Productivity on a Mac

By Firebird, 6 November, 2022

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps

Hello dear Forum,

I am new to MacOS and interested in your oppinion.
I try to get used to macos, but feel a little bit disabled.

I am a Microsoft Office power user. On Windows, I am able to navigate in text like in a web page, if the text has been formated correctly before, of course. I can't do this on MacOS. But this is a basic task. In fact, Text Editing on Macs is just typing and reading like in a Text editor. Or is this because I am a beginner?

Sadly, Windows does not run natively on a Mac with an M1 Chip. I had a MacBook running windows, and it was better than any Windows Notebook.

Thank you in Advance for your answers.

Options

Comments

By jack on Wednesday, November 30, 2022 - 23:45

You'll need either VoiceOver OCR or some sighted assistance to set it up initially, but Parallels does run on an m1 mac. It will automatically handle the installation of Windows as well, so no need to go downloading aniso manually.

By roman on Wednesday, November 30, 2022 - 23:45

The app Pages is and alternative to Microsoft Word, and it's easier as well.

By Firebird on Wednesday, November 30, 2022 - 23:45

Hello,
OK, I got Windows running with parallels.
But using the keyboard is difficult.
vmWare Fusion 12 Public Tech Preview has some serious bugs. It, for example, keeps telling that there was an error creating the audio stream.

With Parallels, it would be easier if there would be a shortcut to grab and ungrab the keyboard/mouse. This is possible with vm, so that you can use the full keyboard without accidentally doing something on the host.

By Firebird on Wednesday, November 30, 2022 - 23:45

It got better now. I will do some Research on the correct settings of Parallels Desktop. I slowly start to like it.

By Firebird on Wednesday, November 30, 2022 - 23:45

Hello,
finally, I have a VM running with Win 11.

But Jaws 2023 doesn't start. It says that jfw.exe couldn't be executed correctly. When I select Autorun, I also get an FSAT32.exe-Error.

This happened after installing Microsoft Office 64-Bit-Version. Before doing so, I could start Jaws. I have tested three virtual machines, the issue always came after Office installation and couldn't be resolved by uninstalling Office or repairing/reinstalling Jaws.

Any ideas?

Some Tipps to make a vm with Parallels:
To get things done, sighted assistance is strongly recommended. The most important is the Configuration of the VM. In General-Tab, you need to make sure that the VM always starts in Full Screen View Mode. Also in the Shortcuts-Tab, select MacOS System sortcuts and put Send System Shortcuts from Auto to Always.
Also, have a look at Start and Shut-up-Tab. I don't recommend you to start the Machine when Mac starts, because you could get in troubles if the host system doesn't run as expected.

If everything is running, you need SharpKeys from the Windows store to remap. I use the right cmd as the screen reader function key, because Capslock didn't work. In SharpKeys, the right cmd is known als right alt, I remapped it to insert.

Thanks and with best regards
Firebird
Edit: Solution for the Jaws-Issue is to Install the Latest Microsoft C Redistributable 2022.
Download Link for Microsoft Visual C Redistributable 2022:
https://aka.ms/vs/17/release/vc_redist.arm64.exe
FS Technical Support Bulletin:
https://support.freedomscientific.com/Support/TechnicalSupport/Bulletin/1793