Users of Mac OS X version of ACTIVstudio/ACTIVprimary?

[UzMac]

Dear colleagues,

I still hope I'm not the sole Mac user lost in this forum. Unfortunately earlier ACTIVstudio for Mac had a separate forum section where we all could share our experience and address technical questions. Though later Promethean joined us into the global (Mac and Win) sub-forum.

My company used to deal with Promethean products for Mac OS platform for long since products early releases on the market and we are extremely happy with functional capabilities the products provide. I must say that these almost fully satisfy our teaching needs ( I do not count some functional requests that I will put on to the request section of the forum in next few days) + fantasy of our teachers preparing for and leading lessons cause unforgettable emotions and amaze within student groups that work with ACTIVsolutions.

Mac users, please echo with your questions and I would share our experience of using ACTIVstudio/ACTIVprimary tools and many 'hidden' capabilities with great pleasure.

Mac Fan.
*******

[stncld727]

You are certainly not the only mac user. :)

We are making many inroads at in our district and every day more and more ActivBoards pop up. Our teachers are becoming super excited about the prospects of these products in our classes. There will be more to come on this one but jsut wanted to let you know that you aren't the only one!


Chris Bowman
Mt. Laurel School District
cbowman@mountlaurel.k12.nj.us

[Stuart Collins]

Well, i have a mac sat next to me in tech support, and enjoy using it very much. plus the ACTIVstudio/primary software is a lot more pretty on the mac, in my humble opinion.

how many of you have had a chance to play with ACTIVstudio2 on the mac? Which I now believe is available from software sales.

[stncld727]

Both ActivStudio and ActivPrimary are Mac ready, although missing a few nifty things from the first go round, including import from .pdf but it's supposedly coming in the update.

I am learning more and more each day on my own and from my staff. The kids are even more excited with the new tools and the new power tools is a great addition.

[AirSkeeter]

In my future new career (2 days and counting) I will be supporting those usinh Mac and Windoze. I have been familiarizing myself with the mac interface as well as the mac AS2 and AP.

I have been impressed with the use interface for mac. It just has that cool factor to a higher level.

I guess that I didn't know what I was missing. When I feel lost and confused, I fire up the old dell!!!

Hi Chris!!!!

[UzMac]

That's great to hear Mac versions are also spread and met well - better than Window's ones :D Secretly I'm the old fan of Mac who 'switched' from Win and happy with any progress on Mac platform.

Actually a dozen on my colleagues deal with ACTIV Mac software - studio and primary and including the fresh cool facility called ACTIVote VR.

Had anyone of you tried it in real practice? So far I did not see any mentioning of it on the forum :( That's a superb solution from Promethean allowing to carry voting sessions without using physical vote handsets - in few classes children have desks with iBooks on which are wirelessly (via Airport) connected to teacher's G4 ACTIVboard 'station'. In fact that's a true client-server solution

ACTIVote VR client application is installed on iBooks, teacher's mac is connected to the activboard or even latest proACTIV. Then teacher launches system preferences, goes to ACTIVboard prefpane, opens ACTIVote tab and starts ACTIVote VR server.

Each kid starts ACTIVote VR client application and in Connect to server dialog sees the IP address of the teacher's mac (serving as a server) and clicks to connect to it - a photo-like quality ACTIVote device appears on screen - Ha! - From it's menu you can even change it to look in an ACTIVstudio or ACTIVprimary theme - different coloring models!

The rest - registration of devices, allocation between students and voting itself is the same as with real devices.

This makes magnificent effect to the auditory ;) - it's worth of try!

P.S. And I'm happy Promethean were primary with this solution on Mac

P.P.S. Some other day I will tell you about some more interesting pcractices of us including superb one with playing AppleScript.
If one is not aware, you can record your activity in ACTIVstudio/ACTIVprimary (primary is not fully capable yet) in (Apple) Script Editor and slightly modifying the scripts (if needed) automate the demo process - can even insert delays, duration, loops - that's the whole big WOW! +wave+

[iforget000]

Hello:
Teachers at our school using activ stud 2 on one year old boards and freezing up.
Any ideas?
My friends are very frustrated as studio 1 worked fine.
Eileen

[Stuart Collins]

hello eileen, its probably best if you speak to our tech support colleagues in the states, http://www.prometheanworld.com/n-america/en/html/customer_care/contact.shtml

[Marnie]

[clap] I love the look of AP2 on MAC but have a couple of questions that someone may be able to answer

???? - is there any way of changing the 'shadow' effect on text? because I want to 'hide' some text by flood filling it the same colour as the background but it can always be seen because of the shadow!! I don't think it is a computer setting because it is not like this for AS2.

???? - is there a zoom tool in AP2? I can't seem to find it!

???? - how can I access 'my flipchart page' section of the library in AP2?

:confused: - sometimes when I reopen a flp in AP on MAC the colours of the font have changed (generally from blue to green) but when I edit the text it is still showing that it is blue!?! As soon as I close the text edit box (having done nothing) it reverts to the original colour!! It has made a white background go purple too!!

:confused: - I downloaded the 100's board but can not consistently floodfill the background square of each number - on MAC it often floodfills the entire background (which is very different to the way it works on PC)

Sorry for all these questions - hope someone can help!
Cheers :)

[Margaret Allen]

Hi

I have to say I am not an expert on the Mac version and now have my own to play with so that this can be rectified!! [clap] I will answer what I think I know :eek:

is there any way of changing the 'shadow' effect on text? I think you will find there is a "shadow effect" setting which you can "turn off"

is there a zoom tool in AP2? No there is no zoom tool!

how can I access 'my flipchart page' section of the library in AP2? There is no flipchart page section to access - this is a feature of AS2.

:confused: - sometimes when I reopen a flp in AP on MAC the colours of the font have changed (generally from blue to green) but when I edit the text it is still showing that it is blue!?! As soon as I close the text edit box (having done nothing) it reverts to the original colour!! It has made a white background go purple too!! - Can't help with this one!

:confused: - I downloaded the 100's board but can not consistently floodfill the background square of each number - on MAC it often floodfills the entire background (which is very different to the way it works on PC) Which 100s board?

Hope this helps?? +wave+

[Stuart Collins]

margaret, welcome to my world of mac :D

which one did you get? i think you'll love activprimary on the mac, much more funky ;)

(did peter and yourself get your macs at the same time?)

[kelliher]

I wonder if any other MAC users have had this problem. Our Mac users log into their machines with administrator rights. Sometimes when they start AS2 they can only see the trashcan - no toolbox. Setting up a new user, logging in and starting AS2 fixes the problem - a nuisance though as all previous data is wthe the previous user. After a period of time the new user also loses the toolbox.

Any clues? I have tried trashing the settings.plist and layout.lay and restarting but didn't make a difference.

[Margaret Allen]

Hey Stuart... I got Pete's old one.... I don't mind being the recipient of somebody's cast off! Sorry kelliher... can't help.... I have alerted the MAC lot though...[clap] hopefully they will respondsoon! - holidays notwithstanding

[LisaD]

To Chris of New Jersey,

The latest Mac version does have import from PDF again! (and searchable resources!!!!)
I missed it- the pdf thing- while it was gone. It is so helpful...the other day, I found the drivers ed manual for my state (Georgia) in PDF and imported the whole thing, questions and all into a flipchart in about 15 seconds! Not too pretty, but quick!

Import from pdf is not available on PC, btw. (I use both equally- actually prefer the Mac but there are some features I like on the PC one that I need.)

To UZMac,
I think you asked about Activote VR for the Mac. I know of a few schools that are using it successfully in the states. It is a great tool but not highly marketed.

If you go to the US marketing site, you can see a couple of movies that show how it works.

http://www.prometheanworld.com/n-america/en/html/solutions/products/activotevr.shtml

Lisa

[cappy]

To Kelliher:
I'm hoping someone with who is more techno savvy than I can help you with more certainty but with AS1 a couple of years back I regularly lost my toolbox as you describe.Very frustrating. The issue at that time turned out to be the screen resolution which I had to keep on 800X600. One of the upgrades since then (I don't remember which one) fixed the problem and now I use AS2 with my ibookG4 set on the more common 1024X768 resolution with no difficulty. I'm surprised to hear that this issue has reappeared.

[UzMac]

Hello kelliher,

Are you using 2.1 build 43 of the ACTIVprimary? What OS? It happened for me on Mac OS Tiger. Just in case this version solved for me the problem that you described. The update to 2.1 b43 is available for download on: http://www.prometheanworld.com/n-america/en/html/customer_care/software/primary_mac_tiger.shtml

Regards,

UzMac.
********

[tmcelroy]

Hi kelliher,

I had the same problem with AS2 with my Mac. It is in fact a screen resolution issue. Just go to your Display Setting in System Preferences put a check mark in the "Show displays in the menu" then you use the drop down from the menu bar to increase your screen res to max when it happen. Then drag the toolbox to the middle of your screen and change the res back to where you want.

Hope this helps,
Tim