Question: Hello Michael, in your email you have @mac email address. Are you are a Mac user?
I was considering switching from Windows to Mac. My only dilemma, was that I wanted to be sure, I would be able to do SEO, and a lot of the other marketing techniques with a Mac computer.
When you created your PDF files, did you use the Adobe Acrobat for Mac? I need a new computer SOON, and would like to know what would you suggest.
Answer: Yes, I’ve used a Mac since 1988. I make my PDF files using Pages, which is part of iWork software from Apple. It’s faster and easier than using a high end page layout program.
I start with a text editor and get all the stories ready to go. I dump the raw text into a template and use style sheets to speed production. After that I source graphics from iStockPhoto.com to match the text.
From Pages, I export a PDF and take it into Acrobat Pro. From there I password protect it, compress it, and add meta data for the search engines. From dumping the text, to announcing the finished PDF on iTunes, takes a just a couple of hours.
I have no problems doing SEO with my Mac. Most of it I do on the fly while I’m building the page. You could say that, "I don’t know how" to make a bad page, as I’ve incorporated SEO, into every web page that I’ve made, since 1997.
Most of the tools I use are web based, so I don’t have a problem with them. True, there are certain software packages that are Windows only. I used to have a PC for that. (But I gave it to my buddy Sherman Hu for his kids to use.)
Now I just run Windows XP on my Mac – with Parallels Software – and it works fine. So I have both operating systems on one computer. I wouldn’t have it any other way now. It’s the ultimate in convenience.
Besides, once you touch multimedia and web 2.0 stuff on the Mac – audio, video, pdf, podcasts, etc – your PC will start getting very dusty. Seriously, all that stuff is super easy on the Mac. You don’t have to mess around configuring drivers, or kludge different bits of software to work together. On the Mac… it just works, and it works well, right out of the box.
