Make Storyline Mac Friendly--and Soon!

Hey, folks.  I've just submitted a feature request.  What I said is included below.  If you are a Mac user, or intend to transition to Mac as I'm currently doing, please add your name to the list of people submitting feature requests to make Storyline Mac-friendly.  The more people Articulate hears from on this point, the more likely it is that it will happen.  They have always been responsive to their user requests, and this is a fundamental one.  Thanks!

Please, submit a feature request of your own:  http://www.articulate.com/support/contact/submit.php?form=feature

Here's my feature request:

I'm writing to add my name to the list of people urging Articulate to do right by those of us who work on Mac computers.  The reality is that with Storyline, Articulate has now jumped into the from-scratch content development market with both feet.  With that shift come expectations, and one of the fundamental expectations is that Storyline should work well for Mac users as well as Windows users.  Having been in the corporate sector for many years, I do understand that Windows still represents the vast majority of your audience.  But that is rapidly changing, and surely you can see that by now.  Adobe's eLearning Suite 6 is available for Mac.  Articulate's silence on the Mac issues for Storyline is not sending the message you want to send to the marketplace.

While I realize this is a lesser point when compared with your company's marketing strategy, here's an example of the hoops I'm having to jump through to migrate to a Mac and still use Storyline:

- Buying Parallels 7 and Windows 7 (I'm on Vista now, which is junk not worth repurposing)

- Buying MSOffice 2010 for Windows rather than for Mac, because you folks say importing a PPT created in the Mac version of MS Office won't work reliably (and I'm on an old version of Office that again isn't worth repurposing).

- Having to turn off the Sharing feature of Parallels 7 that would have made my file backups a lot easier, again because Storyline is one of those Windows programs that experiences runtime issues if Sharing is activated.

- Having to format my new backup drive with two partitions--one for Windows, one for Mac, because I can't identify a single backup drive solution that is recommended for handling automated backup of both environments without issues.  Yes, I can perform manual backups but I shouldn't be restricted to that just because I want to run Storyline.

In short, your currrent lack of support for the Mac enviroment has far-reaching implications for all of us using Macs, and there are more of us every day.  If it is simply not financially profitable to produce a native Mac version of Storyline, then you should at least immediately step up to the plate and accomplish the following:

- Make Storyline launchable with Parallels 7 Sharing enabled

- Import Mac MSOffice PPT files into Storyline smoothly

- Import Mac's Keynote files into Storyline smoothly

With Storyline, you've brought Articulate into a whole new league.  It's not a PowerPoint add-on, it's a full-blown developer tool.  A lot of developers understandably prefer to use Macs.  Please don't stumble now, just when you have the potential for such widespread success and industry respect.  Step up to the plate, and make Storyline a LOT more Mac friendly than it is today.  And when you make those features available to existing users/subscribers, do the right thing and don't charge us for it.  Wonderful as Storyline is, Mac-friendly features should have been part of the first release.

Make Mac-friendliness a Storyline priority.  Make us proud.  Thanks.