Re: Just venting (totally OT)

real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Rowland McDonnell) wrote in
news:1iba1jb.ynhj93lhb15kN%real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:

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.


I don't know if I can afford to buy Windoze though! :o(

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.


I doubt I'd be making pages on the Mac... not straight away anyway :o)

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).


I've just emailed them about it :o)

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.


Yup! I'm not going to build webpages on the Mac though so that's no
problem :o)

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.


Okey dokes!

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.


Okey dokes!

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*.


If I remember I will but I might need a reminder if I forget! :o)

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.


Gotchya!

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).


Ah right!

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


I mainly use the computer for email, building websites and using PSP and
Poser and I'll keep using Windows for all those, I just want to play
around with a Mac to see what it's like :o)

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.


Oh right!

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.


Blimey!

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.


Blimey! It looks like IE7 fails it badly!

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.


Ah right!

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.


We've got 3 Windows PCs and a Windows laptop atm... would I still need to
put it on the Mac?

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.


*nodding*

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?


It looks it but I don't think I could afford to do that :o(

Rowland.



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