Author Topic: Port to OS X? (Read 21318 times)

fustbariclation · « **Reply #15 on:** February 07, 2006, 05:50:12 am »

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Hi,

just out of curiousity, you think EA is quite expensive? What other tools with remotely similar feature set have you seen at lower price?

Bruno

None. That isn't quite the point though. If I simply want to design UML processes, I can use free software from SourceForge, Omnigraffle that comes free with my iBook (an extremely good tool, actually) or the horrible Visio that's very expensive for the rubbish that it is, but happens to be on my customer's machines.

Part of my problem, actually, is that, though Omnigraffle exports to XML, Visio (at least the version my current client is using - they're skinflints rather when it comes to software) can't read it, or create imports to it. So I have to use my own laptop and recent copy of Visio to import stuff and export it so that it can be read at work - a very messy job.

I'd far rather pay the money and get this tool - but it is as useless to me as Visio if it doesn't run on the Mac!

mikewhit · « **Reply #16 on:** February 07, 2006, 10:32:56 am »

Perhaps a Visio/UML user could correct me, but most relevant comments on this forum suggest that Visio can neither read another app's XMI, nor export XMI readable by another app - except Visio!

thomaskilian · « **Reply #17 on:** February 07, 2006, 01:12:36 pm »

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You're probably right. I tried running EA via Virtual PC on my MacMini. It works, but is actually tooooo slow. Fortunately (?) I have a Windoze laptop to run EA. Maybe the next Mac-Generation will not have this performance problem when it runs on Intel - but that's another story

fustbariclation · « **Reply #18 on:** February 07, 2006, 10:46:13 pm »

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Perhaps a Visio/UML user could correct me, but most relevant comments on this forum suggest that Visio can neither read another app's XMI, nor export XMI readable by another app - except Visio!

Visio, nasty as its GUI is, isn't quite that hopeless. It is possible, and I've done it, to export XML from Visio and import it into Omnigaffle - you get a couple of warnings, but it does work. Visio has managed to import very simple XML, but did choke on most of the XML that I presented it with from Omnigaffle. This only works, to my knowledge, with Visio 2003.

eelco12 · « **Reply #19 on:** March 23, 2006, 12:42:41 pm »

It's really a pitty that I can't use Enterprise Architect on my mac. I recently switched to OSX from Windows and I am obsolutely loving it for my development and bookwriting. EA is the only application I can't use. And the company I work for is mac oriented too, so there is no way I can propose EA as our standard now.

Is EA really that tightly coupled to Windows/ Access? I can see that the development costs for fixing this would be higher than the short-term gain, but otoh, OSX is really gaining momentum in the developer's world, so you might be missing out in the long term by not supporting this and having the Linux support just kind of half baked.

eelco12 · « **Reply #20 on:** March 23, 2006, 01:02:28 pm »

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I actually asked the same question directly to Sparx rather than through the forum about a year ago, and was told I was one of about 3 (from memory) requests ever. Maybe if all OSX users on these forums make themselves known!

How incredible passive that is! Amazing. Did those marketing guys ever hear of market potential instead of just sitting around waiting for customers to ring at the door? I have a decent international network of (Java) developers that I know and I think that around 5 - 10 % of them develop on mac (and another 30% on Linux btw), some of them can be considered 'community leaders' too, meaning that if you get them to like EA and write about it, it'll get you a bunch of new customers too. Where do I apply for that marketing position?

fustbariclation · « **Reply #21 on:** March 23, 2006, 09:08:32 pm »

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How incredible passive that is! Amazing. Did those marketing guys ever hear of market potential instead of just sitting around waiting for customers to ring at the door? I have a decent international network of (Java) developers that I know and I think that around 5 - 10 % of them develop on mac (and another 30% on Linux btw), some of them can be considered 'community leaders' too, meaning that if you get them to like EA and write about it, it'll get you a bunch of new customers too. Where do I apply for that marketing position?

You're quite right! Lots of people - not just development types are taking to OS/X, it finally makes sense, a bullet-proof operating system, first rate graphics, fast and less expensive hardware and, with all that, Unix as the underlying engine.

Even marketing types are quite keen on it!

I've had to go for other products as well because of this not working on the Mac. I wonder how many other people have without saying anything on the forum.

It is like the old-fashioned English shops that used to say that they didn't stock X because there was 'No call for it' and then go on to complain about how you're the forth customer this week who has been irritating enough to ask for it!

Bruno.Cossi · « **Reply #22 on:** March 24, 2006, 05:18:22 am »

Hi,

I do not mean to rain on your parade, and personally I have nothing against Mac, I rather like it in fact. But, according to both Gartner's and OneStat's studies published recently, Windows accounts for more than 97% of the desktop OS market share - and in fact, Windows' market share has risen, not declined. Amongst larger companies, Mac OS/X is almost non-existent.
At the risk of getting torched alive, I would much prefer Sparx focused on all the great things that they can do with EA, instead of working on porting it onto another platform, with doubtful sales results.

Bruno

eelco12 · « **Reply #23 on:** March 24, 2006, 09:02:34 am »

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Hi,

I do not mean to rain on your parade, and personally I have nothing against Mac, I rather like it in fact. But, according to both Gartner's and OneStat's studies published recently, Windows accounts for more than 97% of the desktop OS market share - and in fact, Windows' market share has risen, not declined. Amongst larger companies, Mac OS/X is almost non-existent.
At the risk of getting torched alive, I would much prefer Sparx focused on all the great things that they can do with EA, instead of working on porting it onto another platform, with doubtful sales results.

Bruno

Fair enough. I don't know enough about Sparx Systems and their customer base to say they *should* support MAC too. It just seems to me - as a software engineer that is used to develop OS and DBMS agnostic software - that they took a couple of abstraction shortcuts they shouldn't have.

The argument about marketshare etc... Absolute figures mean more than relative, and you are talking about non-specific users while SparxSystems should be interested in their target groups. And it reminds me a lot of the argument of why you don't have to support any other browser than IE, which is an argument I heard a lot the last few years.

Also not that I am not even arguing for a native OS X port. A *decent* Linux port would work too. And anyone arguing that Linux doesn't have market potential missed something. Imvho of course

Yes, resources are limited and there might be things more important than porting. I am just dissapointed that I can't use this product anymore.

Bruno.Cossi · « **Reply #24 on:** March 24, 2006, 01:35:10 pm »

Well, I do not know enough about the customer base either, it is quite possible that I am misjudging the situation :-) I would not mind if EA were usable on OS/X, but there are other things that I would much like to see first. I think that more than OS/X users, Sparx is missing out on sales to large companies partially due to technical issues (team collaboration - locking/unlocking, security...), partially due to insufficient release notes, non-transparent issue resolution process etc. In my opinion (misguided as it may be), focusing on this segment of the market should be easier and rewards could be great.

Bruno

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Fair enough. I don't know enough about Sparx Systems and their customer base to say they *should* support MAC too. It just seems to me - as a software engineer that is used to develop OS and DBMS agnostic software - that they took a couple of abstraction shortcuts they shouldn't have.

The argument about marketshare etc... Absolute figures mean more than relative, and you are talking about non-specific users while SparxSystems should be interested in their target groups. And it reminds me a lot of the argument of why you don't have to support any other browser than IE, which is an argument I heard a lot the last few years.

Also not that I am not even arguing for a native OS X port. A *decent* Linux port would work too. And anyone arguing that Linux doesn't have market potential missed something. Imvho of course

Yes, resources are limited and there might be things more important than porting. I am just dissapointed that I can't use this product anymore.

tdrozdowski · « **Reply #25 on:** May 30, 2006, 12:57:43 pm »

Ok - I'm a recent Mac OS X convert (love my MacBook!), and my only complaint is that I can't run EA short of remote desktop to a windows machine. Any serious chance at seeing this port? I know that EA runs against Access out of the box, but the corp edition runs against a ton more dbs. I'd suspect that running against Postgresql or something similar on the Mac platform would be sufficient. There's quite a few others where I work that are recent converts too and are all lamenting the lack of EA.

resi · « **Reply #26 on:** June 01, 2006, 06:15:38 am »

I'll be ordering a MacBook the next 2 weeks, too. And would love to have a OS X version of EA.

thomaskilian · « **Reply #27 on:** June 01, 2006, 08:26:00 am »

You all will likely have to live with a windoze on your machine. Hopefully a new VMware or VirtualPC will be available soon to run on native Intel HW. That would make it acceptable. I haven't heard of that, so I will wait buying a new machine.

eelco12 · « **Reply #28 on:** June 01, 2006, 08:40:32 am »

Why is it likely he will be having Windows installed on his machine? You really think OSX (or Linux for that matter) doesn't suffice?

The 'vmware' of mac is http://www.parallels.com btw.

That macbook pro seems to be getting pretty viral. Two people that I know bought one the last two weeks, and my last count over at the cofee place I frequently visit was about 1 MBP for every 3 laptops.

thomaskilian · « **Reply #29 on:** June 01, 2006, 11:08:56 am »

Well, you'll need something like Windoze to run EA

I have a VPC on my MacMini but for real purpose this is too slow. There is no VPC for the new Mac-Intels (I read something about end of the year for the first version). Have you tried this 'vmware' version? What I read about getting windoze to run on a Mac does not make me very optimistic. Even the official way put's some limits on running windoze.

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