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http://www.macnn.com/articles/08/07/30/ny.bar.to.hold.off.on.mac/

NY Bar Association to continue Mac-free policy

updated 04:25 pm EDT, Wed July 30, 2008

NY Bar to hold off on Mac

Lawyers taking bar exams in New York have once again foregone the use of a Mac this year, according to information from the state's Board of Law Examiners. Since 2003, people taking the exam have been given the option of using special software, which can be preloaded on notebooks for answering the essay and MPT sections of the test. The Board has explicitly stated however that it is refusing to support "any form" of Apple product at the moment, even if is running Windows through Mac OS X Leopard's Boot Camp utility.

The current software instead requires a dedicated Windows notebook, with a 450MHz Pentium III processor and a 32-bit version of 2000, XP or Vista. The New York Times observes though that exam takers have been extremely wary, since a program used last year wiped out the essays of hundreds of applicants, even if all but 47 were recovered. For safety's sake, many people are said to have written this year's exam entirely by hand, tolerating the extra effort required.

The Board is set to approve software for Mac owners no earlier than for the February exam. "We have enough on our plate right now," says John McAlary, the group's executive director.

by MacNN Staff

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industry, software, Boot Camp, Windows, Mac OS X, New York

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Comments

dliup
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Jan 2006

+2

07/30, 04:35pm | report spam | (1 reply) close Reply |
kickback

Sounds like someone is taking a kickback from MS...

eldarkus
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Feb 2004

+4

07/30, 04:45pm | report spam | close Reply |
Vista

The current software instead requires a dedicated Windows notebook, with a 450MHz Pentium III processor and a 32-bit version of 2000, XP or Vista

luckily they didn't say a 450 Mhz processor AND Vista :)

WiseWeasel
Junior Member

Joined: Apr 1999

+2

07/30, 05:07pm | report spam | close Reply |
Oh Noes!

Oh noes, they won't port their crappy file-destroying software to the Mac until February... I say take your time, and get us a version that DOESN'T eat all your files.

Athens
Addicted to MacNN

Joined: Jan 2003

+1

07/30, 05:15pm | report spam | (1 reply) close Reply |
bootcamp

Thats c*** that they wont even support bootcamp, because when Windows loads up on a Mac with bootcamp, its a regular normal PC.

Elektrix
Dedicated MacNNer

Joined: Sep 2001

+2

07/30, 05:44pm | report spam | close Reply |
re: bootcamp

Yeah, when they say "support" do they just mean they won't help you if you have a problem, or what? Because as you said, with Boot Camp, it would be indistinguishable (h***, even with Parallels it should be).... hard to see how they'd prevent you from using it if you were booted into Windows via Boot Camp.

ender
Junior Member

Joined: Mar 1999

+3

07/30, 05:45pm | report spam | close Reply |
Support?

They don't "support" (as in provide troubleshooting assistance) or don't "allow" Macs running bootcamp. Support suggest they would allow it, but you never know.

My guess that they don't want to force exam proctors into the role of determining whether a Mac user is running Bootcamp or something like Parallels. Their software prevents the user from access notes or other resources on their PC (or Mac if running BootCamp). But if you are running Parallels, you could easily switch to the Mac environment and look things up in any reference material you saved on the hard drive.

So they need to figure out how to close that loophole. The best way would be to create a Mac version that similarly locks down the computer so you can't leave the exam software. But I'm not sure I'd ever want software with that type of control on my system!

Flying Meat
Junior Member

Joined: Jan 2007

+6

07/30, 05:53pm | report spam | close Reply |
Re: Bootcamp

Because, short of checking whether the add on software for Parallels, or VMware, or Vbox, or what have you, is installed on the OS, they can't determine for sure whether the machine is strictly bootcamp boot, or a virtualization.

The software they provide locks down the machine it is running on during testing so folk can't research the answer to a question at the time of testing...

If the test software is installed on a virtual machine, then locking down that virtualized OS would be pretty pointless.

It's amusing that potential lawyers can't be trusted. ;)

Xinnix
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Nov 2003

-6

07/30, 05:54pm | report spam | close Reply |
Who Cares?

Honestly, who cares? Stuff like this isn't news! Nothing has changed since 2003 so why even report this. Must be a slow day I guess.

jimothy
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Sep 2000

-3

07/30, 06:24pm | report spam | close Reply |
Virtualization

Thanks for the info, Flying Meat and ender. But couldn't a dishonest lawyer (and doesn't that really describe them all?) run VMware, etc. on Windows, and do the same thing?

Aussie Bruce
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Mar 2000

+1

07/30, 06:57pm | report spam | close Reply |
Luddites

Case for a class action or is preferable not to have those sort of people anywhere near Macs...

Aussie Bruce
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Mar 2000

0

07/30, 06:59pm | report spam | close Reply |
Luddites

Case for a class action or is preferable not to have those sort of people anywhere near Macs...

Constable Odo
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Aug 2007

+1

07/30, 07:25pm | report spam | close Reply |
If there's an Apple logo

on the computer, they won't touch it even if it has an Intel chip and boots Windows in BootCamp. Those snobby b******* should be tarred and feathered.

dimmer
Mac Enthusiast

Joined: Feb 2006

+2

07/30, 08:01pm | report spam | close Reply |
Hmm

You can run a virtualized environment on a PC as easily as you can on a Mac, even for free with VirtualBox. If that is the rational behind this decision it's damn foolish.

resuna
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Jan 2005

+1

07/30, 08:48pm | report spam | close Reply |
parallels for windows?

That's silly... if someone is going to use a VM to cheat, Parallels, VMWare, and VirtualBox all run under Windows.

bobolicious
Junior Member

Joined: Aug 2002

0

07/30, 08:50pm | report spam | close Reply |
Speeding up lawyers...

...with the macs that run faster than a pee cee might mean more lawyers in the world, so that's just fine by me...

Most lawyers I've met seem either inclined or trained to think in ways I cannot warm up to, and would seem pretty antithetical to the whole notion of 'user experience' in the first place...

msuper69
Mac Elite

Joined: Jan 2000

+1

07/31, 09:27am | report spam | close Reply |
doesn't matter

They lost 47 exams using their obviously crappy software. Even 1 lost exam is too many.

Anybody who would take an exam using that junk deserves to lose their exam.

lordarka
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Apr 2005

+1

07/31, 11:14am | report spam | close Reply |
bobolicious?

So wait; because lawyers think differently than you do, they don't care about user experience on a computer? Forgive me for not being able to "warm up" to your own non-sequitor way of thinking.

It's flat-out silly to not be able to take your bar exam on a Mac. The bar exam is hard enough that, even if you had access to the internet to do research, taking the time to do so would ensure that you won't finish your exam. And non-completion is far more dangerous to your chances of passing than poor completion.

guytoronto
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Jan 2004

+1

07/31, 02:09pm | report spam | close Reply |
Virtualization

Virtualization does NOT always work. I work at a University where the law depart uses special Windows software for administering tests. The software is smart enough to realize when it's running in a virtualized environment, and refuses to work. Using Bootcamp it works fine.

danviento
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Dec 2005

+1

08/01, 12:21am | report spam | close Reply |
Another informed Opinion

GuyT was the first useful post on this story. I'll add to that and say that the IT people at my fianc�e's law school won't help you out with hardware issues if you're running bootcamp or a virtualized machine. They used to even say (2 years ago) that you HAVE to buy a "IBM compatible," much to the chagrin of about 1/4 of the students who had just bought a new apple notebook. Someone must have told IT lately that you can run both OS's because the school changed their requirements.

The exam software, if you haven't figured out the obvious, purposefully disables everything but the top screen so that you can't use any online or offline references. That being said, I haven't had the opportunity to lend her my machine running VPC and seeing if the software would still work.

But As lordarka said, having a reference like that won't help you much (as is the case with most open book/notes tests).

When it comes to licensing exams, you either know it, or you don't. They take hours, sometimes days, to complete and don't offer much time for sly research on the side.

In any event, I'd like to see some dicussion on how you think you could get around the one-window/disableing software made for a mac. Dashboard? Key commands? Terminal window access?

Crappy exam software is no match for the well-learned geek, as long as you disable sending of logs...

lordarka
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Apr 2005

+1

08/01, 11:48am | report spam | close Reply |
danviento

Sounds like your fiance is at NYU Law? They have an amazing program, but I actually turned them down for Columbia's program in part because of their boneheaded policy on Macs. I already had an Intel Mac, and wasn't about to buy a Windows-only computer just so I could take exams. They changed their anti-Mac policy a last year, apparently in response to widespread student and staff discontent on the issue.

Columbia Law lets exam takers boot camp, though they have to sit in the first two rows to police "virtualization cheating." As you so astutely noticed, such cheating is pretty much impossible to do, since the exam software detects it.

chadpengar
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Oct 2001

0

08/06, 01:58pm | report spam | close Reply |
Linux?

Who says you are not running Linux with windows virtualized on a PC?

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NY Bar Association to continue Mac-free policy

updated 04:25 pm EDT, Wed July 30, 2008

NY Bar to hold off on Mac

kickback

Vista

Oh Noes!

bootcamp

re: bootcamp

Support?

Re: Bootcamp

Who Cares?

Virtualization

Luddites

Luddites

If there's an Apple logo

Hmm

parallels for windows?

Speeding up lawyers...

doesn't matter

bobolicious?

Virtualization

Another informed Opinion

danviento

Linux?

Login Here

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NY Bar Association to continue Mac-free policy

updated 04:25 pm EDT, Wed July 30, 2008

NY Bar to hold off on Mac

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kickback

Vista

Oh Noes!

bootcamp

re: bootcamp

Support?

Re: Bootcamp

Who Cares?

Virtualization

Luddites

Luddites

If there's an Apple logo

Hmm

parallels for windows?

Speeding up lawyers...

doesn't matter

bobolicious?

Virtualization

Another informed Opinion

danviento

Linux?

Login Here

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