CorelDRAW Returns to Mac After Nearly 20 Years With macOS Mojave Dark Mode and Touch Bar Support

[bollman]

I know exactly what he means, I'm finding it amusing how they keep explaining what 2.5" disks are to me and saying "us young people have no idea".... I built my own computers all the way back to the mid 1980s, I still don't know what a 2.5" floppy was

Well, I guess you missed all the hype with the 3" QuickDisk and the smaller versions, like the 2.5".
Oh, the happy days of Amstrad PcW computing. Affordable quality computing. At times when PCs and macs cost a fortune.

 

[MallardDuck]

At $499 I'm assuming this is significantly better and more powerful than Affinity Designer? It would have to be.

No question it's far better, but at $199/year is it better than Illustrator at $180/year? And at $499, is that lifetime free upgrades, or do you have to buy one in < 2.5 years (break even on the subscription). Pricing model seems way off on this one.

Re: Affinity. It's ok, but not remotely on par with the other two, especially if you're working with professional printers. PDF export doesn't cut it.

 

[Amazing Iceman]

LOL... What’a next? Lotus SmartSuite? VisiCalc? It’s like a zombie party waiting to happen.

 

[nouveau_redneck]

I used CorelDRAW on OS/2 back in the day! Good to see they are on MacOS now.

 

[ignatius345]

CorelDRAW Graphics Suite 2019 for Mac adheres to Apple's Human Interface Guidelines, meaning that menus, buttons, labels, and other user interface elements are consistent with Apple's first-party Mac apps.

Which is a lot more than you can say for Adobe Creative Cloud.

I'd love to give this a try, but I don't think I'd be able to sell my clients on this file format as a deliverable. They're gonna want something they know they'll be able to open a few years down the road, and unless someone comes up with a common generic file format, it's gonna default to Illustrator.

 

[ssgbryan]

Yes! It took quite a while to install programs like Word on those old disc drive machines running Windows. Sometimes it took hours, literally. I think we probably had 80286 machines then. And it never failed, at least one of the dozens of 2.5" disks would be a dud and you would have to call CS to get another set mailed to you in a week or so!

If you had a 286 - you weren't running Windows. Nor were you using 2.5" floppies (3.5" - I still have some, in a box with an 8-track tape and a zip drive).

 

[Pete Rodgers]

Which is a lot more than you can say for Adobe Creative Cloud.

I'd love to give this a try, but I don't think I'd be able to sell my clients on this file format as a deliverable. They're gonna want something they know they'll be able to open a few years down the road, and unless someone comes up with a common generic file format, it's gonna default to Illustrator.

I have this on Windows. You can save to all generations of Illustrator file.

 

[ssgbryan]

LOL... What’a next? Lotus SmartSuite? VisiCalc? It’s like a zombie party waiting to happen.

I would kill for Smart Suite, Improv and Notes.....

and DBIII

 

[JosephAW]

Whats Next? Ventura Publisher?

 

[HiVolt]

Prepress operators everywhere are collectivly groaning.

Hahah 1000%. Every time I receive something made in Corel anything to print either on newsprint or digital press, its a messed up bag of crap.

And I tell them I can only help in the setup and configuration of Adobe suite products, and limited help in Quark - they get very snarky. LOL.
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Whats Next? Ventura Publisher?

RAGEMAKER!

 

[VeryVito]

I used Corel Draw exclusively -- by choice -- for years for both professional print and Web work, and was thrown for a loop when the company abandoned the Mac platform shortly after I'd "switched" in 2003. To be honest, I searched for a viable alternative to it for more than 15 years (and while InkScape is fantastic for what it is, it hardly feels any more "native" than CorelDraw 12 under VMWare Fusion).

Then came Affinity Designer, and the search was over.

While I applaud Corel's return to the Mac world, I'm afraid it's definitely too late for them now (It doesn't help that it's 14-day "demo" asks for a credit card immediately upon launch... Um, no). This may be the biggest missed opportunity for a successful PC app's Mac launch since IDM released its Mac version of UltraEdit two years after SublimeText consumed the air in that space.

 

[ddamico361]

I use the student version of Coreldraw, mainly because I need to open and export Corel Presentation ".CMX" files as ".ai" files. I literally bought the app to do this specific function as no other program on OS X will do it.

 

[jonnysods]

What!!! Guys after all these years. I had to run a VM on my Mac ages ago just to use CD.

 

[VeryVito]

Hahah 1000%. Every time I receive something made in Corel anything to print either on newsprint or digital press, its a messed up bag of crap.

And I tell them I can only help in the setup and configuration of Adobe suite products, and limited help in Quark - they get very snarky. LOL.

If it weren't CorelDraw, it would have been Microsoft Publisher: "That's not what it looks like on my SCREEN!"

 

[Janichsan]

At $499 I'm assuming this is significantly better and more powerful than Affinity Designer? It would have to be.

I can't say if it's more powerful, but it comes with a lot more stuff than Affinity Designer, as it includes Photopaint, Powertrace (which is something AD still cannot do), a few plug-ins, lots of fonts, clipart, photos, and other stuff.

Whether that's really worth $500 (or more – Macupdate gives a price of $669!) is another question.

Yeah, OK, I'll be sure to download this, along with QuarkXPress...

Funnily enough, I've heard from a couple of people having switched back to QuarkXpress in the last few years, as they are sick of Adobe's sh— and the current version of Quark is apparently not bad.

 

[FriednTested]

Prepress operators everywhere are collectivly groaning.

I run an offset printing press. And I say “Finally”!!! The 12 computers in my office will soon be replaced by macs!!

 

[StellarVixen]

Oh my...that's my childhood right there. I was using Windows back then, but I remember this. It is amazing that it's back to Mac, I know may people will welcome it. Plus, it's pay once, and it's yours forever! They are not gonna milk you like Adobe, seemingly forever!


Turns out there are still famous developers who still think Mac is worthy as platform for creatives. Let's see if Apple will finally listen.

 

[coso]

They're a bit late to the party. Affinity is the strongest contender now, and with Affinity Publisher soon coming out of beta they will have 3 strong apps which are also affordable

 

[ChrisA]

Corel Draw has a large following in some specialized industries. I think sign makers use Corel nearly exclusively. The vinyl cutting software, I'm told works with Corel files although some use Inkscape. There are likey other small niche industries that use Corel too. Fonts and the abilty to trace bitmapped images to convert to vector are important to people who make signs

 

[FriednTested]

Downloaded it, installed it, choose trial, yet it seems we are not allowed to test it out without first signing up for a Corel account. I want to try it out first THEN potentially be a customer, not the other way around. Really not liking apps that you cant try without becoming a customer first.

You just have to create an account. You get 15 days or a month of trial.

 

[mccaffertee]

I remember buying CorelDraw Windows version for about $35 way back in the early 1990s. It was so long ago that I remember I had to feed a succession of 2.5" disks into my work computer to install it. No CD drives at work in those days, and the software wasn't offered on CDRom anyway. I only used it at work. It was nothing to write home about in those days. Pretty basic as I recall. Over the years it trailed behind the other drawing suites we used and finally got abandoned. $499 seems like overkill on price, unless they finally improved it enough to actually compete. Last time I used it was probably the mid to late 1990s.

I remember that too... after moving over to Macromedia and Adobe, I felt that Corel was WAY ahead in terms of simplicity and common sense.

 

[the writer]

Whats Next? Ventura Publisher?

I still have some Ventura Publisher files that I would love to be able to open.

I used one of the first betas of CorelDraw in the late '80s. The technical writing tools of choice were WordPerfect for DOS, Ventura Publiser and CorelDraw.

How many remember that before Windows there was the GEM interface? It also ran on top of DOS and Ventura Publisher had versions for both GEM and Windows. I even remember using GEM Draw.

As for file compatibility, CorelDraw never really went away from the Windows platform. It's been hovering around all along, just not as widely used as its Adobe counterparts. So I wouldn't worry about access to files in the future.

It seems Corel has been slowly buying-up a decent catalogue of software. Not only did they just buy Parallels but they also own iGrafx. For those of you who may not be familiar with iGrafx, it is a six sigma flow charting tool similar to Visio but allows process simulations.

I bought the CorelDraw 2018 Graphics Suite because my father had created a lot of technical drawings in it many years ago and I wanted to be able to open his files without any distortion or artifacts. Illustrator didn't do a bad job of opening them but they were more accurate in CorelDraw itself.

I watched the webinar this morning and it does have some nice features, most, but not all, Illustrator already has. Having it run natively on my Mac would be nice but the license is for either Windows or Mac, not both. This is also the case for the mind mapping application MindJet that is now also owned by Corel. At least Quark provides both Windows and Mac applications on the same license.

I wouldn't get too negative about Corel. Yes, it almost went under when its owner decided to buy WordPerfect and take on Microsoft, but so too did Apple itself. And It wouldn't take too much to knock Adobe off its throne.

Ah, the good ol' days.

 

[decafjava]

Not impressed by the straight $ to £ conversion (even allowing for 20% VAT - aka sales tax)

Here it's 800 Siwss Francs to buy, 261 to subscribe per year!

 

[macaddiict]

I learned Adobe products and thought they were the best until a job in the late 2000s that required CorelDRAW. Turns out CorelDRAW was pretty awesome as of version 13 and 14... I would imagine they have improved it since then, but it beat the pants off Illustrator and InDesign at the time in every way *except* prepping for prepress. Hopefully they have their CMYK conversion and transparency support in PDFs a bit refined.

Although I don't take any credit for this coming to the Mac, I did send them quarterly emails during the years I worked on PC with CorelDraw asking them to please please make a Mac version. Now that they finally have, I've switched to Windows full time. Life is cruel! LOL.

 

[FontGeek]

I couldn't be happier! CorelDRAW is my go-to design platform (since I don't have the cash to subscribe to Adobe), and its the only reason I have Parallels on my MacBook Pro. Though it may not have every capability that Adobe has, it is still highly competent--I am so glad that they are back to supporting Mac! Let's just hope it doesn't have as many bugs as the '01 version.