Ben, I am very new to the mac. Sound similar to you in that I had an ancient pc still running windows xp. I have only had the mac for a few weeks but I am pretty happy with it. The learning curve is a bit steep at times. I have done e-mail and web things, itunes which I find much easier than the pc. Also have edited some docs and spread sheets in pages and numbers. I did buy the apps for pages and numbers although text edit seems to work well too. I know you can open word documents in pages but not sure about text edit. I have not done any audio editing or things like that so can't speak to that part of it. I got a mac mini as it was the cheapest and I already had an old monitor and speakers to use. I did set it up myself and did install mountain lion independently too. Not sure how much melp I am. Kim On 2012-07-27, at 9:22 AM, Benjamin Blatter <benjaminblatter@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Hi to all > > Well, I was so looking forward to get finally a macbook pro this year. Since > I want to ditch my seven year old PC with Win XP for something new and really > powerful. Since I would have to learn anyway anew when getting Win 7 I > thought I'd could switch to mac as well. > I went to an apple store in my area in Switzerland and had a look at the new > macbook pro Retina. Man, I've never seen such a thin notebook! > My joy was big when my BAUM Suvervario braille display was working with USB > right out of the box. Bluetooth didn't work for some reason. > > Because the apple store was loudly and crowded, I didn't have really a chance > to understand voice over and check all the things I wanted in no hurry. > I got a recommendation to talk to a blind musician with apple experience. > So I hit him up and told him what I'd like to do: Daily stuff like mail, > internet, writing documents like in microsoft word. And special things like > doing smaller projects like audio editing, producing my songs with MIDI or > audio, I have cakewalk sonar running on windows for that. I hope I don't > sound like a snop. But for once I really want to have a really powerful > notebook with an SSD, lots of ram and whatever is important. > > So I told this guy all about that. He produces his music with pro tools and > logic. But he wasn't as excited about that as I thought. He told me that a > year ago he'd recommend me going for a mac. Now however apple would end it's > support for professional things like logic about next year and go more into > the consumer area. Therefore he told me I should stay with windows, buy a new > machine with windows 7 and get a new jaws. If I wanted to produce music I > should use Cubase. > > I was a bit confused about that. So I asked him about being independent. As > far I know voice over provides speech and braille during the installation of > the OS, windows doesnt. He told me that voice over is providing accessibility > mostly in the user area. If you want to get deeper it will become difficult. > Voice over would be still be in childen's shoes. > > I asked him about clean systems. Windows software leaves many footprints in > the registry and other places on your hard drive. He told me that the mac > system wouldn't be better considering that and changing a small detail might > have sometimes a very big impact on the whole system, so he had to reinstall > his system more than once because of this. > > Well, I know I have to make this decision for myself eventually. > But I'd like to ask you about your opinion on that. As far i understand you > really are working with these machines and probably don't even use windows at > all anymore. > My plan was to get the new retina macbook pro and configure it up to the > limit. And buying win 7 in addition to run it with bootcamp. > > A main concern of mine is how to read and edit DOC and DOCX files I regularly > get from people I work with. > And would be cubase accessible by voice over? Or which program should I use > for producing music? > > I know, this is a bit longwinded and you probably can't answer all my > questions. but thanks for trying anyway. > Ben > > ************ > > > You are subscribed to the mac4theblind mailing list. > > > The url for this list, where one can unsubscribe or make any changes to > their list subscription is: > > //www.freelists.org/list/mac4theblind > > The list archive is located at > > //www.freelists.org/archive/mac4theblind/ > > All emails intended for the list owner can be sent to: > > john@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > ************ You are subscribed to the mac4theblind mailing list. The url for this list, where one can unsubscribe or make any changes to their list subscription is: //www.freelists.org/list/mac4theblind The list archive is located at //www.freelists.org/archive/mac4theblind/ All emails intended for the list owner can be sent to: john@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx