What are the complexities of doing CAR in an all-Mac newsroom, or a mostly-Mac newsroom? I'm picturing an all-Mac newsroom with a PC island or two for data analysis.

Let's not get a Mac vs. PC flame war going, but please send me a note off list with any complexities of doing CAR in an all-Mac environment. Send replies to Bill@PowerReporting.com

I'm aware of only this:

the Web browsers are the same.
Microsoft Excel is the same. Do IBM and Mac versions always open each other's files?
Access is not available for a Mac. Filemaker Pro said to be a poor substitute.
SPSS has a Mac version.

I'm completely unaware of this:

Mapping? Easier integration with graphics? Same tools for analysis?
Database server? Equivalents to SQL Server, Newsengin's Uniquery, or other tools for serving databases over a network with a Web browser as the front end?

What else should I look out for?

What would be on your list of basic software that should be on every Mac, and on the machine used by the few CAR specialists.

Thanks,

Bill Dedman

Power Reporting newsroom training

IBM's can't open my mac excel doc unless i save as an eariler version of excel, but that could be that we havent upgraded our windows and office apps on the ibms.

Almost every large Canadian paper, including ours, is all-Mac.

The notable Canadian CAR projects use a conscripted PC when a relational database program is required. While FileMaker Pro is a terrific Mac relational DB program, Access is still an easier tool for most to use. Access exists only on the PC; there is no Mac version.

Macs can open any file created on the PC. PCs have a less limited capability although documents created in Word or Excel for the Mac can be transferred over a local network and read by Word or Excel on the PC.

FileMaker Pro is considered generally superior for publishing DBs to the Web but has a higher learning curve (although that's a matter of opinion, too.) Generally, though FM can do anything Access can do, it just does it substantially differently.

> What would be on your list of basic software that should be on every Mac, and on the machine used by the few CAR specialists.

The Office Pro suite from Microsoft;

Also: PC emulators that run on the Mac would allow you to have Mac hardware but run PC programs like Access (albeit with a certain performance discount.)

PCs can open Mac-created Excel documents, but only if the documents are saved with the .xls extension or if imported Mac documents are renamed by the PC user to include the extension. (Mac doesn't care either way about extensions; native Mac documents don't carry extensions, but Mac recognizes PC extensions and will let you manually add extensions during the "Save as..." command.) I have also moved FoxPro documents across platforms, again with extensions; unfortunately, the last FoxPro for Mac was version 2.6.

I do some basic CAR reporting in our all-Mac newsroom. I would strongly recommend setting up a PC island rather than trying to do CAR work on a Mac.

As you noted, Access isn't available on Macs. Whenever I need to use Access I do it on my computer at home.

Excel is available on both platforms. They open each other's files fine, but I've run into problems moving Excel files from one to the other. The main thing is that Mac Excel uses a 1904-based dating system, while PC Excel uses a 1900-based system. Once you know this you can work around it, but it's one more time you're spending time on compatibility issues instead of reporting.

Another reason to have a PC is that it's much easier to open *.exe and *.zip files on the PC. Often, we'll download info off the Web or get things locally that come in one of these compression formats, and it's much easier to open it at home (on a PC) than on the Mac. Again, it's not that it can't be done, it's just easier on a PC.

Hope this helps. I'd be interested to hear what folks from other Mac newsrooms tell you.

Despite being a Wintel bigot, I'd say there shouldn't be huge problems. Personally, I experience lots more crashes and lockups on the PowerMacs in our classroom labs than I ever see on my Dell, but that may be because I've got 256Mb ram.

The biggest gap is the lack of Access. I don't use it myself, but it has become the db of choice among CAR folks at least for medium-duty work. Filemaker Pro supposedly can be beaten into shape for doing some of this work, but that leaves you way out of the mainstream in terms of getting help from resources like NICAR-L.

Mapping will be the same, at least for ArcView users, because AV works pretty much identically on either platform. I don't do enough production mapping to know if doing it on a Mac makes graphic conversion easier, but it couldn't hurt.

SAS is available for the Maintosh (though currently a version behind those for the other major platforms.)

I can't help you on the server questions

That's exactly what we have. Besides the Macs on our desks, we have two PCs for other heavy lifting.

I do as much work as I can on my Mac (a 300 MHz G3) - usually in Excel of VisFoxPro - I transfer files with a PC-formated Jaz drive from the Mac to PC.

I would use Access if it were on my desk, but I know and like Fox and until the code just won't work anymore I'll continue to stay in my own seat, close to my own phone and use it. I've never used Filemake Pro.

Excel files and Fox files open just fine across the platforms. I use the PC for SPSS and ArcView. I've extensively used SPSS for the Mac while spending a year in fellowshipland, but it is a more primitive version and the company has stopped development of it. SPSS on the PC uses the same interface and is significantly more robust.

I haven't exported maps from the PC to Mac recently, but a couple years back had no problem doing so. I believe we used encapsulated post script as the export format.

I'm no expert nerd, but let me tell you how exasperated our staff became trying to use FoxPro on the Mac. Seemed no matter how much RAM we stuck in, we couldn't get fast performance like we could with PCs. So we go with PCs for the heavy lifting. That said, we all use Macs for writing, editing, web browsing and the like. Just for what it's worth...

Simply put, it's a total nightmare. Here's one example: Reporters getting e-mail attachments of Excel spreadsheets or Access databases. They can't open them on their Macs. They go nuts.

We've got three PC workstations for CAR, one at my main desk, and they're jammed up most of the time. Reporters really resent having to walk to another workstation to do their work. They prefer to work from their own desks, where they have their files, notes etc. I can't blame them. When they want to do any analysis, they have to walk across the newsroom and hope the PC is open. We're resorted to installing Office Suite on the laptops of reporters who seemt to do a lot of CAR so they can do it at their desks. Macs totally stink for CAR.

I, too, had some problems with Filemaker being able to read some big files on the Mac. But Excel wouldn't read the files either because the there were too many records (32,000 is its limit). And Statview (my favorite statistics program) wouldn't read it either because it doesn't read fixed-width formats. I even had problems with figuring out how SPSS reads these files and gave up.

But, guess what...

I did find success with FoxPro for the Mac. It's not sold any more, so I would go and find an old version of FoxPro (2.5, 2.6) for the Mac and run it. It is still an excellent database and very cheap. It worked very well for me. I picked up a version off of Ebay. Of course, the huge old magnetic tapes that the state gave me had to be transferred to zip disks first by someone else (I wish I had a tape reader). Foxpro did a great job of reading the data on more than 100,000 cases.

I would keep the Word pantry of stuff on the Mac, DataViz for stuff Word can't open, Canopener for stuff no one can open, Quark, Acrobat (reader and distiller), Foxpro, Statview or SPSS, Filemaker Pro 5.0, and Norton Utilities.

I can't talk about CAR specialists and PCs.

I'll put my two cents in having helped administer Macs at my last job. Also, we ran into trouble trying to coordinate mapping between newsroom PCs and graphics Macs -- they bought some copies of ArcView for the Mac (yes, it exists) but found that absent an actual mapping server -- a much more epensive proposition -- it's very very difficult to ship files between the two. Not so much because of Mac/PC version incompatibility but because shapefiles have so many dependencies on external files that it just becomes very difficult to send actual mapping files around.

As you suggest the nice thing is that Intranets work perfectly, as long as you don't get into anything weird like ActiveX, cross-platform. You get into the ActiveX issues when you try to simply save Access objects as Active Server Pages on your Intranet with 'Save as HTML'...slick but not ready for primetime even for the PC.

When I was doing this a year or so ago Macs were and probably still are a nightmare to network, and even MORE so with Mac servers.

Constant inexplicable crashing and corrupt files related to printing and opening files over the network, but that's not really CAR, that's systems administration. But it argues for using UNIX or NT for your servers. UNIX is the fastest and most reliable but completely foreign to PC/Mac people, also of course incompatible with all the SQL Server/Active Server Pages stuff we're emphasizing at NICAR; you'll need a UNIX person to guide you.

Howsomever from what i could tell the NT stuff with Active Server Pages works great on Mac clients -- the only glitch I noticed is that in testing from Personal Web Server on my own machine the Macs didn't recognize the network name of my machine -- only the IP address. But that shouldn't happen with a true server.

Macs can open Microsoft documents saved on PCs, using a program called MacLink Plus which I think is now part of the latest MacOSes. Sending documents from PC to Mac I often find it's best to send them as .rtf (Rich Text Format).

Where there might be problems, possibly, is in bringing in photos and graphics - but you'd have to ask people more pixel-ated than me about this.

>Access is not available for a Mac. Filemaker Pro said to be a poor substitute.<

that's the telling difference right there, and why serious CAR can't happen in an all-Mac newsroom.

Can't say I've had the same experience. I'm routinely able to open e-mailed .dbf and .xls files created by IBM-compatibles on the G3 I have on my desk.

I do all the spreadsheet and database work I can on Excel and Visual Fox without changing seats. If I need to get on a CAR PC to use SPSS or ArcView, I put the data on an IBM formatted Jaz drive and take it over. Never had a problem.

BUT ... I don't have a lot of competition to use the PC. It's usually open. And it *is* a pain to be away from my telephone to do the CAR stuff. Also, without Visual Fox, which I understand is now hard to get, this scenario wouldn't work and I'd be spending a lot more time away from my desk.

It's hard to do CAR in an all-Mac newsroom, but not impossible if the CAR editor uses the right tools build a hybrid system that leaves the data management to Intel boxes that are better suited for it..

First, since Excel files are compatible across platforms, your people should be able to handle these at their desktops, assuming they have Microsoft Office installed. The real problem involves databases. There are two native Mac choices. Visual Foxpro is powerful but very geeky. It isn't supported very well by Microsoft and its following in the CAR community is growing smaller because Access is easier to use and a much better development tool. The other is FileMaker Pro, which doesn't have nearly as much horsepower but is probably a decent choice for work that doesn't require heavy lifting. However, you'd have to install it on your users' desktops, which is a significant expense and creates a training issue.

Neither is a particularly good alternative, so you might want to consider using your reporters' Mac Web browsers as an intermediary. For databases that your users share, you could set up a PC running Windows NT as an Intranet server. You can create your databases on the server using the Access Jet engine or (if you want to go to the expense), SQL Server. Using Uniquery (available from George Landau at NewsEngin.com) or by writing your own VBScripts and ASP, you can give your Mac users access to the data through their browsers. It's more work for the CAR editor, but it's doable.

This doesn't have to cost a fortune. You can build a pretty decent server for under $2,000.

If I might add my 2 cents, since I work in an all-Mac newsroom where we have absolutely no PCs, not even a CAR station.

When something can't be done in Excel, my fellow reporters and I generally do not do it. I have recenly begun using a Linux system running MySQL server software for a project -- a promising route. That computer is physically elsewhere but I can telnet into it and use the text-based front end. I have FileMaker on my machine but it's not the best choice for CAR.

All-Mac newsrooms stifle CAR. Until there is something for the Mac at least as good is Access, they always will. PC islands seem like a good thing from where I sit, but would be no subsititute for being able to do it from your own computer.

By the way, unless you're going to get a lot of hits, you may be able to get by with Access as your data server. It's not meant for heavy-duty work, but in most cases you're not getting banged by lots of users simultaneously. It's worth trying, as SQL Server is expensive and much harder to get running.

Macs can open Microsoft documents if they have Microsoft Office (98) for the Mac as well. Interestingly, most PC users (including companies and UN agencies) that I have encountered use something older than Office 2000 for Windows. As far as the graphics issue is concerned, try Graphic Converter.

It is share ware and you can do a search for it at www.versiontracker.com I would by the way check an excellent web site at www.macwindows.com for other cross-platform issues.

My personal experience as a freelancer has been that I have seldom run into a cross-platform problem that couldn't be solved in a satisfactory manner.

The only place you could have problems is if you need to connect a Win CE or Pocket PC device to a Mac, but there are some work-arounds for this as well.

I should add a caveat to this however, multi-lingual transfers between PC an Mac can be a b**** depending on the language. Russian in particular comes to mind as there a quite a number of different Russian encoding methods.

I was hoping someone would talk about running PC software on the Mac with SoftPC or whatever its called. Has anybody tried that as a solution?

I haven't done it myself for years (Since the days of Windows 3.1), but we have a MacOPhile here who has tried SoftWindows with a wide variety of Win95/98 programs and found that they work reasonably well--just not very fast. Of course, he's using an older G3. Put SoftWindows on one of those G4 screamers and you probably will get decent performance. It doesn't cost much to try it on a single machine. The only problem is that you'd need to have both SoftPC and the Windows application on each PC that's being used for CAR work. A bit pricey, compared to the Server/Browser alternative.

My paper is an all-Mac newsroom where reporters have Microsoft office on their computers. But we do have a CAR room with a PC for mapping, stastical analysis and other software that you can't use on a MAC. Since most reporters are going to be using speadsheets and a database like FoxPro--both of which can be used on a make--having an all-Mac newsroom does not prevent you from going CAR. Excel and Visual FoxPro work just fine on a MAC.

I would suggest adding a PC or two.

Tried PC emulation on a Mac a few years back. Forget the name, but I think it was SoftPC. Perhaps it has improved since then, but I recall it as clunky and slow.

Don't forget about UNIX. You may want to consider making one of the Win boxes a dual boot -- Win 2000/NT and Red hat Linux. The Linux box could handle much of the TCP/IP duties of a small office like Web hosting, mail and data manipulation -- and speedy non-graphics Web surfing with text-only Lynx. Red Hat Linux is free if downloaded, or under $100 for the full-featured install on CD-ROMs.

The box can also be used for "universal" file storage and data manipulation for your files in both Crashintosh and Windows format. The Linux box could also serve as a firewall appliance for your network. With the Linux box, you now have the potential for true programming in C, C++, Java and AWK, and shell scripting for "in-house" customization.

...and you should have a lot of fun learning UNIX too!

I forgot an important aspect of a Linux install in your Mac/PC shop -- Linux can be installed on a Mac, PC, Sun Sparc or Alpha giving you the potential for a dual boot -- you will able to either boot from the native OS or from Linux -- files residing on the PC or the Mac could be transferred between the two using Linux and the free Win Office-compatible Star Office Suite.

Theoretically, all the work stations at your site could boot up to Linux or the native operating system. All the Macs can run MAC OS or Linux, and all the Windows PC's can run Windows or Linux. Boy! I would love to work in a shop like that!

I've never had any trouble opening PC documents on a Mac (image files aren't really a problem anymore, now that Photoshop works on PCs, too). I have had problems going the other way. If the Mac person knows what they're doing and how to properly save the files, though, it shouldn't be a problem.

I've moved on, thank God to a PC newsroom.

The key problem is moving data back and forth, I think. What normally happens in all newsrooms is there is one or two geeks who do the heavy work and then there's a bunch of computer phobes who start with Excel know how and go downhill fast from there. But more and more reporters are doing their own spreadsheet work. And the vast majority of daily CAR is spreadsheets.

Hell, most of my large database work generally ends up in a spreadsheet for final analysis and presentation. I think reporters will want to do that at their own desk. So migrating data from the PC to the Macs is important, if you ask me.

My basic list of CAR tools for a Mac is Excel, Word and a net browser. Filemaker Pro isn't worth the time. I hated it. If you need something with muscle, that's what the CAR island is for. But every reporter should have Excel, and it's my understanding that you can migrate cross platform with them easily. Our Macs in Arkansas had Claris works, and it was unusable. A few of us young turks bought copies of Excel after being shot down and installed them under the noses of the tech people to get by. Excel is critical.

I've never used it, but I hear the Mac version of ArcView is second rate, and ESRI has abandoned it. So that leaves you with your PC island again.

Migrating from PC based ArcView to a Mac isn't hard, you just have to sit down with your graphics people for a couple hours and work out a protocol.

Also, we tried using SoftPC or something like that and on a blazing fast machine, it worked great for FoxPro, Excel and SPSS. But it blew a tire trying ArcView. The drawing and redrawing of maps just didn't work. On a slower pentium chip than the G3 we tested it, ArcView ran three or four times faster on the Wintel box. I use ArcView all the time, so that wasn't an option for me (which is why we tested it -- techs clung to macs like they were worth a damn, I wanted to bring more PCs into the newsroom). It could be worth it to put Access or Fox on a handfull of machines in the newsroom. Not everyone will need a heavy database. Besides that, it's expensive.

If you come up with other questions, drop me a line and I'll see if we dealt with it. Macs have their place in graphics, but not in CAR, if you ask me.

We tried using SoftPC on a blazing fast machine, and it worked great for FoxPro, Excel and SPSS. But it blew a tire trying ArcView. The drawing and redrawing of maps just didn't work. On a slower pentium chip than the G3 we tested, ArcView ran three or four times faster on the Wintel box. I use ArcView all the time, so that wasn't an option for me (which is why we tested it -- techs clung to macs like they were worth a damn, I wanted to bring more PCs into the newsroom).

If you have a newsroom of G4s, SoftPC could be worth it to put Access or Fox on a handfull of machines in the newsroom. Not everyone will need a heavy database program because let's face it, not everyone can grasp the concept of a database, let alone how to use the software. But if you have a handful of people who want to learn or already know how to use Access or Fox, go for it.

Hi. it's budget time and i'm pushing for three new pc's in our all mac newsroom. we use our pc's to run microsoft access and excel. the editor wants to know why we can't just put virtual pc on three macs so our reporters can run access on their macs. i've never tried this. does anyone know if a mac w/ virtual pc will run access. how clunky is it.

A newsroom of G4s? As much of a Wintel guy as I am (and I've been using some version of them since the TRS Model III, which had a 8086 chip if memory serves), I'd like to have as little as an iMac on my desk. Right now, I'm stuck with a Quadra 605 that can barely run NewsEditPro.

I've also been beating the Wintel drum here, trying to show the management how productive I am using my laptop and sneakernet to do really simple things, like putting a list of recycling sites on Excel. Of course, my ME asked why I didn't just do it on NewsEdit and put tabs between the fields. I started giving reasons (sorting, hiding extraneous data without losing it, etc.), and he basically said the powers above him didn't like to spend money on computers very often. Grrr.

Have your Apple rep come in and give a presentation. Apple should want to keep your newsroom happy. Then get references from the Apple rep of people using the application the way you intend.

The old, "We just bought you a new computer four years ago" mentality. Remind them that they can depreciate the costs, although that doesn't work with my bosses.

We used to do our CAR work on Macs, and we fared OK. That said, almost all my CAR work is on my PC now. For the record, I'm a Fox diehard, too.

But as long as I had them both handy, I ran a quick, not particularly scientific test using Access 97 on a PC (Dell, P2 processor) and on a Mac G3 via Virtual PC. Also threw in Virtual FoxPro on both machines (v 3.0 on Mac, 6.0 on PC).

I ran the same query on the only data I had in all formats, a voter registration database, 97,500 records, 57 MB (lots of obscure fields...), no indexes. it was a pretty standard query-- a group-by with criteria, sorted results. Ran it twice, results were virtually the same.

For the record, Virtual PC wasn't any clunkier or uglier than using Access in any Windows desktop. Just a lot slower... Here's how they did.

Access, PC: 5 seconds

FoxPro, PC: 6 seconds

FoxPro, Mac: 12 seconds

Access, Mac via Virtual PC: 53 seconds.

I know how to drive the bus, but not much about what's under the hood, so I'll punt to the experts on how and why this is... I'd say that while VPC might be OK for the occasional user, a reporter probably would get frustrated watching the computer chug for a minute or two every time. And you want to *encourage* them to do this stuff, not discourage them.

And for serious CAR, it's not an option. Tell them you need the PCs.

Any comments, send 'em to me off list, unless you think everyone really wants to see more of this Mac/PC debate....

For what it's worth, I have been running Access on my mac (a 400 mgh g3) using virtual PC. It has worked pretty well so far, but so far my databases have been pretty small. I'm not sure how well it will work with larger files.

Like the author of the original message, I want to avoid Mac vs. PC bickering, but I'm very curious to know precisely why so many people consider Access superior to FileMaker.

I work in an all-Macintosh newsroom, and we bought FileMaker 5 because Microsoft no longer makes Fox Pro for the Mac. I have limited Access experience, but I found that it does more easily provide a count of fields.

On the other hand I like FileMaker's ability to show only a subset of data and its indexing of fields to speed searches. It had no problem chewing through about 461,000 mortgage records and calculating averages. I would really like to hear the specifics about Access advantages.

We have a systems guy who swears by Filemaker. I think it's confusing beyond belief. I've got a copy, but the only time I use it is when I get data in Filemaker format and I want to dump it out to something I understand better, like Access.

I think it all boils down to which program you're comfortable with, and which one all of your friends use, so that when you run into problems you can get help fast. In this group, that means Access or Foxpro rather than Filemaker, and PCs rather than Macs.

You can reach Bill Dedman by e-mail at Bill@PowerReporting.com.

CAR in a Mac newsroom? discussion on CARR-L and NICAR-L

CAR in a Mac newsroom?
discussion on CARR-L
and NICAR-L