Storyline on a Mac

This has been hinted at, most of the devs use macs. Tbh though I see no performance issues on m mac and also get the benefit of using a mac

So, are you saying you're running a Windows VM client on your Mac to use SL OR you got it to work on Mac natively? Probably the former but just checking.

 was really dismayed to discover that Parallels is requires to run Storyline on a Mac. This has been asked before but I'll post a more updated question: Is there any intention to develop the product so that it's iOS compatible? I was sold on the product and ready to try it but am now wondering if that's going to create a hassle down the road. Any Mac users out there who can vouch for cross-platform work?

I am working with someone who runs it on a Macbook Pro, using Windows through the emulation software.

I have quite a good PC here as well so I upgraded it and put it on there for him because he was frustrated with the emulation and Windows 8.

He only used it for a few days before moving back to his Mac. Since everyone else is using a Mac in the organization it was just simpler for him to stay with it.

Having said that I'm surprised that they haven't developed for the Mac yet. Maybe the market is smaller than I thought.

On the whole though it works all right. Just yet another layer of software that you have to work with.

What emulator is he using in Windows 8?

What I meant was, what emulator is he using to run Windows 8?

Just my two-cents worth... I use SL on both a MacBook Pro (Parallels/Win7) and a typical office-class Lenovo desktop with Windows XP. Both work fine; the desktop is somewhat speedier than my MacBook Pro but my Mac is far from the latest, speediest models available. As Phil said, the benefits of using the Mac (to me) outweigh the minor speed advantage of the desktop. If I updated my MacBook Pro to a newer model that speed advantage may disappear as well.

Hi Lisa and welcome to E-Learning Heroes! Looks like you are getting some great feedback here from some Mac users. I know that users have put in feature requests to have a Mac version, but I do not have any information to provide as to if that will happen or not.

FWIW, I have used Storyline in these two Mac-centric setups:

VMware Fusion: Using the Vmware-supplied Migration Agent utility I cloned my company-issued Windows XP craptop and ran the image on my iMac within Mac OS X. It worked well for a couple of years, running virtually in a window on my Mac desktop. Cut-and-paste between OS environments, large 27" iMac screen, multiple monitors…heavenly. Then our corporate IT group added more and more security software and hard disk encryption software and it dragged Windows things down to a crawl. (How do Windows people keep their sanity? Get a Mac!) Anyway, that led me to another solution, which has worked fantastically to this day...

VNC software over home LAN: Admittedly, this is not what this thread is talking about. If you had BOTH a Mac and a PC there wouldn't be a need for you to use Parallels or Fusion. Nevertheless, this setup offers some real advantages. My company-issued Windows 7 laptop sits on the floor in another room, so it's out of the way and not cluttering up my desk. It's running VNC (virtual network computing) software that allows me to 'remotely' operate the laptop from my iMac in its own window. There are numerous VNC applications out there to choose from. The performance is great, particularly since the PC uses its processor/memory/drive, freeing that burden from my iMac. One keyboard, one mouse, one monitor for both systems. The PC display shows up as a window (1600x900) on my iMac (2560x1440). Cut-and-paste between them. I store all my Storyline files on my iMac (in a shared folder that the PC accesses) so that my Mac OS X Time Machine backup software can take care of backups and versioning.

While I'd love to see Storyline natively on Mac OS X, the Windows-VNC-Mac solution is a great one if you can swing it.

I'm using Parallels Desktop 9 for Mac with Windows 7.  Storyline runs fine and I get to use my 27" Mac screen - perfect for developing!.  I have done all the settings they recommend to make it run properly and have allocated extra memory just in case.  Would like to see a MAC version of SL down the track, but at the moment it works well enough for me.

Just adding my thoughts on running Storyline on a Mac.

I have a MacBook Pro, which I use to run Windows 7 and all of my Articulate software. I don't use emulator, like Parallels. Instead, I load Windows with BootCamp. BootCamp is something that is built into all Macs, and it allows you to install Windows as a separate partition on your hard drive. 

I decided to go this way, as I rarely ever need to run Windows and OSX at the same time. It works great for me and I've never had any issues. Here is some more information on it.

Would love to see a native Mac version - and I'm sure thousands of others would too.

I'm running Windows 8.1 via VMware Fusion 6.02 (which is supposedly designed for OS X Mavericks and Windows 8) on a 15" Retina MBP .

In fact, all programs I've tried so far work well, including Articulate Studio 09 - the only one that doesn't display properly is Storyline. The GUI is tiny. Any tips?

Hi Guido,

What's your DPI setting for the Windows side of things? You'll want it to be at 96 DPI for Storyline to display and work properly. 

And, if you'd like to see a future version of Storyline for Mac, we encourage you to submit a feature request directly to our product development team. 

Hi Ashley,

Thanks for your reply. W8 doesn't let me set/change the DPI per se, it just lets me adjust the 'percentage' (as per your link - thanks!). It's set to 200% as this is what's required to display things correctly on a Retina MBP (4x the pixels).

I did try 100% as per the guide. The result was that everything was equally tiny (ie illegible. My eyesight is good, but not that good) - which is even worse than only most things being tiny (which is what happens at 200%)..I can upload screenshots if it helps.

Feature request submitted

Here are some screenshots to illustrate the issue:

This is Storyline @ 100%

Here's Storyline @ 200% (note the large icon on the top left and the taskbar at ). This is the recommended setting by VMWare and every other program/app seems to display either correctly or upscaled (such as Studio 09)

And here's Quizmaker for comparison (@200%). The GUI is upscaled and pixelated but at least it's legible and the proportions are right.

Hi Guido,

I use Storyline on a rMBP via parallels with Windows 8.1. I totally understand how things look tiny with 100%, I did buy an external monitor and project the VM on it, things looked very sharp and crispy.

However when I just want to use the MAC, 2 settings that I found myself comfortable with. In both cases the DPI had to be 100% otherwise things went really bad in Storyline and characters and text were misplaced:

1- De-selected the Retina option in the VM settings and changed the Widows resolution to something less (I found 1600*900 to be better but is it really up to you on what you feel comfortable with)

Or

Change the resolution in the MAC to something more scaled (OSX gives you 4 options 1920x1200, 1680x1050, 1280x800, and 1024x640) but you can also download third party apps like QuickRes which gives you more resolutions to select from. Play around them, whatever you change in the MAC environment will impact the VM.

Performance has been great. I didn't use bootcamp as I wanted to keep using OSX.

Hope this helps

Kind Regards,

Mohd Ayman

iLearn Middle East

www.ilearn.ws

Hi Guido,

Thanks for the screen shots - and as Mohd mentioned working with Storyline at anything other than the 96 DPI or the slide zoom being off of 100% can cause some odd behavior like your characters being decapitated or text looking differently in edit mode than in your preview/publish. 

I can see that the Articulate "A" button is larger in 200% although the text on it still looks quite small and the Storyline start screen doesn't look like it changed sizes. 

Thanks for submitting the feature request too - it wouldn't hurt to submit one for the ability for different DPI settings in addition to Mac support. 

Thanks Mohd (Mohammed?) and Ashley.

The external monitor sounds like the way to go. I have a 2009 27" iMac I can use in TDM as an external monitor, so I'll probably just use that.

On the go and at work, I'll probably upscale OS X.

Both options are pretty annoying workarounds rather than real solutions. I'm still on the trial and I won't be buying Storyline until there's either a native Mac client or a switchable DPI setting. The 15 rMBP sports 220 PPI and a lot of new Windows laptops sport even higher resolutions (like the Lenovo Yoga Pro or the Samsung Ativ - those little things push 3200x1800 pixels!). 

Please Articulate - think of the pixel junkies! HiDPI all the way! (Feature request submitted)

I never realised how incompatible windows and mac screen resolutions were until I started using Storyline on my 2008 21" iMac with Teamviewer. Teamviewer makes sharing my windows desktop so easy, and with a couple of screen res tweaks each time it's totally usable 

. We do need a mac version though please Articulate! 

I have done the same thing loaded windows using bootcamp,  however, my top menu bar is really small for articulate - i can hardly read it.  Any advise? i have a 13 in mac book pro.  Have tried changing the screen resolution in both mac and windows with no luck.  i am thinking i have just wasted my money on software i cant use unless i buy another lap top!

Hi Shaista, 

It sounds like you've run into an issue with the DPI setting, and you'll need to use the DPI of 96 - which can make things appear smaller. We've shared with our product development team that folks have asked for better support for high resolution monitors and you're also welcome to share your thought in the form of a feature request as well. 

How do you set DPI to 96?

Shannon

Hi Shannon, 

You'll need to follow the directions here for whichever version of Windows you're running in your VM setup on a Mac.