"Professional" software

[RacerX]

Just finished reading about how Macromedia was incorrectly claiming to have the first vector based application for Mac OS X with Freehand. When confronted with the error (Stone Design has had a version of Create for every release of Mac OS X all the way back to the first Rhapsody release), they changed the wording to include the word "professional". This, of course, should come as GREAT news for Adobe, because they should be able to say that Illustrator is the first "Professional" vector based apps for Mac OS X when they finally release it. What can Macromedia say, from Adobe's perspective Freehand is no more "professional" than Macromedia considers Create to be.

Macromedia should have had to pay for the rights to say they were first by having beta versions with every release of Mac OS X, instead they were one of the firms that said they wouldn't port their apps to Rhapsody (forcing us to wait two years for the final version).

The reason this is an important issue is that Omni, Stone, and Caffeine where constantly working on their apps for an OS that had NO users (and therefore no one to really sell to) only to have Apple push them a side for bigger software firms. A perfect example (if the one above isn't good enough) is how Internet Explorer is now included with Mac OS X and OmniWeb (which was include in the developers and Server releases) was not. Microsoft wouldn't touch OS X until it already had a user base. And then they would not REALLY invest any major apps until long after the final release. Yet Microsoft is treated like a first class OS X developer by Apple and Omni is pushed out of the limelight.

We shouldn't forget Id either. Omni had ported Quake III to DP4 and PB, and was about to upgrade the port to 10.0... but wait, 10.0 actually has customers! Id rushes in to do the "final" port (which is still very low on their priority list) so they can charge us (someday, in the future, long after when Omni would have finished their port).

Lets look at this from Omni's point of view... they had the ONLY web browser for the platform for the last four years, they had the ONLY good game(S) for the the platform (both Quake II and III), and soon this platform is going to be on a large number of Mac users computer. that would more than make up for the complete lack of customer base for the last four years. Then the big players who wouldn't work with the platform during it's development all of a sudden want center stage for their "better-late-than-never" software!

On a happy note, Macromedia just layed of a large number of workers and had a large drop in their stock value. What comes around goes around.

There... I feel much better now that I've gotten that off my chest. Thanks.

 

[AdmiralAK]

Well a few points to consider.
1st of of, the definition of professional software. Would that be software used by professionals for the most part? If so simple little programs that we "simpleton home users" use are also proffessional. I am not talking about photoshop, I am talking about the cheap free/shareware altrenatives like graphics converter ( a great program in my mind! ), and pagespinner to name a few. I think the term "prooffesional" is just one of those terms that adds to the overal price of the software. Another of those words would be the word server. I am not a linux fan but you can run a server with it. All the software comes with it, but M$ and Apple byndle a couple of more apps with their OS and make it a server version and change $400 for it ?? Weird!


2nd and last. I use omni. Screw M$, they make me sick, and people who support them rabidly make me sick. Yes It's a great business when marketing and sales are concerned, but as a user I am not interested in stock price, earlnings and growth. I am interested in results. Omni rocks. I think that these "small" companies should get the limelight for supporting OS X for all these years.



Admiral
--> wasn't omni a browser for OpenStep as well? I am not mistaken am I ?, if so they have been with dear ol' steve for a long long time <--

 

[endian]

the definition of professional software. Would that be software used by professionals for the most part?

I think this hits the nail on the head, though maybe not in the way Admiral intended. Professional software is software used by professionals - in graphics, I know of quite a few people/companies that use Illustrator or Freehand (usually both) and none that use Create. It's not a Carbon vs. Cocoa issue, GraphicConverter and PageSpinner are in the same boat - they aren't professional programs, because professionals don't use them, because there are more established alternatives available. When you're using a tool to make your living, price doesn't really matter - you get what you need.

Notice that the above has very little to do with the actual software: Create, GraphicConverter and PageSpinner are all great apps.

wasn't omni a browser for OpenStep as well? I am not mistaken am I ?, if so they have been with dear ol' steve for a long long time

Yeah, it was/is. I think Omni still has its old Rhapsody/OpenStep oriented site up somewhere on their server.
Tangentially, the web was *invented* on a NeXT cube using OpenStep apis. I think on the w3c site Berners-Lee talks about how he was a physicist, not a progammer, and he couldn't have done it using any other environment at the time. Think of the ad: "The World Wide Web. Made possible by Apple technology"

 

[endian]

Yet Microsoft is treated like a first class OS X developer by Apple and Omni is pushed out of the limelight.

I think this is exaggerating a bit. Omni apps are still on iDisk, Apple promotes them through the OSX web site, Apple engineers participate heavily on Omni's OSX-dev list (although Apple just started a cocoa list of its own.) To say that Apple is pushing Omni away is simply not true.

Look at it from all viewpoints. What was Apple supposed to do? Before Carbon there *was* no other browser to bundle, so Apple shipped OmniWeb. Today the fact is that OmniWeb simply doesn't work at all with a large number of sites (including Apple's own bug reporting page) and renders others incorrectly. OSX without Internet Explorer is a much less usable operating system. Apple made the right choice.

In the end, everyone wins. Apple gets 2 browsers for its OS, including the industry-standard one, MS gets to advance one step closer to world domination, and Omni still gets more exposure and more users than they've ever had before.

Don't think I'm bashing Omni here, I'm a registered OmniWeb user and it's been in my login items for a long time. But until I can check my email at usa.net, and report bugs at RadarWeb, and so on, IE's icon is going to be right next to it in my dock.

 

[RacerX]

Okay, so many I'm blowing things a little out of proportion. Yes, former NeXT software firms had it MUCH easier when porting to Yellow Box/Cocoa than any of the main stream Mac development firm would have... but none of them would even try until Apple invested two years in creating Carbon. Additionally, some of these former NeXT software firms have had to deal with quite a few changes over a short period (moving from NextStep to OpenStep to Yellow Box to Cocoa) without a large customer base to support them. Lighthouse is a great example of a firm with great software that wasn't able to continue on, and AFS is still not sure if they are going to release WriteUp and PasteUp for OS X (they released a limited port for Rhapsody of both). I just hate to see the little guy get run over for firms that are still not supporting OS X 100% (not that most of them were supporting the MacOS 100% before).

As for the professional standing of software, I look at web designers as being up there with other areas of graphics and illustration professionals. Consider WebObjects as a starting point (we generaly support Apple here). If we wanted a complete web solution with WO we could use Photoshop and Illustrator on the same system as WO if we used Windows NT, but to get the same out of a Mac you would need to have been using Mac OS X Server 1.x with TIFFany and Create (both are charging professional prices I might add) to get the same single system solution. As this would bring up the question, are you a professional only if you work with Window? Are these web designer any less professional because they wanted a complete alternative to Windows? And by the same argument, are WE any less professional because we use Macs as a complete alternative to Windows?

GraphicConverter is a nice piece of software for the $35.00 you pay for it, but TIFFany had better be industral strength at $555.00, and the same for the Stone Design Suite at $1000.00+. Macromedia had never heard of Stone Design software... understandable considering that macromedia is new to this platform, but to correct a mistake by inserting "professional" into their address at the WWDC is just a pompous if you ask me.

One a side note, I'm most disappointed with Adobe though. Display Postscript (used in NEXTSTEP, OPENSTEP, Rhapsody, Mac OS X Server and Solaris) is their technology, yet the best they could do was an early version of Illustrator for NeXT systems, and Photoshop 3.0.1 (currently running for $800.00) and Illustrator 5.0 for Solaris systems (another platform that can run WebObjects). And other than Acrobat Reader, nothing for Mac OS X. That is pretty weak.