Porting The Print Shop from Windows to Macintosh Platforms for Broderbund®
Printable Version
Challenge
- Reading The Print Shop Windows files on the Macintosh platform.
- Creation of a Windows to Macintosh font-matching system.
- Integration of third-party applications and libraries.
- Reconciliation of Windows and Macintosh Stonehand composition engines.
- Adjustments for diminished memory available and hard drive performance on the Macintosh.
Results
- Orbital developed three separate market versions of The Print Shop.
- Orbital ported the product to all five major Macintosh versions, 8.1 to X.
- Orbital completed the project on time and on budget.
Value
- Broderbund was able to offer The Print Shop to the Macintosh community in accordance with its timeline and budget, thereby achieving its business objectives.
“Orbital did an excellent job in porting The Print Shop over to the Mac platform. I was very impressed with the level of their professionalism, competence and communication. I would highly recommend their services to anyone looking to gain assistance in product development projects.”
-Vice President of Product Development, Broderbund LLC.
Broderbund LLC (Broderbund) is a worldwide publisher of award-winning productivity and rich-media software. The company publishes and distributes a number of consumer software products such as The Print Shop, Calendar Creator™, and 3D Home Architect®.
Broderbund secured Orbital to port Version 6 of The Print Shop to the Macintosh so that they could offer this successful Windows product to the Mac community.
This project involved Orbital providing three separate market versions of this product: one for the retail market, one for the schools market, and one network version. Orbital ported The Print Shop over to all Macintosh hardware platforms and for five major versions of the MAC OS from Mac 8.1 to Mac X. In addition, Orbital ensured compatibility with a broad range of printers, scanners and cameras.
From May 1, 2001 to April 1, 2002, Orbital conducted over five person-years of work on this project and successfully met all of the project milestones.
“Orbital secured this project from Broderbund as they knew of our solid reputation and were aware that we are one of the few companies that do Mac porting,” said Amyn Rajan, CEO of Orbital Technologies Inc. “In fact, at Orbital we treat Windows to Mac porting as a core competency.”
Porting The Print Shop to the Macintosh was completed using a rigorous Application Porting Process that has been systematically developed by Orbital, given its vast experience working on a variety of similar projects in the past. These tasks included converting projects from Visual C++ to Code Warrior 6.0, replacing MFC classes with PowerPlant Classes, replacing a Windows-specific library with QuickTime, and replacing all Win32 APIs with Mac OS Toolkits.
Some of the many challenges encountered during this project included: reading The Print Shop Windows files on the Mac platform, including Windows-specific image formats; creation of a Windows to Mac font-matching system; integration of third-party applications; integration of third party libraries; and reconciliation of the Windows and Mac Stonehand composition engines. Moreover, to account for diminished memory availability on the Mac platform, the memory requirements of the new product had to be pared down. Also, to account for diminished hard-drive performance on the Mac, disk access optimization was necessary.
This project demonstrates why Orbital is the leading provider of Windows to Mac porting expertise in the world. Orbital is proud of the fact that it was able to extend The Print Shop and allow Broderbund to offer this product to its Macintosh customers. This project was large, complex and very demanding—and Orbital delivered 100%.
Broderbund and The Print Shop are trademarks of Broderbund LLC. Additional product names indicated herein may also be registered trademarks of other companies.
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