I'll be honest, I've never particularly cared for Apple's design software. They're just way too widget happy, not enough power user interface inclusions. I find a program is best when it has ways of doing things that are very obvious, but maybe not the fastest, but also much more efficient ways of doing things (keyboard shortcuts, selection tricks, etc) once you really get the hang of it. And even the power users can ease into the territory they're less familiar because hey, with complex design programs like these, no one knows everything! (except magic dave). FCP was "okay" back when I used it (vers4), but I found Adobe's interfaces to be cleaner and more friendly toward accelerated use, plus have lots of nice little interface features that take care of the unimportant things. Back when I started my job using Premiere Pro 1.5 (it's on vers7 now, can you believe it?) "Premiere" was pretty much a bad word in the video industry, but I had used FCP, the darling of the day, and I knew otherwise, and now look... FCP is the laughing stock of the industry, where-as Premiere is now the new darling.artfarm1 wrote:Like many others, I love Apple computers and gadgets and was thrilled and amazed at Apple's offering since they came out with OSX Jaguar way back when... but I seem to dislike Apple software more and more. Especially when it comes to the interests and needs of the professional market, and for the needs and interests of any people who really use and rely on their computers for daily usage besides the razzle-dazzle of 'social media' or having the ability to publish your latest 'opus' of loops or iphone 'major filmaking'.
Apple make layman things, sometimes they're pretty good at being power-user friendly, but only some of the time. I think generally their OSs are quite power-user friendly especially compared to microsoft. Windows always get this credit as the "power user" OS of the two, and frankly, that's a load of BS... microsoft has bloated the thing beyond recognition with gizmos and gadgets and reminders and yadda yadda yadda. However irksome sometimes Apple's new widget of the day is, I just don't think you can compare them to the horrendous disaster microsoft makes out of them.
I think it's possible that an OS manufacturer will never be the greatest design software company... they're too biased and too general. Apple wants to sell expensive hardware to all different sorts of people, so they're going to try and cater as much of their software to the masses as possible, too. Design software is never going to be at its best when its appealing to surface users, because almost always, there's a better, faster, more appropriate way of doing something that may take a little more time to learn, and surface users can't be bothered.
I've always loathed Microsoft's production software too: Publisher, Powerpoint, Word (with a passion), only thing I can't find any huge problems with is Excel.