articles/Review/thewormhasturnedagain-page5

The Worm has Turned again - part 5 of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

by Mike McNamee Published 01/10/2009

Even Apple take no prisoners. When compiling this feature we went off the find the Mac logos which were helpfully provided in a zip file called 0906mbp13_3q.tif.zip in the corporate press area. Showing a complete lack of understanding of Windows requirements, note that it has two period signs .tif and .zip.

It's feast or famine - when they have no file extension Windows has no idea what to do with the file, when it has two (or more!) things can go astray on some older server systems still using previous versions of Windows. If you try and drag the file from the download panel to a location on your computer the error warning appears, saying that the file name already exists. Note that there is a folder (from point C) called MacOS_1c_flat and that there is also (second arrow from C) a file with no file extension, but the same MacOS_1c_flat name. Note also that the second file has a zero size associated with it (0 KB). If we had a pound for the number of MacMonkies who have sent us articles with image files of 0 KB size we would be rich! This is particularly a problem with compressed (zipped) files and causes as many problems when migrating crossplatform as fonts do.

Note also that the folders in panel A also have duplicated names for both folders and the 0 KB files below them. So here we have an honest attempt to arrange files in logical sub-folders making file transfer into the Windows system a complete nightmare, Apple really should know better! It is almost as good as the fact that the little video on their website telling you about migrating from Windows does not work in Visa because it is in QuickTime format.*

*Actually that last remark is a fib! When we checked recently we found that QuickTime movies do now operate, presumably because of one of the almost daily updates we have to endure from Windows Vista has modified something to good effect (yippee!). We then went back and checked the movies on the Mark Galer book, Photoshop CS4 Essential Skills (see Feb/ Mar 09 for review). The movies threw an error originally, but with a change of file association we found that they now work.

Overall - so far

All things considered, the temporary switch back has gone well. It would take a few days of continuous working on a Mac, after a long immersion in PC world, before it became intuitive. Setting up the fly-out menu bar at the base was a little tricky and resulted in our disabling InDesign as we had inadvertently dropped the icon onto the desk top. This seems to be an issue of the touch pad which your editor could not really get along with even though son (and daughter) of editor were flying along with it. I found myself running out of space and letting go of the pad to drop stuff in the wrong places. I also found the 'drag' of action a little tiring on the fingers. The two-fingered scroll action was really useful, the rotate Photoshop pasteboard an annoying gimmick if you left your spare finger too close to the pad and while the 'pinch-separate' action to magnify either an image of the icons was soon forgotten about.

The place where the Mac scored heavily was the ease of attaching and setting up of external devices, you just plugged them in and they worked just like is always claimed! Conversely removing an application was difficult to track down in the help menu. In terms of raw performance, the Macs gained on file transfer but did not compete with Vista on the intensive operations within Photoshop. This is entirely reasonable, it is quite unfair to compare a laptop with a work station! However, we still put up with Vista's turgid start-up because once it has struggled into action in the morning it does tick along quite well.

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Contact Mike McNamee

1st Published 01/10/2009
last update 09/12/2022 14:59:50

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