Mac users help please

[seagreen]

Hi there
Could anyone who uses a Mac to trade online give me some advice please. I am about to get myself a lovely new computer (G4 iMac, 1.25 GHz, 512 Mb RAM) and would like to use it for trading. I haven't started yet, I have been reading for about six months but would now like to get some software and spreadbet at 1p a point. Is there any software that runs on a Mac which is recommended or will I have to get a pc emulator (and learn how to use it!!) Also will things like the Finspreads website run with no problems on a Mac? Sorry if this is a stupid question.
Thanks in advance

 

[cas01]

Hi,

I use a G4 Power Book but found that D4F's website, let alone their MarketMaker software, would not work with it. I tried using both IE and Safari (which got slightly better results) to log onto their web page. Gave up trying and use my Wintel machine for SB. Normal online brokers' sites (e.g. Comdirect) seem to work fine with OSX.

 

[ravydavy]

I tried going down that route, and eventually gave up and bought a PC for trading and use my macs for research/development. I also tried running MarketMaker under VirtualPC, but it could not cope during busy periods, and I was getting a large number of timeouts.

If all you need is a broker frontend, you could try InteractiveBrokers. Their system works on OSX, and I have not had any problems with it.

 

[tdf]

Hi,
IG Index is now (since last Monday week) Mac compatible i.e. OS X with Safari it is also Mozilla, Firefox and Netscape compatible on PC's.
There are a few problems with the their Java applet coding for the Mac *(e.g the total current mid-price valuation of all open positions doesn't function i.e. it doesn't add up all the individual positions but you can see each individual open position's running profit/loss, and the tear-away tick charts don't work either (but these are of only limited use anyway). But other than that it works perfectly when it comes to actual SB'ing, well at least in my experience.

One bit of advice if you are switching between between the "Dealing Desk" and "My Prices" a lot you should "Empty Cache" on Safari quite often, prevents it from becoming 'sticky' - don't know why - just seems to be like that (suspect java coding again)
Hopefully they (IG Index) will work on the Java applet coding and iron-out the wrinkles. Also their charting service supplied by IT Charting doesn't work native on the Mac ( java- coding problem again I suspect)- if you wanted to you can run that through Virtual PC, their Dow Jones news-feed service works fine.

As I said it works fine for the actual SB'ing, and it's nice to not have to use my Wintel - because I travel a lot and bring my PowerBook with me - now at least i can keep myself updated on my open positions wherever I am, I'm generally a position trader with stops/limits so I don't actually spend all my time monitoring my positions.

 

[daytrader]

Mac limitations

I've had the some trouble with my new Mac OS X. After a great deal of research/surfing I have come to the conclusion that i shouldn't have bought the darn thing! I'll be buying a PC next week! As for deal4free you can get system requirements for the marketmaker software from their website: http://www.marketmaker.co.uk/us/ In which they state that It Is not compatable with Mac OS X!
On a similar note; is anyone having problems accessing Capitalspreads using a Mac? They have stated that their site is all right for mac but i am still have problems. :?:

 

[ewilcox]

PC's are definitely the way to go if you want to run trading software. Macs are superb for design and in general they are excellent products but hardware is no use if there is no decent software to run on it.