Mac Studio and Studio display

 

My six-year-old i9 iMac was showing signs of wear and tear, slowing down and crashing more often, and it was becoming harder to run newer apps that were designed for Apple Silicon. I was getting really worried and decided to get a Mac Studio before I couldn’t work at all. Since it wasn’t a brand-new 27-inch iMac, which I’d been dreaming of for ages, I needed a monitor and went with the Studio Display. I’ve always thought Apple makes the best screens, and this one had features that others didn’t.

Specs:

• M4 Max chip with a 16-core neural engine
• 16-core CPU
• 40-core GPU
• 64 gig RAM
• 2 TB hard drive

This machine is a huge upgrade from my old iMac, which was already pretty powerful. With the M chip, many of my apps run much smoother. It’s super fast and completely silent—no more noisy fans! I was also surprised to find that my Huion tablet works perfectly on it, something that had become impossible on my Intel machine. I was able to update Blender to version 5, which is only available on Apple Silicon, and the workspace is a huge improvement. My first animation render was over three times faster than a similar one I did just a few days before getting the Studio.

I wanted to get a new Mac while they still offered a variety of ports, something that’s likely to change soon. I have a lot of accessories that I can’t afford to replace, and they all use USB 3 connections. This setup has two USB 3 ports, six USB-C ports (plus four on the monitor), a spot to plug in my internet connection and a card slot for my camera cards—in the front! It also has a headphone jack and the display has a camera. 

Overall, this will really take me into the future and give me the tools to tackle more complex projects, especially in 3D and 2D animation. 

27" iMac, 10 core i9 with AMD Radeon Pro 5700 XT 16 GB and 5K screen

 I recently made a huge decision and upgraded to the higher(est) end iMac and sold the machine I only bought in 2019. There were several reasons that seemed important, at least to me. The former imac I bought when it's predecessor exploded while I was working on several projects and I needed something THAT DAY. With limited funds and time I got a pretty much base model and while it was slightly faster than the one on fire at the moment, it wasn't a step up which is what I need after having a computer for 6 years. Then the pandemic hit and it seemed pointless to upgrade with no work coming in. I am convinced eventually the M chips for the new Mac lineup will take over but not as quickly as they might hope with the chip shortage etc going on. I also use an older version of Cinema 4D with a ton of plugins that will not weather that transition so well. I could have spent 8 grand on a Cinema upgrade and 4 grand on a new computer... but then I would have to live in the box the computer came in. 

The new machine ticked off a lot of boxes for me like increased rendering speed by, well, A LOT and even better performance with the few games I play. Apple now also only sells with SSD drives and while the fusion drive was fine for the years I had one, application just popping open after a couple seconds is really easy to get used to. The rumours of a 30" screen coming up was a temptation to wait but I already use 2 17" screens to work on and a new design isn't a big motivator for me. I use these for work, not decoration, and I wasn't exactly horrified by the look the iMacs already had. I don't care how thin my desktop is... it's on my desk. I am not moving it around and most of it faces a wall. 

My spouse is a teacher and I do much of his graphics for his classes especially - when everything went online for a year. This lets us buy one at the educational discount which isn't huge, but it certainly helps. I also know selling my other would cut a big chunk off the price and I moved the extra RAM I installed in the old computer into this new one so I did not have to buy that. 

Still it was a big investment to make with no guarantee more work would be coming in to justify it. I did know if more did come along, especially CGI work, the old computer wouldn't cut it and I would have to get something faster. So better to have it now. I should be able to edit up to 8K video now with no stuttering and my current animation project is much easier to work on with the new graphics card and processors. It's probably the biggest speed and performance bump I have ever experienced going from one computer to another. 

Fellow artist, Mike Luce bought one of these a while ago and he gave me me advice on my decision which I found very valuable. There was a big speed increase in the Affinity lineup which I am totally profiting from now and Blender will have a big update fairly soon and that already runs super fast so I am looking forward to doing a project with the exclusively. One can only draw and paint so fast but the opening on Krita (also updating very soon) and saving large files is done in seconds now and not a minutes. 

I am still in sticker shock but I can't imagine that I will regret doing this and it should be with me for quite a few years to come. 

Choosing how to back up data

My choices at the moment are a couple of external disks with "live data", stuff I might need to access right away and a large number of DVD disks titled "portfolio 1, 2 etc" linked to a database (Filemaker) of info and images to help me search and find things. I've had this system for at least 10 years now and it's served me well enough but as files get bigger and storage space cheaper, it's time to re-think it all.

The advice I get is pretty all over the place. From, just keep doing like you have been, to get a tape system to have 3(!) copies of everything in various formats linked to a central server. Obviously, some people I know live in a world where they have tech support, money and other resources more readily available to them than I ever will. My needs are pretty modest overall, I just want an easily accessible way to save files and combine it with making more of my work, particularly photos, easier to access right away.

My first step will be to buy 2 internal terabyte drives to replace 2 smaller ones on my tower and then buy 2 additional external drives to match up with the internal ones. (I already have one big internal and external drive) My tower has 4 drives, one is a system drive for apps, fonts etc and that will stay exclusively for that. The other three will be one for video, one for work and one for play, essentially all my movies, music and personal stuff. I will then re-organize ALL my DVD back-ups on to the hard drives and make a copy on each external drive to match. The really hard time consuming thing will be to go through all that data and put it into a filemaker database. It took me 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for 3 months last time. I am also going to go through a step many people think of as unthinkable for some reason, dumping a lot of old work I've never looked at since it was done, including many photo shoots and getting rid of duplicate files. I know, "you never know you might need that one day", but you know... you can know in many cases and it's just pack ratting to keep every single thing you've ever done. If some client calls you out of the blue 20 years later for a copy of a project you are not obligated to have it waiting for them. If you can even open it still!

I could go the tape route, but that's an entirely new system and not practical for a small time designer like me, with hard drives I can plug them into a new computer or a laptop if need to to as well. The "cloud" is another option, but unlike a few friends who jump on everything new, I think the cloud is a very a bad idea and really impractical for video and other large files. I could never afford the bandwidth (we pay for usage here in Québec), not to mention my severe misgivings over privacy and having my data and life's work on some companies server. I have no desire to wait hours for a film project to download either just to get one clip for my demo reel.

As n most things, the most important thing to making a decision is not what's "best", there is no "best" way to do anything, just the best way for you to do something. In the case of back-up the number thing priority is just to do them!

Cloud Computing

«The cloud» is all the rage in computer circles these days, aggressively pushed by computer companies as a great solution to «never lose» data and have access to all your stuff where ever you are and on whatever device or operating system you are using. Sounds fantastic!

There are advantages to cloud computing. Mobile devices have limited storage and most people never back up at all, never mind enough. Forgetting to bring the powerpoint file to the meeting would be a thing of the past. You would be able to buy software once and use it across computers without the complicated and draconian agreements all software producers require these days.

However, I personally do not want my computer info in someone else's hard drive and I don’t want some «Cloud» having complete control over my data. I like my Mobileme service for transferring large files, sharing short videos and syncing my calendar and contact info across my devices, but that is as far as I want to go.

«The Cloud» can crash (or dry up), I’ve already lost and screwed up data with the simple Mobileme setup.. imagine if all my work was on there. I work in video and in print, files can be HUGE (liked 100’s of gigabytes) no service will be able to handle that for a long time in a way that will be functional. Not everyone has unlimited super fast broadband service and this will mean service providers will have another way to gouge you for more money. There is also the unavoidable fact that no one is able to be connected to the internet all the time in every circumstance. What if the software producer decides to pull the product and they erase it from your storage so you no longer have access to it? This already happens with books in Kindle and the App Store and is justified with the «you were only renting it you didn’t really own it» line... despite having paid good money for it. A cyber attack on one of these cloud systems could be disastrous for the everyone. Hackers could get into sensitive work documents. Heaven forbid you have porno on your computer, some right wing Tea Party nut job in the United States or elsewhere could decide to prosecute you (after watching it no doubt). Music and movie companies would have a field day harassing people they feel have stolen their intellectual property or just decide they want to charge you another fee for having bought it already.

So, in my mind this service, interesting and useful though it is in a limited way, is for too dangerous and intrusive in many, more serious ways.

Keep your head out of the «Clouds» .

Part One my digital evolution

My entry into the world of design came long before the arrival of the computer. I started doing illustrations for advertisements and setting up text, which in those days meant using rub on letters (one by one on white paper the size of the ad) and hoping you made no mistakes. There is no “erase” or “control Z” with those things. Design was a lot more art oriented and a lot less tech oriented back then. You still had to be fast and able to change things last minute, so that much has stayed the same. My specialty was pen and ink illustrations, tedious work that I really love to do. I did an entire catalog of hats once for a local hat-maker in Boston that took weeks to finish.

By the 80’s things were changing. I was one of those who had a Vic-20, one of if not the 1st home computer. It basically did next to nothing but in those days, the little it could accomplish seemed miraculous. I didn’t do much else with computers until the Amiga arrived. This platform still exists for a small number of diehards and I have to say it was my favourite of all time. It had the visual “double click” method of a Mac and the ability to fiddle with the DOS. The graphics were amazing, in fact digital effects for shows like “Babylon 5” were all Amiga based and still hold up today. Many TV stations used Amigas to run themselves also, but it never caught on with the public in any case. With it I started to change my work flow to include the computer. At first just text which now could be corrected, spell checked and changed instantly was a huge step forward and a big time saver. My computer has 100 megs of hard drive and 8 megs of RAM... a super computer in those days! I remember friends asking me “What on earth could you use all the memory and RAM for?”

Before long is was printing in “photographic” colour.. using all all 64 colours and 16 shades of gray available in a state of the art ribbon printer. My first scanner looked like a window wiper and had to be dragged manually across the image very slowly and precisely. For colour, you needed to make 3 very precise red, green and blue passes... all by hand. Of course I thought the results were spectacular. Not quite “press ready” however.

During this period, I experimented with 3d too. A single image with transparency would take 25 hours to render. This was “blazing fast” unless you had a dedicated “Video Toaster” system which used Lightwave as the 3D modeler. Out of my range financially, but I really, really wanted one.

Home computing was still very young, convincing clients to use use the stuff produced ion them impossible. I KNEW that this was the future somehow... the technology advanced more all the time and I could just see on the horizon a time when all work would be done on home computers.

Next... MAC-PC and The internet