Symantec has the story Monday, Symantec has also stopped development of Windows versions of Norton Utilities and Norton SystemWorks. Update: Symantec has confirmed to MacNN that it has not stopped development on the Windows platform.
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Norton has been more of a problem creator than solver with recent releases... say after version 4. I can't say I'm surprised given their skimpy support and infrequent updates.
Symantec put less and less development money and support into Norton and ceded what was once the premier Mac repair utility to Disk Warrior and Tech Tool Pro.
Worse, over the years Symantec aggressively bought out numerous excellent (read: better than Norton) Mac repair utilites and halted support and development.
At least they stopped the Win development at the same time so this isn't another hit to Mac development. I'm surprised they axed the Windows app since it's useful for cleaning up registry garbage. Perhaps Longhorn would require too much investment or they see MS as locking them out. Given what I've read about the Mac quality, this is no loss. I wish Central Point hadn't been bought out by Symantec though.
It's important to know when to stop. Symantec is at that point and perhaps just beyond. Thanks for all the good NUD did for us Mac users in those earlier years.
Norton Utilities was a pointless upgrade after version 6. It was just about the only tool I needed to fix Macs for as long as I can remember, but when OS X took over NUM became half-assed and useless. I'm a Diskwarrior man now, and I'll probably pick up something else to augment it as most of my clients finally make the jump to OS X.
On Windows 9x and 2000 machines, I found Norton Utilities to be indispensable in fixing some of the random, slowdown-and-problem-causing cruft that gunks up the average PC after normal use (just running it from CD, though, never installing it). My Windows-only colleagues thought I was crazy, at the mere mention of NUW they'd recoil like a vampire shrinking back from a cross. I guess they had bad experiences with it.
The lastest version of the NUM suite is quite good. It has the fastest disk-recovery application on the mac, and the bugs that were once ever-present in the never-should-have-been-released version 7 are gone. But FileSaver now works just as well in v.8 as in v.4 and 6, and DiskDoctor no longer crashes inexplicibly. And SpeedDisk is now reliable again. This is a shame for anyone like myself who actually benefits from the program.
Norton's always seemed to have the Star Trek curse: odd versions suck, even versions are much better.
Stop the presses! Symantec stops development on its best, yet still lousy, product! A holiday is declared by banana dictators. Spontaneous cheering is heard in Silicon Valley. Germany takes the day off. A moment of silence is declared by George Bush. Techies everywhere breathe a sigh of relief.
and anti-hacker is where the money is these days. symantec realized this and decided to relinquish the market to other players.
Also, this just in: Japanes manufactured cars waste thousands of gallons of fuel per year. (and, oh yeah, by the way, so do the cars made by everybody else).
Chalk one more up to MacNN's fantastic editorial standards.
MacNN doesn't usually editorialize news items (I've never seen one). One of the things I've always liked about MacNN. News. No Chat ;)
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Joined: Jul 2003
Great
That's great news. Those two applications cause as many system problems as spyware and viruses.