The Windows "software advantage" 81

Alan Baker

"It's been a while - probably 6 years or more - since I last used Quilt-Pro. In that time, I've converted to full-time Macintosh use. I bought myself a handy little Mac laptop, running the latest operating system, OS X (10.4, aka "Tiger"). I've been designing my own quilts in the meantime, but to do so, I've had to run the Electric Quilt software on (gasp) my husband's PC. "

"I was glad to see a version of Quilt-Pro come out for Mac OS X, but I had reservations. On the one hand, Mac users desperately need a quilt design program that runs natively on the OS X operating system. On the other hand, the old version for the Mac (under OS 9) was clunky and crashed a lot. So how does Quilt-Pro 5 for the Mac stack up?"

"The problem is, I'm working on a laptop. I have a 12" screen. There's not a lot of real estate for so many windows. You've got your quilt window, your block design window, your color pallet, your toolbox, your fabric store, etc. They're going to overlap, and some are probably going to get hidden. Now, the Macintosh OS X operating system has a solution for that, called "Expose." You just push the F9 button, and all the windows sort of slide apart and get small enough that you can see what's what, and when you click on the window you want, they all go back to full size but with the preferred window in front."

"Unfortunately, Quilt-Pro doesn't play nice with Expose. Push F9, and you get only the main window for whatever quilt projects you have open, and none of the ancillary windows. So if you've mislaid the toolbox, for instance, you have to start digging around and minimizing windows until it resurfaces. Not handy."

It doesn't look good for the one and only piece of quilting software you found for the Mac...