tibbon
11-02-2009, 06:20 PM
There is currently no Mac imVOX client. This is rather unfortunate since I realize it is holding a lot of people back from using imVOX.
VMWare isn't a good solution. My testing with VMWare Fusion 3 still currently only produces semi-decent results. Also the way that VMWare works, when VMWare's Windows instance takes over, Snow Leopard actually pretty much stops running. I don't mean freezing, but it literally hands over processor control to Windows. I was talking to the engineers behind VMWare the other day about it and they admitted that it was a very hard problem due to the handling of memory and the CPU. VMWare basically isn't great for a background, yet realtime application.
I haven't been able to test with any other virtualization machines yet.
The good news:
We will have a Mac client as soon as possible
imVOX for the PC is written in .NET and we have tested it with Mono meaning that porting should be easy. It isn't rewriting from the ground up
The Bad news:
We need to re-write the front end. Not only from a programming perspective, but from a UI perspective Mac users expect different things than Windows users. The last thing you want is a Mac program that looks like Windows.
The main codec that we've licensed (which rocks btw) we will have to re-license for the Mac. This costs a lot of money. As in, I could be driving a nice brand new BMW instead type of money. We're going to make it happen, but it might have to wait on one or two things.
Luckily, we have a temporary workaround for the codec, which involves using a very low compressions G.711 codec instead. Its not as good on the bandwidth level and it isn't as robust for network transfer, but it should sound just as good. Main downside is that it will eat (marginally more) bandwidth than optimal.
I'm a Mac user day in and day out. There's nothing more that I hate than having to use Bootcamp to make imVOX work. It's a serious priority for us.
VMWare isn't a good solution. My testing with VMWare Fusion 3 still currently only produces semi-decent results. Also the way that VMWare works, when VMWare's Windows instance takes over, Snow Leopard actually pretty much stops running. I don't mean freezing, but it literally hands over processor control to Windows. I was talking to the engineers behind VMWare the other day about it and they admitted that it was a very hard problem due to the handling of memory and the CPU. VMWare basically isn't great for a background, yet realtime application.
I haven't been able to test with any other virtualization machines yet.
The good news:
We will have a Mac client as soon as possible
imVOX for the PC is written in .NET and we have tested it with Mono meaning that porting should be easy. It isn't rewriting from the ground up
The Bad news:
We need to re-write the front end. Not only from a programming perspective, but from a UI perspective Mac users expect different things than Windows users. The last thing you want is a Mac program that looks like Windows.
The main codec that we've licensed (which rocks btw) we will have to re-license for the Mac. This costs a lot of money. As in, I could be driving a nice brand new BMW instead type of money. We're going to make it happen, but it might have to wait on one or two things.
Luckily, we have a temporary workaround for the codec, which involves using a very low compressions G.711 codec instead. Its not as good on the bandwidth level and it isn't as robust for network transfer, but it should sound just as good. Main downside is that it will eat (marginally more) bandwidth than optimal.
I'm a Mac user day in and day out. There's nothing more that I hate than having to use Bootcamp to make imVOX work. It's a serious priority for us.