My Ultimate eLearning Development Machine
November 9, 2008
A reader last week wrote me and asked what PC I would recommend for her fledgling eLearning development shop. The answer to me was a no-brainer. I’m sure to her it was not the answer she expected. Nonetheless, I thought I’d share it here too. I’d be interested to hear your opinions.
First off, whenever one recommends anything from Apple, he/she is immediately perceived as a nutty zealot. I’m not sure where this came from – effective Microsoft marketing perhaps? Fortunately, the times, they are a changin’, but today this perception is still prevalent. Allow me to counter based not on some irrational religious-like devotion, but actual personal experience.
I’ve used both Windows (XP and prior OSes) and Mac (OS X and prior OSes) many thousands of hours over many years – starting in about 1991. Windows full-time in the corporate environment and mixed Mac and Windows at home. If given the choice, I would choose a Mac for everything but games. No question. I don’t need to delve into all of the reasons here, but I will make a case for the Mac being the ultimate eLearning development box.
First, the hardware I’d choose:
24″ iMac with 4G of RAM, 750GB hard drive
The 24″ iMac gives you a speedy Core2 Duo processor, a massive amount of screen real estate with a high-quality display, a sleek built-in webcam for video conferencing or desktop video capture (talking-head video or stills), a small, clean footprint on your desk, and whisper-quiet operation that’s great for narration recording (and your general sanity). You get Wi-Fi (802.11n), Bluetooth, USB, Firewire, dual-layer DVD burning, Gigabit Ethernet, a solid aluminum enclosure and a real glass screen (ah, just like the good old days).
Disclaimer: you will almost certainly pay more for this machine than an equivalently-specced PC. Period. But is it worth the extra money? Yes. The hardware is beautiful and powerful, but the real killer features aren’t evident from a product photo or spec sheet.
Here are three reasons the Mac is the ultimate eLearning development machine:
1) You can run all major operating systems on a single machine.
Run OS X, Windows, and Linux – simultaneously – at native speed. With Apple’s transition to Intel processors a few years ago, they effectively made the Mac the all-in-one miracle computer (while making all of my wildest dreams come true). Running Windows in VMware Fusion allows me to jump back and forth between Mac and Windows apps seamlessly, as if they were running in the same operating system. So I have the best of all worlds. I record and edit my narration in GarageBand. Create my charts and graphs in Keynote. Then import it all into PowerPoint 2007 (for Windows) for creation of my course using Articulate Presenter, Quizmaker, and Engage (Windows-only apps). Maybe I want to use ScreenFlow (review coming soon) instead of Camtasia. Perhaps I want to create a beautiful Timeline for my course. Or do some bargain-priced usability testing with Silverback. There are no limits to the software I can run, free or commercial. This kind of flexibility just can’t be quantified with a dollar figure.
This multi-platform capability also gives you the ultimate testing environment. Many work in mixed Widows/Mac shops, particularly at schools and universities where students use a wide range of hardware and software. Test your courses in each OS quickly and easily on your Mac. At home I used to have a big, noisy PC tower next to my big, noisy PowerMac tower on my desk, sharing a screen and keyboard/mouse with an irritating KVM switch. That’s all gone now, replaced with a single machine that is smaller than my CRT monitor alone used to be. And it puts out about a tiny fraction of the noise (and heat).
2) Great multimedia software out of the box.
GarageBand is free with any Mac, and makes a great environment for recording and editing your narration. iPhoto manages my images, and iMovie gives me a great little video editing tool. And I don’t get all the junkware/trialware that comes pre-installed with the typical PC (which smart users immediately remove, if not just reformatting the drive and starting fresh). And for paid software, I often find Mac stuff to be cheaper than the Windows stuff (yes, this surprises me too). ScreenFlow is $100 vs. $300 for Camtasia. iWork is $80 vs. hundreds for Office. There is more shareware/freeware on the Windows side, but I often find the Mac equivalents to be of higher quality yet with lower prices.
3) Kiss virus and spyware worries goodbye.
If I had a dollar for every time I’ve had to clean spyware off friends’ and relatives’ PCs, I’d be sitting sitting in front of a shiny new 24″ iMac right now (I currently use a 20″ model that’s a couple of years old). I don’t have spyware and virus fears on my Mac. Period. Could I pick up viruses and spyware while running Windows in VMware? Sure. Which is why I do almost all of my Internet-related stuff on the Mac side. And if I do happen to pick up something ugly in Windows, it doesn’t effect the Mac side of the house. It stays quarantined on the Windows side, where it belongs. The Windows virus and spyware plague is the primary reason many of my relatives and friends have moved to Macs over the past few years. They don’t miss the grief. Nor do I.
There are plenty of other reasons I love developing eLearning on my Mac, but I’ll stick with the Big 3 in this post. Ultimately, my iMac is like that James Bond Lotus Esprit that turns into a submarine. Wherever I need to go, it takes me there, no matter what operating system or software application I need to use.
In upcoming posts I’ll give you a more detailed look at VMware Fusion, narration recording in GarageBand, and reviews of some of my favorite apps on both the Mac side (ScreenFlow, etc.) and the Windows side (Articulate).
Until then, please feel free to opine in the comments section.
Posted in Apple, eLearning Development Tools
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November 10th, 2008 at 3:32 am
Hi,
Not a comment but a plea for help.
I am an experienced e-learning educator but still a novice on the product development side. I am now retired and have no technical backup.
How can I add a brief sound clip from my itunes matrial to play over a particular PPT slide in an otherwise silent presentation? I use Mac 10.4.11.
John
November 10th, 2008 at 7:49 am
Hey John, try dragging the song file directly to the slide in your presentation. In iTunes, right-click the song and choose Show In Finder. Then drag that file and drop it on the slide in PowerPoint where you want the audio to play.
November 10th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
I definitely agree with this for a sweet development machine, although if I am spending all day in development software, a nicely outfiftted PC would not (for me) be a bad option either (bugs and viruses notwithstanding).
I am looking to get a new machine with the next 12 months, and I’m honestly torn between a PC (which I am more used to but am rather sick of) and getting an iMac with the works. I like the hardware options available for PCs, but the completeness of functionality in the Mac is the counterpoint.
Here’s to training departments the world over “getting” the Mac and making the switch.
November 10th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Hello,
What Windows programs would you use instead of Timelines and GarageBand? Also how would you compare Camtasia to Adobe Captivate?
Thanks! TS <
November 10th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Travis, I’m not aware of any Timelines equivalent for Windows, though I assume there has to be *something* out there. Adobe’s Soundbooth ($99) is probably a pretty good equivalent for GarageBand.
I put in a request with my employer for Captivate many, many months ago, I’ve yet to see it installed on my machine. So I can’t compare it to Camtasia. I don’t have the latest version of Camtasia (6) either, but regarding v.5, I can say that the program has a lot of functionality but I think the interface is horribly outdated and not very user-friendly. I’ll talk about this more when I post my review on ScreenFlow.
November 10th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
@ Paul, I’d recommend you give the iMac a shot. Worst case scenario you hate it, sell it, and lose a couple hundred bucks.
Me, I’d be willing to wager that will not happen and a year from now your Windows-only world will be but a painful memory.
November 10th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
I have been using a mac (15″ MBP 4GB/200GB) as my main development machine for almost a year now. Its great I too use Articulate Studio, Captivate, SnagIt, VMware Fusion 2 and XP. I had to give up Vista, but XP is snappy. On the Mac side i use iLife, iWork, Handbrake, VisualHub, Pixelmator, MindManager, ScreenFlow, Jing, and QuartzComposer (part of XCode). I fin myslef using Keynote a lot. You can set the canvas in Keynote to match the Canvas in Articulate Presener and make som really nice animations keynote style export to Flash og mov and then convert to flash with Visualhub og Articulate Encoder. Also you can make some really cool background animations with QuartzComopser drop it in Keynote and export from there.
Using the Alpha channel tool in Keynote it is a breeze removing backgrounds in photos. I mostly use the shared folder in XP to access the files on the macside, but when I am in a hurry or in flow I just drag and drop files between desktops. I have an extra 22″ samsung connected to my Macbook Pro. I will never go back using just a windows machine again.
January 17th, 2009 at 8:00 am
I’d love to switch back to the Mac (I had a Mac Mini for a while, but it was painfully slow for the money, even after I had upgraded the RAM and added an external firewire boot drive…should have just bought an iMac…). But the one thing holding me back from getting a new iMac is that you can’t run a dual-monitor setup. I can’t live without 2 big displays anymore. I have a 22″ and a 19″ right now, side-by-side.
An ideal solution would be a nicely equipped (ie, not the low-spec model) MacBook Pro, but then we’re in the ~$2500 range which is just ridiculous.
I agree with what I think is one of your main points – the *quality* of the Mac software, even the freeware, is so much higher than most paid Windows apps it’s ridiculous. And with the Fusion solution there really isn’t any limitation anymore.
Windows 7 (I’m running the beta in a dual-boot with Windows XP) is basically just Windows Vista with a slight makeover and slight speed increase, but it’s still woefully slower and just less ’snappy’ than XP on equivalent hardware. I have a pretty high-end PC built part-by-part and the benefits of a really lightning fast OS (ie, XP) vs the glossy Vista/Win 7 make me think I’ll eventually, maybe later this year, jump to the Mac and just suffer with a single display : (
January 17th, 2009 at 9:13 am
Mark, I’m revising my previous comment (which is being replaced with this comment) because I wasn’t thinking straight. I believe you *can* run a dual-display setup using the iMac. There is a video out on the iMac (just not a video in), and I believe it supports video mirroring as well as an extended desktop. Your local Apple Store folks should be able to confirm this.
October 6th, 2009 at 8:29 am
[...] For us Mac-based eLearning developers, Windows virtualization can be, sadly, a necessity. Though some must-have tools are starting to arrive on the Mac platform (Camtasia, Captivate, SnagIt), others remain Windows-only for the foreseeable future (Articulate). And often your projects require capturing screenshots natively in Windows-based applications. The ability to run apps from all major OSes in a single environment on a single machine is an advantage that can’t be underestimated, and that ability is what makes the Mac my Ultimate eLearning Development Machine. [...]