Adobe are listening! Captivate for Mac is coming!
Author: Matthew Bibby | Filed under: Mac, Promotion, eLearning
After years of requests from passionate Mac & Captivate users, Adobe have made it known that they are working on Captivate for Mac!
I noticed this tweet from RJ Jacquez who is the Senior Product Evangelist at Adobe yesterday and it looks like the Mac version of Captivate will enter beta testing in a few months time.
This is a great step for Adobe, however it looks like TechSmith may win a few hearts before then with their release of Camtasia for Mac (they are beta testing as we speak.)
I use Captivate CS4 on my Macbook through Fusion, however the problem with this approach is that I can only record what is happening in the Windows session. For recording Mac applications I have been using ScreenFlow which is a very impressive program however it not really comparable to Captivate or Camtasia.
My hope . . . that Captivate for Mac .cp files will be 100% compatible with the Windows version of Captivate CS4.
What features do you hope Captivate for Mac includes?
What do you think the work flow will be like?
Thanks for listening Adobe.
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Tags: camtasia, captivate, Mac, screenflow
April 26th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
Hi there
WRT:
This is a great step for Adobe, however it looks like TechSmith may win a few hearts before then with their release of Camtasia for Mac (they are beta testing as we speak.)
Captivate is a different beast than Camtasia. Sure, it’s cool that Camtasia records the screen. I actually have a Camtasia license and it’s a great product. But Captivate records the screen in a totally different way.
I suppose I might consider Captivate and Camtasia to be like power saws. I have a table saw and I have a compound miter saw. Each saw will certainly cut wood. But each handles different cuts in entirely different manners.
The bottom line is that I see room in my development toolbox for both products!
April 26th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
I know what you mean Rick.
While I haven’t used Camtasia extensively I have tried the latest two reiterations of the product and while I thought it was a good program it is a certainly a different beast to Captivate. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to secure a beta invite for Camtasia so will have to wait to see the Mac version.
That being said . . . I suspect there are many Captivate users who only use the basic features and I think that these are the people who may switch to Camtasia once it is released for Mac.
On the note of different work flows, I am loving the way ScreenFlow works . . . it records the entire screen and allows you to then edit the capture afterwards with some pretty impressive effects.
I am almost finished a kinetic typography project that I built using a combination of Keynote & ScreenFlow, a pretty amazing combination! (Stay tuned, hoping to be able to release this within the week).
Even when Captivate is released for Mac – I will certainly still be using ScreenFlow for some projects.
Thanks for dropping by Rick.
April 27th, 2009 at 8:00 pm
I wonder how the market for this will be affected by the rumoured feature of Snow Leopard.
http://www.macrumors.com/2009/04/24/snow-leopard-screen-recording-feature-allows-desktop-video-recording/
I suspect Apple’s feature will be simplistic, but may impact on the market for Captivate.
James
April 27th, 2009 at 8:21 pm
Hi James,
I heard about that feature and think it is a great addition to OS X. Knowing apple, it will be a streamlined app . . .
Given the number of third-party screencasting tools available for cheap or free I would be surprised if it had any noticeable impact on Captivate sales.
Great post on ‘Ten reasons why Twitter will eventually wither and die” James, keep up the good work: http://tr.im/jNxE
August 10th, 2009 at 2:30 am
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August 30th, 2009 at 5:05 am
Greetings. Mac users need not wait for Adobe or Techsmith. Qarbon has recently made the pre-release version of ViewletBuilder for Mac OS X available for public download. http://forum.qarbon.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1014
Do ping me with any questions.
Jim Lynch´s last blog ..Qarbon Newsletter – December 2008 – Bundle Promotions
September 2nd, 2009 at 8:13 pm
Having now tried the Snow Leopard screen casting in-built feature, hmmm, it only takes full screen and is quite jerky compared to other tools.
I will still be using third party tools to do screen captures.
One I used recently was Screenr which is a web based screen capture tool which is intergrated into Twitter (but can be used without a Twitter account). Useful for quick and dirty screencasts. You can also download the screencast as an MP4 file so can then edit in iMovie or similar.
James
James Clay´s last blog ..Mobile Learning Thoughts