Comments on: To Mac or not to Mac? http://www.sowrey.org/2008/02/to-mac-or-not-to-mac/ A miscellany of know-it-all-isms by Geoff Sowrey Fri, 06 Jan 2012 04:27:17 +0000 hourly 1 By: Daniel http://www.sowrey.org/2008/02/to-mac-or-not-to-mac/#comment-4896 Daniel Sat, 22 Mar 2008 10:37:39 +0000 http://www.sowrey.org/2008/02/28/to-mac-or-not-to-mac/#comment-4896 Geoff, I suffer the same issues. I got took my MacBook Air to a trade show and the entire audience was on my side. The presentations went well, the people like the content better just becuase is came from a Mac ... although it was originally a ppt ... I am currently experiementing with Office 2008. It seems to work and Entourage as far as I can tell after a week seems to work too. Cheers, Daniel Geoff,

I suffer the same issues. I got took my MacBook Air to a trade show and the entire audience was on my side. The presentations went well, the people like the content better just becuase is came from a Mac … although it was originally a ppt … I am currently experiementing with Office 2008. It seems to work and Entourage as far as I can tell after a week seems to work too.

Cheers,
Daniel

]]> By: Geoff http://www.sowrey.org/2008/02/to-mac-or-not-to-mac/#comment-4822 Geoff Wed, 05 Mar 2008 05:35:00 +0000 http://www.sowrey.org/2008/02/28/to-mac-or-not-to-mac/#comment-4822 Crossover sounds pretty cool -- something we'll definitely have to send through the Tech team and see what they say (just for support reasons). But if it makes it possible to run Windows apps on the Mac without a secondary OS, that solves a lot of potential problems. As for Word, as much as I hate it, I know how to handle it. Running OpenOffice or NeoOffice just raises my "uh oh" alarm. Mostly for compatibility reasons. We all know M$ loves to hide things that cause problems with other apps. Crossover sounds pretty cool — something we’ll definitely have to send through the Tech team and see what they say (just for support reasons). But if it makes it possible to run Windows apps on the Mac without a secondary OS, that solves a lot of potential problems.

As for Word, as much as I hate it, I know how to handle it. Running OpenOffice or NeoOffice just raises my “uh oh” alarm. Mostly for compatibility reasons. We all know M$ loves to hide things that cause problems with other apps.

]]> By: Dan http://www.sowrey.org/2008/02/to-mac-or-not-to-mac/#comment-4810 Dan Sat, 01 Mar 2008 03:25:03 +0000 http://www.sowrey.org/2008/02/28/to-mac-or-not-to-mac/#comment-4810 Oh. You hare Word... switching to Open Office sucks for Macs, because the Open Office people decided to say F a Mac and just hack together the Linux distro, toss it in a .dmg file, tell it to run under X11, and pretend that's a real solution for Mac software. Fortunately, they guys at http://www.neooffice.org took Open Office, made it into a real Mac program, and re-distro it themselves. Now... regarding my comments above, all windows software that you use with Wine has to go through X11. That's just how it is. Wine's not a fantastic thing, its just a way to get Windows software to run in the Mac/Darwin/Unix environment... but it works. Well, for most software anyway. Oh. You hare Word… switching to Open Office sucks for Macs, because the Open Office people decided to say F a Mac and just hack together the Linux distro, toss it in a .dmg file, tell it to run under X11, and pretend that’s a real solution for Mac software.

Fortunately, they guys at http://www.neooffice.org took Open Office, made it into a real Mac program, and re-distro it themselves.

Now… regarding my comments above, all windows software that you use with Wine has to go through X11. That’s just how it is. Wine’s not a fantastic thing, its just a way to get Windows software to run in the Mac/Darwin/Unix environment… but it works. Well, for most software anyway.

]]> By: Dan http://www.sowrey.org/2008/02/to-mac-or-not-to-mac/#comment-4809 Dan Sat, 01 Mar 2008 03:13:27 +0000 http://www.sowrey.org/2008/02/28/to-mac-or-not-to-mac/#comment-4809 Crossover for mac (www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac/) is a professionally-supported Wine app-manager that lets you run all your Office programs for Windows on your Mac with no Windows. Its limited - check the compatibility chart - but most popular Windows apps are supported. I have a 15in MacBook Pro and I got Crossover because I was tired of using Parallels to do the Paltalk comms program... which Crossover doesn't work with, live and learn right? But it allegedly works with Steam/HL2 so I'll probably use it sometime anyway... Entourage does stink though. I have it, I hate it, it doesn't work as nicely as Mail.app and iCal do in my opinion... though iWork doesn't really measure up to Office 2008, it is definitely a nice suite for what its worth. Crossover doesn't do anything that you can't do yourself with a standard Wine installation (downloads at http://www.kronenberg.org/darwine/ and http://darwine.sourceforge.net/) but it is a lot easier, cleaner, and friendlier than doing it... the hard way. Your Mac will run Windows, it will run Outlook, it just takes some coaxing to get it there to begin with. http://www.wine-forum.org/index.php and http://winehq.org are good information sources. Rumors were flying about that Apple will support Wine in the next Leopard update... but I won't hold my breath. Wine itself is pretty hit-or-miss, Apple doesn't seem to like miss's. Crossover for mac (www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac/) is a professionally-supported Wine app-manager that lets you run all your Office programs for Windows on your Mac with no Windows. Its limited – check the compatibility chart – but most popular Windows apps are supported. I have a 15in MacBook Pro and I got Crossover because I was tired of using Parallels to do the Paltalk comms program… which Crossover doesn’t work with, live and learn right? But it allegedly works with Steam/HL2 so I’ll probably use it sometime anyway…

Entourage does stink though. I have it, I hate it, it doesn’t work as nicely as Mail.app and iCal do in my opinion… though iWork doesn’t really measure up to Office 2008, it is definitely a nice suite for what its worth.

Crossover doesn’t do anything that you can’t do yourself with a standard Wine installation (downloads at http://www.kronenberg.org/darwine/ and http://darwine.sourceforge.net/) but it is a lot easier, cleaner, and friendlier than doing it… the hard way. Your Mac will run Windows, it will run Outlook, it just takes some coaxing to get it there to begin with. http://www.wine-forum.org/index.php and http://winehq.org are good information sources.

Rumors were flying about that Apple will support Wine in the next Leopard update… but I won’t hold my breath. Wine itself is pretty hit-or-miss, Apple doesn’t seem to like miss’s.

]]> By: Geoff http://www.sowrey.org/2008/02/to-mac-or-not-to-mac/#comment-4807 Geoff Fri, 29 Feb 2008 20:05:33 +0000 http://www.sowrey.org/2008/02/28/to-mac-or-not-to-mac/#comment-4807 Yeah, but that still requires me to boot two OSes just to read email. And I just can't get past that as being an effective way to do my daily job. If there was a way to run Outlook natively, I'd be all over it. But even with VMWare, you still have to run Windows. Yeah, but that still requires me to boot two OSes just to read email. And I just can’t get past that as being an effective way to do my daily job. If there was a way to run Outlook natively, I’d be all over it. But even with VMWare, you still have to run Windows.

]]> By: Scott http://www.sowrey.org/2008/02/to-mac-or-not-to-mac/#comment-4805 Scott Fri, 29 Feb 2008 15:34:15 +0000 http://www.sowrey.org/2008/02/28/to-mac-or-not-to-mac/#comment-4805 You should run VMware Fusion instead of Parallels -- Fusion supports "seemless" app integration; that is, your Outlook (or Visio) runs like an Outlook app within the Mac as opposed to running it like a "remote desktop session". You should run VMware Fusion instead of Parallels — Fusion supports “seemless” app integration; that is, your Outlook (or Visio) runs like an Outlook app within the Mac as opposed to running it like a “remote desktop session”.

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