Re: Just venting (totally OT)

Mandy <mandy2uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

lying_***@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

x-no-archive: yes

Mandy <mandy...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I've just found some resellers that sell Macs around here so I'll see
if I can persuade Steve to take me to each of them so that I can have a
look! :o)

I strongly recommend you find a friend who already has a Mac and make
sure it will run everything you need before you buy one.

I don't have any RL friends... only online ones!

Online is all you need - but remember, since you can run Windoze on a
Mac, everything you've got now will work on a Mac.

But you've said what applications you use all the time - Poser is
available in a Mac version (both Mac and Windoze versions of Poser are
the same, at version 7), and while MS FrontPage is discontinued by MS,
there are much better Web page creation tools around.

So: if you want to run Poser 7 on a Mac, the thing to do would be to
enquire about with the firm about a cheap `side-grade' so you can go
from Poser 7 on Windoze to Poser 7 on Mac without paying full whack (not
all firms do this, but some do).

MS FrontPage - well, you should get something better even if you stick
with Windoze. But aside from that: ask on uk.comp.sys.mac, explain that
you use FrontPage now, and I'd bet that you'll get lots of good
suggestions on what'd be a better replacement for you to use (they can
probably advise you on a replacement for FrontPage under MS Windoze
too). For sure there will be a period of learning, but whatever you
get, it'll be better than MS FrontPage. Remember, MS FrontPage was
dropped by MS some time ago, and it's always been the crappiest big name
Web page creation software out there.

Paintshop Pro is not available in a Mac version. If you want to know
what to do about that, ask on uk.comp.sys.mac. I'm sure someone can
give you good advice, but I know I don't know what's what in that field.

I'm certain that if you want to do graphics things, you'll be able to
find Mac software that will - once you've learnt how to use it - end up
much nicer for you than PaintShop Pro. *CERTAIN* - some things are
`swings and roundabouts' between Macs and Windoze. Graphics software is
not one of those: Windoze graphics software has always been a poor
relation to what's available on Macs.

As for the rest of it: as I've suggested, you do need to check that you
can run what you need. But that doesn't mean you need to get specific
versions of specific software, necessarily. Identify the jobs you do,
and ask on uk.comp.sys.mac how to get them done with a Mac - telling
them what you use *now*.

Most software companies develop their programs to run on Windows, and
only subsequently do a Mac port if they think there will be enough
demand. Hence Mac versions of Windows software are often a couple of
years behind the times, or don't include all the features.

Ah right!

This is actually a common misperception held by people who don't use
Macs. And a common lie put about by people who like lying about this
sort of thing.

In reality, the Mac versions of much software are frequently in advance
by a generation or two over Windoze software, rarely behind for any
length of time (Couple of years? Utter nonsense!), and generally it's
only Windoze games that are poorly represented on Macs (that's because
it's often hard to port games between platforms - oh, never mind why, it
just is).

So: if you're an avid gamer, don't get a Mac. But otherwise, it's a
better bet than Windoze in general.

The best example of the Mac software being ahead of its Windoze
counterpart is Microsoft Office. Microsoft Word was originally
developed for the Mac only, and the Windoze versions of MS Word and all
the other parts of MS Office have always (AFAIK) been one step behind
the Mac versions. My wife reports that she finds it so, using both Mac
and Windoze versions of MS Office.

This is because the innovations in MS Office all come from Microsoft's
`Macintosh Business Unit', which is their elite office application
development team. Really: MS does it on Macs first in general. When MS
made the file formats of MS Office the same on Macs and Windoze, it
picked the Mac file format as the one to standardize on.

My wife uses MS Office and home and at work: at work, she has the
Windoze versions. She has had to bring MS Word files home to translate
on the Mac here, because the MS Word for Windoze file from someone at
work she had couldn't be read by the version of MS Word for Windoze on
her desktop PC at work. So it took Mac software to translate the MS
Word for Windoze file into a form that MS Word for Windoze could
understand.

Really.

As a former website developer, I used to have to test websites using
browsers on the Mac and that was one of my least favourite parts of
the job because things operate differently and web pages that look
fine in windows can look crap on a Mac, even using the 'same' browser.

Oh right!

Practically speaking, I can view any Website I want without any apparent
problems at all. Sometimes `it doesn't work', but switching to a
different Web browser almost always deals with that. Very occasionally,
it won't and I'll find a Web site that I can't use. But every time I've
asked my wife to check it from work, she's seen exactly the same crap
that I've seen; in every case like that, the problem seems to be caused
by a problem with the Web server talking to some back-end database and
it's got nothing to do with anyone's Web *browser* at all.

FWIW, most Web sites have HTML that's not compliant with the standards -
one of the Web browsers I've got does a compliance test on every page it
visits, which is how I know this. So it's not really the fault of a Web
browser if it can't handle the Web page - it's usually the fault of the
Web page creation software (MS FrontPage is one of the worst offenders)
for producing broken HTML.

So: Evil Nigel makes a common claim, but my experience proves that his
claim is false. And I've never seen any Web site not built with MS
FrontPage (or similar `standards breaking' Webpage creation software)
that suffers from any sort of problem with any Web browser in recent
years (10-15 years ago, it was different). As I mentioned, MS FrontPage
was designed to produce non-standard HTML that only MS Internet Explorer
would render properly so that people would think that only MS IE worked
properly, whereas the reality was that MS FrontPage was deliberately
producing bad HTML to screw up those who stuck to the standards. And
you use MS FrontPage still!

Now then, AFAIK, Firefox renders things identically on everything -
provided that its settings are the same on each installation.

Safari, Apple's Web browser that comes with Macs, used to be pretty bad
at a lot of things. Evil Nigel might be remembering Safari v1, which
wasn't good - well, it was utterly useless for a lot of Web sites.
Safari v0.9ish was a joke. Safari v2.current is one of the best Web
browsers going - Safari 2 was a major update to handle most of the stuff
it couldn't handle properly in the past, and it's just been getting
better since then.

Put it like this: Safari 2 came out years ago. It's long been able to
pass the Acid 2 test.

<http://www.webstandards.org/files/acid2/test.html>

MS IE /7/ fails the test - the new one (not sure if it's out yet), v8,
is the first MS Web browser capable of passing it.

There's really no point in buying a Mac to run windows - you're just
paying more for a computer to do something less well.

Evil Nigel

So you reckon I should just get a Mac without adding Windows into it?

Do not take advice from this person: he's talking a mixed load of lies
and bad advice, although not all his remarks are without foundation so
you could easily be mislead into making the mistake of trusting him.

If you get a Mac, it makes sense for *YOU* to put Windoze on it in my
opinion to aid with the transition because you're Windoze only at the
moment. If you don't do that, you could possibly get stuck at some
point if you don't have access to a Windoze PC. If you've got Windoze
available, you can't get stuck without access to Windoze software.

That's my opinion.

On the other hand, if you've got other Windoze computers in the house,
you might not consider it worth doing and you might be right - a retail
copy of MS Windoze is horribly, horribly expensive: much more expensive
than MacOS X.

The flash way of doing it involves Parallels Desktop.

<http://www.parallels.com/en/rc/screens&demos/>

Now, with that on your Mac, you could have all your old Windoze software
available and the new Mac stuff, all running alongside each other.
That'd be dead convenient in many ways - you could use the Mac stuff
until you got stuck, and if you did get stuck, you'd have your Windoze
stuff available to use at the click of a mouse. For sure it's not a
*cheap* way of doing it, but oh boy oh boy is it fancy or what?

Rowland.


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