Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

vsurfer · Sep 3, 2002, 09:07 PM

How many self-employed vs corporately employed creative Pros? Strikes me that if you are self-employed you are more at liberty to use OSX at home or at your office.

The stereotype says we are either users of professional systems or users of consumer systems -- I say that's a load of olebollox -- maybe it's not so clear -- maybe there are many Mac OS aficionados that use consumer macs at home., but who also use Pro Mac systems at work (because OSX adoption in corp is on a totally different time schedule).

ie. we are not necessarily either a pro customer or a consumer customer - we use both! -- and even influence the decision making in the buying of Mac systems -- but not necessarily whether we can run OS9 or OSX on it !

What do you say???

---
PS. almost forgot to add the juvenile vote: my kids often rely OS9 because of certain games that run much better there. Other wise home would be an almost completely OSX place.

Macola · Sep 3, 2002, 09:15 PM

I belong to the self-employed category and use a TiBook/400 running OSX most of the time. I still have to boot into OS 9 for Quark, and other desgn work because I don't have the cash to upgrade right now.

As far as other systems go, I have a Beige G3/266, LC475, and Apple IIc...if that tells you anything

art_director · Sep 3, 2002, 11:08 PM

self-employed here. would love to go X full time but quark is sleeping at the wheel and have been too busy to learn indesign 2. when things slow up i'm going to indesign. quark has gotten their last pick out of my pocket.

x is the way.

godzookie2k · Sep 9, 2002, 02:29 PM

Corporate. (ish) We are an all os 9 office, primarily because the hardware costs alone to upgrade the office to X would be insane. We have G4 towers across the entire design department, which *could* run X but we are quite invested in quark and other os9 software, updating licenses alone would be insane. At home for web stuff and freelance stuff, however, I'm all X. For the freelancer its just simply cheaper to upgrade that one box and your software to X than for a company to upgrade 20 macs to X.

bluedog · Sep 9, 2002, 03:22 PM

Currently working for a Narrow-web flexographic printer

Three workstations running OSX/OS9

I've been working in OSX for a few weeks now exclusively. We have glitches like only having fonts with our font-management utility available for OS9 and classic apps. This is the major headache of using X. Once we have an OSX client for our font-server (Font Reserve) I'll be in heaven.

Even Quark isn't so bad on X when you have the ability to use other apps and do what you can do in X.

The other headache is keyboard shortcuts in OSX that interfere with the old shortcuts for QuarkXPress (step-and-repeat being the worst conflicting shortcut).

I prefer working in OSX. The last issue that's perplexed me is our Linux fileserver having a hell of a time with the latest Netatalk and -50 errors. I've tried everything and think the IT people who installed it didn't use the best settings.

Has anyone else had trouble with OSX connected to a netatalk server?
-------------------------
At home, my wife freelances and I do minimal freelancing and we have OSX on all the time and a PC with XP for compatibility with client apps when necessary. All design work is done on the OSX box.

GORDYmac · Sep 11, 2002, 09:01 AM

Self employed, successful, and using OS X. It's actually a selling point, because my customer's think that the OS is so elegant.

vsurfer · Sep 11, 2002, 07:08 PM

Originally posted by GORDYmac:
Self employed, successful, and using OS X. It's actually a selling point, because my customer's think that the OS is so elegant.

Sorry to be some kind of devils advocate (I luv OSX, just so u kno) but which business are you in that it woud be a selling point to your customers as to which OS you are using?

Ordinarily it's usually the finished product that counts in the long run and not what OS is running on the GD's laptop, as long as its compatible with the clients files, non? Aren't most of those PC toting clients kind of suspicious of Macs, or are they OS9 users you are talking about?

PS. I visited your fine city, this past summer, wish I'd had the time to get around more...trade shows, tsk, tsk.

vsurfer · Sep 11, 2002, 07:15 PM

Originally posted by bluedog:
Currently working for a Narrow-web flexographic printer

Three workstations running OSX/OS9

I've been working in OSX for a few weeks now exclusively. We have glitches like only having fonts with our font-management utility available for OS9 and classic apps. This is the major headache of using X. Once we have an OSX client for our font-server (Font Reserve) I'll be in heaven.

Even Quark isn't so bad on X when you have the ability to use other apps and do what you can do in X.

The other headache is keyboard shortcuts in OSX that interfere with the old shortcuts for QuarkXPress (step-and-repeat being the worst conflicting shortcut).

I prefer working in OSX. The last issue that's perplexed me is our Linux fileserver having a hell of a time with the latest Netatalk and -50 errors. I've tried everything and think the IT people who installed it didn't use the best settings.

Has anyone else had trouble with OSX connected to a netatalk server?
-------------------------
At home, my wife freelances and I do minimal freelancing and we have OSX on all the time and a PC with XP for compatibility with client apps when necessary. All design work is done on the OSX box.

Recent review I read of Font Reserve put me off (and I had been leaning towards FR for some time as a home purchase). Looks like I will go Suitcase, when push comes to shove. I have been working in ATM Deluxe/OS9 at work ---and OSX at home for ages. (Now, even my wife and kids are OSX converts despite the poor gaming.)

vsurfer · Sep 11, 2002, 07:19 PM

Originally posted by godzookie2k:
Corporate. (ish) We are an all os 9 office, primarily because the hardware costs alone to upgrade the office to X would be insane. We have G4 towers across the entire design department, which *could* run X but we are quite invested in quark and other os9 software, updating licenses alone would be insane. At home for web stuff and freelance stuff, however, I'm all X. For the freelancer its just simply cheaper to upgrade that one box and your software to X than for a company to upgrade 20 macs to X.

Sounds like my deal...I am worried the corp IT will balk at the forced OSX transition when hardware upgrade time comes. Mostly because most of the Mac OS users are died in the wool OS9ers. Well we'll see, maybe.

skalie · Sep 11, 2002, 10:02 PM

um, if I may slip in a newb question here.....

Why is it necessary to upgrade one's software for OX, when OX will run OS 9 programs in classic mode?

godzookie2k · Sep 12, 2002, 12:01 PM

Hardware connectivity is flaky, applescripts don't/might not work right, performance hits of working in classic, and dammit no native flight check! Basically, if all you are doing *is* working in classic, why bother upgrade to X?

bluedog · Sep 12, 2002, 01:23 PM

Originally posted by vsurfer:

Recent review I read of Font Reserve put me off (and I had been leaning towards FR for some time as a home purchase). Looks like I will go Suitcase, when push comes to shove. I have been working in ATM Deluxe/OS9 at work ---and OSX at home for ages. (Now, even my wife and kids are OSX converts despite the poor gaming.)

Oh, don't get me wrong about font reserve. I'm really ecstatic about their FontReserve Server edition. It collects ALL fonts from our workstations into one network accessible library of fonts. You can go to any machine and have the fonts you need for a specific document.

It also has features to assist in maintaining the integrity of licenses for fonts. The single-desktop version is purported to work great in Jaguar and 10.1.5 and OS9 activating the needed fonts when necessary.

Diamondsoft is in the process of testing their Jaguar compatible update to their server version of the Font Reserve.

I used ATM deluxe in 9 and preferred it to Suitcase which at the time had some stability issues (that were resolved in updates).

GORDYmac · Sep 12, 2002, 02:24 PM

Originally posted by vsurfer:
which business are you in that it woud be a selling point to your customers as to which OS you are using?

Every contact I have with a customer involves my iBook or my G4 in some form or another, for showing demos of a video or DVD I'm vorking on, photo shoots, etc. Most have never seen OS X, so they ask me a million questions. It seems to pique their interests.

skalie · Sep 12, 2002, 03:03 PM

Originally posted by godzookie2k:
Basically, if all you are doing *is* working in classic, why bother upgrade to X?

........the ability to do file transfers to PC's using the smb protocol, use the built in apache webserver to run php scripts and, er, the usability of OX, the improved finder and other little things that I am just discovering.

I first saw the Mac in action while working alongside a small graphic design company. I was working for a media company specialising in web design, we were using PC's.

The palava that was gone through to transfer a simple bit of html to the person sitting next to me was unbelievable. Emailing it to a web based email server because the email client wasn't configured properly, then having to zip the file to transfer the file from one Mac to the other because their network wasn't quite talking to itself.

OK, they were from the more artistic side of DTP'ing.

Now I know a little about OS 9 and OS X, I'm still looking for a reason why they shouldn't run OS X and run their DTP software in classic. (They have OS X sitting in a cellophaned box on the shelf)

Even if it is only to be able to use the smb protocol to be able to talk to the PC's.

godzookie2k · Sep 12, 2002, 03:36 PM

BECAUSE we are _designing_. Sharing to PC's through SMB, Apache webserving, don't apply to us. I'm assuming that, like us, most studios are mac only, with, aside from perhaps a fileserver or two. So those bonuses just don't apply to us. We have a W2K file server that we use, and that mounts just fine in the finder, and we only have 2 PC's in our office out of fifty or so computers, both in the accounting dept. Just no need to smb share with them. If we were a web shop, I'd _definately_ be pushing X. Its a web developers dream, but being a print shop, we just have no need for the other stuff.

As for improved finder.... come on, _what_ improved finder? The X finder sure looks nice, but it doesn't come anywhere close in functionality to the 9 finder, just in features alone.

"Usability" of X is a _really_ arguable point, see any OS9/X "zealot" (sarcastic quotes) arguments. And, that usability doesn't apply if, again, you are running only classic software. the only X interface widget while running classic software is the dock, which is completely useless when you have a program switcher at the top of your menu bar.

The fact of the matter is, to upgrade to X we'd have to upgrade our hardware across the board, _and_ upgrade our software, the costs are just way too extravagant at this point. My Sysadmin was also none-too-pleased when I told him about that new macs not booting to 9 post 2003, I'm betting no new hardware for our department until we can get together the funds to upgrade everything.....damn that.