Xara wants our opinion!

[Gare]

Paul, I thought I'd left this thread, but something you said about low-cost apps struck me, and I'd like to provoke some thought here.

There have become several schisms in computing over the past decade, many of which have been spearheaded by Apple, Google, and Samsung. If one accepts that the new paradigm for computing is the cloud or portability or whatever, clearly much money has been invested in it, and consumers have returned the money spend by the companies on development. Apple had the largest cash reserve of any company, and at least twice as our U.S. Treasury Department...a staggering $160 billion, and Apple achieved this through innovation and redefining the Sony Walkman, the mobile telephone, and other consumer devices. I mentioned Samsung earlier, because they are exceedingly successful at copy-cat creations such as the Galaxy tablet.

Okay, one schism worth mentioning is between content creators and consumptive audiences. They use different technology and need different apps. For example, my kid brother just bought a Surface 3rd generation. Nice piece of machinery, IMO. He doesn't give a hoot that it's a Microsoft product; his Samsung died one day and he was going into withdrawal not being able to access YouTube. For my brother, computing is a consumptive hobby; he consumes data, he doesn't create anything, he collects pictures, he downloads "apps" (a term originally annexed by Apple, I think, but now defines all software), he's a happy sport with his consumer device. Actually, you could load and run Photoshop on his model, but again, that's not why he came to the "Tech Party"—it's email, surfing, and videos.

Me, I own a workstation, a heavy, large black lump that sits on the floor. I create content, I'm in the 10% at best, of people who own a computing device and what they do with it. For the price I pay for software, I don't call them "apps", and I really wish I could put a physical "bragging box" up on our bookshelf, but no one ships physical software anymore (okay, 2%), and our friends that come over are into consumptive computing and could care less about an AutoDesk 3D Studio Max box.

I think this schism alone is far greater than the Mac-PC nonsense. Let's get real: an experienced user can sit down in front of either UI and get productive within minutes. As Unix weenies used to call both Mac and Windows users, we're WIMP (Window, Interface, Menu, Pointer).

I have a strong desire to learn—that'll probably come after the fact—what Magix intends to mandate Xara developers to do in the near future. Is it going to be dumbed-down so it perfectly fits into the product line? Is that 10% pros, 90% hobbyists really true (would a survey reveal that?)?

A lot of us have invested serious time perfecting our skills with Xara. Am I pulling one way on the development rope, and Magix is pulling the other way?

I've got to get back to Xara and finish this month's Xara Xone stuff.

Professionally. :)

Gary

[Rik]

I thought an 'App' was mainly for mobile devices - mobile phones, tablets etc.

Whether it's on a mobile phone or a tablet, to me that doesn't matter.
What matters to me, is whether it has enough functionality to carry out the functions/tasks I want.
Has the App got enough tools for me to be able to create, what I want? If it's a drawing type App.

As to whether some things should be called an 'App' and some things should be called a 'Programme', that is quite debatable, I think?!

As to whether Xara/Magix are interested in our opinions? I don't know.

[pauland]

Apple and Microsoft both have Appstores on their desktops. Probably Google has for the Chromebook.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/w...-8/apps#Cat=t0

Of course, you can still sell outside of those desktop Appstores. For now, at least.

[Gamerprinter]

I'm not sure if that's absolutely true. AFAIK Magix now control the product set regardless of branding, with Xara staff doing the development. Someone will surely correct me if I'm wrong.

You are quite right, legally speaking, I'm just stating that I am a loyal Xara customer. I know Magix owns Xara now, but it didn't when I became a loyal Xara customer. My loyalty didn't switch to the new owners, just because... Now its only to the development team.

That's not something that's even been discussed here. I merely pointed out a number of low-cost applications that have emerged on the Mac because they indicate a trend: low-cost, very focussed apps that are all working in the space that Xara occupies. They may be on Mac now, but some will migrate to Windows. Xara doesn't exist in a bubble and if you were a Mac user you could be choosing between the Xara app and all those apps, all for a similar price collectively.

So I'm not seeing endless praise for a Serif application, and endless comparisons to Xara, and how Xara should do this and that like Affinity? It sounds to me like that indeed is what is being discussed. While I do indeed do some page layout and wish Xara could handle multi-page documents more efficiently, that's not my primary use of the application, rather its to make maps, and IMO, after 20 years of using other software, Xara is the best solution for my needs, bar none - it makes me a lot of money.

I'm not on the Affinity forum, rather the Xara forums, so I'm not so interested to continuously hear about Affinity, personally speaking.

[pauland]

So I'm not seeing endless praise for a Serif application, and endless comparisons to Xara, and how Xara should do this and that like Affinity? It sounds to me like that indeed is what is being discussed.

There's no praise for the Serif application, nor is there any comparison with Xara. Where is the praise or comparison?

What I am saying is that the Serif application, like others is focussed and marketed in a very differrent way to Xara and has been 'instantly' successful.

My point is that Xara will have this kind of competition and that the complacent ride it's had in many ways is over. Trends in software development are changing and people are being very successful with small teams and low cost software.

I've hated all of the Serif products, and the affinity product is a sea-change in they way they market and the toolset they produce. It's working for them and Xara better look out.

You can't consider what should next be in Xara without understanding where it sits with regard to competing products.

I deliberately mentioned only mac products because they aren't currently direct competitors to Xara, but they are coming.

This isn't about affinity or the other software products, it about where Xara needs to go to compete.

[fridolph]

I can't say anything about serif product since I haven't try it yet. I'm satisfied with Xara.

[pauland]

I can't say anything about serif product since I haven't try it yet. I'm satisfied with Xara.

That's great. I've hated every Serif product I've tried on Windows.

[handrawn]

well serif drawplus has a lot of issues usability wise, it is clunky and won't export vector as well as xara; does have some compensations such as brushes - and I upgraded to ver 8 because I will find the flood fill of bitmap line drawings and the smart size/rotations very useful [and they gave me a good discount]

affinity is another matter - affinity is a very nice user experience indeed and I am actively looking to convert my win7 to hackintosh [legally of course] so I can run my own copy; I don't and never did need all the xara web stuff so whereas a couple of years or so back I was not too fussed, now I am seriously asking myself why I should continue to pay for it with the expected upcoming options opening the market up

[Gare]

• On the off-topic stuff about competing programs: I agree with handrawn that the UI is clunky compared to just about every other vector program. It's strokes look a little more authentic than Xara's Pressure profiles, more like Creature House Expressions, and my impression is that Serif will continue to sell Serif Products and Affinity products separately and make no attempt to merge code and make a drawing program a unified bi-platform entity.

I'm not sure whether Charles Moir had anything to do with the early versions of Inkscape, but aside form a slightly wonky learning curve, it has some features I'd love to see in Xara, especially a scatter brush, where you can sample a shape or group of shapes and then scatter a bunch of them by merely dragging a nozzle-like tool. It's a neat and effective way to truly scatter randomly placed and sized element all over a page.

• On-Topic with the opinion survey:

1. How would you rate any other program compared to Xara for feature set? Illustrator? Inkscape? Affinity Designer? SerifDRAW? CorelDRAW?

2. How would you rate any other program as being geared and used by professionals? Illustrator? Inkscape? Affinity Designer? SerifDRAW? CorelDRAW?

3. How would you rank Xara compared to other programs for usability without reading the docs (which is what everyone does)? Illustrator? Inkscape? Affinity Designer? SerifDRAW? CorelDRAW?

For these three questions, please answer in this format, on a scale of 1 to 10, and I'll accept zeros and 11s, too.

Feature Set
Xara: 8
Illustrator 10
Inkscape 4
Affinity Designer: 9
SerifDRAW: 8
CorelDRAW: 9

Something like this appeal to anyone, to better express a real survey, its data, and usefulness if only in the Scare Factor for Magix?

My Best,

Gary

[mwenz]

I'm a half-empty sort of guy today.

Comment on #3. I think that an answer to this is confounded by the answers to the other two questions. That is, once an application has fewer features, capabilities and is still reasonably presented to the end-user, by nature its usability score would rise. I think that if vector drawing application reviews today are compared with similar reviews of say the early 1990s, the earlier ones were more comprehensive. Why? Easier to write a through review on something that has far fewer features than today's applications where there is an "everything and the kitchen sink" approach to features. Today, software appears more like it's a shotgun blast of features hoping to hit something that makes the greatest number of users "like" it.

Anyway, back to the half-empty thing.

#1. To truly do justice to #1, a person would need to be completely versed in all that those particular applications have to offer. A tall task. I have been using CD since version 1.2 and have no idea what truly is in CDX7, for instance. I could almost recite what was in versions 1.2 to 5, though. They were so much simpler.

#2. Geared to professionals? I don't really know what that really means. I see professional work done in them all...and/or hobbyists doing professional-grade work in all of them. I see the tool-sets and work-flows in each of those above that I do or have used as just that--different. If geared to the professional was defined as easiest to use with the least amount of thinking to get from started to finished, I would say XDP is as good or better than all of them (haven't used Affinity Designer, which will come to the PC btw). If the definition was limited to SVG output for web sites, InkScape would be at the top for me. If the definition was based upon the four biggies to me, Feature Set & Extensibility & Usability & Output, I would say Illustrator.

But as I mentioned concerning CD, I have no idea what all Illustrator can do as it has grown in features far faster than when I first used it in the mid-1990s to day compared to what I have needed to do with it. Because I create relatively simple vector graphics, XDP ticks all the boxes for me...even though there are better/faster/more extensible means of doing certain things in other applications. So while XDP may be my most used vector application, it may be combined in use with any of the above applications you mention.

Back to my half-empty cup of coffee.