Running Actinic on OSX

[gabrielcrowe]

I've officially ditched the windows platform, for a new macbook pro.

Using Vmware fusion, with 'unity' the windows desktop is seamlessly integrated with the osx one > Video

Attached is a shot of my desktop just after a perfect install.

It runs MUCH faster on this mac, than on my PC, ironically.

[Bruce]

Nice one Gabriel, I had a customer ask me if he could run Actinic on a Mac, I can now tell him he can.

Regards,

[gabrielcrowe]

fyi: i just migrated the interact-studio site over, without a hitch.

The reason it runs so fast, is that actinic is literaly the only app on the guest.

my other development tools, i'v moved over onto the mac host.

This goes for every windows app, tbh, and it even works for some 3d games too.

osx is sooo much easier to use, i'm very surprised i diddnt do this sooner.

[Mark H]

Thanks for that Gabe. I've boasted before about buying a Mac as it has been suggested earlier this year that they run Windows faster than any PC laptop, might actually do it now.........

PS i presume you're running XP on the Mac, not Vista

[Mark H]

"PS i presume you're running XP on the Mac, not Vista"

Apart from knowing the answer already, I should have looked at your attached image first.........

[gabrielcrowe]

I also found myself annoyed at the dreamweaver interface in the demo for osx, so i ended up running the pc version on the mac this way too, fusion is so seamless, apart from the interface and the emphasis on right clicking, you'd not notice you were running a windows native app.

[pinbrook]

Bruce in notice your sig is the actinic one as you running dual personalities? ie part of you is back at actinic? or was it an oversight?

[Mark H]

Gabriel - just out of interest, how is OSX at moving Windows data files? I have spent the last 3 days moving 35Gb of data from one drive to another using Windows Explorer over a Gigabit LAN connection

[wesleythorne]

we also use a macbook with osx and actinic and sage, you have 3 good options for running windows on a mac,
ist option i to use 'bootcamp' this is built into osx and allows you to install windows on a partition and run it as a pc, on pc startup you choose which os you would like to use.
2nd option is Vmware as mentioned above, i have not tried this but have heard great things, especially if you need 64bit software
3rd option, one we use is 'parelles' a virtual os runs alongside osx and you can link bewteen the two os's easily.

Bootcamp is free
Vm and parells costs about 80-100$
Of cause you need a full version of xp or vista.

Lots of options to try out.
We find paralles and osx work together fine for running actinic and sage, setup is straight forward.

Demos available for bot virtual products on their website.

[gabrielcrowe]

well, bootcamp may be free, but the key points to note are that fusion allows seamless desktop integration. bootcamp would rwquire me to boot into xp in order to use actinic.

parallels has a similar feature, but i tried both, and for me, this macbook runs vmwares offering faster.

[gabrielcrowe]

Gabriel - just out of interest, how is OSX at moving Windows data files? I have spent the last 3 days moving 35Gb of data from one drive to another using Windows Explorer over a Gigabit LAN connection

its fine if you move them onto an external drive first. there are some odd 'large file' errors if you use samba networking. i opted for the simpler approach. a 500gb external drive. i did nearly 50gb in 4 hours.

[Cheapprices4u]

try this
i find its great

NTFS for MacŪ OS X

* Paragon NTFS for MacŪ OS X beats down the barriers between Windows and MacŪ OS!

[Nadeem]

This is quite interesting, thanks Gabe.

PS: Love your desktop - Gears of War 2 -

[gabrielcrowe]

actinic as an application isnt very far away from crossover office compatibility.

the only thing murdering its ability to launch under (dar)wine, or crossover, on osx or linux, is its odbc connection.

crossover is a better choice, since macs actually have odbc in their control panels. actinic still fails for various reasons.

there are certain libraries that can be used within actinic (namely libwine) that will allow *native* wine usage, but until then, vmware (or parallels) is a good choice.

I found that Codeweavers (crossover) have a page on Actinic 7, that someone has since neglected: http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibi...e/?app_id=1624

you could even give it a test yourselves, and become a vmware partner, bundling it with actinic for osx people.

can you say "8% addition to your client base?"

[malbro]

can you say "8% addition to your client base?"

We are seeing around 4.6% of visitors to the site are using a MAC, as we get around 70% of our visitors from UK does that mean there are less MAC users over here?