Thank you for your input. You make a very good case, and we are seriously evaluating a Mac version for Axure RP.

I think a very strong business case could also be made for adopting Axure RP in a design consultancy... even virtualized on a Mac :)

 
I want to add my voice to these suggestions.  A lot of design is done on macs (and I'm in the US).  The virtualization experience is just not the same as having a native app.

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- Eva

Running a virtual machine constantly really isn't an option, no matter what the industry pundits tell you (especially if its Vista!). I don't mind it for occasional tasks and testing, but for every day apps they have to run on OS X. Maybe I just wasn't paying attention but I actually got all the way to the download page before I even realised this was a Windows only app! A Mac version would almost guarantee a sale from me, and I'm sure lots of others that maybe don't even know about Axure yet!

I run a usability firm in New Zealand (all Mac) and would buy for sure!!.

I would love to see a native OSX version of Axure with Pages Specification Generator and a Keynote Presentation Generator. OverSite, http://taubler.com/oversite/ may be a viable option until then.

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Ricardy Banks
WSI Certified Internet Business Consultant
http://www.easywsiwebsolutions.com

OverSite is not so bad, well worth its shareware price (I've bought a license). I managed to specify an entire project with it, but it wasn't easy. It's quite buggy and the HTML "rendering" if wonky. 

 The developer is very helpful though.

However, OverSite is not in the same league. I need the stability and consistency of Axure, on the Mac. 

Let me add another voice to the chorus asking for an OS X version of Axure RP. I've been using this tool for about six months at a web marketing firm. We use it to prototype every major project in considerable detail. We've started using it for usability testing of site prototypes.

We have a few Macs in the company and are considering more. The company historically used Microsoft technology to build sites, but no longer,  as we have switched to PHP frameworks. We now have the luxury of considering alternate platforms for productivity reasons.

 Axure RP is a crucial part of our workflow. And having it on OS X -- not running a virtual machine -- would be of great benefit.
 

victor:

Thank you for your input. You make a very good case, and we are seriously evaluating a Mac version for Axure RP.

I think a very strong business case could also be made for adopting Axure RP in a design consultancy... even virtualized on a Mac :)

Maybe. But it doesn't make me want to try out Axure very much on my Mac. There are after all some alternatives existing that are Mac OSX native, including ConceptDraw which has nice libraries for web-page prototyping. Seeing an .exe file is not very enticing. And then there is also the price-tag. For ~$600 you'd want something native to your environment and Parallels does simply not provide the kind of experience you'd want to live with every day in working with an application.

It would be much appreciated if there could be a Mac version. Why not start gathering peoples interest and allowing them to pre-order a Mac version? That way you could easily build a business case internally.

All the best,
Bjoern

 

i too am a die-hard Mac user but Axure is built on .NET, which largely binds it to Windows. i run Windows with Parallels and have no complaints. would i like to have an OS X native version of Axure? sure, but anyone who has done desktop software dev knows it's not so trivial - especially for smaller companies let alone big ones.

Omnigraffle and Conceptdraw can both be used to generate excellent diagrams and great wireframes but their prototype generation and spec-generation facilities have much to be desired.
 

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Disclaimer: I am not an employee of Axure nor am I compensated by the company in any way, shape or form. Rather, I have a vested interest in its continued development as an avid user of the application on a daily-basis.

Another call for a mac version here.

 

I work for an all mac (bar 1 PC) dev company and we're about to settle on Axure as there just anything else as fully featured.

 

This means we have to buy a licence of parallels and windows for every mac along with the Axure licence. Money that we would rather spend elsewhere!

Another vote for a Mac version. I'm currently using it in VMware, but I'd be more inclined to push it in our organisation if it was Mac native.

David, how do you find Axure in VMWare? I have tried it in Parallels, and its seems to work fine in full-screen mode, but when running it in "Coherence mode," which allows me to shuffle Windows and Mac applications, the window redrawing is flickery and annoying. Given that Axure is a very visual app, this is less than optimal.

Yeah, I'm posting also to help make a business case. Like a few posts I have seen, we are a small interactive agency where all our designers work on Mac, the vast majority of designers I know work on Mac, in fact I'm under the impression that most designers work on a mac. 

Parallels and VM work in a pinch but are hard on system resources, require an extra steps when setting up and cost money. I don't think I can justify purchasing software that needs to run in a windows environment, there are too many roadblocks involved. No matter how good your software is, to demo it I would need to demo Parallels or VM as well. It seems unlikely your demo will ever even get installed. 

Another argument for a mac version is the community. It's tight, and Mac users don't search out or attention to PC software, regardless if we can run it. 

I'm a former developer familiar with both Windows and Java programming paradigms.  I suspect that the "business case" problem being referred to stems from the necessity to completely rewrite Axure to have Java at it's core.  This is a daunting proposition for an application that is in production on Windows and likely making the company a fair profit.  A project to port the core runtime to Java (read: Mac OSX and Win compatible codebase) is not only questionable in terms of cost/benefit but also in terms of the risk of failure.  Axure probably is a Windows development shop, with most of its collective knowledge base in application development for Win32, either on the .NET runtime or in C++, which adds a R&D resource problem (hire or contract).

So, while we can't surmise the mindset of Axure's product management, I suspect the more critical long term decision is whether to build out the current product's feature set to further compete in the marketplace.  Keep in mind that some of the heavier hitters in the market (e.g. iRise) also only run on Windows and they've had a large amount of success.

All that being said, this is a growing problem for Windows software development shops as Mac gains traction in the business world and design firms seek to move off the more expensive Windows development platforms.

One more vote for Mac version. VMware/Parallels + Windows Licenses nearly double the price of Axure for Mac users.

(Business case? I'm sure Mac share among web developers (your primary audience?) will only grow. The ease of local server, development tools, OSX, virtualization and integration between these make it a Swiss Army knife of web development.)