Mac - Leopard

[Camy]

For those of you who have nice cute mac's (and don't loiter in parks)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7048463.stm

[Tanuki Racoon]

For those of you who have nice cute mac's

I have nice, cute Macs. What are Mac's?

I will wait at least 90 days before I jump into Leopard. I assure you 10.5 will beget 10.5.1 within those 90 days to fix all the terrible bugs they missed first go-around.

[dude]

I have nice, cute Macs. What are Mac's?

a short double-breasted coat of a thick woolen material, commonly plaid... commonly worn while loitering in parks in autumn.

[colinian]

I have nice, cute Macs. What are Mac's?

I will wait at least 90 days before I jump into Leopard. I assure you 10.5 will beget 10.5.1 within those 90 days to fix all the terrible bugs they missed first go-around.

"Mac's" in this context are computers owned by a guy named Mac.

I know a guy from high school whose name is Mac, and he had (that's past tense) a Mac (computer), and had a sticker on the monitor that read Mac's Mac. When it started giving him grief, freezing at inopportune times (inopportune like when he was using it), and taking it to a local Apple authorized dealer/service center was of no help, he reprinted the sticker so the new version read: Smack Mac's Mac. It was funny, because if he smacked the side of the case it would sometimes unfreeze. His dad bought him a high-end Dell PC. His sticker on his monitor now reads: Mac's until Dell freezes over. So far it hasn't. And I thing that's even funnier.

Colin

[colinian]

Oops!

[Tanuki Racoon]

freezing at inopportune times (inopportune like when he was using it), and taking it to a local Apple authorized dealer/service center was of no help,

Too bad. I could have fixed it. I know what the problem is. He's got a REALLY bad dealer if they couldn't figure this out. There are only two possible problems. Hmph.

[colinian]

Too bad. I could have fixed it. I know what the problem is. He's got a REALLY bad dealer if they couldn't figure this out. There are only two possible problems. Hmph.

I wish I'd know that you have that information. It could have saved his dad about $700 for the new Dell PC and however much he needed to pay to upgrade or buy Windows versions of software. His dad donated the Mac (the computer, not his son) to the school district. They probably fixed it and are as happy as raccoons.

Colin

[Tanuki Racoon]

I wish I'd know that you have that information. .... as happy as raccoons.

1. Raccoons are seldom happy.

2. I know an absurd amount about Macs (though there are things I don't know). I can fix them on a hardware level if I know what the problem is. I can fix wonky software. Hell, many moons ago I wrote (a very small) part of the system software which is still in use today on every Apple product that uses an IWMII chip (Apple II, Mac, AppleTV). That was when I was an ?ber-geek-genius. I am no longer a genius.

[The Pecman]

I will wait at least 90 days before I jump into Leopard. I assure you 10.5 will beget 10.5.1 within those 90 days to fix all the terrible bugs they missed first go-around.

Wimp. Real men have no compunction about installing a new OS. My partner and I will have 10.5 up and running on five different Macs by Friday night, but we're crazy.

Leopard has a ton of new features that are "can't miss," as far as I'm concerned. I particularly look forward to Time Machine, where the OS makes a background backup so that you can quickly get to deleted files, older copies of programs, and so on. Very handy.

There's a list of features and a video demo on this page on Apple's website.

The big problem with installing any dramatically new OS is when it breaks other programs. I'm fairly confident that for 90% of what I do, it'll be fine; it's the other 10% that makes you crazy.

Note that I'll still have Windows XP available on at least three of the main Macs, for the stuff we have that only runs under Windows. I have no doubt there'll be a new version of Parallels that will work with Leopard, and since Leopard has been in the hands of developers for about 6 months now, I'm pretty certain that they've gotten 99% of the bugs out of it. (One hopes...)

[Cole Parker]

I am no longer a genius.

we're crazy

Nice to see these two giants of this site finally identifying themselves. Speaking like Cossell for a change. Telling us like it is.

Hah hah hah hah!

Cole

[blue]

Alas, I have no mac coat or pea coat, though my coats are good.

Either go with Leopard (10.5) or wait until the next bug fix (10.5.x). Apple's Macintosh hasn't forgotten how to serve the user, instead of the user serving the OS's moods.

-----

Highly likely that my next computer -- not until another two or three years, I hope -- will be a Mac... which wil mean changing over my software, fonts, and files.

I bought a Windows laptop over a month ago, with Vista. I figured, I'm a geek, I've been dealing with computers for years. I'm no wire-head or hacker genius, but I'm OK enough. (I was better with Macs.)

Hmpf! Vista and Office 2007 were written by ?ber-paranoid psycho-aliens. That's my sincere opinion so far. WinXP and Office 2003 were not perfect, but they're usable. (My desktop computer is fine.)

Once I get a problem with my internet provider solved, and get the laptop fully set up and get used to it, I might think differently. ...Or I may be convinced of the errors of my straying ways....

[Tanuki Racoon]

I still run a few legacy OS-9 applications and Leopard WILL NOT RUN OS-9. Support has been removed. That's going to keep me away for quite some time. I just read that on the spec sheets.

[The Pecman]

I still run a few legacy OS-9 applications and Leopard WILL NOT RUN OS-9. Support has been removed.

Feh! Unclean!

What the hell are you running under OS9 these days? About the last thing I held onto was Pagemaker, and once I switched over to inDesign, I never looked back.

Maybe what you can do is find an old Mac and just run OS9 on that for the one or two things you can't do anywhere else. Heck, I may have an old G3 or something lying around, if you want a free one. We must have at least 5-6 unused computers in the house out in the garage, waiting for a good home (or the next time the Salvation Army comes around).

[colinian]

1. Raccoons are seldom happy...

Hmmm... strange. Where I lived (before moving into the dorm) we had raccoons visiting regularly. They seemed very happy to eat the food my sisters (on the sly) put out for them. We could see them through the French doors in the family room, a family of five (Dad, Mom, and three kids, we presumed -- at least three of them were small -- but we don't know about the two adults). They'd come up to the door and actually knock on the glass, like they were asking for more food (which only my sisters knew about, because they provided it without my folks or me knowing). One of the little ones liked to curl up and take a nap in a pot with a rosemary plant that Mom was growing. Maybe he/she liked the smell of the rosemary. Anyway, they sure seemed to be happy.

Colin

[Tanuki Racoon]

Feh! Unclean!

What the hell are you running under OS9 these days? About the last thing I held onto was Pagemaker, and once I switched over to inDesign, I never looked back.

Maybe what you can do is find an old Mac and just run OS9 on that for the one or two things you can't do anywhere else. Heck, I may have an old G3 or something lying around, if you want a free one. We must have at least 5-6 unused computers in the house out in the garage, waiting for a good home (or the next time the Salvation Army comes around).

I have two legacy applications.

1. WordPerfect for the Mac. However I have recently (last month) found that NeoOffice 2.1 (aka OpenOffice Mac) will read WordPerfect files. It thrills me as I've got well over 2,000 documents. One down.

2. Claris Resolve. This was the replacement for Informix Wingz. Nothing can read these files. It pisses me off, too, because it ought to be simple to read this. Resolve ended up as ClarisWorks and then AppleWorks. Only, guess what? They can't read it. I've got just over 800 spreadsheets. I am not opening and saving each one as an old Excel file then converting with Excel to a new format and THEN manually reformatting the spreadsheet (that's what it takes) just for the privilige of running Leopard.

If anyone can help with #2 above I'd be pleased :)

[The Pecman]

I have two legacy applications. 1. WordPerfect for the Mac.

Yeeessh! I think they haven't made that for at least 10 years, maybe 12. While I dislike Microsoft as a company, I've sworn by (and often at) Word for almost 20 years. And, like any old-time computer geek, I used WordStar for 7 years before that. (I feel pathetic.)

I could've sworn that Microsoft used to have WP conversion filters for MS Word, but I'm not sure if they ever implemented them recently for Office 2004. I bet there's a way to do batch-conversion in Windows, and have a program go through and automatically convert any number of WP files at least to RTF's or some other easy-to-open format. But there's always issues with conversions like this, particularly if you have a lot of headers and footers or imbedded graphics.

2. Claris Resolve.

Gad, that's been gone for 13 years. The question would be, do you really need to see any of those 800 spreadsheets in 2007? My advice would be to convert the top 50 or so that you actually need to some kind of compatible Excel format, and then use something like Apple Numbers to read and change those docs. I know there's a free MS Excel reader out there, but I'm not sure if it exists for the Mac.

I've stuck with Claris' Filemaker database for almost 15 years now, and use it under Windows and on the Mac all the time. I wonder if it's smart enough to take your old Resolve files and convert them to an FMP database? At least you could then see, access, and print the info that way; in fact, I usually prefer to use FMP instead of Excel, particularly for dealing with text-base databases.

At some point, I think you have to make the decision to join the 21st Century, cut bait and move on up. Sticking with legacy programs like this just drags your whole life down after awhile. I have to admit, though, there are still some situations out there where there's no direct route to convert a file format; for example, pre-3.0 Pagemaker docs are pretty much defunct, unless you have Pagemaker 3 sitting on a computer (which was the lingua franca to PM 4, 5 and 6, as well as inDesign).

Makes you wish everything could be open source and accessible to all operating systems. I've taken a serious look at Google Docs, and I bet it scares the hell outta Microsoft. I just wish they could get it to work with Safari (though it does work on Mac Firefox just fine).

[Tanuki Racoon]

I use many of those spreadsheets every day, actually.

[The Pecman]

Just installed and launched Leopard, and all is well... so far. (We always say that in the beginning, right before the nuke goes off.)

It's terrific so far. Wibby, I still say you should join the 21st century and figure out a way to convert your old files. I'm positive there's a way to batch-convert them, probably on a PC. <thinking about it some more> If you know (or could learn) AppleScript, I bet you could semi-automate the task under old OSX and convert the files that way, then eventually move up to a more-modern OS.

On a similar note: a close friend of mine, a struggling writer I've known for 30 years, is still using OS 8.6 and MS Word 5. About six years ago, I tried to install the then-new version of Office 2000 (or maybe it was 2001), and he totally freaked out at the idea of having to learn a whole new set of menus. He practically had a nervous breakdown. Luckily, we kept his old OS and programs on the computer, let him boot back into 8.6, and I think he's still using that today. Some people will not change.

Me, I think change is part of life, and I'll go with it most of the time. But I try to do it my way, and -- in the case of operating systems -- I try to bend them to my way of thinking, rather than vice-versa. I wind up using a lot of little background programs in order to make the OS look and feel the way I want it to. Think of it as adding a fancy stereo and whitewall tires to a new car you just bought. Factory-equipped usually doesn't work for me.

[DesDownunder]

re: WordPerfect:

From Word 2003 for Windows, help file:

Microsoft Word provides file format converters that enable Word to open documents that were created in older versions of WordPerfect. If your document was created in a version of WordPerfect that is later than 6.x, save it in an older WordPerfect format before you open it in Word.

Note Word does not provide a converter for saving a Word document as a WordPerfect file. However, you may be able to open your Word document directly in WordPerfect. For more information, consult your WordPerfect documentation.

To open a WordPerfect file, do the following:

On the File menu, click Open.

In the Files of type list, click either WordPerfect 5.x or WordPerfect 6.x.

If you don't see either of these options in the list

Install the file format converters as follows:

Exit all programs.

Do one of the following:

If you are using Microsoft Windows 2000, click Start, click Control Panel, and then double-click Add or Remove Programs.

If you are using Microsoft Windows XP, click Start, click Control Panel, and then double-click Add or Remove Programs.

In the Currently installed programs list, click either Microsoft Office 2003 or Microsoft Office Word 2003 (depending on whether you installed Word as part of Office or as an individual program), and then click Change.

The Configuration Wizard opens.

On the Maintenance Mode Options page, click Add or Remove Features, and then click Next.

If you installed Word as part of Office, then on the Custom Setup page, select the Choose advanced customization of applications check box, and then click Next.

On the Advanced Customization page, click the plus sign (+) next to Office Shared Features.

Click the plus sign (+) next to Converters and Filters, and then click the plus sign (+) next to Text Converters.

Click the arrow next to either WordPerfect 5.x Converter or WordPerfect 6.x Converter, and then click Run from My Computer.

The file format converter is installed.

In the File name box, enter the name of the file that you want, and then click Open.

Converting from WordPerfect 5.0, 5.1, and 5.2

You can use the WordPerfect 5.x converter to open WordPerfect 5.x documents in Office Word 2003. You cannot save an Office Word 2003 document in WordPerfect 5.x format.

On Claris Resolve, I found the following at this site:

http://www.darsys.net/2005/04/computer-thi...hat-vex-me.html

3. I still can't convert my Claris Resolve documents to any OS-X spreadsheet easily. I can load them one at a time, save them in a very, very old Excel format and then load them into the new Excel and re-save them. The resulting document does preserve my formulae, but the formatting is mostly lost. Claris Resolve rocks. The thing is, AppleWorks spreadsheet is a stripped down version of Resolve (which is actually Informix Wingz* in disguise). So it should be easy, but it isn't.

I seem to remember a Mac technician telling me that Mac versions of MS Office do not have the same features or conversions as the Windows versions. I can certainly vouch for that as far as PowerPoint is concerned.

An Aussie curse on Vista!

[Tanuki Racoon]

I seem to remember a Mac technician telling me that Mac versions of MS Office do not have the same features or conversions as the Windows versions. I can certainly vouch for that as far as PowerPoint is concerned.

True. Similar but not the same. However, based on that, I'm going to bring a few files on CD to the office and borrow the controller's PC and see if I can read/write some of them that way. As an experiment.

In other news, I played with Leopard. Spiffy looking. A bit slower than Tiger -- scary since the Mac at the store is much faster than my mac at home and it still seemed slower.