Will there be a Mac version coming out any time soon or is there even a possibility for there to be a Mac version?

This question has come up numerous times on all the XSI/Softimage forums in the past two years.

The answer, done by Softimage ppl, to this is NO.

Please search the forums and Internet on this and be amazed how quickly all this turns nasty.

rob

I’ve asked this question to several SoftImage staff directly. And the answer was indeed no, *but* that I wasn’t the only one asking for an OSX version.
In addition to that, their advice was to by all means keep asking.
The Mac platform is seeing significant growth and AutoDesk seems to have noticed this as well, judging by their most recent porting efforts of some of their other products. If enough people show a genuine interest in having their products available for the Mac, eventually it will make good bussiness sense.
So much to some individual’s dislike, I for one will keep asking this and will advise anyone else with similar interests to do so as well.

SoftImage is the only software package tying me to Windows. If an OSX version were to come along I’d drop windows faster than a loaded grenade and sing AutoDesk’s praise every time I’d start up SI. :D

LoneDeranger 06 July 2009 01:27 AM

In addition to that, their advice was to by all means keep asking.

really ? ... so, +1 !
thomas

So… like everybody is asking for say… the last 5 years.... ;-)

During the MS & Avid years yeah.. not much chance.... Who knows Autodesk might listen. :)

I never understood why the Linux and Windows crowds are always so violently opposed to a developer being asked to support the Mac. They’ve got their nice SoftImage workflow going on their preferred platform. Why would they want to prevent Mac users to enjoy the same benefits? People can be so selfish.

rork 08 July 2009 05:00 PM

So… like everybody is asking for say… the last 5 years.... ;-)

One reason I could think of for the Windows- and Linux-crowd to “oppose” a MAC-version would be the fact that porting an application takes a lot of time and work to get it right and the aforementioned “crowd” probably fears this will negatively affect the further development of the existing versions, as the development team at Softimage can only do one thing at a time (they’re merely human)! If this is a valid reason for Softimage itself to “oppose” a MAC-version, however, I can’t really say. Maybe it’s just, that they deem the potential MAC-market for (X)SI too small to effectively be worth the investment… ;)

The “other” Softimage community: si-community.com

I’ve been running Softimage on a Mac using VMWare Fusion booting off the Bootcamp partion. It has tolerable speed for the learning/fiddly stuff. When I need a full render, just start up the Mac in Vista native mode off the same Bootcamp partion.

Works both on an older MacPro (2x2.66 GHz Xeon) as well as the latest 17” Laptop. Agreed that a native OSX port would be preferable.

Softimage is a complex Windows application, and there are no plans to port it to the Mac.

So how does the Linux version factor into this?

luceric 16 July 2009 12:38 AM

Softimage is a complex Windows application, and there are no plans to port it to the Mac.

Sure it’s difficult to port application. Somehow Maya works just fine on Mac.

I moved to Mac for compositing work. It just works better, even with slower processor. Still I have to have a Windows box sitting around just for XSI.

If someone at Softimage started porting in 2006 when this question was first introduced it should have been done by now. Instead someone thought it’s better to waste time on Linux? Why is it good (or profitable) to have XSI on Linux? I don’t know anyone who use XSI on Linux? Do you?

Anyway I never managed to get a good stable XSI no matter how much I spent on hardware… Dell, HP, ATI, Geforce, Quadro… With Mac you will have a stable platform, without a need to make it good on every peace of crap people buy (like I did)

I understand why this conversation gets ugly… it is ugly when no one listens. That’s why people switch to Maya ... well… Autodesk wouldn’t mind :)

Take care Luc, I know you read everything (and do nothing about it)

	Video

i have a mac and i never use my pc except when i want to use SI. Mac is so much better. Please make one for mac so i don’t have to turn on my pc anymore and just sell it to someone.

Yes Luc might read all of your comment, but have you read his???  I suppose you want SI completely rewritten from scratch?!?

sssR 11 March 2010 08:36 AM

Mac is so much better.

Sorry for my ignorant question (I’ve used Mac/OS only once at a friend of mine) and trust me when I tell you this is a genuine question:

Why is Mac so much better? Are you referring to the actual OS or the Mac system?

I hope my questions are not betraying my stupidity regarding this subject.

On the Mac topic: The Mac loyal are that and lots of people are switching to OS X running away from Windows. Linux as a platform still scares away the less-than-technical in the computer ecosystem and they go Mac. Macs are more about a well laid out and un-intrusive experience, bordering on the minimalist and with a user-centric approach opposite window’s engineer’s mentality-approach. Both are valid but some people prefer to be able to tweak (and break) away and others prefer the comfort of less options as a trade off to stability.  OS X gets full on revisions at a faster pace than Windows because the hardware base is well known and documented so you have less variables and a more predictable platform to develop for. That is not to say that users don’t install a bit or two of extra hardware and that custom interfaces are out of the question on OS X.  They both happen but the stability of the OS for the most part stays there. WIndows has a bad reputation in terms of stability mainly because of poorly written drivers, even when it is a good platform. Both Windows and OS X are completely different beasts to code for.

I would actually jump at the chance delete my windows partition on my mac for good if Softimage was ported to OS X , that and UDK although I understand that one might happen. Valve is bringing Steam to OS X so one down, two to go (in my case)

My thoughts on the MAC question go along the following logic: It’s not simple and as a software project manager myself I can tell you that porting is not easy, library availability aside. I understand.

I’m sure in this day and age you could probably do a switch to some open source libraries that could do the trick but you’d have legal wrangling to take care of. Also there is the issue of developing and maintaining a codebase that can be cross platform compiled, right now it’s Windows and Linux, add OS X and you are increasing your development overhead, the conversion of the source code to something more portable will give any developer a huge headache. You need to go back and clean lots of code to do that. You’d probably have to find more guys just to fine tune the Mac side of things because I’m sure Autodesk will not want to stretch it’s Maya OS X team thin and I guarantee that the first few iterations of Softimage for OS X will be either glitchy or slow, just like Maya. Maya has come along nicely on the Mac and the benchmarks that I have seen show that it is only marginally slower than the Windows side, but this is at least 6 years after the initial port. There would almost invariably be a feature freeze thrown in for good measure, just to make sure all platforms play the same way before adding anything new that could potentially break it while doing the switch. The list goes on so I won’t bore you.

This is just how it looks like from where I’m standing and I felt like saying something because when LucEric said that it’s complicated and I read (and this is an appreciation, nothing more) what seems to be some people getting angry about it, I don’t think that many people understand just how complicated it can get. You’re talking a code base worth years, even decades of development, on a tight rope on a hunch that the OS X port will sell enough licenses to actually warrant taking such a risk. Sounds like a fun time too, if you’ve ever worked in software development and like it as a job you might understand.

But I think it is a worthy gamble and Autodesk should go for it. Softimage started in IRIX so it would only be natural for it to come to another UNIX-compliant OS. I mean, think about it, IRIX was made for content-creation types and so is OS X.