OT: You OS/X Users...question for ya...

[Bill Campbell]

On Tue, Feb 27, 2007, Fairlight wrote:
>Is it preferable to have .mov videos for Mac?  I heard they made great
>strides in being able to play .wmv now, but I'm just wondering, because the
>option is open to me to obtain a codec to do that as well.

I'm hardly an expert in video for anything so take this with a grain of
salt.

The .mov QuickTime format may well be the best on Macs as it's the native
format if you will.

WMV files are now supported under QuickTime using flip4mac, available from
versiontracker.com, and, I think, from Microsoft.

I generally avoid using any Microsoft proprietary binary formats if at all
possible.

>Also, is Stuffit still the compression tool/format of choice for Mac?  Is
>this as critical as it used to be, or no?

Funny you should bring this up as it was a topic at an intermediate OS X
SIG meeting I attended tonight.

Stuffit isn't used much any more, with most things being distributed as zip
files, or as disk images in .dmg files, either of which are handled easily
with the default tools.  They can also deal with normal *nix formats such
ag tar.gz and cpio.

>(The last time -I- used a Mac hands-on was System 9, and before that 
>System 6.  At that era, .sit was pretty mandatory.)

These aren't your father's Macs any more :-).

I spend the vast majority of my desktop time using a Mac Mini in my office,
or a 15in PowerBook, generally with a bunch of xterms in ssh connections.

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Bill
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