This document (including, without limitation, any product roadmap or statement of direction data) illustrates the planned testing, release and availability dates for Spotfire products and services. It is for informational purposes only and its contents are subject to change without notice. Planning to implement - generally 6-12 months out. Likely to Implement - generally means 12-18 months out.
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The Need:
The need for the MacOS client is simple: remove friction from end-users and meet them where they are. Most users don't want to jump through a hoop of installing a VM or dual-boot just to use software -- that's a terrible UX when your product can't be used without someone else's product!
The Message:
A lackluster Mac client signals that Tibco doesn't care about those users or their business needs if they don't provide a fully-featured client application for them. I'd also argue that's a bad business model to leave potential customers on the outside looking in when universal and architecture-specific software packaging/deployment is easier than it ever has been. Spotfire is built using technologies that are not exclusive to Windows/x86.
The Risk:
I couldn't agree more that the current Mac client is essentially useless for authors. Even basic things like changing a scale from linear to exponential don't exist. It's almost faster/cheaper for me to make my own data visualization tools than to purchase a Spotfire license as a MacOS user. This is massive failure from a business perspective -- the ability to capture interested users & market share upfront is largest determinant of software success. Users become familiar with software and are typically reluctant to transition to new platforms and invest that time/money again. Just ask yourself how many bad legacy applications you still use in your business. Likewise, your most avid users are your best marketing team and can spread adoption within companies and as they move to new companies. Providing a better cross-platform experience provides those super-users a feature to tout that the competition largely lacks, and carves out a strong moat for Tibco.
The Mac M1/M2 chipsets running Parallels which runs an ARM build of Windows. As all new Macbooks will use this processor it would be helpful to have a Windows ARM build of the Spotfire Analyst client.
https://informatics-support.perkinelmer.com/hc/en-us/articles/10362645036820-Spotfire-Analyst-Client-with-Lead-Discovery-running-on-Windows-via-Parallels-on-Apple-Mac-M1-ARM-processor-does-not-start-
I don't really get the need for the MacOS Spotfire client. Plenty of options have been available for years on how to run Spotfire in MacOS: Boot Camp, VirtualBox, VMware Fusion and Parallels. Personally I have been using Parallels for years in my Mac to run those apps which only exist on Windows (like Spotfire) or the ones that work much better on Windows (like Office). If you haven't tried it before you should. Parallels has a full-featured free 14-day trial so excuse. And here are two good tips:
Use Parallels's Coherence Mode to run Windows apps side by side like native MacOS apps (see here for how Spotfire looks in my Mac).
Use Parallels Transporter Agent to migrate an existing Windows installation into a Parallels VM, saving you the trouble to setup Windows, activate and reinstall all your programs
So the solutions are out there. Sure you have to pay a license for Parallels but it's well worth your money since you not only can run Spotfire but any other Windows program you want/have.
I (used to) do a ton of complex Spotfire development when I had a PC because it is a very quick and effective way to develop BI tools for engineers/managers. I frequently used R, ironpython, HTML, and javascript.
I've moved to a mac now that I'm living in a cloud world where compute is linux-based. because of that I'm also trying to use the dumbed-down version of spotfire for macOS; which is almost useless as an advanced developer. as a result i've moved away from Spotfire as a tool unless it's absolutely necessary and workth my time to hobble through a citrix or remote PC connection.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE give me a full-featured resource for macOS!!
Agree with Jason. These 5%/dev team of mac users support the business users so their opinion matters or else they would just shift to Tableau. Plus mac users are growing.
You may want to check out Spotfire Business Author which is a web based client for analysis and authoring. It is compatible with Safari, Chrome or Firefox browsers on MacOS. It is not yet as advanced as the Spotfire Analyst client but it does support the creation and modification of visualizations.
This has little value in my view. It will take a massive effort to port the client to the Mac with benefits to a very small percentage of Spotfire developers (arguably less than 5% since most large enterprises run on Windows not on Mac). It will take a lot more sense to make Business Author feature complete which is multi-platform and can run even on tablets.
Completely agree. This gets in the way of Spotfire adoption. Our development teams are all on Macs, so they are cut off from using the client.