Mac version still inferior

[jayartibee]

I now have ActivStudio 2.1 installed on five minis round the school and they all suffer from delays, slow reactions and so on- such as rotating the protractor, pen jumps and similar annoyances. I have updated the drivers.

We have just had a 3 hour training session with a lady from Promethean who got so fed up with the sluggish performance that she got out her PC laptop and used that. Great.

And she couldn't beleive how bad the handwriting recognition is compared to the PC- just try writing "Hello" in joined-up writing. The PC does fine; the Mac produces garbage. It can only cope with separate letters. :mad:

[mistermorris]

That sucks. Writing in joined handwriting is an essential part of my language classroom.

I've only been using it for a few months but doing so Mac only, and can't figure out why it's sluggish.

I'd love to talk to the Mac programmers, I know a bit about this stuff and might be able to offer some tips...

[Jos]

Support for cursive handwriting in Windows Activstudio is provided by a plug-in written by an external software house (Paragraph). The bad news is that this plug-in can only be licensed for Windows. Mac Activstudio uses Apple's 'Ink' handwriting technology which is built into 'OS X'. If Apple improve this technology the benefits will be incorporated into Mac Activstudio.

[mistermorris]

Well boo hoo to Apple for not incorporating cursive handwriting in its Ink technology.

[AirSkeeter]

While you are boo hooing, you might want to notice that a 2.2.42 update has been released.

What's new:
1) Support for detecting of ACTIVboard on application startup on Intel Macs
and removal of watermark
2. Added flipchart version validation check
3. Improvements for multiple text appearance cross platform incompatibilities,
such as:
3.1 Text cut
3.2 Incorrect line spacing
3.3 Now reading win flipchart text is laid out according to text runs data
3.4 If there was no editing of a text object, original text run data gets resaved
to the flipchart
3.5 On saving flipchart text run data gets generated from RTF data and is saved
to the flipchart
4. Flipchart object movement via Shift and Ctrl keys
5. Change request 148: Transparency will be defaulted to OFF when adding images
(non AS2 files) into the flipchart from any of the following locations:
6. Change request 149: The following Studio/Primary setting now defaults to unticked
for new users and for users who reset their settings: 'User Input --> Use keyboard
supplied with Operating System'
7. Improved playback of placeholder movies
8. New Universal Binary of ACTIVboard driver
9. New Universal Binary of Hasp driver
10. New Universal Binary of ACTIVtablet
Fixed:
1) Actions on locked objects were not working
2) Impossible to annotate over locked image object when annotation starts inside
object area.
3)Reset button at bottom right corner of Cutting Edge flipcharts frequently does not
work.
4) Text on flipchart becomes corrupted after edit it and then undo the changes.
5) End of words are cut off in flipcharts created on Win.
6) Added flipchart version validation check (on opening placeholder.flp it does
not crash now and shows an alert that the flipchart of this format is not
supported)
7) Fixed crash on pasting objects from shortcut bar to flipchart which has a
text in edit mode after which user attempts to resize the dropped object
8) Fixed crash and bulleted line corruption which occurred after drawing a
line with ruler and setting bullet in its start/end and afterwards attempting
to resize it horizontally (or vertically) through resize handlers
9) The disk image now includes the latest 2.3 build 58 of the ACTIVboard
driver which supports for driver autostart start when connecting board via
Serial or Bluetooth connection.

Maybe that will help some....

[clap]

[gapr29]

Hi Jeremy:

We run both platforms here at our school with our ACTIVboards (4 now, 2 mor coming, and growing). We give our teachers a choice of platform to use with the board, and also a choice of boards, which by the way, the choice of boards in the last year has been the ACTIVboard.

What we are finding is that each platform has it's own strengths and weaknesses over the other. We are also finding that age, operating system, memory is also a factor. Clearly, the text recognition is superior, for now, on the PC. The layering effect, and video/graphics effect, over different programs running simmutaneously is, on our experience, superior with the Mac. I have used both platforms and find that the "sluggish" performance you speak of has occured with both platforms with me, depending on a variety of factors of the computer and others that I have already mentioned, including what program I am annotating with.

I now use mostly the Mac platform for the layering and window advantages over the PC (although the PC does it also, just not as fluently and smoothly). Both systems have excellent features to offer when using the awesome capabilities of the Promethean products.

Greg Ranieri

[JB_UK]

I would guess that those features are welcome additions to Mac users, but when will the platforms be equal? ever?

Never used a mac with the software so can't really comment, but I can imagine it's frustrating

[Daniel Turner]

Hello

I have to say that these are totally different pieces of software behind the scenes that look slightly similar on the front.

We are restricted on developing certain things on a mac and the same on the windows pc, so you will see some differences. Windows PC's have a lot more third party software available like screen capture to video etc.

It will come eventually, we would love to give you all on both platforms but it is hard enough keeping up with Apple's operating systems and pc's coming out 8 months early and development work is taken up on that.

For the moment if you want the windows features, Buy an Intel Mac, Buy an OEM copy of XP and a mouse (this qualifies you to buy an oem version), Intall Bootcamp and you can then dual boot XP and OSX.

There is a nice piece of software called "parallels" this lets your run Windows XP natively in OSX, I have attached a screen shot. You can even rotate the screen like a cube, like the transitions in Activstudio.

http://www.parallels.com

Best Regards

Dan Turner

PS I now refer to PC's as a Windows PC as we now have Mac Pc's.

[AirSkeeter]

Dan,

I hav ebeen doing some research on parallels but have not spoken to anybody that has used it. Do you find it to be as good as the results that I have heard.

I understand that it rivals bootcamp...

My big question is that does parallels allow use of the same files like mp3s, pictures, etc....bootcamp does not.

[gapr29]

Bill;

I thought your quote summed up everything well.

Greg

[ocpete]

Dan,

I hav ebeen doing some research on parallels but have not spoken to anybody that has used it. Do you find it to be as good as the results that I have heard.

I understand that it rivals bootcamp...

My big question is that does parallels allow use of the same files like mp3s, pictures, etc....bootcamp does not.


I've got paralells installed and it works well for what it does. One of the features is that it treats your mac home directory as a networked share, albeit a little slow and flaky.
What I haven't tried is running the PC version of AS on it, and I'm not sure if it would work well, or at all - the biggest issue parallels has is dealing with external devices (I know things like palms and pocket PCs syncing is a big issue). As I understand it, at least on the mac side, it takes a special kernel extension to get AS connected to the boards - just seems like something too complicated to work reliably in paralells. I might be dead wrong and I'll give it a shot just for kicks when I get back to work (It'll be a week, I'm on vacation next week).
The main reason I haven't tried already is that I don't want to run windows. I'm running macs at my school because it eases my workload immensely to not have to be right on top of every security and virus scare. As soon as I introduce some sort of windows install to run a program, its money for a license, and then I get in the business of windows support and maintenance. I've done windows support before, and still do to a certain extent. Windows can be a great OS, and Macs have issues - don't get me wrong. For me and my situation, running Macs (using Mac OS) is a much better solution and the last thing I want happening is developers to start pushing the 'just run windows on your mac' excuse. If I wanted to run windows, I'd save myself a few bucks and get a cheapie dell. Running windows just for one piece of software would add a lot of cost and time to my job.
Thanks for your commitment to the platform, its the main reason we're using Promethean and not Smart (the smart software is awful on the mac platform). I hope to keep seeing continued growth on the mac side of AS.
P

[Daniel Turner]

Bill

I think the issue with bootcamp and sharing files is that ntfs is not writeable within osx. If it is possible to create a fat32 partition for sharing between the 2 operating, this would be the way.

I will let you know when ours arrives.


Best Regards

Dan Turner

[tinag]

I use mac for everything but attendance, gradebook, and email. I use parallels to run these programs they are located on the school server. It has taken me awhile to figure out everythings. My biggest problem is there are too many steps to save and email attachment in parallels to mac. Over all I'm happy with it.

[Vicky-d]

I now have ActivStudio 2.1 installed on five minis round the school and they all suffer from delays, slow reactions and so on- such as rotating the protractor, pen jumps and similar annoyances. I have updated the drivers.




I have had a similar problem. When connecting my mac mini to my Philips Flat Screen 42" Plasma TV it behaves really sluggish. Can I ask how your minis are connected to the boards? ie USB, HDMI etc

It could be something to do with the graphics cards in Mac minis. I'm gonna look on Apple's support site and see if I come up with anything!

[Peter Lambert]

Hi

I'm using Parallels on my Mac and everything I want to do on the PC side works really well. However, UNTIL I plug in my board. In this case Parallels reports that the application is being used by another application. What happens is that the Mac OS "steals" the input from the board first and Windows on Parallels doesn't get a look in.
Our resident Mac guru sent me these instructions:
I have installed latest release of Parallels and I have reproduced the same problem you are getting “USB device you are trying to connect to the Virtual machine is being used by another application”.



I can overcome this problem in the following way


i) Start Windows virtual machine.


ii) On the Mac side, run the Mac Activity Monitor which is located in Applications::Utilities


iii) Locate and kill the process Activhardware

iv) Click on the USB symbol at bottom right of Parallels Desktop window


v) Select Activboard from pop-up menu

The driver should then find Promethean hardware and ActivControl should report back the version number.


HTH

[Joshua]

I Have Paralles on my 24inch Intel iMac and it works GREAT. At first I had the windows version of ACTIVstudio installed in Parallels and it worked fabulously. But then I went ahead and installed the 2.1 Mac Version of ACTIVstudio and it was little slow, but then I updated it to 2.5 and that made it universal and then turned out great! I would update your 2.1 ACTIVstudio to 2.5... Then it will be universal...which means it will run on YOUR mac. I hope it helps. Let me know if it works. If you update to 2.5 it should solve all problems.

[ojsaunders]

I have not been able to get the hardware to work with parallels but thanks for the advice above as I will try it. I have found using Bootcamp works very well and I have very little trouble. I used some software called macdrive 6 that gave me access to my mac hard disc so that I could use resources there and interact between both 'machines' with ease.