Educational software and Apple's new Macs: Some good news

Last time, we cited a reader's statement that most Learning Company educational software no longer works on the iMac or the G3/BW Macs. Two readers disputed this claim, saying that all of their Learning Company software works just fine on their iMacs.

Update: The Learning Company also now denies this claim, stating:

"The Learning Company currently tests all of our Macintosh applications on a wide array of machines, including several flavors of iMac and G3's. We are well aware that supporting the Macintosh today means supporting these models, and quickly moved to incorporate them into our QA and Compatibility labs as soon as we were able. We also work directly with Apple to insure that software currently in development will be compatible with Apple's next generation of software and hardware."

However, James McDonald writes to support Brian Cameron's initial claim, stating: "Nothing doing on any Learning Company CD-ROM. Nada. I get crashes, crashes. I write the company, and they say that they're working on the problem. Then I get silence." I continue to investigate this and hope to report back soon.

Other vendors Vendors from two other educational software companies also wanted us to note that they also support the Mac.

Russ LaValle (of Edmark) writes: "We at Edmark have a continued strong commitment to the Mac platform. We ensure that software in development runs perfectly on these new machines. There are 14 Mac programmers here who make it their goal to develop the highest quality software for all current Macs."

Eytan Bernet (of Tom Snyder Productions) writes: "All of our educational software does indeed work with these models and OS 8.5. We do have one problem - some of our floppy disk products need to be made into image files (or the user needs a USB floppy). However, we are quickly making everything available on CD."