TransMUG

I have been sharing my excitement lately for the fact that one can now use Trados on a Mac with the same ease as one does on a PC. It requires Windows, still, but you only need one machine and can get native speed, whichever solution you choose (to be developed below).

Last weekend, at the NCTA picnic, one colleage told me that he had heard that Trados was touting Mac compatibility… I was intrigued and that same evening found out the information my friend must have been thinking of. Right there, on the TranslationZone website, Trados is still touting its compatibility with… Virtual PC! This is so 2005! I guess you may want to download that with Internet Explorer, too, another Microsoft product discontinued the Mac OS platform. (Oh, and they write Mac “MAC”…)

I will certainly be meeting some SDL Trados people at the ATA Conference and I hope we will be able to correct this. Indeed, the solution currently promoted by SDL to have you run Trados on your Mac is not the way to go, and here’s a hint. The same page carries the mention “If you find it does not work for you, you can return it for a full refund.” If you have a PowerPC processor, even G5, forget about using Virtual PC to run Trados. You’d better poke your eyes with a knife! I’ve tried it (Virtual PC, not poking my eyes) and I’m glad those days are over.

A Mac under OS X is the most user-friendly platform you can find, why make it needlessly painful? PowerPC users who need Windows should rather use a cheap old PC by their side and pilot it through their Mac with Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection–a free piece of software, still supported, that allows you to control a PC networked within your Mac, allowing you to move files around seamlessly between platforms.

Now, if you have one of the newfangled Intel-powered new , that’s a completely different story! Your options are much rosier and you can indeed use Trados on a Mac as you would on a PC because you can have your PC INSIDE your Mac.

First option, the emulation, will offer practically the same features you found with Remote Desktop Connection, the difference being that you don’t need an external PC, you create a virtual one on your hard drive. You can then use your virtual PC (not Virtual PC) in a window among your other applications, or bring it full screen with the beautiful spinning cube effect Apple designed for the user switching function. This virtualization option is offered by Parallels, is called “Desktop,” cost $80, and requires your bringing your own version of Windows, pretty much any flavor past and present–even the latest beta of Vista, RC2, with a little extra effort.

Parallels Desktop is very nimble–you don’t even need a minute to start both the software and your virtual machine–but it can be buggy, especially when you are using the new beta, like I am. I believe version 2.1 was behaving correctly, but my 2.2, which is still technically a beta, will crash the virtual machine at each wake up of the Mac. Not ideal if you depend on a PC solution side-by-side with your Mac, but not a problem for me since I invoke the virtual machine for specific tasks, limited in time.

Essentially, on my virtual machine, I run MS Office, Trados 6.5 (soft dongle), and Termium, and that’s it. Sometimes I check a web page in IE or Firefox, or use a PC-only gadget such as the IKEA kitchen planner, but that’s the full extent of my PC experience. After all, why bother with the cumbersome PC platform when you have a Mac. PC users often offer the argument that there is more software for their platform. Sure, but do you need 50 ugly Windows applications to do one thing when you can get a handful of beautiful (and often cheaper) solutions for the Mac? Users of MacUpdate or VersionTracker know what I’m talking about. Very rarely have I not found a solution there for a problem I wanted to solve on my computer.

But I digress, there is a second solution to run Trados on your Mac, the Apple one: BootCamp. With BootCamp, your Core Duo or Core 2 Duo Mac becomes one of the fastest, native, PC on the marketplace. PC World benchmarks have confirmed it. Gamers rejoice. They can have a Mac and play their favorite games, too. If you work in a corporation, I’ve heard you may get better compatibility for some connection issues when you boot natively. I would be glad to get more comments about that. I am not convinced it is a real problem, having connected seamlessly with a VPN network with my PowerBook recently.

Coming back to BootCamp, how come you can boot, start up, your Mac as a PC you may ask? That is the whole advantage drawn from Apple’s switch to the Intel platform. Since last January, the processors that power Macintosh computers are strictly the same as those you can find in any Intel-powered Dell or HP machine (for example). The underpinnings of Mac OS X are the NeXt operating system, which ran on Intel chip, itself based on UNIX, running on Intel chips…

Steve Jobs, when he came back to Apple, was aware of the company’s vulnerable position as it depended on the PowerPC line of processors for its machines. So Mac OS X always kept its lineage with the Intel processor alive, in case. And when it became obvious that the PowerPC option was more of a handicap than an asset, the switch was programmed. Announced in June 2005, started with the new iMacs in January 2006 and completed with the Mac Pros last August, the switch is now complete.

With BootCamp, you can choose at startup if you want to use Mac OS OR Windows at launch time. As expressed above, the advantage of the solution is that when you boot as a PC you have a real, fast, 100% compatible PC. The inconvenient is that you cannot go back and forth between your Mac apps and your PC apps. For that simple reason, I have never installed BootCamp. Another caveat is that BootCamp requires a Windows XP SP2 install disk. You may not install your old XP and run the automatic updates after while… If you have installed Windows on your Mac under BootCamp, and you enjoy that solution, you are more than welcome to leave your comments at the end of this article.

In summary, if your Mac is due for renewal, don’t hesitate, don’t even think about buying a PC because you need Trados or another PC-exclusive solution, now you can have your pie, and eat it! If you have been wondering about switching from the “dark side,” I hope this article brought you some answers. And Apple has much funnier, if not compelling, arguments on their Get a Mac page. Love those ads! Finally, if like me you have one of the new Macs and are wondering about translation memory tools, not only you can now use Trados, but a whole world of new opportunities is opening up, and I will discuss it here soon.