Made With Mac

 Posted on August 15, 2007 in Uncategorized

Austin criminal-defense lawyer Jamie Spencer just bought himself a MacBook Pro. As it turns out (see the comments to Jamie's post), Ft. Worth criminal-defense lawyer Shawn Matlock is a Mac guy as well.

I've been using Macintosh computers since college; I haven't had a PC since before Windows first came out. Criminal defense is a creative profession, and a Macs, which just work, are excellent tools for creative professionals. Now that most Windows software will run in Parallels on an Intel Mac (and Windows "boots" in the background in about 15 seconds), there's little reason for most of us to buy a PC.

I just found a better solution to a Mac hardware puzzle that I've been trying to solve for years (since OS 9 stopped supporting my SCSI scanner with automatic document feeder): how to turn paper into PDFs. I had been using a Xerox Workcentre multifunction machine that scan-to-PDF and email the results to me, but that was cumbersome and slow. Last week I upgraded to a Fujitsu Scansnap S500M (made for Mac).

Load a document into the Scansnap, hit a button, and the document (up to 50 sheets, double-sided) is scanned to PDF in seconds and opened on your desktop in the application of your choice. I tried Adobe Acrobat Pro, then Preview, and I've settled in with Yep, which allows me to add tags to PDFs.

(South Carolina lawyer Ben Stevens uses a ScanSnap with his Mac too, as does Kansas lawyer Grant Griffiths.)