This thread may be able to help you. Also, for additional information, you may check this link as well for the demo videos available on using Storyline on Mac.
This thread has more recent comments and suggestion. It may be of more help to you. There's no native Mac version of Storyline yet. Check out this article so you may be able to use Storyline on Mac with Parallels.
I guess I'll have to wait until it's working with Parallels. I'm using Storyline on my more than 10-year-old Mac with Parallels and it runs ok, but it's a bit slow sometimes.... but it might be because I don't keep Windows open and when I open it once in a while, it runs all the updates. Once the updates are installed, it's a bit faster.
I run Storyline via Parallels Desktop and have for years (9+). I'm on both an older iMac and have it on a 2019 MacBook Pro. They work flawlessly for the most part but know that you should get as much RAM as you can and you'll want the "Pro" version of Parallels. Pro gets you the ability to allocate more than 8 GB of RAM to the virtual machine. I currently have 32 GB on my iMac and allocate half to the VM. I also run Illustrator, Photoshop, Word, Chrome, PowerPoint... etc., etc. so the RAM goes to good use. I have run Storyline 360 on an older MacBook Pro (2012) when my iMac was in the shop. It has less RAM and everything was just fine as long as I didn't open too many other things.
Getting Parallels set up can be just a little fiddly if you're on a Retina machine (scaling is very weird sometimes).
I prefer running Windows on my Mac as the hardware just seems to be better (other than the dud of an iMac I have that keeps blowing logic boards... but that's a whole other story).
ETA: Since the newer Macs are beasts (and expensive) to upgrade, I HIGHLY recommend getting the top specs you can. Don't go for a MacBook Air - we tried it. It worked but not very well - processor speed is more important than cores in my experience.
Leah, thank you, very helpful. Do you find yourself switching btwn MacOS and Windows (for example, creating assets in Adobe on the mac side, then switching over to Windows for Storyline...)?
Hi there - You're welcome. Seriously have been doing this full time for YEARS. Happy to help. Lots more info below - sorry for the long post! This is all based on my own experience - your mileage may vary! ;)
yes, I tend to run just about all applications on the Mac OS other than Storyline. The only exception is PowerPoint because I like the interface and options on the Windows version. Despite Microsoft's claim that the software between Mac and Windows is now the same, I still find things I can only do in Windows. Most of the time I run Word in Mac OS but certain things are really hard or not possible there (styles, design/font/themes, etc.) so if I'm doing lots of work in Word, I'll often use Windows. I'm not great in Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator (early beginner actually) so I can't speak to the experience much there. However, I've been using Macs for years and just prefer the interface more so I try to use it.
To address a couple of the concerns on that other thread:
Disk space - I think this is possibly from the user's lack of knowledge about Parallels. Windows is a hog for space. It keeps trying to take more. Parallels has a tool to "recover" unused disc space. I have a 250 GB SSD in both of my machines. I have plenty of space.
Slowness - I'm guessing this might have to do with RAM. I'm running both a Late 2015 iMac (3.2 GHz, Quad-Core i5 with 32 GB Ram) and a 2019 Macbook Pro (2.6 GHz, 6-core, i7 with 16 GB Ram). I also had Storyline 360 running with no lag or other issues on a 2012 MB Pro with 16 GB Ram last week and had NO issues. Storyline IS slow when rendering large projects. I run into that on native Windows machines...
Saving to USB and not having cloud tools? This person hasn't set Parallels up properly. I use Sync.com for our cloud storage but have also used OneDrive and Google Drive. All work just fine with Parallels. I do copy files from the cloud folder in Windows to a local Windows desktop folder so that I'm always working "locally" and not autosyncing. I choose NOT to share files or applications between Parallels and Mac OS because I think "windowed" mode is faster than cohesive/shared mode. I also want my VM with Windows isolated from the Mac for virus/malware reasons (I happen to run antivirus on both OSes.
All of the above being said, a native, full-featured, Mac version (Adobe's version of full-featured, not Microsoft's!) would be amazing. I'd love to stop working most of my time in Windows.
This was my thoughts on the USB issue described there... we are heavy users of OneDrive and I believe it would get the job done for us.
Again, thank you for sharing your experience here. We're probably heading towards switching over to macs and Storyline is the only application we're concerned about, so just trying to do our due diligence here before making the final decision.
9 Replies
Hi Brian,
This thread may be able to help you. Also, for additional information, you may check this link as well for the demo videos available on using Storyline on Mac.
Hope this helps!
Best,
Mark
Thanks for the references Mark. They're both several years old since being last updated...
I am really looking for more recent experiences from Storyline authors.
Hi Brian,
This thread has more recent comments and suggestion. It may be of more help to you. There's no native Mac version of Storyline yet. Check out this article so you may be able to use Storyline on Mac with Parallels.
Let me know what you think.
I'm researching the same and here is some disappointing article: https://www.howtogeek.com/701733/can-you-run-windows-software-on-an-m1-mac/
I guess I'll have to wait until it's working with Parallels. I'm using Storyline on my more than 10-year-old Mac with Parallels and it runs ok, but it's a bit slow sometimes.... but it might be because I don't keep Windows open and when I open it once in a while, it runs all the updates. Once the updates are installed, it's a bit faster.
Good to know about M1 macs, thankfully we're looking at intel macs
I run Storyline via Parallels Desktop and have for years (9+). I'm on both an older iMac and have it on a 2019 MacBook Pro. They work flawlessly for the most part but know that you should get as much RAM as you can and you'll want the "Pro" version of Parallels. Pro gets you the ability to allocate more than 8 GB of RAM to the virtual machine. I currently have 32 GB on my iMac and allocate half to the VM. I also run Illustrator, Photoshop, Word, Chrome, PowerPoint... etc., etc. so the RAM goes to good use. I have run Storyline 360 on an older MacBook Pro (2012) when my iMac was in the shop. It has less RAM and everything was just fine as long as I didn't open too many other things.
Getting Parallels set up can be just a little fiddly if you're on a Retina machine (scaling is very weird sometimes).
I prefer running Windows on my Mac as the hardware just seems to be better (other than the dud of an iMac I have that keeps blowing logic boards... but that's a whole other story).
ETA: Since the newer Macs are beasts (and expensive) to upgrade, I HIGHLY recommend getting the top specs you can. Don't go for a MacBook Air - we tried it. It worked but not very well - processor speed is more important than cores in my experience.
Leah, thank you, very helpful. Do you find yourself switching btwn MacOS and Windows (for example, creating assets in Adobe on the mac side, then switching over to Windows for Storyline...)?
Just ran across this thread, which raises some concerns... https://community.articulate.com/discussions/articulate-storyline/does-articulate-have-any-plans-to-make-a-mac-os-compatible-version-of-storyline?page=4
Hi there - You're welcome. Seriously have been doing this full time for YEARS. Happy to help. Lots more info below - sorry for the long post! This is all based on my own experience - your mileage may vary! ;)
yes, I tend to run just about all applications on the Mac OS other than Storyline. The only exception is PowerPoint because I like the interface and options on the Windows version. Despite Microsoft's claim that the software between Mac and Windows is now the same, I still find things I can only do in Windows. Most of the time I run Word in Mac OS but certain things are really hard or not possible there (styles, design/font/themes, etc.) so if I'm doing lots of work in Word, I'll often use Windows. I'm not great in Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator (early beginner actually) so I can't speak to the experience much there. However, I've been using Macs for years and just prefer the interface more so I try to use it.
To address a couple of the concerns on that other thread:
Disk space - I think this is possibly from the user's lack of knowledge about Parallels. Windows is a hog for space. It keeps trying to take more. Parallels has a tool to "recover" unused disc space. I have a 250 GB SSD in both of my machines. I have plenty of space.
Slowness - I'm guessing this might have to do with RAM. I'm running both a Late 2015 iMac (3.2 GHz, Quad-Core i5 with 32 GB Ram) and a 2019 Macbook Pro (2.6 GHz, 6-core, i7 with 16 GB Ram). I also had Storyline 360 running with no lag or other issues on a 2012 MB Pro with 16 GB Ram last week and had NO issues. Storyline IS slow when rendering large projects. I run into that on native Windows machines...
Saving to USB and not having cloud tools? This person hasn't set Parallels up properly. I use Sync.com for our cloud storage but have also used OneDrive and Google Drive. All work just fine with Parallels. I do copy files from the cloud folder in Windows to a local Windows desktop folder so that I'm always working "locally" and not autosyncing. I choose NOT to share files or applications between Parallels and Mac OS because I think "windowed" mode is faster than cohesive/shared mode. I also want my VM with Windows isolated from the Mac for virus/malware reasons (I happen to run antivirus on both OSes.
All of the above being said, a native, full-featured, Mac version (Adobe's version of full-featured, not Microsoft's!) would be amazing. I'd love to stop working most of my time in Windows.
This was my thoughts on the USB issue described there... we are heavy users of OneDrive and I believe it would get the job done for us.
Again, thank you for sharing your experience here. We're probably heading towards switching over to macs and Storyline is the only application we're concerned about, so just trying to do our due diligence here before making the final decision.
Much appreciated