Mac vs. Windows Thread poster: Hang Nguyen-Padfield
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I have received sereval translation requests with Macintosh. What is Macintosh? Is it an operating system? Is it useful? Please advise.
| | | | Ralf Lemster 
Germany
Local time: 23:51
English to German
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| It's an operating system | Mar 2, 2002 |
Macintosh (or \"Mac\") is the operating system developed and maintained by Apple - the most recent development is the iMac. Check www.apple.com for details.
Macs are pretty commonplace with graphics and video designers (advertising agencies, printers, web designers, etc.). While Mac fans will tell you that the Mac operating system is technically superior, many people find Windows-based computers as easy to use... See more Macintosh (or \"Mac\") is the operating system developed and maintained by Apple - the most recent development is the iMac. Check www.apple.com for details.
Macs are pretty commonplace with graphics and video designers (advertising agencies, printers, web designers, etc.). While Mac fans will tell you that the Mac operating system is technically superior, many people find Windows-based computers as easy to use, and equally powerful. No judgements here... ▲ Collapse
| | | | Klaus Herrmann
Germany
Local time: 23:51
Member (2002)
English to German
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As Ralf said, it\'s just another computer system. The discussion about which is the better system is more like a religious war then a factual. But more important to you: Both PC and Mac have programs that permit to read disk format of the respective other system (including CD-ROMs and ZIP disks).
If you\'re doing \"only\" the translation (not typesetting), it\'s pretty safe to say that all major application support cross-platform work, i.e. with your PC, you will be able to... See more As Ralf said, it\'s just another computer system. The discussion about which is the better system is more like a religious war then a factual. But more important to you: Both PC and Mac have programs that permit to read disk format of the respective other system (including CD-ROMs and ZIP disks).
If you\'re doing \"only\" the translation (not typesetting), it\'s pretty safe to say that all major application support cross-platform work, i.e. with your PC, you will be able to open an MS Office file created on the Mac, and vice versa. If you\'re doing the typesetting as well, you have to watch out for some font-related problems.
If in doubt, let me know about the file format - we\'re using PC and Mac, so there\'s a good chance I\'d be able to verify it.
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| | | | Jerzy Czopik
Germany
Local time: 23:51
Member (2003)
Polish to German
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| Oh dear, MAC is not only an operating system | Apr 7, 2002 |
The operating system is MAC OS, the last development ist MAC OS X.
But you all have forgotten, that MAC - or MacIntosh or Apple - is a quite different computer than an usual PC. As PC use Intel or compatible processors and MAC use Motorla (ie. BIG ENDIAN processors) and ARE NOT COMPATIBLE WITH THE PC-WORLD.
It is right, that you can open a MS-Word document on PC and MAC, but there are big problems if you use other languages than english, german french or so. I translate polis... See more The operating system is MAC OS, the last development ist MAC OS X.
But you all have forgotten, that MAC - or MacIntosh or Apple - is a quite different computer than an usual PC. As PC use Intel or compatible processors and MAC use Motorla (ie. BIG ENDIAN processors) and ARE NOT COMPATIBLE WITH THE PC-WORLD.
It is right, that you can open a MS-Word document on PC and MAC, but there are big problems if you use other languages than english, german french or so. I translate polish, so it is quite difficult to switch between PC and MAC - in most cases it doesn´t work at all and a additional labour is to be done, if you want to get a PC document be shown properly by a MAC - and vice versa.
MAC are quite good for graphics and are fast for video applications - but they are much more expenceive as PC. For example a good PC with a PENTIUM IV 1800 MHz costs about 999 EUROS, but an equal MAC costs more than 1.900 EUROS. For normal translation you don´t need a MAC - but if you got a lot of work to do with MAC, it is worth to buy or lease one. But be aware - software for MAC is even more expenceive as the MAC itself...
Regards
J. Czopik ▲ Collapse
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For quite some time I worked with a Mac - I tended to find Mac OS more reliable than most PC systems (this was before XP came out), but the one big problem I\'d like to point out is that the majority of CD dictionaries are not supported by Mac.
| | | | Victor Foster
United States
Local time: 16:51
French to English
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| Mac Vs Windows | Feb 6, 2003 |
I prefer Macs, especially the new Unix based OS. But the reality is that there are more applications for Windows. As a translator it is easier to work in Windows as most CAT tools are made for Windows platforms. Wordfast will work on both Macs and PCs so if you are translating mostly documents or excel files, that could work for you. MS has a Mac version for MS office so there is no problem there though there can sometimes be an issue with fonts, accented characters, etc.
| | | | Paul Bishop (X)
Netherlands
Local time: 23:51
Dutch to English
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| Mac vs. Windows - starting out in translation... | Nov 11, 2004 |
What would the advice be if starting out in translation: I am about to buy a PC (or Mac) AND CAT.
Given this situation, would I be making a mistake to buy a Mac, knowing that I will be using it predominantly for translation?
I have read the limitations about CAT and Mac and that Wordfast would be one of the few options.
However, there are so many people who rave about Macs...
| | | | Hirschmann (X)
Local time: 23:51
English to German
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| I was a long-time Mac user but prefer the PC and Windows now | Nov 28, 2004 |
Paul Bishop wrote:
However, there are so many people who rave about Macs...
I raved, too, from 1985 until 2001. I had used lots of Macs for translation work but currently reasonably priced PCs are much more powerful than comparably priced Macs, and CAT software (I own WordFast but prefer TRADOS by far) is almost only available for Windows.
I still have a Macintosh that runs Mac OS X 10.3.6 (the most recent version) but Windows 2000 on my fast PC with an AMD Athlon XP 3000+ and 1 GByte of RAM is far more stable although this may seem incredible to most people.
Maybe, a Power Mac G5 2x2500 that costs EUR 3149 is slightly faster than my PC that I built for EUR 598 but it is prone to crash more often, doesn't run the software I need, and is probably even noisier than my PC that is totally inaudible. And VirtualPC (a PC emulation software) is just a very miserable option.
As I have built a PC system using only select components (motherboard, processor, memory modules, etc.), my computer is much better than most PCs which contain crappy components that cause Windows NT (2000 or XP) to crash. My PC didn't crash even once after I turned it on for the first time several months ago.
[Edited at 2004-11-28 17:30]
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| Mac OS, before OS X, is truly more reliable than Windows | Mar 9, 2005 |
I was a long-time Mac user (because of my computer graphic/DTP related major) and switched to PC 3 years ago because of translation cases. It's true that Mac is great for graphics and image/video editing, and the OS is really more reliable than Windows. Well, before Mac OS X.
OS X is somewhat like Windows XP, taking a lot of disk space to do little things. Many Mac users have told me that OS 9/9.x is much better than OS X in terms of stability and efficiency.
It's also ... See more I was a long-time Mac user (because of my computer graphic/DTP related major) and switched to PC 3 years ago because of translation cases. It's true that Mac is great for graphics and image/video editing, and the OS is really more reliable than Windows. Well, before Mac OS X.
OS X is somewhat like Windows XP, taking a lot of disk space to do little things. Many Mac users have told me that OS 9/9.x is much better than OS X in terms of stability and efficiency.
It's also true that there's always problems when performing cross-platform tasks between Mac and PC. Word documents in Chinese done on a Mac frequently appear as messy codes on a PC, and Excel files done on a Mac would often lost the proper table format when showing on a PC. Even the Chinese input methods are much fewer for Mac than PC, in additions to software/CD-ROM.
However, there's a big "plus" for using Mac, especially for Internet connection. There're far, far more PC viruses than Mac's, so it's not a bad idea to go online with a Mac, if you have one. ▲ Collapse
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