After years of using Freehand

[Nickmet]

A good analogy of what has happened to our beloved Freehand
Would be if Lada bought Mercedes, then shut the Mercedes factory down so they could sell more Ladas.

We used to be a two Lada family in the 80/90's, but thanks to Freehand, my design business went so well we are now a two Merc. family.

I don't think I could have done as well as I did if there had only been illustrator.
It doesn't perform anything like as well.

[gingerbird]

That's a brilliant analogy, the best I've heard yet. I've tried to like Illustrator, I really have, but it just doesn't seem to like me back. Why does it have to be so cumbersome and difficult to work with? It's like trying to chop a tree down with a herring.

[Robin]

I am also a user of freehand since 1988, I also bought a copy of Ai back in about 1990, I have kept both up to date but hardly ever used AI. I have now been using onlt AI for about 1 yr and I am getting used to it but it is not nearly as eaisy to use although some of the functions do work well , but I wonder how many changes and upgrade would have been made if freehand was still around. AI only got as good as it is WITH the compition from freehand.

[Jules V]

I had to use Illustrator today (I know yuk!!) there's just nothing there, it's flat, dull, clunky and not at all intuitive, very disappointing

[freehandfevr]

I fumble around in illustrator. yuck
I want to donate american dollars to the cause. How?

[wittenbourg]

I use FreeHand MX even in 2012. I've used this for the last 15yrs and its still the best package by far. Not happy with the lack of Rosetta support and Adobe can do one...

[Donaldson83]

"If Lada bought Mercedes, then shut the Mercedes factory down so they could sell more Ladas" - that's exactly what it looks like!

[slopes]

I realised long ago (from painful experience) that Illustrator is for artists who don't like art.

[sharonritter]

I did it! I have a Macbook Pro with Lion - It would not run macromedia Freehand 10 (thats what I have). I purchased Parallels 8. I downloaded the trial version of Parallel 8 first, it will have you make a virtual machine to run like a PC. I have a old PC that I do not use, with a xp operating disk, I was able to take that disk to install, then I got the upgrade to window 7 online - Microsoft website. Parallels made a virtual machine with windows 7. I then installed Macromedia Freehand. You toggle between a mac and a pc when you work. It is very easy to do. All of the Macromedia functions work - you just have to change a few keyboard shortcuts as apple has a different keyboard. Control vs. command etc. It sound complicated but once you download the trial version of Parallels call their tech support and they can set it up for you. I love Freehand its the fastest design program around!
Good luck!

[gusto]

Every time I try Illustrator, I get sick. I had high hopes when they added the like-Freehand option, something like CS3 or CS4, but it's not Freehand. I need the drag and drop eyedropper, the CMYK slider mixer, all the easy tools like trace click and 3D-lens, and all the glorious tools I take for granted till I'm trying to use Illustrator. There will never be another Freehand.