The majority of embroidery designs you buy now come either on a CD or USB stick or download. You do need a computer to get the design to whatever format you use in the embroidery machine. As to whether a MAC will work or not I don't know, but as long as it would read the CD or USB and allow you to transfer the design from it to however you actually transfer the design to the machine, whether it be USB, CD or card, it should work. If it's a downloaded design, you still will need to be able to unzip and transfer that to your machine. And some of the Singer embroidery machines DO need to be connected to the computer to transfer the designs--a friend of mine has one.