Participating Frequently

Question

Framemaker for the Mac. WHY NOT?

Forum|Forum|12 years ago
April 24, 2014
8 replies
6696 views

I have a Mac and use the Creative Suite software on it. Yet, when I went to go find FrameMaker, I have found it is ONLY available for the PC. Why?

So I go look for a solution and find that FrameMaker 7 is the last version available for the Mac. Ok, I still have my G4 as well. So I figured I will look to get a copy of v7 then. Nope, can't find it on the Adobe site. Not only that, but it's a pain in the "blank" to find a viable copy to puchase other than on amazon for $4K.

If Adobe is going to stop making a version of their software then I can understand the cut. But to stop making it for one system and not the other? At the very least, you could continue to keep support for, and make available (at a reduced price hopefully), your older version for the Mac (or PC if you cancel a PC version of something), so that users can still use the software if they have the system to use it.

A huge amout of Mac people use your software. Apple computers are still looked at to be the BEST graphics hardware around to run. So when someone thinks "graphics" often, the Apple computer is what comes to mind. When they think Games, the PC. One is for work, the other for play, when it comes to Graphics. So, what's with cutting Apple off for FrameMaker.

So I have a suggestion/request. IF your going to keep a software package going for one system, and not the other. Then at the very least, keep the Last Version of the software for the other alive and supported.

You have FrameMaker for the PC. V12.

You stopped for the Mac with V7.

Go back and resupport, and sell V7 to the Mac folks (at a reduced price since it is older). Then, if possible, get V13 or 14, or what ever, updated to work on the Mac and PC. Then, offer the Mac folks the upgrage pricing to go from 7 to 13 (or 14, or what ever).

For those anti-mac people - For the record, I am fully experienced using both the PC and Mac. I own a mac and prefer the Mac for all my Graphics Needs. So please don't suggest I get rid of my Mac and get a PC. Won't happen.

tlmurray23

Inspiring

When it comes to app development, the big bucks are spent in deciding how it does something and what it looks like. Once that's done, it's code. Adobe can't tell me that they couldn't put two Mac programmers in a room, shove them Hot Pockets, Jolt Colas, and the Windows version with it's code, and say "make it happen." Four to six months, tops. As expensive as FM is, Adobe would make their money back fast. The scientific community is full of Macs, and they don't want to rely on VM+Windows to run FM.

Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Community Expert

For large, publicly traded corporations like Adobe, it isn't just about making a profit--it's also about the amount of profit to be made. I would think that Adobe has looked into the whether a Mac or Unix version of FrameMaker would be a profit center or not.

That being said, I too would like to see a Mac version of FrameMaker (again), but I'm not holding my breath. When I see a 64-bit version of Frame on Windows then I might hold out some hope. At that point, the entire code base would probably have to be rewritten making a Mac version easier. (I'm not a programmer, so I speak from the position of ignorance...) For Mac users, it could be easier to to update InDesign to add missing features; InDesign hasn't really had any major long document publishing features since CS3.

David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)

S

Stefan Gentz

Legend

A lot of interesting speculations and assumptions in this thread … :-)

Generall speaking: At Adobe we never say never. This is also true for a FrameMaker for MacOS version. If there is a substantial interest in the market for a FrameMaker for MacOS version, we will look at it. Currently, the situation is simply, that the number of tech writers working on a Mac is vanishingly low compared to the Windows community. And those who are doing tech writing on Mac are usually happy with InDesign.

Adobe is heavily investing in FrameMaker for a few years now. We have done some fundamental changes in the last two releases (2015: new typographic engine to support all languages/writing systems of the world; 2017 - new interface technology) and worked a lot on the core platform of FrameMaker in the background. We are investing heavily again in the next release as well, and I’m confident that a lot of FrameMaker fans will be very positively surprised and excited – and not only about the many improvements and enhancements. Also not just because it will fulfill a lot of long-term community wishes. But also because of the technological jump the FrameMaker platform itself will make.

Stay tuned, friends … 2018 will be a great year for FrameMaker. Maybe the most exciting in last 20 years or so of FrameMaker!

N

nowade

Participating Frequently

It is a pity that Adobe did not put some of their investment into making

a) downloading FM or any other product a simple one click and

b) what's with the 1.x Gb ? Honestly, you need over 1 Gb to run FM.....gawd!

N

nowade

Participating Frequently

PS....don't take too long Adobe, I'm getting old!

D

Doc Raman

Participating Frequently

LOL...people still posting about FrameMaker. No Mac version = no version at all.

Bob_Niland

Community Expert

re: No Mac version = no version at all.

Unless you want to run a VM, that's pretty much the story. Curiously, if we consider a remark in the basenote here: "Then at the very least, keep the Last Version of the software for the other alive and supported.", Adobe did just that for the Sun Oracle Solaris platform. You can still buy FM8 for that, from CDW if not other resellers.

So why not FM7 for Mac? Two main reasons suggest themselves:

1. Unicode (which didn't appear until FM8)

2. Platform ISA

FM7 doesn't support Unicode, and would be useless with any modern fonts (translates as: major support headache). FM7 for Mac, as I recall, was compiled for the Power instruction set architecture, and newer Macs are x86 ISA. Does current MacOD still emulate PPC?

tlmurray23

Inspiring

Something Adobe might be missing -- or better yet, ignoring -- is where costs come from. During development, a great deal of time, and thus money, is spent deciding how it's going to work, and that part is done. A handful of good coders and some Hot Pockets could turn this into a 64-bit code base that could compile for the various *NIXes and throw on the proper UI in no time.

I also could not help but notice that one of the questions on one of the Adobe surveys about Frame asked "what do you want to see?" and one of the check boxes was a Mac version.

D

Doc Raman

Participating Frequently

I still miss FrameMaker every time I have to type a document of any sort. A real pity that Adobe bought it and killed it, as they did with so many products over the years.

Since I'm not the CEO of Adobe I can't make a definitive statement, but I'll say that you will never see a version of FrameMaker for the Mac.

Bob_Niland

Community Expert

> ... but I'll say that you will never see a version of FrameMaker for the Mac.

I won't bet against that. As I recall, big part of what made the Mac unattractive for Adobe to support was the ISA churn. If I'm not mistaken, the last native FM code for Mac was for the 68K. You had to run in 68K emulation on PPC, and still do now on x86.

It's also interesting that FM is still 32-bit code. The platform it started on (Sun, also 68K then) went 64-bit (on SPARC) a decade before Windows did, but even Windows has now had 64-bit variants for 9 years. I'm guessing that the code base is contaminated with 32-bit assumptions and is far from a simple re-compile for 64-bit. /* since nothing will ever get this big, we'll just use bit 31 to flag ... */

MichaelKazlow

Legend

I run FrameMaker under Windows using (Parallels on one machine and Virtual Box on another). Would I prefer a Mac version you bet. Not going to happen anytime soon. FrameMaker under Windows on Parallels and VB is very usable. My biggest complaint is that i preferred the keyboard short cuts, but I have gotten over that. The old Mac code is too old to port to current machines. It would require nearly a complete rewrite. Which might be a good idea even under Windows, but isn't going to happen anytime soon. Frame 7.x-Frame 12 all work under emulation. I'd rather have it work under emulation than not at all. I have been using Frame since 3.2 on a Mac. We just have to get used to some programs are not available on a Mac and others are not available under Windows [BBEdit, Graphic Converter, AppleScript, OmniGraffle, OmniFocus).

Bob_Niland

Community Expert

> The old Mac code is too old to port to current machines.

It's not just a codebase problem. It's a platform market problem.

Frame's ostensible competitor has a codebase that's some 15 years younger, and it's also Windows-only (and somewhat arrogantly oblivious about it - they don't even tell you what platform you must have to run their stuff).

The question becomes one of: what are the demographics of future content-creator platforms? Some of the platforms that FM used to run on (various Unix RISCs) are now entirely gone. The abortive port to Linux failed to become a product (might have been intended to fail). Desktop Mac may or may not be a key part of future Apple plans.

Windows, alas, is being massively bungled by Microsoft, who arguably accelerated the demise of the desktop PC with Windows 8. A c|net news article today is headlined "New Microsoft VP consigns the PC to irrelevance". Well, you know who to thank for that, Mr. Elop. Sure, content consumer computing is increasingly ISA- and OS-agnostic. Consumer code needs to run on ARM and x86, on at least 3 different OS'es.

Adobe is in the content creator business for revenue products. Creator development/authoring platforms are no longer the same as consumer platforms. Adobe needs to keep an eye on where this is all headed, and needs a Plan B in case MS continues to screw up desktop Windows. If CS and TS were to be ported to a second platform, it's not clear that Mac is the optimal target. It might be to Linux again (whether Android or some other distro is an open question), perhaps on ARM-64. Does Linux have CMYK model yet? or color management?

F

FieryPantone

Legend

Managed to track down the "Microsoft VP" story, and I see it isn't all bad –

"The vast majority of people […] haven't been exposed to Windows or Office, or anything like that, and in their lives it's unlikely that they will," he said.

:-}

M

Mike Wickham

Inspiring

When someone thinks "graphics," they may think of Apple, but they

probably aren't thinking about FrameMaker, whose graphics capability is

little changed since the 1990s. There is no support for transparency or

actual layers, and FrameMaker still wants to pump graphics through the

Windows GDI, which converts CMYK to RGB. (This latter problem can be

overcome by using EPS or PDF graphics, which pass around the GDI when

passed to PDF.)

I imagine that the main reason they don't sell FM for Macs anymore is

that there were too few Mac users to justify further support. Jeff is

right, though. Lots of people run it comfortably in virtual machines on

newer Macs. So you are not out in the cold.

Mike

Jeff_Coatsworth

Community Expert

First, you know that this is a user to user forum, right? Nobody from Adobe is “officially” looking at it to respond.

Second – there are still lots of FM people running Macs – they’re just running it in VMs like Parallels, etc. now instead of natively – what’s the big deal?

M

meterit

Participant

VMs like Parallel totally crash my MAC is the big deal

Jeff_Coatsworth

Community Expert

Sorry, but if a VM is crashing your Mac, then I would have to say that you either need a beefed up Mac or something else is messed up, because lots of people are running VMs just fine.

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