Mac Law Students

Matt W. sent me the tip on this one. It seems the New York Bar is coming down firmly in the “no Macs allowed” camp. Sure, they use SofTest, which is Windows-only. But ExamSoft has stated that Boot Camp works with their product, and several states (and these are just the ones I know of) allow SofTest + Boot Camp.

New York is a fairly populous and wealthy state. I hear they even have a lot of lawyers and a not unsophisticated Bar Association. Maybe by next year they’ll have their act together.

This was sent to me by Wendy, who is frustrated by ExamSoft:

Currently the bar exam support for the California bar exam is terrible from SofTest. Many questions are unanswered and the bar exam takers are giving conflicting information. Two days before the exam although my Mac is fully registered to take the exam with the California bar, SofTest has still not resolved my problem of being able to download the 4 exams and the 1 mock exam and the test is Tuesday.

At this point the problem is totally their fault as I have gone to great pains to have my Mac set-up with a split hard disk with XP on it so there will be no problem. I also have examsoft.com as a trusted site so I am still waiting for ExamSoft Support to fix their problem!

Has any one else been having difficulties with ExamSoft during the runup to the exam? Anyone have suggestions based on their interactions with ExamSoft?

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If you’re thinking of buying a MobileMe subscription, you may want to wait to see how Apple handles glitches with the transition from .Mac to the new service.

As The Apple Blog and others have pointed out, Apple has done a poor job not only of making the transition, but also of responding to support questions from customers.

I’ve used Apple products and services for years because Apple generally does a very good job with both. The company has many balls in the air right now between the new iPhone rollout, the AppStore, and MobileMe, in addition to the usual Mac and iPod support workload. But pretending that all of the MobileMe support calls are because of “overwhelming interest in MobileMe” isn’t fooling anyone.

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Whether you’re a 1L brining your Mac to law school for the first time, or a returning law student who has just switched to Macintosh, here are some Mac Law Students resources that should get you started on the right foot:

1. Doublecheck your school’s Exam Software policies.
2. If you don’t already have a Mac, see the Buying A Mac page for tips.
3. Check out the Law Student Setups:
• Athas’s setup will be of particular interest to anyone with a computer science background or knowledge of *NIX.
• Interested in the MacBook Air? Check out Brad’s setup.
• If GTD and plaintext are your thing, give Brian’s setup a look.
• You like to customize the look of your Mac setup? Addicted to RSS? See Carnell’s setup.
• If blogging and photography are your thing, you’ll definitely want to check out Dan’s setup.
• I’m no longer a law student *sniff* but Erik’s setup may still prove useful.
• Greg’s setup should be of particular interest for anyone wondering about Word 2008.
• Curious about using Pages to take notes? James’s setup is worth examining.
4. The Mac Law Student’s Basic Software Arsenal is a year old, but gives a solid overview of some of the best apps available in several different categories
5. Looking for the right web browser? Check out this review of eight browsers, which is focused on law school use.
6. You can find reviews and other posts using the Search box and the Categories list in the right column navigation.
7. Join the Mac Law Students Forum! There are plenty of helpful Mac-using law students. They won’t bite, really.

To all who are about to join the law school fray, I wish you restful sleep, laserbeam mental focus, and well-prepared professors.

As we all know, patent filings don’t mean the patents in question will ever see the light of day in a product. But it’s fun to imagine a notebook tablet Mac. In fact, I’ve been wishing Apple would create some sort of lightweight hybrid cross between a Newton and a MacBook for years now. Perhaps Apple has been reading my mind?

Check out the story at MacNN.

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