Re: Mac compatible astrology software?

3
Tara wrote:Hello skyscripters,

I'm looking for recommendations on software that is compatible with Mac. I'm particularly interested in strong horary options.

thanks!
http://skyscript.co.uk/forums/viewtopic ... aaa6ac306a

Get hold of that tech man and use Virtual box emulation in Mavericks with and old copy of Windows XPP.
You can use all your windows software.

https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

or explore this out for 30 launches.
http://www.kairon.cc
I think it has arabic parts , the dignities and Almutens were there in an earlier beta version, so they should be there in 3.61 version. I have the ios version and that does do dignities and almutens.

PD

4
Hi Tara,
I 'm a maccer for almost 30 yrs, and being a professional astrologer, I can only second PD's advice about getting an emulator.
Kairon aside (which I never really got used to) there s only 1 other option for pure apple-programme, and that is the IO-series from Timecycles.
The only thing I find wonderfull there is there tiny programme Io-Sprite, which is like an astro-clock: once you 've set it to your parameters, you can have it running in the background and when you get a phonecall or mail with a question, you can call it to the foreground and presto - having understood the question - you have the horary right there on your screen.
Bad thing about Io-series (or rather the firm behind it) is that they have no feeling with either their clientele or the a-changing-times: I have asked zillion times about some adjustments in the GUI, AND about new features (fixed stars, arabic points, etc.). They are a bit out of sync, as it were. At least last time I checked with them (already some yrs ago).
Having studied yonder times with J. Frawley,and making the dutch translation of the porgramme Mercury (by Bernhard Bergbauer), it was adamant to me to be able to run it at home; therefore I installed both Parallels Desktop, and Virtual Machineware. They run perfect on my iBook and iMac (still using MacOSX 10.6.8 ). AND they give you access to practically every good astrology program on the market.
Apparantly Delphic Oracle works better with VMware, and Solar Fire seems to prefer PD.
I have no experience with Virtual box, which, ofcourse, has the advantage of being free. But to me the investment of twice (about) 80$ was well worth it.
Herman

http://www.hervaro.be

5
Tara

I second the opinion of getting an emulator to run windows.

As per PD's suggestion, I would also recommend VirtualBox
https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

And you can get emulators of Windows etc. here:
https://modern.ie/en-us/virtualization-tools#downloads

Follow the instructions and choose "VirtualBox for Mac" from the "Select your OS below:" section.

Then choose whichever operating system you wish. This tool is primarily used by web developers who have a requirement to test websites in different versions of Internet Explorer which is why it is so focused on the version of IE on offer. But you can use it to run any PC software once you have it installed.

If you have trouble with it, let me know and I'll try to help point you in the right direction.
"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing" - Socrates

https://heavenlysphere.com/

7
Hi there,

currently I'm a programmer myself, and I have released some software in beta status, like skyplux (http://skyplux.webfactional.com/). The beta-versions are cross platform, but the Mac version does not look good on current retina Macs. However, since I was finishing my PhD, I've stalled the development of skyplux until now.

However, I would like to ask some genuine questions, maybe someone can take the chance to reply, and it may help other independent astrology software developers to focus on specific areas.

Are astrologers reluctant to use astrology web applications such as astroapp (mentioned before in this post)? Do people have specific concerns such as privacy, or is it just because they are "happy" with their current desktop programs?

I do not want to hijack this thread (to much), but would like to take the chance to ask for opinions on about software development matters..

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jventura wrote:Are astrologers reluctant to use astrology web applications such as astroapp (mentioned before in this post)? Do people have specific concerns such as privacy, or is it just because they are "happy" with their current desktop programs?
Hello Jo?o! For me, it's the cloud issue?privacy and other attendant risks of cloud computing.

Congratulations on your PhD!

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Seems to me that the real issue these days is multi-device cross platform application development which is causing diffusion in the market. The technology makes it relatively easy to create these interfaces now, but the problem is that there isn't enough financial support to create a version of each of your apps for every device in existence (apps for iPhone sell for next to nothing ($5) or so from what I've heard). There simply is no way to make it a business for small time developers. The big names will do it for advertising recognition for their main platforms (for free usually), but the small companies who do this risk being run out of business while Apple App store rakes in most of your hard earned labor. Most who use mobile during the day, will switch to a desktop at night.

I haven't developed for the web because of the limitations of internet bandwidth that would slow down data delivery (the live data functions in Delphic Oracle would be hurt by this). Some of the slack can be taken up server side with the cloud, but if an internet connection becomes slow (something that needs to be taken very seriously now due to the FCC killing net neutrality in the USA), then bandwidth fees could soon start to rise with users not being able to keep up as web developers seek to pass along these new fees to consumers to stay afloat financially.
Curtis Manwaring
Zoidiasoft Technologies, LLC

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One way to combat the practice of bandwidth slicing (the practice adding increasing numbers of users to the same capacity pipeline) by ISP's is for web developers to return to the programming practices of the 90's. We used Gif's and went to PNG's due to superior graphics and reduced size (and because of CompuServe's stupid patent that expired in July 2004), but when capacity increased, webmasters abandoned conservative bandwidth practices. If your app doesn't create video and relies on text and graphics (avoiding expensive graphic animation) one can optimize for the old 28.8 kbps like we used to. So the fight for the ISP bandwidth bucks will primarily be with those who can't downsize such as YouTube and Netflicks. I expect ISP's to try to gradually turn up their prices (while they try to boil frogs in the net). Perhaps the other giants will band together (like Google and Netflicks) to battle it out with Comcast, Verizon, etc... or maybe they will just pay the increased prices since these corporations can afford it. In 1995 I had a text only version of my website for low bandwidth users.
Curtis Manwaring
Zoidiasoft Technologies, LLC

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zoidsoft wrote:One way to combat the practice of bandwidth slicing (the practice adding increasing numbers of users to the same capacity pipeline) by ISP's is for web developers to return to the programming practices of the 90's. We used Gif's and went to PNG's due to superior graphics and reduced size (and because of CompuServe's stupid patent that expired in July 2004), but when capacity increased, webmasters abandoned conservative bandwidth practices.
I don't want to derail this thread into something overly complicated or technical, but one of the 'problems' with returning to using Gifs is that clients and marketing people would simply never allow it, indeed neither would the end user. The reality is that today we have tablets and phones whose resolution sometimes go beyond the average television screen, and using gifs or low resolution solutions like gifs simply wouldn't be feasible as it would degrade from the user experience. In addition, many modern requirements for transparency put gifs out of the question, as their transparency is simply not appropriate for modern web experiences.

I think instead the route that web developers need to take, and are taking (at least in the UK and Europe in general) is to reduce HTTP requests, adopt more semantic HTML, mix adaptive and responsive imagery to tackle lower resolution devices (ie feed lower resolution devices lower resolution images etc) and also to take advantage of the latest CSS and HTML properties and adopt a graceful degradation approach rather than a "This must look the same on all browsers/devices" approach.

With that in mind, we no longer need to use gifs for rounded corners etc. - we can use CSS to do this and if you're using an older browser you get an older experience and will not see the rounded corners. In addition other uses of SVG and generally vector based graphics all reduce the http requests to the server and ultimately reduce the bandwidth required to serve the page.
Whilst it is true that web developers lost sight of controlling bandwidth for a while, this largely changed with the advent of the mobile market, where web pages are increasingly encouraged to be responsive or responsive-adaptive (ie, the same HTML structure but serving different css and images) to reduce building costs but still must account for poorer bandwidth due to people connecting wirelessly.

As for mobile apps, again the thing to do is to reduce the necessity for HTTP requests by moving assets such as images to the app itself, so that they do not get served from the server but from the app's repository on the device itself. In addition, logic for the calculation of planetary positions etc. would all need to be moved to the device itself (ie, not served remotely) and saving would have to be done locally too - in other words you could easily create an app that NEVER needs to access the server to operate and run its functionality, this then allows access to the server to be optional - such as the use case of synching your app to some server/cloud based database.

In other words I do think that there is a problem present but I think the solutions are probably much simpler in a way by changing the approach to the problem rather than resorting to adopting the same strategies as in the late 90s. Of course the major problem with developing for operating systems is the lack of financial viability from a standard business model, but once again, people overcome this by offering premium solutions and by working alongside advertising. But it still a potentially unprofitable solution due to the need to create code for every OS (one for iOS another for Android another for [insert next big thing]) or use solutions like PhoneGap which work across devices but can suffer from, at times, being clunky/slow.

Either way there are solutions to these problems but ultimately they may not make custom web apps all that attractive as a solution but this may be more a symptom of the the changing times, and perhaps we can no longer expect the same returns from software as we once could have for desktop only solutions.
"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing" - Socrates

https://heavenlysphere.com/