Dr. Gabriel Dorado, project manager/computer systems manager Dept. Bioquimica y Biol. Mol., Campus Rabanales, Spain, said the Macs in the university’s labs are in danger. He said that if Apple would either sell the USA version of the Mac OS outside the US or post updates online the situation might be resolved.
Dorado said he and his Mac loving colleagues continue to promote the Mac platform, but that it’s getting harder. Problems arise when they purchase a new machine for the labs. The machines come with the Spanish Mac OS, but sometimes the “US version” of the operating system is needed when using a Mac with certain products.
For example, Dorado couldn’t use his Macs with a Hitachi FMBIO II to identify and clone differentially expressed genes. They received the machine from Hitachi France and purchased a Power Mac G4/466 and Apple Studio Display in March 2001. However, the Hitachi machine doesn’t “get along” with the Spanish version of the Mac OS.
“So far we have not been able to start the machine because the Mac came with Spanish Mac OS, and the Apple Store Europe cannot send us a USA version of the Mac OS,” Dorado said. “Many people are urging us to switch to Windows systems, but I hate that option.”