hifred
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Posts
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Joined
Everything posted by hifred
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@Ben although the 3D graphics market is a lot smaller than the entire graphic design market quite a few apps you keep calling niche products likely sell far more units than Serif. Maya is used in the majority of films you have watched in Cinema since the early nineties. I have not been yelling "Port to Linux, forget anything else" here, did I? I was just surprised that you guys obviously aren't at all aware of the role Linux plays in VFX and couldn't resist leaving a comment. I'm afraid I'm looking in the wrong place here. Affinity was announced as "unashamedly pro" but now you insist on the $50 hobbyist/prosumers market + price-tag and on thinking small. The Suite of graphics apps which had the potential to make me leave Adobe simply had to be available on at least Win+Mac for compatibility reasons – Linux was a welcome addition. A 96 bit graphics engine, consequently exposed to the user again was mandatory, Nodes as an alternative UI to Layers were again welcome. With anything less I can stick to CS6. -
@00Ghz All I wanted to do is correct Ben's initial statement: There clearly is a market for commercial software on Linux. As soon as a statement is proven wrong people start saying that this doesn't count / that this is an entirely other industry / that one can not compare things. At Autodesk, at the Foundry one will have been in the same situation before. Is it really worth it? What's pretty obvious is that Autodesk as one of the largest software makers in the world doesn't port + support the outcome for a mere handful of users. It has to pay off, they are the first to discontinue products, as they did with Softimage and many other products. Thus far it seems to work out. That all being said – to make me consider Affinity it was enough to port to the most widely used operating system. Have a nice day all, I'm away!
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You know that I can not deliver hard numbers. None of us can. No Software manufacturer publishes details on licenses sold, let alone their distribution to various operating systems. I just wanted to state that a payed market for Linux products clearly does exist, which you denied. t's pretty obvious that Photoshop has a larger market than say Maya – but with some hundred thousand units the latter sure isn't exactly a niche application – also Modo is very widely in use. Then again there's 3DCoat, made by just a handful of people, which costs less than 400 dollars – they had support for Linux almost from the beginning on (and very likely with less than millions just for Linux in the pot). Most of the mentioned apps admittedly use a common interface for all OS's and don't waste precious developer time on making the program behave diffferently on every operating system, so that they feel "native". We seem to look at things from very different perspectives. If you manage to make a multi OS Suite which can cope with the smaller Adobe Suites (PS,Ai, ID) I would consider $ 500 perfectly fine, I don't understand your current price point anyway. There's a lot of professional users who have payed thousands for Adobe products: They are not searching for a cheaper product than Adobe CC but for an equally good product suite which comes with perpetual licenses and gives continous access to intellectual property.
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A lot of expensive High End 3D graphics applications are available on Linux (as well as on Win+Mac). They are in use in high level Studios around the world. My painful gut feeling is that you at Serif only have the "classic" 2D graphics segment on the radar, but the VFX and CAD market needs 2D graphics apps too. One needs consequent 32 bit per channel support here – at this point there's no indication that you also develop with this potential userbase in mind. Some examples for propritary + commercial Linux software, most of these programs cost four digits for one seat, some even 5. The full The Foundry product range: Nuke, Mari, Katana, Modo and others The full Next Limit product range: Maxwell, Realflow, XFlow Autodesk Maya, Mudbox, Motion Builder and others SideFX Houdini Blackmagic Fusion 3DCoat I am not even a regular Linux user, but this statement really deserved a correction.
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Please don't interpret what I say – this has proved not to work. Your speculations about my motives don't work either, sorry.
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Lets please agree that we look at the problem from very different backgrounds and that we draw different conclusions. Neither can I see cloud services as universal collaboration problem solvers (for a bunch of reasons) nor would I personally profit from switching to the Mac (for an even greater bunch of reasons). I also judge on Adobe quite differently – they managed to run the Creative Suite for about a decade and without any doubt could have continued. Just look at their fiscal numbers - they are the 7th greatest software maker in the world and employ >11000 people. What they now do is economically brilliant of course, as it guarantees a continous stream of money and limits support to just the current version number (which is huge). But it's highly unetical too. Anyway - I'm out for now.
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Then one still needed to exchange data with colleagues, who sit in front of another os. There is exactly one cross platform offering in the 2D graphics field, made by Adobe. Ideal? You must be joking. With CC Adobe effectively has set up a system which binds access to data (= intellectual property) to continous payment. When a CC customer decides to stop paying because the recent development direction is irrelevant for his work – all installed software expires. It may be that one can open .psd files or .ai files with 3rd party products but this with complex content inevitably is tremendously lossy. Other files as written by Indesign, Adobe's video editing products or Web-Editors can't get opened with anything else. One essentially loses access to all work files.
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There's certainly many firms which profit from dividing disciplines as clearly as your firm does. And there's many who don't. Here's a typical job posting for an architect, here's one for an Industrial Designer. They are not looking for an entire team, they ask a single person to combine all these skills. It is of course still possible to continue saying that I'm seeing things the wrong way... Or that certain industries should reorganize their workflows – but my time for senseless disputes is rather limited.
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Any Industrial Design Studio and Architectural Studio combines artistic as well as technical computing needs. Both industries aren't exactly what one could call a niche. Yes, it may well be, that a specialized machine operator isn't the one who besides CAM programming does a lot of artistical vector or pixel editing. On the other hand, especially in smaller offices people have a lot of responsabilities –personally I have been involved with all the mentioned and many other things. Making what Vector and Pixel editors can do available for direct machining is not my interest and I didn't express this anywhere. What I explained several times already is that such offices besides possibly running machines also create a lot of graphical data, posters, documentations, books and brochures, websites, video clips. This data needs to get shared and processed by team members with various different professional backgrounds, responsabilities and - yes -also hardware preferences. In such contexts it has proven useful to have at least the two most important os's supported as trying to run a highly diverse enterprise on just one os is a darn unrealistic goal. It likely is quite another story with the streamlined CAM business your family offers.
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3D-tools aren't only used for making art in terms of graphic design in the broadest sense. In terms of software sales the 3D- graphic design field is small in comparison to the manufacturing field. Autodesk, a firm nearly as big as Adobe creates several of the most popular 3D modelling applications, such as Maya, 3DSMax, Softimage etc. only make 8% of its total revenue in the entertainment field. See also this graph pubished by Autodesk here. But Autodesk of course also have a lot of tools for Architecture and Industrial Design under their sleeve, such as AutoCAD, Revit, or Alias and Inventor. There is an acceptable choice of 3D modelling tools intended for creating film, games, advertisment and artistic illustration which always had a Mac version or got ported. The offering is still a lot broader for Windows computers, important third party plugin products, such as certain render engines or some hair generators aren't all available for the Mac, so for specialized workflows it will be pretty hard to entirely avoid Windows. In Architecture there's a handful of capable Mac tools but the industry has traditionally been a Windows domain. Specialized Generative Design tools are limited to Windows as well as as the majority of tools which deal with actually building something. As soon as a structural engineer tests the strenght of some beams or the construction manager orders windows and doors by using the a manufacturers planning software one clearly is in Windows realm. In Industrial Design there's some Mac options but thus far no widely used product. The high end section of CAD-applications (programs which typically cost 5 digits per seat) are windows exclusive. The offering dries down to zero for specialized analysis and manufacturing purposes. Of course windows software makers were free to port their products over to the Mac, but they will only do so if maket forces them to do so.
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I'm afraid you said this just a few hours ago... Then you simply keep repeating that releasing Affinity to Windows was insanely difficult and would break everything while even developers say... Also I do not think that I even implied weaknesses of the Mac platform. What I said is that there's large areas of computing where the Mac doesn't play a role as there's obviously not enough customer interest in having software for mold filling analysis or milling simulation or etching circuit boards on the Mac. Sorry but discussions on that level are no joy. I'm out.
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KipV, what you state here is far from true. Porting years old code which has originally been developed purely for Windows and which heavily relies on technolgy which has no Mac equivalent is a tremendous task and equals rewriting major parts of the program (the same is true for porting older Mac programs over to Windows) Incorrect. Affinity is written using more modern methods, which in its genes doesn't require any particular OS. This was stated several times by staff members in this forum. Solely supporting the Mac was a strategic choice, it wasn't a consequence of programming methods used. You are correct that there's quite a few CAD applications for the Mac, but the huge majority of software tools dealing with physical production of things (I'm talking of many thousands of different software programs and whole software categories many people probably never heared about) are only available on PC. Volkswagen or BMW could by no means build their cars based on the Macintosh platform and the cabinet maker couldn't operate his milling machine driven by an Imac. Just visit a trade fair which focuses on consumer good production and count the Mac software you see here. I bet it's only IOS on vendors telephones. This all isn't supposed to say that the Windows OS is technically superior in any way! All I want to point out is that there's a lot of software genres which can only get accessed from Windows as there's no Mac equivalent.
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Let's leave Linux out of the equasion for now... I only wanted to express that the os landscape in the graphics industry is no monoculture. Also I'm not so sure the about the unwillingness of larger offices to change programs. A decade ago the DTP market was owned by Quark and they quickly lost it because someone made a far more attractive offer. Even large automotive companies change their CAD workbenches - which has an impact one can hardly describe in just a few words, as thousands of employees in dozens of industries do "everything" with that software-platform from the very first brush stroke to CAD-drawings, engineering, project documentation and product lifecycle management. If the pain is hard enough people actually do change.
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Rui, also os-conversion advise makes no sense. :) What os makes sense heavily depends on your industry, and preferences of your coworkers, your location in the world and your personal preference. I'm perfectly fluend with the Mac but PC is the far more useful choice for my daily work. See also my answer here
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Yeah, I agree. It was just nice if the silly Windows (users) bashing stopped.
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I am quite surprised that this question comes up at all! Here's my take: I can imagine freelancers or smalish offices which concentrate on text and graphics production staying purely on the Mac platform and have no problem doing so. But any somewhat larger Studio I ever had to do with had people working with quite a mix of Mac, Windows as well as Linux operators. Studios which deal a lot with 3D-content such as architectural offices quite likely need Windows too. Sure, there's capable CAD programs for Mac but one might badly miss graphical programming environments such as Grasshopper3D or Generative Components which simply have no Mac equivalent. Also for information exchange with other offices one can hardly avoid Windows as Microsoft has dominated this industry for decades. Industrial Design Studios likely have milling machines in their workshops and need to generate CNC- Toolpaths or analyze parts with Finite Elements Calculations. Again, these are areas where it makes no sense to try finding a suitable Mac product. There's none, the whole tool category is practically nonexistent on the Mac side. Both offices might have a renderfarm, a bunch of beefy server computers used for digital image calculations. It will likely run Linux. These Studios all produce tons of graphics, still imagery as well as motion graphics. In such contexts it of course makes great sense to be able to exchange psd files and being able to open and edit them both when sitting in front of a Mac and a PC. I currently don't work in such a large office, but still profit from Adobe's multiplatformness on a daily basis. As a PC user I frequently get sent .psd's and .indd (Indesign) files created by Mac users. Its fantastic that I can simply open this content losslessly, may save my changes and finally send the files back: Knowing that my coworker won't encounter any issues whatsoever.
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It for any software maker should be relevant information to learn what is considered missing by existing users or potential users. Even hearing the same issue brought forward repeatedly, by varying posters can be meaningful and impact decisions. As this forum is read by staff and staff members answered in this thread, this seems to be an appropriate channel. I can however not see anything remotely useful (for anyone) in efforts to discredit serious requests by windows users, as brought forward by some current Affinity users.
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This is really a weird phenomen: Why on earth software users at all feel inclined to defend actions of software makers? I don't get this. Why doesn't one leave it up to Serif staff to comment? As Adobe ceased selling licenses and rolled out their rental only model disappointed customers used all feedback channels to make Adobe reconsider. The reaction? Numerous fellow users who already happily rented CC obviously felt the the massive urge to explain how wise this step by Adobe was and how terribly wrong people who prefer perpetual licenses were, and hesitant to change and whiners and so on. Not all of these "advisers" managed to stay calm, indeed it often got pretty nasty for most odd reasons: Nobody had actually said anything against happy users of CC. And here? Graphics professionals on windows complain about Serif's platform decision. And again people can't resist defending a company which makes a software they happen to like and can use as they happen to sit in front of a supported os. And it gets nasty too, although nobody had said anything against the qualities of Macs or Mac users. People who wish the Affinity makers to reconsider and to develop a windows version address the makers of this software. The opinion of loyal customers who for whatever reasons wish Affinty to stay limited to just the Mac platform is irrelevant for this very discussion. Whether you think that Serif could move faster when they concentrate, or that there was no serious user base on windows or that windows users suck per se. It's utterly irrelevant for the discussion.
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Thanks Ben, time to move on then.
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@Ben, you present a new, highly interesting suite of graphics tools in public. Your website and all 3rd party reviews point out its Mac exclusiveness and it's being tailored to this OS. Reviews don't stop here but divide graphics users in Win=Consumers and Mac=Professionals, which neither is an accurate nor a psychologically smart statement - both towards existing Serif Plus customers and potential new windows customers. For anyone who... 1) has just a very basic idea of how software is created nowadays and 2) understands how Adobe's cross-platform-ness contributes to their market position... it simply has to cause massive head scratching to hear that a firm starts yet another single platform project. It takes delving deeply into these forums to at some point read that you at Serif are actually writing neutral code and for the time being have chosen to just expose it to one OS. That's actually quite another story and one of the things I wanted to know. @rui_mac Well I know quite a few deep graphics software packages which were created cross-platform from ground up and are coded by less than a handful of people. It seems to be quite doable. Who still needs 32 bit os-support these days?
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Matthias, you are putting forward standpoints which partially were valid 10 years ago. Nowadays OS- agnostic code development is a reality, it's available for years. This means that newly developed tools will run on any mayor platform without any hickups. Many software developers work that way – and according to gmcg Serif uses this strategy too, with Affinity. Given that statement is correct Serif artifically restricts this software suite to the Mac at this time. It is not correct to state that MacOS has global performance advantages over Windows due to more advanced technology. Sorry, that's just not true. If you don't believe me, just do a Google search on that topic. And it belongs to the realm of speculation that starting Windows development introduced an overall decline of Adobe's software quality. Don't you think that a firm with >11.0000 employees and and a revenue of > 4 billions could deal with instability problems? (just for the record: I see no such issues).
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Childish battles on preferred operating systems and even assumtions on creativity and mentality of their respective user base don't help anyone. Not here, not anywhere else. Indeed – and as pointed out earlier – there's no sound reason to restrict the development of Affinity just to the Mac.
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You indeed managed to squeeze the only reasonable interpretation out, but it definitely requires more than just a bit of reading between the lines. I didn't follow along closely and hence didn't read anyone stating that their new code is meant to be os-agnostic! Given that your interpretation was correct one certainly could deal with this topic more elegantly. At this point a group of windows customers who don't fall in the target group of the PLUS product line gets attracted to Serif with the announcement of Affinity (often - probably for the first time) and turned off again right away. Having to wait a bit was quite a differenent story - releasing on one platform first, getting feet wet and at some point making the product available on additional platforms isn't rare at all. cheers!
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Hi developers, I only registered to this forum in order to quickly express my stunning disbelief about Serifs platform decision. You create a promising and contemporary looking modern product line which is clearly geared towards graphics professionals and really limit it to just the Mac? You do this in 2014 with a wide array of mature cross platform software and interface development tools available? You want to address graphics studios who boycott Adobe's forced rental contract just with the Macintosh platform in mind? You create a comprehensive new suite of Pixel and Vector tools and decide to disregard Adobe's unique selling point: To be the only vendor worldwide who offers a 100% identical suite of graphics tools on the 2 most important operation systems? You have the fantastic chance to unify your already highly diverse product portfolio but instead decide to deal with the same development tasks twice, in two entirely separate product suites: And and you call this more efficient? What firms do is of course entirely their business – but I can't bend my mind enough to remotely follow this logic. Also the option to see Affinity features eventually dripple into your Windows tool Suite holds no promise. A wasted chance.
