Mac Hate?
Dear Insulin Pump/Glucose Meter/CGM Manufacturers,
First, let me tell you how much I love your products. I’m a big geek, who actually gets excited at the prospect of new diabetes technology. When I get a new meter, it’s like my birthday. CGM arrival day is like Christmas. And, well, new pump day? That only happens once every four years, so I can’t even compare it to any other day. I don’t know what it is about new tech gadgets that gets me so excited. It’s just all so shiny and new and wonderful.
Until I look at the minimum requirements for using your software. Why-oh-why won’t any of you support Mac OS? Imagine my disappointment when, after carefully unboxing my new Accu-Check Compact Plus meter, I found that in order to use the software, I had to use Windows. Windows!?!
What is it? Did Apple beat you up in grade school? Did they steal your college girlfriend? Did they get you fired? Seriously. What is it?
Because, when/if one of you guys ever steps up and makes Mac-friendly software, I’ll be first in line to give it a try. Hell, I’ll even beta test it for you! Just. Make. Something.
kthanksbye,
Shannon
Themocracy
Let’s form a Mac users against crappy diabetes related software movement. LOL! I wrote the Wavesense meter guys a similar letter.
I can’t agree more! It’s sooooooo frustrating that there really isn’t decent software out there for diabetic Mac users! I feel like I”m being discriminated against for being smart enough to not use Windows. lol. A Dexcom rep told me awhile ago that they were working on Mac software. I don’t know whatever came of that though.
Thanks for the heads-up link on TuDiabetes.
As a fellow Mac Addict (I still miss that magazine), I am squarely in your corner, Shannon. I have been pushing for Mac OS compatibility from the inside, even though that really isn’t my department (for those who don’t know me from TuDiabetes, I work for Roche).
As a small victory, we have developed a free iPhone app with Glucose Buddy. It’s a pretty neat tool. While not full integration, it’s a step in the right direction!
I have used both PCs and Macs and actually prefer PC’s, but run antivirus, antimalware and firewalls all the time. I just want to point out that the market for diabetes is relatively small and the software tends to be written for the majority of the market, which is PCs. I know that Anaimas EzManager is written in java, and does run on some version of the Mac OS.
I totally agree. I’ve got VMWare running the OneTouch software but I also have other programs (games, IKEA’s home design software) that require Windows so it wasn’t a huge big-D-only sacrifice to make for me. My bigger frustration is that I can’t get my pump to upload data to my Mac no matter what I do – my Cozmo is supposed to communicate via IR port but the firmware for the connector I bought is crap or the software for the pump is crap. Either way I need to go to my husband’s Windows partition to upload my pump data and reprogram it.
In response to Joe: if the majority of the market wants a poorly designed and implemented operating system like Windows (especially the recent Vista and upcoming 7 releases) I’m not going to stop them… I’m just going to continue plugging Mac and opensource options as often as possible. While Windows emulation continues to run programs for both of those options, my experience is that it’s pretty hit-or-miss when it comes to interfacing with meters, pumps, and CGM systems. A really good company would be looking to the future of the computer tech sector and say “how can we update for the future?” Few of them are bothering with that aspect, it seems to me (with the exception of Bayer’s new USB-friendly meter with Mac support).