THE TRANSMUG REPORT — THE END OF THE LINE
BY YVES AVÉROUS
At WWDC in June 2013, Apple finally broke the silence on their latest secrets: new operating systems for the Mac® and iDevices, a long awaited radio service, a sneak peek at a futuristic Mac Pro® soon to be built in Texas, a preview of a Web-based iWork®, and updated MacBook Airs® with brand new Wi-Fi base stations to fit their new, faster specs.They’ve been busy, and we’re not even counting the seasonal upgrade for iPhone®, iPad®, etc. likely to come this fall. For now, let’s concentrate on the Mac, its OS and the lay of the land. The Mac is doing great, benefiting in part from the misstep that was the first release of Windows 8. To add insult to injury, in the midst of a depressed computer market, last April the MacBook Pro® was rated best laptop to run Windows in a Soluto study that compared the performance of 37,000 laptops in business environments!
From the translator’s standpoint, I still wonder why 99% of translation software runs on Windows when, for example, it’s so simple to enter special characters with a regular Mac US keyboard and it’s a continual challenge on a PC. And even though you can use Wordfast or OmegaT on your Mac, those must run on top of Java and therefore do not take full advantage of the more refined technologies offered by OS X®. Even WorldServer has to be run in Firefox to work smoothly on the Mac, and therefore misses system-based text processing features available to Safari® and Chrome. Before CAT tool developers see the light and come to the Mac with native, modern, and stunning applications, Apple will have brought their own Office suite to the masses: iWork for iCloud, demonstrated in beta at the latest WWDC. Pages®, Numbers®, and Keynote® will soon work in your browser. Anyone who has ever used both PowerPoint and Keynote knows the difference.
The newly released Airs are faster in every respect and more affordable. Battery life has been enhanced to 9 hours on the 11” and 12 hours on the 13”. Add to that the faster Wi-Fi 802.11ac connectivity, Thunderbolt and USB 3 ports and you are set for a few years to come. As for the future of Mac OS, WWDC 2013 marked the end of the line for the big cats: no OS X Bobcat, or Sea Lion, as joked about at the conference. Instead OS X will now take the names of prominent California locations. The first one chosen: Mavericks. OS X Mavericks promises not only a decent series of welcome refinements on the desktop, but is also supposed to deliver noticeable advances in speed and efficiency. For configuration questions and other issues you would like to discuss, visit TransMUG.com and join our mailing list. YA
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Apple, iPad, iPhone, iWork, Keynote, Mac, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, Mac Pro, OS X, Numbers, Pages, and Safari are trademarks of Apple Inc.
