Experiences with Storyline on Mac via Parallels

May 25, 2012

Hi, folks!

So, I once lived in a Linux world in college.  Then, when I started work, I moved to a Windows world.  

I just accepted a new job and the question has arisen: PC or MAC?  I'm tempted to make the move to a Mac world to broaden my skill-set (how hard can it be???!!), but Storyline is going to be a real bread-and-butter app for me, and I'm concerned that it's not natively supported on the Mac.

How have you found working with Storyline on a Mac via parallels?  Is the performance acceptable?  Have you run into any serious productivity log-jams?

Thanks!

Brian

62 Replies
Sean Speake

For Parallels specifically, avoid the bundled Kapersky AV. I was having regular BSOD's on the windows side while I had it installed. Once I removed it, smooth as silk.

Another thing to be aware of; there is some software that does not appreciate being run in a virtual machine. There's an avatar program I use regularly that behaves very badly in a virtual environment. That generally means a trip to bootcamp when I need to work with it. Which often means that I'm working in bootcamp while using SL (or Studio 09) as well.

Magda Diaz

I am amazed by how well Storyline works on an old MacBook Pro core duo with only 4 gigs of RAM. I am waiting for the new Macs to come out and wasn't sure it would work on tho old thing, but I am impressed. Works way better than Studio. (Probably because it don't have Powerpoint baggage.)

I will be getting more RAM on my new Mac, but I am still impressed by the performance on this old on.

I am using Windows 7, BTW.

Ethan Waldman

I have a macbook pro with 12GB of ram. Most of the time, I just give 2gb to my windows install. Storyline surprisingly runs great with this meager amount of RAM, but then when it came to publishing (encoding videos) it took forever. I'm sure if I gave paralells more RAM for times when I'm publishing it would be great.

Peter Anderson

Randall Sauchuck said:

No one mentioned all the problems that can arise if you have your story file or the output destinations on the mac harddrive (you must keep them both on the virtual c drive in parallels) I have wasted over a week trouble shooting this issue

Hi all,

Here are a few important tips for running Articulate software in a Mac environment with Parallels:

  1. First, disable the Shared Profile within Parallels, so all of the default Windows folders reside in the Windows environment and not in the Mac environment.  For more information on this, please see this KB article provided by Parallels.
  2. After disabling the Shared Profile, you must completely uninstall and then reinstall the Articulate software.  This step is only necessary if the Shared Profile feature was enabled previously.
  3. Make sure that your Articulate project files are saved in the Windows environment and not in the shared environment.  Save your Articulate projects in a folder that is located on the Windows installation.  For example:  C:\Users\Administrator\Documents\

Also, follow these best practices when working with the Articulate products in Parallels:

  1. Audio, video, and image resources that you want to insert into your Articulate content must be located in the Parallels/Windows environment, not the Mac. Copy and paste any files that you'll need to the Windows environment prior to inserting them into your presentation.
  2. Make sure you're saving your Articulate projects to the Parallels/Windows environment, not the Mac. The default location would be C:\Users\Administrator\Documents\My Articulate Projects.
  3. Make sure you publish any project to the Parallels/Windows environment, not the Mac. The default location would be C:\Users\Administrator\Documents\My Articulate Projects
  4. Never work from a network drive or a USB drive. If an existing project resides on this drive, you must first copy it to the Parallels/Windows environment before working with it. (Note: Articulate Presenter presentations have two files that need to be transferred—the PowerPoint file and the Articulate (.ppta) file. These two files must have the same file name and should never be separated.)
Luke Benfield

Parallels 9 with 8G of RAM on a Macbook Pro is running as smoothly as I could have imagined. Per the feedback offered in this thread, I have windows and mac running separately, but may experiment with the shared profile.

For storage, I use Copy and their desktop client. I have not experienced any corruption issues  or errors when syncing projects between multiple computers. 

Martinique Dolce

I just purchased the MacBook Pro with Retina 16GB and have installed Parallels 9.  Unfortunately, I'm not having much luck running Storyline and I know it probably has something to do with the way I've got it configured.  I've maxed out everything and am not using the Shared profiles as directed.  I've got Windows 8 installed with all the latest drivers.

Unfortunately, on my Mac, my Storyline files appear as though they are not completely rendered.  Meaning that images on the slide appear as disconnected artifacts.  I've attached a screen capture hoping someone can help.

This same file will open in Windows Storyline with all the images intact.

Joseph Fambro

I don't own Articulate Storyline but recently made the decision to purchase it.  Then, when reaching the last page to purchase I read that it is not available for Apple/Mac.  How is this possible in 2014?

With computers moving towards flash storage and cloud-based storage, it isn't reasonable or feasible for me to run parallels or bootcamp on my machines.  I currently have 2 MacBook Pros with Retina Displays (13 inch and 15 inch).  I am ready to enter the Articulate Storyline camp, but every gig is precious.  My entire ecosystem is Apple and I despise Microsoft Windows and Office.  

I tweeted with Articulate about this already, but I wanted to voice my frustration here as well.

Please open the barrier for those of us (many these days!) that use Mac so that we can natively run Storyline.

Christine Hendrickson

Hi Joseph,

I appreciate your feedback on this and the time you took to share it. Have you had the opportunity to share your suggestion with our development team as well, yet? If not, I would definitely recommend doing so. 

It's been a popular request, as you've no doubt seen, for quite some time. We are hoping that this will be an option for a future version of Storyline. However, the more feedback we see the better. If you know anyone working on a Mac that would like to see this type of functionality, share the information with them and have them submit a request as well.

It's definitely on our list of popular requests, both from here in the community and with the support team. 

Thanks again for the feedback and welcome to the community, Joseph!

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