Mac OS X Lion and Freehand

[AppleFarmer]

But this won't work if you need to buy a new Mac - new Macs will only Boot in Lion.

So this is NO Solution!!!!

I have several new macs, and you can boot both SL and Lion just fine (hold the ALT key on boot). So please, get ur facts straight and stop the misinformation!

A Mac will not run an OS lower then it shipped with. If a Mac came with 10.6.6, you can not boot it with a 10.6.3 installation DVD. So the new Macs that ship with Lion will not run Snow Leopard.

I have 80 % of my work in FreeHan MX, the rest in InDesign CS5. I don't even want to touch Illustrator. As for now I can not update my main Mac to Lion. I will probably have to run FreeHand on an older Mac in the future.

[jeffdonde]

Freehand was working up to OS 10.6.8, but stopped working in Lion.

[Lion Design]

This is my first time on this site, so if i'm posting wrong or at the wrong place, I apologize.
I am a 46yr old designer who needs to keep freehand going for about another 14 years. It makes up 100% of my business. I currently am on a G5 with OS 10.4.11. I never upgraded to 10.5 or 10.6 because freehand works so great on this machine I didn't want to risk it. Now with the Lion info. i'm extremely worried, so I want to but a new mac immediately (before Lion hits stores) with snow leopard still on it. That way I can have it in storage for the day my G5 days. My Question for the forum is, can anyone tell me what kind of Mac I should buy? Pro, Mini, Imac, ect? Does freehand work on all of them? (Money is not the issue, for which kind, I just want to know that freehand will work on the new computer before I buy it.....PLEASE HELP

[FFH Mark]

Hey Lion Design, I was in a similar situation as you last year. Had my G5 with both a 10.4 and 10.5 install on it. I thought 10.4 running FreeHand MX was the best but it was long-in-the-tooth for so many other applications that 10.5 became my more used OS. To be honest, I'm still on 10.5 with a newer Mac Pro Quad-core Intel but only because I can't let go of some utilities that I depend on that are not available on Snow Leopard.

I guess what you should get depends on the applications you use. For example, I will keep Photoshop, InDesign/Quark, FreeHand, Mail, Safari, and more all running at the same time so the multi-tasking is important. You want enough processor and RAM muscle to make your work easy. I like the Mac Pro but a good buddy of mine (who also runs multiple programs for web design and photography) decided on the new 27" iMac Quad-core and raves about it. He too traded in his G5 for this. You can't install extra internal drives like you can with the Mac Pro but you can attached Firewire 800 and Thunderbolt devices externally.

There is plenty of help on this forum to keep you running with FreeHand, no matter what you get, as long as it isn't running Lion 10.7. But that is what Free FreeHand is fighting for anyway; a future no matter the OS.

[Lion Design]

sorry bad phone spelling. supposed to be "buy" instead of but and "dies" instead of days

[AppleFarmer]

This is my first time on this site, so if i'm posting wrong or at the wrong place, I apologize.
I am a 46yr old designer who needs to keep freehand going for about another 14 years. It makes up 100% of my business. I currently am on a G5 with OS 10.4.11. I never upgraded to 10.5 or 10.6 because freehand works so great on this machine I didn't want to risk it. Now with the Lion info. i'm extremely worried, so I want to but a new mac immediately (before Lion hits stores) with snow leopard still on it. That way I can have it in storage for the day my G5 days. My Question for the forum is, can anyone tell me what kind of Mac I should buy? Pro, Mini, Imac, ect? Does freehand work on all of them? (Money is not the issue, for which kind, I just want to know that freehand will work on the new computer before I buy it.....PLEASE HELP

FreeHand MX works great (and fast) on any "new" Mac. An iMac is a very powerful computer. A Mac Pro may be overkill for you. Just buy enough RAM (at least 8 Gb imh) and you should be fine.

[MRElisei]

Another problem ...

The newer Macs do not support older systems.

We have to stay at the Lion.

[thorpug]

Just a comment on those thinking of switching to iMacs from Mac Pros. I too have thought about it but my clients are so varied that I keep Mac OS (snow leopard) on one drive, WIN 7 and WIN XP each on their own drives with the 4th drive as backup. Should I "need" Lion I will merely use the 4th drive for Lion and backup to an external drive. The main reason I am staying with the MAC PRO is its versatility plain and simple. I run Freehand on all 3 OS and plan never to be without FH. It doesn't matter to me what OS. Also I have no problem transferring FH files to ILL and ILL files to FH and these files are extensive mapping files. IDon;t lose sight of the fact that its Freehand here is what we want and with Lion coming out I would think the legality game may take on a bit more heat now. (cud be wrong....sometimes am)

[Kookaburra]

Did anybody ever think about re-programming (re-writing) FH? How much would that cost? Who could do it? Is there a vector-software similar to FH, which coul be taken as base? I think, Linux would be ideal, as Mac runs the same kernel by now … sorry, I am a designer, not a programmer, otherwise, I would have started it yet

[sharonritter]

I did it! I have a Macbook Pro with Lion - It would not run macromedia Freehand 10 (thats what I have). I purchased Parallels 8. I downloaded the trial version of Parallel 8 first, it will have you make a virtual machine to run like a PC. I have a old PC that I do not use, with a xp operating disk, I was able to take that disk to install, then I got the upgrade to window 7 online - Microsoft website. Parallels made a virtual machine with windows 7. I then installed Macromedia Freehand. You toggle between a mac and a pc when you work. It is very easy to do. All of the Macromedia functions work - you just have to change a few keyboard shortcuts as apple has a different keyboard. Control vs. command etc. It sound complicated but once you download the trial version of Parallels call their tech support and they can set it up for you. I love Freehand its the fastest design program around!
Good luck!