New(ish) Macbook Pro (2015)

My old MacBook Pro had been showing serious signs of decay over the last few years, not a surprise since it was over 6 years old and well used. It took 5 - 10 minutes just to fully turn on. I was becoming unusable for my work so I started looking into new laptops to replace it. Luckily, my brother had bought a MacBook Pro less than a tear before and wanted to sell it so while it’s used, it’s practically new - to me anyway. 

This past weekend I transferred my old files and programs to the new computer. I used Apples Migration software and it was going pretty poorly. I was using wifi for the transfer and it just wouldn’t work. To top it off, the new machine did not have an ethernet port, the way I usually transfer from one computer to another. In the end I had to buy a Thunderbolt to Thunderbolt cord and the transfer flew by with no more issues. The next day, I tried to wipe and re-install the OS on my former machine so I could sell it - dead… it couldn’t do anything. I guess I waited until the very last moment to make my upgrade. 

How is the new MacBook Pro?

This is the pro before the new miniscreen on the keyboard that takes place of the F keys and gives more functionality to certain programs. I was interested in having that but the price to get a new  MacBook with it was too high. There were other reasons to reject that newer model, however. The new models have one port… one! This MacBook has USB, A flash card port for my camera, 2 thunderbolt ports, hdmi port… all of which are useful to me and I really did not want a portable that needed 100 widgets to connect things. 

There is a vast improvement to the screen, I can now do colour corrections and work on my photos with less worry it won’t look the way I want on my bigger home system. The updated graphics card and 16 gigs of RAM really make it a real alternative for my 3D work and should help me with rendering complicated projects. The i7 processor and flash drive boot it up in seconds and all my software just flies on it. No more beachball of death as I try and save a photo or Indesign file.  It is also thinner and lighter, features that don’t really impress me much but are nice to have  just not essential from my point of view. 

Conclusion

This was a great purchase for me. It’s fast, practical and should service my needs for at least another 5 years. It will have to, my lack of actual paid contracts and home renovations this year with cripple my finances for years to come. At least now I can continue to work no matter where I am. 

As an aside, I also stripped the application folder to the bare minimum of software, which means only the Adobe program I can't replace with something else. (Namely Indesign and After Effects). This, I think should save me from running low on RAM as much and frankly, the Affinity products I am using are much faster and practical on the laptop. 

Was AppleWorks a sign of things to come?

AppleWorks was Apple's long standing suite of programs used as an alternative to the Microsoft office suite. Office has and continues to have an on again off again relationship with the Mac so it made sense for Apple to have its own simplified version as a back up. It was quite capable and easy to use but one aspect of its interface might just make a comeback in light of recent developments in how software is being sold.

While Office has always been sold in a suite, adobe products have pretty much been separate products, but have more and more been grouped into suites until now you really have little choice but to get them all. Macintosh ended the AppleWorks suite years ago but just started giving away it's new suite of products for free with new computers, much like AppleWorks was.

The interface element whose time has come back might be the idea that instead of opening each software when you need it, you open the suite all at once and choose which function (word processing, spreadsheet, etc.) from a main menu. This way of using a suite has a few advantages. Shared resources and functions are not repeated in each program making updating easier and downloads smaller and faster. Another big plus would be that once someone is using  one part of a suite they are more likely to use the rest and with all the other functions one click away in the same software, it's much less likely the user will switch to a competitor's product.

Only time will tell if this old interface idea will resurface but it makes sense given the direction things are going. I know personally, I'd still be using AppleWorks if it were possible and the all in one place set up is part of the reason why.

OS X - LION

I didn’t exactly feel the need to run out and get Lion the day it was released, not after the problems I had with Snow Leopard not too long ago. The new laptop I bought didn’t come with Lion either, though I expected it too, and that was more a relief then a point against it. Apple did offer a free upgrade for the laptop and eventually I did take them up on it. I did this after I was sure I wouldn’t be needing the laptop for anything crucial for a while.

Backstory over, the upgrade went extremely smoothly. No compatibility issues so far at all and it all seems to work as advertised. Getting the code for the free upgrade took over a week, a common problem I discovered, but since I wasn’t in a hurry, it didn't really matter to me.

Lion does seem to slow down start-up a little bit, shut down is just as fast as before. I like many of the new features I’ve tried... the «versions» feature I have no idea where it is or how to use it yet.... the multiple desktops are much more useful than I thought and «Launchpad» is just a little less useless than I feared. I like the gestures for flipping through webpages and I really like the new calendar, Address Book and Mail updates.

I had no PPC programs on my laptop, I suspect there may be 1 or 2 on the tower though so I am not upgrading that too soon. Also, the gestures, full screen apps etc are all pluses with the portable computer... less so or useless to me on me 2 screen office computer. I also discovered the «Airdrop» feature which lets you easily transfer from one computer to another will not work with the towers, who don’t have a wifi card installed. (I recommend a software called «Drop Copy» for that anyway).

Lion, as a little plus, fixed a bug with the «Dream Chronicles-book of air» game I was playing as well!

Mac Book Pro 13 inch

My macbook pro from over 4 years ago finally got to be too much for me. Overall it still works very well. Some dead pixels, a little slower than I’d like, not enough ram, typical stuff for an older computer. It had one terrible defect that presented itself awhile ago that finally get the better of it and made replacing it a must. It seems this model, after several years, wears down the connection between the keyboard and the rest of the computer and the only way to get it working is to smack the battery area really hard. You can imagine how professional that looks.

Since I might have some hard core work to do while I am away on a trip coming up, I bit the bullet and bought a bottom of the line macbook pro. I am pretty surprised how much I like it and how much improved it is over the older (but higher end model) I had.

The screen: is simply incredible for a laptop. there some falloff but for a portable, I’m really liking it. Going from 15 to 13 inches was no big deal either. In fact I hardly notice it.

The body: The new macbook pro is literally as thin at my old one, minus the cover. The one piece design is pretty easy to hold and the smaller form is preferable, to me anyway. I like a portable to be... portable. This is a “while I’m not in the office” computer, not a replacement for a desktop. Not having a million dollars lying around I didn’t try any of the new “thunderbolt” connections or external drives. I’m not lacking anything I need to connect to my current devices.

Operation: The transfer from old to new was so simple, even by Apple’s standards it was sort of surprising. A couple of software issues that were easily fixed by re-installing. In use it’s much, much faster than the older one, starts up extremely fast and opens software, even slow pokes like Photoshop and IN design much more rapidly than my Mac Pro tower does. The trackpad... which in general I don’t like in principal, has little odd glitches I find annoying. It’s hard to click on things sometimes or open software from the dock, instead you get the pulldown menu. Might be me not using it right but it’s not as intuitive as I’d like. The faster graphics card, 5 gigs of ram and larger hard drive help a lot.

Overall a great new tool to take on the road with me.

C4d, Mac OS updates....

Yes more udate:

but more serious this time... it appears Snow leopard is causing complete havoc on many macs, including my new tower. It crashes whenever you open a dialogue box from an application. IN other words you can't place an image, save, save as, export or anything else that requires opening the dialogue box. So far it's affect every Adobe product, Cinema 4D, Apple's own Mail program... so it pretty much a system wide wide bug. I has not affected my laptop - yet. If you read the Apple or Adobe programs you get an idea how very serious this problem is... Apple had better take back some of those Vista ads and get to work on fixing this, TODAY!

Never ending article on updates:

Looks like Apple may have broken records with the patch they put out today. Time will tell if it handles this problem or not.

Cinema 4D has gone to an 11,5 update. Normally ,5 updates are small... but this one includes some heavy duty improvements and features including bucket rendering and dynamics for Mograph. At 700$ in this terrible job market... I just can't afford it. 300$ I would take the chance, but not 700$. Even Apple computer's Final Cut Pro upgrade price was lowered by 200$. I wish Maxon had the sense to realize how really bed it is out there for those of us end users. If I got a really Mograph heavy, very well paying job, it might be worth the update, but it looks like I'll be staying put for now.

OS X is upadted as well. At 35$, it's not a big deal to make the change over. There have been a few issues. Even Adobe Cs$ programs crash until the "get used" to the new system now and then. Even "Safari", Apple's own browser just crashed while I tried to upload the image for this article. Second try, no problem however. I hav enoticed some great improvement in speed and most software plays well (Cyberduck and Cool Iris are 2 exceptions). The new Quicktime X seems a waste of space for now as I use Quicktime pro and have use of many of the features other than just playing movies in a pretty box. It will be interesting to see how quicktime developes as a software over the next year of so.

Update: Dreamweaver seems to crash like hell constantly now. Every time anything changes in the OS... Dreamweaver seems to be the worst in Adobe's line of software for crashing in my experience.

update update:

the new Behemoth media site is up!

Premiere Pro (CS3) testing

Recently I’ve been able to start using Adobe Premiere Pro (version CS3) on my MAC. I’ve long been curious about it in comparison to Final Cut Pro, especially recently since Premiere has been adding useful features by leaps and bounds while Final Cut seems to be stuck in a cave. It’s too soon for a real review, but I do have some first impressions.

It’s slow in many ways. Some of this might be I am not accustomed to how it works, but just simple cuts, rendering ect are certainly slower than Final Cut. Using the razor tool is a little annoying becuase of this.

Importing from tape was no problem at all. Even the sync was good which is a big problem still with FInal Cut Pro with my Sony deck and Sony cameras.

Overall... it’s pretty easy to transition from one software to the other. I am looking forward to trying the tight intergration between After Effects and Premiere. Intergration is truly essential these days and round trip editing between software is not just nice, but truly a timesaver on complicated projects.

I can see that Premiere is not on the multi-editor/ collaborative level as Final Cut... but I work alone in the editing room so that’s not really an issue for me.

As a quick impression. I can see myself using this software more and more for my personal work anyway. I still need to try exporting setting out ect... as I said it’s too early for a real review, but I can see why many independent productions are not shying away from using Premiere these days.

New Mac Pro

As my old dual G-5 was not cutting it anymore, I needed to upgrade my tower sooner than later. I keep hearing how expensive these new towers are, but honestly, I paid double for the G-5 than I paid for this dual quad core with 6 gigs of ram and a much better graphic card, not to mention the new LED screen which blows the old one out of the water. It seems a great deal from my perspective! Could I afford it in this bad job market...no. But I could afford less to be without a tower if things pick up suddenly. Oddly after setting it up and using it a couple days, I realize it’s basically my dream office now.

For now the old computer is networked into the new, giving me the extra rendering power for larger projects in Cinema 4D. The transition went better than expected with the computers doing basically all the work transferring all the software automatically. There were a few glitches, like re-installing adobe media encoder and now I must run Photoshop in Rosetta mode if I want to integrate the scanner. Apparently the twain driver only works in the PPC version of Photoshop. The largest software issue is my French grammar and correction program, “Antidote”. Every time I get a new computer, I seem to need to buy a new copy as there is no way to de-activate the old to re-install on the new. That is literally the only thing I can’t recommend about that software, however. It might be one of the best done programs I’ve ever used. They update frequently for integration with just about everything that you type into. Customer service is beyond amazing and even more appealing to me, it’s made locally.

The computer:
As with most MAC computers, ease of everything is everywhere. Putting in extra hard drives (up to 4) is even easier than before. You could literally eat off the inside of one of these machines. I’ve never seen the inside of something so organized and just plain clean looking. It has space for two burners, I opted for the one for price reasons, but it would be nice to get another as I am often caught needing a back up disk while I am burning a DVD or 10 for a client. The speed is amazing. Much better than I hoped. My last animation was a 2-3 minute per image render job. On this it was 20 seconds (!) and I experienced none of the screen refresh problems that have plagued me since I started learning character animation. The new graphics card showed it’s worth within minutes of opening my favourite software.

The monitor:
I have now two monitors... something I have quickly become accustomed to. The new Apple LED 24” is a big improvement from what I had, which was a pretty great monitor itself. I love having a microphone, video cam and speakers in the monitor (the sound is not half bad btw), something Apple should have been doing for years to make up for the prices they charge for these things.

Disappointments:
Not everything is perfect. It seems ridiculous that new machine has a ton of ports and not one of them is a standard firewire! Hello, Apple! This is a Pro machine, non? We are not all going to run out and replace every video deck, camera and the rest on top of paying a minimum of 5000$ for a new computer! I was able to daisy chain a firewire hub from my Lacie external disk drive, but I really should not have to do that for a basic functionality.

The other big disappointment was the service at the Apple store. There must have been 100 service people and it took 40 minutes just to get one over to us and the first two that tried seemed to know nothing about computers or disappeared, never to be seen again. I know Ipods and Iphones are popular, but you might think giving service to a customer who knew exactly what he wanted and was willing to shell out a few thousand on the spot might be a higher priority.

My Digital Revolution - part three

After the internet started taking hold of things a lot changed and not just with online software. For years I had made short films, mostly in Super 8 and aided in some 16 mm films as well. I really loved film making and effects work but it was simply too far out of my budget to even consider it anymore. I actually cried the day I sold my Bell and Howell Super 8 camera (I loved the thing!). Then on day Apple introduced, free with the OS, Imovie and I digitized my old films and re-edited them. God bless my ex-boyfriend at the time. He saw how excited I was to work on film again and spent all his money to get me a video camera that holiday season. I made a couple of documentaries, one about him and another on my grandmother (Big MA). I won an award for Big MA, then for other films I made, soon I had a small showing at a movie house in Provincetown and eventually 2 of my films were shown on Canadian TV. Of course, everyone reading this thinks I must be filthy rich... everyone who gets in the movies is rich.. non? No at all... to this date my most expensive film cost about 200$ and TV never paid me a dime, the movie house netted a pretty sum of 176.52$ I believe. That “you much be rich” attitude really burns me at times. Every artist gets it... “you paint so well you should sell them and make a fortune!” What world do these people live in? Where will this money come from exactly? Most of the time the people saying it have never bought an original piece of art in their lives, like about 95% of any given population. Artistic urges are like a mental illness, you need to do it or you can’t cope. Satisfying as it is for an artist to make art, it mostly goes unseen and unnoticed and certainly, unpaid for by anyone but the artist him or herself.

I did get attention form some friend who encouraged me who were in the production biz. One gave me software to help me out.. Final Cut Pro, Cinema 4D etc. The other gave me some advice, training and eventually work doing de-rigging (a tedious chore I actually love to do). At the same time, I convinced several clients to go online with their work flow which let me work easily from my studio on several things at once and not having to wait for FedEX to deliver crucial information and files. It was all looking very rosy for a while. I always seem to be 1 or 2 steady clients away from a livable income however... even now. I’ve done some very top notch work, but always just not enough to get the steady contracts. I suspect I am in the majority of contractors in this respect.

Animation is another hobby of mine I am slowly able to explore in ways I never could have before. I’ve surprised myself with several animation awards when, truth be told, I had no idea what Iw as doing when I made those films. The MAC continues to be my machine of choice, I’d really like the new 8 core tower to improve my speed and render times but that seems a little like a dream world right now.

In many ways, I am living my dreams... the stuff I can do with my photography and film work was unthinkable a short time ago. My level of experience in Photoshop, Final Cut, After Effects etc are expert and I can only hope eventually, after this self made financial world crisis is over, those skills will be in demand again and the economy of hiring someone like me online will appeal to more and more tech savvy employers.

All in all, the future, though tough right now, still will offer opportunities I can’t even imagine right now. The digital revolution, in which I was swept up in, has changed how I communicate, work and do my art. Even a “nobody” like me in this new world (I am no Steve Jobbs or Bill gates obviously) benefits.

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