Apple Computers

[dsnjs03]

Dear Light-O-Rama Staff,

Have been a huge fan of you guys for approximately 6 years now. Love the product, have it myself. BUT I have one serious complaint about the company and I am sure that I do not speak for myself!

When, oh when are you going to release a version of your software for Apple computers? I do not want to run bootcamp or parallel on my MAC, that is the whole reason I left it in the first place! Its the fastest growing computer anywhere, sales far blowing out PC in every category but you have not made your software available to us yet!

Is there any time frame when you will have a version available for us? I will not be using my equipment this year because of this and I hope that in the near future you will be releasing one!

David

[jimswinder]

Speaking of apple computers:

Rare Apple I computer sells for $210,000 in London

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101123/ap_on_hi_te/eu_britain_apple_auction

[gspence]

I know where you're coming from, my laptop is a Macbook Pro and I love it. However, I'm also a programmer and understand how much trouble it could be to port the software to Mac OSX and then try to support two versions.

Given that this is still a hobby/niche market, I doubt they'd sell enough extra units to make it work the development cost. I'd rather see them focus their development efforts on making the UI more intuitive/polished and adding new features.

[Big D]

I run mac and I just use boot camp. Works great.

[csf]

I am a mac user, I have boot camp on my mac.

I also have a net book that runs windows xp. That's that I usually use for all my LOR stuff. Since net books have came down in price quite a bit, getting a 300$ net book might be the best option.

My plan though is to program my own sequencer that I can use on mac though for next year. But please don't hold up your display waiting for me to release a program, all I can say right now is I have a plan for it, and I plan to start coding it comes January, but being a college student I have no idea of a time frame for release.

[George Simmons]

Haven't I seen this thread somewhere before? Like in the last few days... And didn't I see the preponderance of responses were that no one really cares very much about Apples and Macs? I wonder if the OP thought maybe the answers would be different here a few days later than they were there...

[bwaldrep]

George Simmons wrote:

Haven't I seen this thread somewhere before? Like in the last few days... And didn't I see the preponderance of responses were that no one really cares very much about Apples and Macs? I wonder if the OP thought maybe the answers would be different here a few days later than they were there...

He posted both threads at the same time, this thread just got some new life (replies) Today

[csf]

I disagree...

While for the people that visit this forum, and for the people that do personal displays they may not be much of a mac need, there is some, and you have to think of the need out side Christmas displays at peoples homes.

We will never know for sure, since we can't look at the books of LOR as a company, but I would think its a safe bet that a nice portion of the money they make is not from home owners doing shows at there houses. Just look at there web site were they talk about solutions for places like amusement parks, or malls. I am sure an amusement park will have allot more money to invest in there show then the average home owner has. Granted there are some home owners that may have 400 or more channels, but seams like most of us have allot less then that.

The reason I bring this up is I can't remember the last time I have scene some one who is a DJ, Involved in theater, music, or video using a PC. They all seam to be using Mac's to control things. Granted am not in any of those industries I mentioned, and I am suer there are some pc users in them, but my experience is there all mostly Mac users.

Now Porting S2 to work on a mac may not be worth wild at this point, but I am sure at some point there will have to be an S3 and LOR should probably conceder coding it from the ground up to be cross platform.

Truth be told if it wasn't that I had a net book I might of well stayed away from LOR my self.

If there are a few mac users that fell this way and actually took the time out to post here about it, chancres are there are more mac users that had an interest and were just turned away and never bothered to post about it.

The only way to really be able to judge if there is a need for Mac LOR software would be to openly pole current and potential LOR users. I think it's safe to say most of the active users on this forum are ether already using LOR or have at least figured out the system enough to know they will need a pc to currently use it.

[gspence]

csf wrote:

I disagree...

While for the people that visit this forum, and for the people that do personal displays they may not be much of a mac need, there is some, and you have to think of the need out side Christmas displays at peoples homes.

We will never know for sure, since we can't look at the books of LOR as a company, but I would think its a safe bet that a nice portion of the money they make is not from home owners doing shows at there houses. Just look at there web site were they talk about solutions for places like amusement parks, or malls. I am sure an amusement park will have allot more money to invest in there show then the average home owner has. Granted there are some home owners that may have 400 or more channels, but seams like most of us have allot less then that.

The reason I bring this up is I can't remember the last time I have scene some one who is a DJ, Involved in theater, music, or video using a PC. They all seam to be using Mac's to control things. Granted am not in any of those industries I mentioned, and I am suer there are some pc users in them, but my experience is there all mostly Mac users.

Now Porting S2 to work on a mac may not be worth wild at this point, but I am sure at some point there will have to be an S3 and LOR should probably conceder coding it from the ground up to be cross platform.

Truth be told if it wasn't that I had a net book I might of well stayed away from LOR my self.

If there are a few mac users that fell this way and actually took the time out to post here about it, chancres are there are more mac users that had an interest and were just turned away and never bothered to post about it.

The only way to really be able to judge if there is a need for Mac LOR software would be to openly pole current and potential LOR users. I think it's safe to say most of the active users on this forum are ether already using LOR or have at least figured out the system enough to know they will need a pc to currently use it.

The only problem with your whole theory is that Mac users CAN and DO use LOR already today. My show has been running on my Macbook Pro since I started it last week. So its not like they will win a whole new set of customers by doing this work. There are multiple solutions out there that will allow people to run it just fine on Mac hardware.

I'm a hardcore Microsoft fan and I've been writing software for Windows for over 15 years. I'm now in game development and our games only run in Windows. But I still think that Apple hardware is some of the best designed and well-thought-out stuff out there, that's why my laptop is a Macbook. In the past few years I've become a huge fan of Apple products, but I still don't see an advantage to porting LOR to a native Mac OSX app.

Now, on the other hand, I do some iPhone/iPad development and I've been kicking around the idea of creating a hardware app for iOS that will allow me to more easily test my circuits while i'm hanging up the lights. I'm just not sure if there would be an easy way to make the network interface from a mobile device to the LOR controllers.

[dkoehler42]

gspence wrote:

I know where you're coming from, my laptop is a Macbook Pro and I love it. However, I'm also a programmer and understand how much trouble it could be to port the software to Mac OSX and then try to support two versions.

Given that this is still a hobby/niche market, I doubt they'd sell enough extra units to make it work the development cost. I'd rather see them focus their development efforts on making the UI more intuitive/polished and adding new features.

Given how many of us on here are being vocal about Mac support, and that I know there are Mac users not on this forum, you figure they'd want to offer a Mac version.

[gspence]

dkoehler42 wrote:

gspence wrote:

I know where you're coming from, my laptop is a Macbook Pro and I love it. However, I'm also a programmer and understand how much trouble it could be to port the software to Mac OSX and then try to support two versions.

Given that this is still a hobby/niche market, I doubt they'd sell enough extra units to make it work the development cost. I'd rather see them focus their development efforts on making the UI more intuitive/polished and adding new features.

Given how many of us on here are being vocal about Mac support, and that I know there are Mac users not on this forum, you figure they'd want to offer a Mac version.

*shrug* So far the poll shows that 8 people want it. Not quite enough to make that assumption IMO. Go nuts and say that maybe its 100 or 200 or 300 people, probably still not enough to be worth it considering most of them probably will buy it anyway.

[gizmomkr]

I like both platforms, but have no need or interest for a mac version.

If I REALLY WANTED to run on a Mac, I'd VM it.

A Mac hardware utility would be cool - like others have said some type of Test app on an iphone ipad ipod - But there is that whole physical interface part Cant plug a rs485 adapter into an ipad (even if you could, that sort of ruines the idea)

I would want the rs485 connected inside the house, and the ipad app to talk to that via wifi - and that brings up back to e1.31 and artnet. Now your having to write a gui on the phone and a server app for the pc. Lots of work.

Id rather see more features built onto S2 than a new ipad app. I would love to see lor take on e1.31 but dan has allready hinted that SOMTHING is coming down the pipe for that.

If LOR controllers could recieve e1.31 (we would need an adapter to get it on the lan) there are allready apps that will support that interface on OSx and ipad.