Why isn't Xara Designer Pro visible on Xara.com?

[RKissane]

As far a over price concerns,

For a while now Magix has had Designer Pro as a new purchase for $159.00 (US) with Panorama Studio. If you want to upgrade Designer Pro it is $129.00 (US) with ASEOPS11. In my opinion, get rid of the ASEOPS11 and give us a decent discount on the upgrade price.

I have been watching the price for a few weeks and Magic just keeps moving the date out a week when they say the offer is going to expire. So effectively Magix is saying the value of Pro is only $159.00.

Typically there has been updates to Designer Pro in March/May and around October. Once in a while bug fixes come out in between. Around July is usually a revision update. Rob was saying they expect an update in a few weeks which would be in keeping with the past cycles.

Ray

Ray.

[Acorn]

As far a over price concerns,
For a while now Magix has had Designer Pro as a new purchase for $159.00 (US) with Panorama Studio. If you want to upgrade Designer Pro it is $129.00 (US) with ASEOPS11. In my opinion, get rid of the ASEOPS11 and give us a decent discount on the upgrade price.
I have been watching the price for a few weeks and Magic just keeps moving the date out a week when they say the offer is going to expire. So effectively Magix is saying the value of Pro is only $159.00.
Typically there has been updates to Designer Pro in March/May and around October. Once in a while bug fixes come out in between. Around July is usually a revision update. Rob was saying they expect an update in a few weeks which would be in keeping with the past cycles.
Ray.

Ray, Magix has always done this. Remove the spurious offers of its software and remove the pointless M service (http protocol only / no cPanel / no email / ...) and the upgrade cost could be reduces substantially. 35% of new is fair. Over 50%, just park for a year

In passing I have Posted https://www.talkgraphics.com/showthr...ation-Versions.
It tries to show releases and patches (fixes) in a time context so you can predict when a new release might appear. sadly, not if it has any merit.

My suggested strategy for v17.0 is if the Update Service is about to expire, let it and buy back in at v17.1. Make sure you have used Download all to get all the on-line content onto your machine.
If you ignore the first major release and all its ensuring patches, v15 & v16 effectively had one or two feature additions in a year. Dig a little deeper and you see you are paying for a lot of Templates.

Acorn

[shiphen]

Re pricing, I would be genuinely interested to see who Xara/Magix think that their customer is (and is not) for XDP.

e.g.

Graphic designers?
Are they serious about poaching Graphic Designers? Given that no graphic designers I speak to ever seem to have even heard of XDP, and given Xara's failure to upgrade the UI for high res screens... Presumably not.

Engineering Designers?
If you get the grid set up sensibily, and particularly with the "snap to object" turned or from time to time, XDP can be made to make quite a good fist of engineering design, once you've learned it's quirks. BUT which engineer would ever tolerate lines with arrow heads where if you want arrow heads, they terminate boyond the end of the line?! So, not engineers, then.

Professional web designers?
I don't know if I am typical or not, but I have used XDP only in fits and starts. When I was a web designer, I used to use it for creating graphics (e.g. buttons) when I did web design. But I never used it to create web pages - the loss of control was way too great.

General Management - diagrams?
Then as I then moved away from the coal-face, more into general management I would still use it occasionally for random graphics. However over time PowerPoint seems to have become more & more what is used by general management, particularly in larger corporates, to create shapes & diagrams for their documents and presentations.

General Managment - text / DTP document
Clearly Xara is no competitor for msWord. Nor InDesign / QuarkExpress. Apart from anything else, the indexing/spidering of text by the likes of X1 Search is hopeless.

Casual Dabblers?
For the casual dabbler anything over $100 is way too much, no matter how good the product. Lets not forget that we live in an age where even $20 seems like quite a lot for a mobile phone app.

Honestly! Who is Xara supposed to be for?

[iamtheblues]

Honestly! Who is Xara supposed to be for?

Rich, (ageing) masochists?

[Chris M]

Rich, (ageing) masochists?

I resent that. I'm not rich!

[handrawn]

...

Honestly! Who is Xara supposed to be for?

Forgive me for saying so, but your post is very one-sided, and you have left out a whole sector of users that fit between 'management' and 'dabblers' who probably are the core users, and i would say always were, though on the forum they have become more 'website' than 'pure' graphics...

I am the first to point out the things i don't like, but I am also well aware of the great strengths of the program[s] - you have not even considered any of these in this post... still in your previous post you say it is a fabulous product, so you must be aware of them

answer to your question ? 'whoever finds it useful'

[handrawn]

Rich, (ageing) masochists?

depending how you choose to define the first and last of those terms they might apply to me - the middle term applies to everyone for whom the process has not yet terminated

if you mean rich as in 'has more money than they need[can use]' then nah, 'faid not....

and by definition, anyone who spends a lot of time here on TG is a masochist....

[shiphen]

Forgive me for saying so, but your post is very one-sided, and you have left out a whole sector of users that fit between 'management' and 'dabblers' who probably are the core users, and i would say always were, though on the forum they have become more 'website' than 'pure' graphics...

I am the first to point out the things i don't like, but I am also well aware of the great strengths of the program[s] - you have not even considered any of these in this post... still in your previous post you say it is a fabulous product, so you must be aware of them

answer to your question ? 'whoever finds it useful'

It remains a serious question. Who *IS* Xara DP for?

Xara seems to have evolved towards web design.... but clearly it can't be targetting graphic designers because
A) almost all of them would be on much higher resolution devices
B) probably the majority would be on Apple OS or using Adobe Illustrator

The problem with the "dabblers" market is that an increasing number of them will have high resolution screens and Xara will increasingly not work for them. But Xara is too expensive for the casual dabbler...

Yes there still are many strengths to Xara - although I fear those of us who are now old enough to remember the likes of the Xara Studio incarnation, may not have tried much of the competition.

I suppose it is exactly because of those many and various strengths of Xara that I find myself drawn back here every few months to (in effect) publicly hold my head in my hands and weep at Xara's apparent total loss of direction.

J

PS Anyone feeling rich? Maybe Xara just needs a change of management and I bet you could buy the whole company for a song...

[pauland]

I fear those of us who are now old enough to remember the likes of the Xara Studio incarnation, may not have tried much of the competition.

I have tried plenty of the competition, and use them.

Nothing has ever replicated the thrill of discovering Xara Studio 1.0 at a stall in a design-oriented exhibition in Islington, London, back in the day. I may even have been sold Xara Studio by Kate Moss..

Just by Xara's stand was a product that turned images into paintings. That impressed me no end, but I didn't buy it because the usage rights in the license put me off - I wanted to process home movies turning them into paintings. My PC would have been on fire!

I bet you could buy the whole company for a song...

I think not.

[handrawn]

It remains a serious question. Who *IS* Xara DP for?

Xara seems to have evolved towards web design.... but clearly it can't be targetting graphic designers because
A) almost all of them would be on much higher resolution devices
B) probably the majority would be on Apple OS or using Adobe Illustrator

The problem with the "dabblers" market is that an increasing number of them will have high resolution screens and Xara will increasingly not work for them. But Xara is too expensive for the casual dabbler...

Yes there still are many strengths to Xara - although I fear those of us who are now old enough to remember the likes of the Xara Studio incarnation, may not have tried much of the competition.

I suppose it is exactly because of those many and various strengths of Xara that I find myself drawn back here every few months to (in effect) publicly hold my head in my hands and weep at Xara's apparent total loss of direction.

J

PS Anyone feeling rich? Maybe Xara just needs a change of management and I bet you could buy the whole company for a song...

xara is now Xara GmbH, a startup company using venture capital, and based in Berlin - it's focus is on the cloud based app which is focused on 'creating documents' be they web as in websites, or print - they have just launched a new package whereby you can subscribe to the desktop as well as the cloud app as one

I do not think that Xara's focus was ever on the kind of graphic designer you seem to be talking about - sure some did use it, some swear by it, but Xara are on record as saying they never intended to compete with Illustator - you have sort of answered you own question here:

A) almost all of them would be on much higher resolution devices
B) probably the majority would be on Apple OS or using Adobe Illustrator

yes exactly and in respect of B) it was always the case, no one seriously pretended otherwise, although it did no harm to push the capabilities of the program as far as they would go in the advertising

I think that is worth repeating: Xara is not and never was targeted at high end graphics designers [except maybe in the very early days when things were less windows/mac] - I am sure MEB365 will come back on this if I am wrong - if it had been so targeted it would have been on apple

You are not going to get your 4K resolution upgrade any time soon because the target demographic do not need it [yet]

But Xara is too expensive for the casual dabbler...

so everyone who dabbles is poor - is that what you are saying ? ... come on....

Maybe Xara just needs a change of management....

It just had one of those, what it needs is lots of take up on the cloud + desktop app package by those who it is targeted for, and anyone else who finds it useful... then it will have money to grow

...and I bet you could buy the whole company for a song...

agree with Paul - if you look at what Xara now is, as opposed to what it was, they may just have got their act together and I hope they have