Info on MAC compatability issues please?

[Benchwayze]

Hi folks.

I really like the idea of this new MAC.

http://www.jigsaw24.com/Apple%20iMac%20 ... duct/18385

At present I use the following important add-on PC software programs

Microsoft Word 2010 (I also have used Open Office for a spell. ) I see that is one change. But will my existing docs be compatible?
Adobe Photoshop
PC. Version games. (Only two I use lately Half-life 2 and Far Cry)
Various bought DVDs.
Roxio copying and CD formatting software.
AVS Video and audio editing suite.

Most of my other programs are run of the mill online downloads, for which I'm able to download MAC versions.


(Hardware) My printer is a Kodak and I use a Canon dedicated scanner.

Supposing I decided to go for this MAC, how much of the above will I need to buy again?

Is it worth changing over? (I am asking this last question, whilst aware that I probably already know the answer!)

TIA

Regards
John

 

[Eric The Viking]

In most cases running a PC emulator, with, say XP, will allow all your software to work on a Mac.
Regarding Mac-native applications:

• Microsoft Word 2010: No change needed. Open Office runs on a Mac (we use it), and if you want to shell out, so does MS Office, although it's slightly different.)
• Adobe Photoshop: Runs on a Mac (expensively!), but there are open source alternatives such as Gimp. Some P'Shop files can be opened in other things, some can't - it depends.
• PC. Version games. (Only two I use lately Half-life 2 and Far Cry) : Dunno. Probably not but you can emulate a PC to cover this, albeit with a reduction in performance.
• Various bought DVDs: shjould be playable without problems, as long as there is a DVD drive (not all new Macs have them now!). If not you can readily get a USB-DVD drive that will work.
• Roxio copying and CD formatting software. Probably not. But there are lots of Mac equivalents out there.
• AVS Video and audio editing suite. Again no, but the free app is good, and Final Cut Pro is industry leading.

(Hardware) My printer is a Kodak and I use a Canon dedicated scanner. -- should be fine depending on age and type of connection: worth checking with an Apple store possibly.

It's worth pointing out that John Lewis offer an extra year's warranty on Macs, at the same overall price as the Apple Store. I've found their after sales very good (we've bought three Macs from them, cameras, at least one PC an Android tablet, and a lovely small MacBook most recently). Apple themselves (Apple Stores) are 'variable' in my experience.

Early models of that iMac shape have some design quirks that I don't like. Later and current ones are better, and use quite a bit less power.

If you do get one, it's important to make sure the Time Machine backup software has somewhere else to back up to. This can be a USB external disk, or across the network (we use a Linux box), or a PC via iTunes, or even the Apple cloud service costly long-term). They now have solid state disks - fast and theoretically more reliable, but a failure although unlikely, would most likely be irrecoverable. Back up properly and a crisis is a mere nuisance. Time Machine works just fine, but is picky about what it sends data to. You *might* use a NAS server, but if the box doesn't support it, you're a bit stuck. That's why we use Linux. Once I'd found the instructions on the net, it literally took about 20 minutes to set it up (I'm not a Linux guru by any means!).

HTH,

E.

 

[morfa]

Microsoft Word 2010 But will my existing docs be compatible? - Yes, they'll work fine, but you'll have to buy a mac version of the software
Adobe Photoshop - You'll have to buy this again
PC. Version games. (Only two I use lately Half-life 2 and Far Cry) - They won't work
Various bought DVDs. - Not sure what you mean here?
Roxio copying and CD formatting software. - There are Mac alternatives
AVS Video and audio editing suite. - You'll have to buy that again
(Hardware) My printer is a Kodak and I use a Canon dedicated scanner. - These will probably work, if you google the model numbers and 'mac os x' you'll probably be able to find out.

Supposing I decided to go for this MAC, how much of the above will I need to buy again?

I reckon you'll have to buy most of the software again.

As for 'is a Mac worth it?' well they're high end PC workstations with a decent GUI running on top of a proper OS (Unix), so yeah, I'd say so. However, you may find that buying a high end PC will give you the same kind of performance and quality without having to shell out loads on new copies of software.

 

[Benchwayze]

Thanks Eric & Morfa
=D>
That just about sums up all I need to be aware of.

I am much obliged.

I am off to design a plank and two piles of Ibstock bricks to use as a slimmed down MAC Station!!! With the cash I need to spend, it will be just about affordable! :lol:

Various bought DVDs = my feature film collection.

All the best for the Holidays m;' merry men. :ho2

 

[morfa]

I did think by DVDs, you meant films, yes, but you'll have to buy a external DVD drive, as that Mac doesn't have one. The ones Mac will try and sell you look good but aren't cheap. You can get them much cheaper.

If you want to save money, then a Mac is a bad choice, they're generally quite expensive. If you did want a nice PC, you can buy something with a better spec for less money.

For example this has a similar spec for half the price:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... catid=2477

And you probably won't have to buy as much new software.

 

[RogerS]

I did think by DVDs, you meant films, yes, but you'll have to buy a external DVD drive, as that Mac doesn't have one. The ones Mac will try and sell you look good but aren't cheap. You can get them much cheaper.

If you want to save money, then a Mac is a bad choice, they're generally quite expensive. If you did want a nice PC, you can buy something with a better spec for less money.

For example this has a similar spec for half the price:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... catid=2477

And you probably won't have to buy as much new software.

Yes but PCs are so.o.o.o last year :wink:

 

[Eric The Viking]

We've long had both Macs and PCs in the house.

My wife's G3 has finally died in the last month. I think it's about fifteen years old. In that time it's had no virus problems and needed very little by way of support (no problems have arisen from it at all, but some from me rebuilding the infrastructure around it!).

The older kids had slightly unreliable iMacs and eMacs of the cathode ray tube vintage. That said, Apple support was excellent. I've had one major issue with the big iPad in the house, none with the iPhone 4 nor the small iPad, nor the MacBook.

None of them have had any operating system or software issues that I can remember, except for one bug on the iPad caused by a sloppy release of iOs (suitable workaround achieved with assistance from Apple support).

At the time we first started buying them, PC compatibility was supposed to be tricky, and Open Office didn't exist, so we bought a multi-seat licence for Office Mac. Apart from that and a few games, I can't remember last time we paid for software. We've moved files transparently between the two 'universes' for more than a decade, using Samba to share files. Everything uses the same two HP printers over the network, one a big laser and one a heavy-duty colour inkjet (apart from the iPads, which still can't print easily!).

I've said this before: if I didn't have to use a PC for work, I'd much prefer a Mac. I'd qualify that slightly now I have a Linux box - it's really very good.

When support for XP expires next year, I'm not yet sure what I'll do, but it will probably involve Ubuntu Linux with XP in a virtual machine (for compatibility purposes).

I have a piece of photographic software (Hugin) that runs on all three platforms. If my wife gets the iMac she's talking about I'll test it on that too, but on Linux it rendered a large panorama roughly 25x faster than on an XP machine (with as many processes as possible turned off to speed it up). The processor on the XP box is nominally significantly faster, but the render wouldn't complete without crashing (the reason I tried it on Linux in the first place). The Linux box had more physical memory, although both had ample swap space so that should only affect performance (not crashing).

Unix-based operating systems are much more efficient than Windows based ones it seems.

E.

 

[RogerS]

....

Unix-based operating systems are much more efficient than Windows based ones it seems.

E.

And for many OS upgrades, Apple have now stopped charging. Nothing. Nada. I can migrate from Snow Leopard to Mavericks for nowt (that's four generations of OS on from Snow Leopard).

 

[Hivenhoe]

Hi folks.

I really like the idea of this new MAC.

http://www.jigsaw24.com/Apple%20iMac%20 ... duct/18385

At present I use the following important add-on PC software programs

Microsoft Word 2010 (I also have used Open Office for a spell. ) I see that is one change. But will my existing docs be compatible?
Adobe Photoshop
PC. Version games. (Only two I use lately Half-life 2 and Far Cry)
Various bought DVDs.
Roxio copying and CD formatting software.
AVS Video and audio editing suite.

Most of my other programs are run of the mill online downloads, for which I'm able to download MAC versions.


(Hardware) My printer is a Kodak and I use a Canon dedicated scanner.

Supposing I decided to go for this MAC, how much of the above will I need to buy again?

Is it worth changing over? (I am asking this last question, whilst aware that I probably already know the answer!)

TIA

Regards
John

for Macs. I'm treasurer for local BKA and have to deal with many odd doc formats from MS PC owners and so far managed to open/convert all. However I've had some complaints that their PC's either can't read my emails, docs/docx so now usually send in pdf format.

 

[MMUK]

The question you have to ask is:

Is it really worth spending £1200 on a MAC when you can build a PC to greater spec for around 1/3 that price?

I've used MACs in the past and to be perfectly frank, I can't see how the price tag is justified. Yes, they do their job very well but so does a carefully built and tuned PC which still works out much cheaper. Yes, viruses aren't as common on a MAC but they still exist and if you have decent software, viruses aren't an issue on a PC (I've not had a virus on my PC for at least ten years since I switched to the full version of AVG).

However, that's my opinion based on personal experience. I say exactly the same about the iPhone, iPad, iPod, etc. - for what they are they do the job very well but they're over priced by a long shot and very restrictive.

 

[RogerS]

.....- for what they are they do the job very well but they're over priced by a long shot and very restrictive.

For you perhaps but for most users I would argue that they work perfectly well and are not restrictive.

 

[Jonzjob]

This site will probably tell you if your printer is compatable John?

http://support.en.kodak.co.uk/app/answe ... ected/true

If it ain't an all-in-one then I'm sure they have a site for that as well?

We have a MacBook Pro 13 and an iMac 21 1/2" and would not go back to a M/soft machine again. As far as a photo programme is concerned, do you relly need all of the clout of Photoshop? Because if you son't then Photoshop Elements is great. Nt as comprehensive as PS, bu it does everything I need and is dead easy to use. I have Elements 8 and see no reason to upgrade?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Adobe-Photoshop ... lements+12

 

[bugbear]

We have a MacBook Pro 13 and an iMac 21 1/2" and would not go back to a M/soft machine again.

Agreed.

Linux is marvellous, isn't it?

:lol: :lol: :lol:

BugBear (Ubuntu 13.10, with extensive customisation, just because I can)

 

[Eric The Viking]

Linux is marvellous, isn't it?

It's certainly fast!

I built a brand new Linux server for under £200* about five months ago (HP/Cpq microserver). It's not supposed to have/need Ubuntu desktop, just the server, but I thought, 'why not?'.

Very glad I did. It's now acting as a mailserver and my 'rendering engine' for panoramas and Time Machine repository. The graphics are rubbish, but most of the money went on 8GB of RAM and the server box - I'm using the onboard graphics chip, which is fine for the purpose.

E.

*I cheated - the 19" monitor was reconditioned. Everything else was new.

 

[Jonzjob]

Nobody's mentioned CCC as a backup? Carbon Copy Cloner. I use it and when I upgraded from Mountain Lion to Mavericks, clean install because I was fitting a bigger HDD, I thought about doing a boot from it, just to see how easy it is, still on Mountain Lion, and it does just what it says on the proverbial tin.

Because it's a USB2 connection it took a little longer, but it booted up no problems. Now it's ready to go if I have any disk problems and I now that if I do get a crash on either system all I have to do is boot from CCC and let it reload my complete system, OS and data, straight onto a new HDD. I can go and have a cuppa, or more likely a glass of red or several 8) 8)

 

[Eric The Viking]

Thanks Jon, I'll take a look.

One reason for using Time Machine was the psychology of it: I want daughter #2 to actually do backups. Since it came with her shiny new Macbook, it's cool and will be used. Had I loaded something else onto it, that would have been dad interfering!

She's had it for a few weeks now and some of the novelty has worn off. Amusingly I keep encountering her in unexpected places, like the spare room (wrapped in a blanket as the heating isn't on in there) and daughter #1's bedroom (where she shouldn't be, really).

When challenged, "the WiFi is better in here!"

:roll:

 

[Jonzjob]

I forgot to say that it isn't a freebe any more, but it ain't much either and worth every penny..

http://sites.fastspring.com/bombich/product/ccc