Software (not thread & fabric :) the computer kind)

I use a MAC also. I'm an addict - my first one in grad school had a 3 digit serial number. Is your MAC an older one, or do you have a new Intel chip MAC? There was some nice software that Davis Computing did for MACs some time back. I don't know if it's been updated to the OS X platform, but will run in classic.

I just found this link:

I couldn't get their demo download to open. Stitchcraft Gold for Mac is used by a lot of designers - or at least was. Here is their link: on the site it says you have to run under Classic. It's a goodprogram.

This other program looks really nice, but not primarily for XS. It's great if you're doing knitting and other things as well.

when I started doing NP, which I don't chart, but was thinking about(and am again) doing some charted work I spoke with some of the designersout there using MACs (quite a lot, though not all use them for charting). Ithink that Jennifer Aikman-Smith from Dragon Dreams had some good advice -she was a MAC person. And you could do some queries at Tink Booard-Dill'ssite. Tink has a designers discussion group/list and is full of info. When I was at the Scarlet Thread last week, onwer Anna told me that she, and the Merrey of Merrey Designs, of course are also MAC gals - we had to bond about this. But, that Sarah Merrey had gone back to a legacy machine in order to use her charting software in classic.

I'm running OS X 10.4.8, on a hefty G5 dual processor. But, I also have all the professional graphics stuff so can do a lot with that (hence the reason for the dual processor - for those that don't know - programs like Illustrator, high level graphics are all "vector" based - which means it's all math that the user doesn't have to see - so having a significant or preferably dual - processor capability makes a big difference). I haven't run anything in Classic on this machine - but I can. The new laptop (coming soon for DH primarily) will be on the Intel chip, so we can run Windows so I could conceivably do all my art on the big workstation, and then just use one of the Windows based charting programs on his laptop.

I hope this helped.

ellice

Any other insight on the tools?

ellice

Thanks for the links.

Actually my first Mac was a cobbed together job -- my DBIL worked for Apple and would scavenge parts for it. It was originally a 2??K w/ one floppy drive & no harddrive (graduate school working on MS in Biomechl Engr) -- that was interesting -- writing a masters thesis on it. By the end of that round of grad school, it had been boosted to 512K (?), had an external harddrive and a plug in numeric keypad.

For my PhD -- went to the dark side and used an ibm machine. Have many not so fond memories of working on my dissertation and watching/listening to the first Gulf War in the background. I don't know if the nightmares were from CNN or the PhD!

After that, I became a college prof AND since it was my research $$ -- I had macs again (plus a sun and one ibm to run the instron).

Next, I left academia and started my own outsourcing business. Stuck with windows machines mainly b/c some of the pgms I used weren't yet available mac-compatible AND macs were prohibitively expensive.

A little over a year ago, got me a G5 and a G4 laptop. I'm in love with them! There are a few things that are annoying, but that's mainly a function of MSOffice...

EG

LOL - I can so relate to this. We've had pretty much every model of MAC. My oldest one - a friend who ran the materials lab at work bought - looks like the machine from the comics with the shoes smushed under it.

Could be either. I spent way too many nights locked in a room with a bunch of DECs. We had an IBM that we turned into something totally different and when someone would wander into the office we'd yell at them not to touch it

- not really a PC. First DH and I wrote on the MAC - by then at least a 512 K, then we got an LS, and an SE. But, work was done on the CRAY with MAC front ends.

We actually got together a MAC users group at the lab where I worked, and eventually turned all the graphics depts into MAC addicts. But, basically the guy who ran the materials group, I, and another female engineer friend seemed to be the responsible ones for supporting the MACs on the campus (very academic type lab). We actually got a MAC running the lab software for the chemistry side, and controlling the machinery - though the Instron (as we liked to call it - MY Instron) probably did have a PC controller. Eventually, my boss figured out that he liked what I could do - so we actually did our entire group - except the old guys who only needed e-mail - on a MAC network. With our own server - got the secretaries nice 2 page displays, got me & 1 of the guys huge machines with really big monitors, to keep my SGI company. When I changed agencies - only a few MACS around - so I had to have a PC for 1 piece of software, but got another MAC, and a laptop, and actually the entire test facility we built for very special testing - all running MACs - except my deputy and I each had an IRIS.

My old grad school officemate, his wife (a prof), and their household should be an ad for MACS. It's like a MAC minefield in there - so we've finally gotten DH convinced over since he's been playing with the wife's MacBook Pro. My old officemate - where he now works - the VP over IT had issued some edict that everyone had to have PCs. My firend lasted aboauat 3 months

- complaining all the time about his stupid laptop that he couldn't just sleep, etc - and finally got his Macbook for work (he's a pretty senior guy himself, and a VP of the World Wide Web consortium) - but it was funny while he was moaning about the stupid PC. I'm loving life with the G5 dual processor. And we have FIOS (living in a fiber to the house development) so everything is quite fast. I still have my old 603 chip machine, which I swapped boards around, and made a G4. But...some weenie at Microsoft (home of the devil) convinced me to do something to fix a recurring but, and despite my better judgement, I screwed the command structure. So, after 3 days of screwing with the UNIX, and trying to fix it, we agreed to buy this machine, and that one now only runs in Classic. Could be worse. I think we're going to donate it somewhere. The dog can't seem to get the hang of using it, and since I have this machine, and DH has a work laptop, and we're going to buy a new Macbook Pro - what the heck.

It's nice that the prices have come down. And, honestly, I think it's a long-term vs short term economy thing. The MACS just don't die.

See above. Even the newest version of Office still has some weirdness. We were waiting on the Intwl chip to get the new laptop - because of the stuff we do for USA Hockey. We produce the teaching presentations for the ref ceritification seminars for our district (which end up getting exported all over). USAH does a very basic set, and then a few years ago we totally redid them, including animations, MAC graphics that we could embed so that the PowerPoint viewer could be used on all the PCs - cause we never know what will be around. DH was wary because we had some issues with fonts, some of the animation between the 2 platforms. Now, we're working on inserting digi-video clips (hence the other reason for the dual-processor G5) into the presentations. Much better than just switching to some boring, long film. With the new Intel machine, we can do all the work on the MACS, and then verify all the compatibilities running on the windows side.

On the stithing topic - I've been playing a bit with the Ursa demo software

- I'm not convinced. I'd have to see if it can take imports of stitch diagrams - looks like it might be cumbersome. But, I'm going to try.

ellice