iPads and Macs

[amazonpam]

A friend of mine has decided to upgrade her Mac desktop and is considering also getting an ipad to use in other areas of the house. She's not very computer literate and relies on me for a lot of help. Since I'm a PC user and Mac illiterate, you can imagine what fun we have solving her problems. We usually wind up at the Apple store with me taking extensive notes. Living 2 hours apart only increase the fun.

Anyway, I know there have been lots of posts about Mac and ipads which I skimmed over. So I have a questions: Can you access the Mac from the ipad and do work on the Mac? She uses MS Office on the MAC, will she have the same limited compatibility ability that we PC users do? If so, is there a MAC program that is more compatible with Pages, etc.?

 

[seajay96]

A friend of mine has decided to upgrade her Mac desktop and is considering also getting an ipad to use in other areas of the house. She's not very computer literate and relies on me for a lot of help. Since I'm a PC user and Mac illiterate, you can imagine what fun we have solving her problems. We usually wind up at the Apple store with me taking extensive notes. Living 2 hours apart only increase the fun.

Anyway, I know there have been lots of posts about Mac and ipads which I skimmed over. So I have a questions: Can you access the Mac from the ipad and do work on the Mac? She uses MS Office on the MAC, will she have the same limited compatibility ability that we PC users do? If so, is there a MAC program that is more compatible with Pages, etc.?

To address your first question, she can use a remote desktop program or virtual network client (google those terms + ipad to find a number of different solutions) to allow her access to her Mac from her iPad.

I'm not quite sure I understand your second question regarding limited compatibility. Do you mean compatibility with Pages for iPad? For the most part and as far as office suite compatibility, what is true for PC's is true for Mac's. The iPad office suites are just simply limited in their functionality to the very basic functions.

 

[filmbuff]

Pages can both open and export .doc files so it should be fully compatible with MS Office on her Mac.

 

[robgendreau]

As someone who has to tutor some iPad users, but who has a Mac, I'd say good luck. There are VNC clients and the like for iPads that connect with Macs (which have built-in VNC), but nothing like what Citrix offers on the iPad for PCs. Even syncing can be a chore. Many apps require installing a server on the Mac, and then there are some firewall issues, etc.

The best bet is to find out exactly how she wants to work on/with the Mac. That will narrow things down considerably and we can give you more useful advice.