mac surely is an alien machine..........

Hey ppl!..
Im still quite alien with my beloved mac machine.... so u'll be seeing me ask a lot of dumb questions...

As of now I've got two....

1) As we all know mac generally is immune to viruses which effect other systems coz it simply cant read exe files.... but the new macs have this system where u can load windows and use this software called parallel which helps you use both mac and windows in the same machine...separately as well as simultaneously... now i wish to load 3d max which does not work in the mac platform...I think my windows is already loaded and so is parallel.... Ive never used them and quite frankly Im scared to do so, not knowing what problems it'l become exposed to. What kind of risks will i be taking while using windows in mac...? any preventions, precautions....?coz god help me if my machine crashes....

2) I really wish to learn html, CSS, etc.... Id generally be requiring the notebook and Internet explorer to start off fr html in my PC previously...what fr mac???

Told u I'd ask dumb questions.....pleaseee provide me with some smart answers....tx!!

I'm a pure Linux user but since Mac OSX onwards is very similar to Linux, let me have a shot at this. Where's Cone when you need him??


1) Well, to be honest, Mac isn't really immune to virii. And the immunity it has is not because it can't read exe files. Exe files are just executables. Mac have executable files as well (if it didn't, you wouldn't be able to run any programs!) just with different names. The reason Mac's (primarily OSX onwards) are less immune than Windows is because it's based on UNIX which uses a very complex permission system which simply does not exist on Windows. Also, UNIX, Linux and Mac's are true multi-user OS's unlike Windows which I think is simulated.
Anyway, this software, Parallel, sounds like some sort of virtualization software. If that's the case, your Mac is safe. The worst thing that can happen is, your Windows that runs inside the Mac can crash and Parallel might stop responding until you restart it but your Mac will be quite safe.
Best thing for you to do would be to install a virus guard on the Windows inside Parallel.
There was a time when I had to run Windows from within my Linux installation using virtualization software called Xen and that's just what I did, I installed an anti-virus on the Windows installation that ran within Xen.


2) You could use Safari web browser on a Mac but Mozilla Firefox is better because it has less CSS bugs. For a good text editor on a Mac, I think there's one called TextMate but I'm not sure if it's free.

..that really helped..thanks! and the stuff abt exe....smthin i will remember for sure...

ya the new macs have an upgraded application for text mate called Text edit.... i checked online... there is some complication as compared to the previous macs with text mate application coz u gotta change the default settings frm rtf to plain text... but ya i got the hang of that... tx a ton!

there are rumors flying abt that the pirated versions of 'ilife' etc for mac apparently are carrying viruses... kinda making me think twice before loading ny softwares... anyway i can check the softwares before loading??,,,

Thanks once again for the response!

ok jus one more thing... parallel is a virtualization software...i jus checked... does that imply that the hd is shared?...my concern is that if im loading something onto my comp while using mac os ...perchance some sort of virus gets into my machine... will that act out when i switch to the windows os....its sounding a lil absurd when im asking u this question... but its a genuine concern from my side.... like i connected a pen drive to my ma yesterday...it didnt show ny glitches in it... but when i opened the file elsewhere there was a trojan detected in it and had to be removed... ... is this a cause of worry?

Anything Windows related is a cause of worry

Hows it going with the mac?

I see you posted this some time ago, i can't really help, i ran windows on my mac back in 98 so i could play Red alert wich wasn't out for mac at the time. It sucked, it takes up too much memory. Fo course back then computers didn't have as much memory as they do today, so i guess it might not be a problem.

But still, Apple is a great computer not only cause it looks cool, it's OS is crazy, compared to windows. Are you sure there isn't a 3D software for mac that is just as good as Studiomax??