Apple OS / Windows OS Compatablility?

[Shark Bait (Stu)]

I have a lot of Transit of Venus data in the form of *.pdf, word docs, *.jpg and videos on my Windows OS system.

I have gone through and tidied up the files and would like to do a data dump for the kids at my Son's school. Over 600 people got to see the transit and many have asked for a copy of my images and documents. A good number of these families will be running Apple based platforms. The school looks to be shifting to Apple products as they upgrade their systems.

I am sure that photos, videos and *.pdf files will work ok, but.....

Can an Apple system read the word documents and videos created on my Windows OS computer?

Thanks for reading.

Regards,
Stu.

[supernova1965 (Warren)]

I am fairly sure that you will have no problems with the compatibility with office documents

[Omaroo (Chris Malikoff)]

Stu - give us a hand here. What format are your video files in? Macs are, uhmmm, rather good at reading and playing video and graphics - but there are proprietary video codecs you may need to install on a Mac first depending on what you used to create them on your Windows machine.

As far as MS Word-based docs, Macs need either MS Office or Apple Pages (works with Word documents beautifully and is way cheaper and in my mind far nicer to use) loaded too. Do schools load these applications? I'm guessing they do.

[Poita (Peter)]

If I am giving people video files on a disc, I always include a copy of VLC for windows, OSX and linux on the disc, so they can install that if their videos don't play.
It pretty much plays anything without requiring codec downloads etc.

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/#download

[Omaroo (Chris Malikoff)]

Originally Posted by Poita

If I am giving people video files on a disc, I always include a copy of VLC for windows, OSX and linux on the disc, so they can install that if their videos don't play.
It pretty much plays anything without requiring codec downloads etc.

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/#download

Yup

[naskies (Dave)]

Originally Posted by Shark Bait

Can an Apple system read the word documents and videos created on my Windows OS computer?

If they have Office for Mac OS X, then it's very likely they can open the MS Word docs

However, fine formatting in Word docs almost always gets messed up when transferring between Windows and Macs. Providing PDF documents is a safer option because how it looks on your computer will be the same as how it looks on another. Macs have a PDF viewer built-in - no need to download Acrobat Reader.

Videos in H264/MPEG4 format usually open up fine on recent Macs without any further software needed.

Having your videos in a format that can be directly loaded onto an iPad without transcoding would be handy too

[Colin_Fraser]

OSX does not support *doc files. It can open some but does not handle some of the formatting options of Word.
I have Open Office on the mac but it does not convert perfectly all the time.
Best bet is to have Cutepdf on the Windows machine and print the files in .pdf format.
I have a Windows laptop and an iMac and found that is the easiest way of doing it.
I have had no trouble viewing video's on my iMac that I had created on my Windows machine. As Peter suggested, use VLC

[Omaroo (Chris Malikoff)]

Originally Posted by Colin_Fraser

OSX does not support *doc files. It can open some but does not handle some of the formatting options of Word.
I have Open Office on the mac but it does not convert perfectly all the time.

Not sure what you mean by this, as Windows does not support .doc files either - not natively anyway.

Open Office is a compromise - a valiant one, but still behind the eight ball when it comes to keeping up.

Both MS-Word and Apple Pages do a very good job running on OSX in opening very complex .doc files, as generated by Windows versions. I use both daily - same with Excel spreadsheets using Apple Numbers.

[Shark Bait (Stu)]

Thanks to one and all for your assistance. The slow reply is due to being out all day. Apologies if the amount of information that I provided isn't specific enough. Computers are not my area...I am still using Vista (I can hear the laughter all over the forum).

Originally Posted by Omaroo

Stu - give us a hand here. What format are your video files in? Macs are, uhmmm, rather good at reading and playing video and graphics - but there are proprietary video codecs you may need to install on a Mac first depending on what you used to create them on your Windows machine.

As far as MS Word-based docs, Macs need either MS Office or Apple Pages (works with Word documents beautifully and is way cheaper and in my mind far nicer to use) loaded too. Do schools load these applications? I'm guessing they do.

Video files are created using Windows Movie Maker (more laughter) and end up as *.wmv files.

Originally Posted by Poita

If I am giving people video files on a disc, I always include a copy of VLC for windows, OSX and linux on the disc, so they can install that if their videos don't play.
It pretty much plays anything without requiring codec downloads etc.

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/#download

Originally Posted by Omaroo

Yup

Thanks for the heads up. I will get familiar with what you have both suggested. Sounds like it will solve some compatability issues.

Originally Posted by naskies

If they have Office for Mac OS X, then it's very likely they can open the MS Word docs

However, fine formatting in Word docs almost always gets messed up when transferring between Windows and Macs. Providing PDF documents is a safer option because how it looks on your computer will be the same as how it looks on another. Macs have a PDF viewer built-in - no need to download Acrobat Reader.

Videos in H264/MPEG4 format usually open up fine on recent Macs without any further software needed.

Having your videos in a format that can be directly loaded onto an iPad without transcoding would be handy too

My boy is in Prep and is already using an iPad. I have become a dinosaur. I will look into the file format needed so my vidoes will suit that product.

Originally Posted by Colin_Fraser

OSX does not support *doc files. It can open some but does not handle some of the formatting options of Word.
I have Open Office on the mac but it does not convert perfectly all the time.
Best bet is to have Cutepdf on the Windows machine and print the files in .pdf format.
I have a Windows laptop and an iMac and found that is the easiest way of doing it.
I have had no trouble viewing video's on my iMac that I had created on my Windows machine. As Peter suggested, use VLC

Cheers. *.pdf sounds like the easiest fix.

Again, thanks for your help. These suggestions will save people a lot of frustration when they can 'see' and use the files that will be provided.

Regards,
Stu.

[Omaroo (Chris Malikoff)]

Originally Posted by Shark Bait

Cheers. *.pdf sounds like the easiest fix.Stu.

Oh - so you don't intend for people to further edit your documents? In that case, you should never distribute documents in Word format. Not everyone is guaranteed to have the appropriate software to open them. All platforms have PDF Reader (at least) supplied with them.

Macs, on the other hand, open PDF files natively - i.e. at operating system level. QuartzGL, the display layer, utilises a very comprehensive subset of PostScript/PDF routines as part of this. If you're going to distribute documents to Mac users and Windows alike - use PDF.