StoneWorks for Mac2008-08-08

"Anonymus'" comments don't show credible problems with this software. As for slow... It's Cocoa... Cocoa apps are, usually, pretty quick (down right snappy) especially, with the hardware configuration people use in these fields... realtime adjustments of images and text are by no means slow. The estimation,"Overrated", was, as my guess leads (as there was no detailed example of how it was overrated), may be a referrence to the apps esteemed power and comparison to apps like InDesign or Illustrator Image Ready or Quark or Dreamweaver, etc.... nah..not overrated. Though often touted as a "mid level" suite of apps...the Stone Studio often stands toe to toe.. (sometimes surpassing..) the usefulness of these apps.. The "Studio" is the "Studio" and isn't meant to be these other apps.. it's meant to be the "Studio". Standing on its own merit, it shines. In comparison with other apps.. and suites... it shines. The combination of apps to equal Create© alone, shows its power. With the addition of iMaginator and the power of Linkback... these apps just became a whole lot more powerful, funcional, and the ease of use and workflow possibilities just sky rocketed. Drag a portion of a layout via a dragwell to iChat or Adium, or Fire or Proteus or Subetha or iStorm (,etc) and your collaborative productivity just left the others in the dust. yeah. check it out. Cocoa is the way to go... (P.S. ;-) ) put (the following is a list of and/or's) Tiffany, Seashore, Gimp (or Gimpshop), Teal, Intaglio, iDraw, EasyDraw, Cheetah3D, Sphaera, PressPercent... Put these in your arsenal... then judge. see your inital costs come down.. and see your productivity increase. Give them a try... Most come with Trial liscenses. I didn't mention the makers of OW.. but... heh heh.. add them in the mix... wow. Check out the Studio, Now.

The Stone Suite shows what Cocoa can do, when it comes to outclassing the multi nationals in terms of adhering to the Apple HIG, ease of use and elegant power. Create is quite obviously the jewel of the lot, providing DTP, Drawing and WYSIWYG Web Design in a well laid out and powerful package. PStill is great too - take a 1Mb PDF and make it 100k, especially useful for sending info to people on dial up. The other apps are pretty spiffy too ;-) (Best of all, the developer, Andrew Stone, is very receptive to comments and feature suggestions)

probably the most over-rated suite of apps on mac OSX ever. - slow, ugly and counter-intuitive.

I have been using create for 2 wks...as a first time user of any web page apps I have tried contribute and dreamweaver...IMO create is much simpler to use and allows for quicktime .mov files unlike contribute 2....i think create would be an awesome product to market to the .mac crowd...it just needs a few templates for those too lazy...something like contribute 2 has would be nice...I will continue w create as it is ez to use and good...but I really think some templates are in order.

Create 11 is more of an evolutionary step for the app, but it was already so simple to learn that it doesn't need reinventing. Its simple tool palette, thorough inspector panel, its use of a resources library, and multipage layering and thumbnails make it a joy to work with. The other big deal for me in this release is PStill version 2.6 which now takes advantage of Apple's new PDF workflow options in OS X version 10.2.4. Stone Design has a distinct advantage because it can take new features Apple adds to the OS and applications for "free" and much faster than the big developers. The developer is also extrmely responsive to user input, and can also seemingly implement user suggestions at will. My critique of the suite would be a few minor points: I think it could use some more and varied clip art, especially if they were as slick and professional-looking as OS X icons and other elements. I think the animation tool, originally set up in Create, could move into GIFfun as a one-stop shop for animation. I think people look for it there sometimes instead of in Create. And I wish Apple would make the standard rulers more like Keynote's rulers with alignments guides, so Create could auto-magically inherit them! Great tools, great price, great developer, great community.

I can't emphasize the value enough. If the software doesn't impress then the free updates for life should. Customer Service is second to none. The best of pagemaker, illustator, and others combined to allow publishing to Web, Print , PDF or all from one application. With a free trial period you should not pass up sampling the 7 apps.