Aktub will run on any Mac OS X system, but some features are disabled because of limitations of the operating system. We recommend that when you use Aktub with Mac OS X, you use Java Runtime Environment v1.4.2, not 1.5.0.

It is well-known that Mac OS X has issues with the Arabic language in general, and it is impossible to use Arabic in applications like Microsoft Word. As far as Aktub is concerned, one issue with Arabic rendering on Mac OS X is that different letters that are part of the same word cannot be given separate "colors" or "styles," or else the script will be broken and they will be treated as separate words. This is not a limitation on the part of Aktub.com's software or services, and Apple has confirmed that this is a known bug in the rendering engine for AAT (Apple Advanced Typography). According to sources, this error should be fixed in the next release of Mac OS X (Leopard). Until that time, however, we have modified Aktub to operate differently on computers running Mac OS X. In the typing levels, rather than highlight the letter that should be typed, we have placed a visual cursor to indicate progress. This works about 95% of the time, but becomes unpredictable or unuseful when letters have many diacritic markings around them. For a visual explanation of the differences, please refer to the images below.

Just because you use Mac OS X does not mean that you cannot use Aktub! In fact, Aktub was developed in part on an Apple computer, and all of the images on the Screenshots page were taken in Mac OS X! Because the developer of Aktub uses an Apple computer, you can be sure that focus in the future will be on expanding Aktub's capabilities on OS X.

Screenshots of Color Highlighting on Windows XP and Linux versus Mac OS X

Windows XP/Linux	Mac OS X