wonderful discovery, and I continue to use it. I've gotten several other folks started, too, and they also like the program.

One of my users has found a long-term contracting gig with a very large international company, supporting one of their websites ... but the whole department is on Macs. She is now using one as well, and would like to know if there's any chance there will be a Mac version some day? She doesn't want to load software to make her Mac emulate a PC.

What, if anything, is in the long-term plans for a Xara web development package for Mac?

[gwpriester]

Probably no Mac version.

Xara is a small company and a Mac version is not simply a port over of the current application. It has to be coded from scratch.

It makes more sense from a resources and financial point of view to put their emphasis where their largest market is, Windows.

[Ken Anderson]

Thanks Gary,

That was my guess, but figured I'd get a definitive answer from one of you folks who are closer to the company than I am.

I think it's smarter to be the BEST software in their target market, where other graphics software is neither as good nor as affordable.

Will pass along your comments.

[gwpriester]

Before Xara was acquired by Magix, there was both a Unix and a Mac version in development, but I am not sure how far along they were with either when Magix decided against developing these two products.

[tovokas]

Reviving the dead here, but it's a bummer if the Mac isn't considered a viable market. For a variety of development reasons I've spent the last six months converting my workflow over to the Mac, after nearly 25 years on the PC. And I've learned that the one thing OSX really needs is a program like Xara. There's Illustrator and a number of elegant, but limited programs like iDraw; but nothing in the middle. And while I have Illustrator as part of the Creative Cloud, and I've tried, oh have I tried to make it work, I've finally determined it's just an irredeemable hunk of crap-weasel. Lots of incredibly cool features, but an absolute nightmare to work with. Gradients and transparencies? Good heavens. Seamless node manipulation? Argh. Create hot-keys for combining and cutting shapes? You'll need to record an action. Zoom to object? Still not in it. I thought they were joking on that one. It would seem the elegance of Xara would be a perfect OSX fit...

That being said, since Xara is currently indispensable to my work (and being my very last PC-only hold-out), I've created a virtual XP machine to run it in VirtualBox. Properly configured, it's pretty seamless, and I've gotten real work done lately. A native version would obviously be preferable, but it works very well.

(And I second Gingerbearman's call for Crossfire cooperation. Crossfire is a utility to run PC apps natively in OSX, and Xara runs well, with a few glaring problems. It would seem just a little communication between Xara and Crossfire folks would produce a working solution, with very little investment in time...)

[Sheff]

I've never understood the logic: If art and design professionals prefer to use a Mac, then we'll be exclusive on the PC. It would make sense if Xara integrated well with 3D apps which are better on the PC rather than on a Mac, such as 3DMax or Maya, etc. but it doesn't. Xara is the only app that keeps me using a PC. Otherwise, I might have made the jump. But I'll stick with Xara on a PC for as long as it's practical to do so. I think Xara ought to develop an Android version for Samsung Tablets as there a huge lack of good vector apps in the Play Store. Then that would be one more reason not to need a Mac. I'm planning on getting the Galaxy Note Pro pretty soon. I know Adobe Ideas works on the Note 3, and I'll try it out on the Note Pro. When I create a design in Adobe Ideas, and that design has alpha, it saves to the cloud and opens up nicely in Illustrator. Copy/Pasting the objects to Xara loses all transparency. It's really weird that an Adobe vector product for a tablet does transparency better than Xara.

[tovokas]

I do the same thing with my iPad and Mac versions of iDraw Sheff. All the files are saved to the cloud, so I can work on something on the desktop, save it, and then seamlessly open it on my iPad. I'm starting to get used to this type of workflow: it's liberating and inspiring. The SVG files that iDraw creates import into Xara pretty well, but I'd love to see the day when all the programs are able to seamlessly share all the elements correctly based on standards: transparency, gradients, drop shadows, etc, so we can just pick up a file and start editing with whatever we're using.

I know it's too much to dream of mac/mobile/whatever versions of Xara, but it sure feels like seamless interoperability is the way of the future, especially for creative work.