2 Applications to keep your Mac apps up to date

 orSo I have been a longtime user of MacUpdate, a web site that keeps a library of more than 32,000 Mac Apps in an easy to find interface, where you can search by Free, paid, on sale, or top rated, or recently updated. So it will update your existing applications as well as help you find new apps.The problem is the use the MacUpdate Desktop app, it is a $20 subscription for 6 months, and I have had a subscription for a long time, but it is not without it's issues.First off I have a long standing re-occuring issue with my login, where the app freezes and stops getting updates, and you have to log out, but when you try to log back in your login does not work. And the only solution I have found is to contact support and have them reset my password to a generic, and then you can change the password and it works for a little while before the problem occurs once again.Another issue with MacUpdate Desktop is Mac OS Big Sur, because MacUpdate Desktop does not run at all on Big Sur, which is on version 10.16.3 already, so a new version seems a long time coming, especially for a subscription app.An alternative to MacUpdate is MacUpdater 2 from CoreCode. Unlike MacUpdate it is a one time purchase (at least for version 2, as there is an upgrade from versions 1), and can be had for $14.99 to $35.00 depending on the version.It also has a Priveleged Install Helper tool so you can install apps that require a password with a single click, and you can have it make app backups of recently installed apps in case one doesn't work.It is also Big Sur and Apple Silicon native, which is a big plus. And it has as dark mode unlike MacUpdate. As is the price, which is certainly better.So I would recommedn MacUpdater from CoreCode and it is what I will be using from now on.

Engadget is reporting that Apple’s M2 Processor has entered production and could arrive by July

Engadget has the news, and that it will again be SOC or system on chip, so integrated CPU, GPU and AI processor.I am still hoping for eventual external gpu and memory for system and gpu, but that could be unlikely, but hopefully this will at least have support for more than 16GB of Combined RAM and a better GPU.I hate having Mac’s future so up in the air again. At least with Intel we had a roadmap. Now we will will never know what is coming. And the pro machines won’t cone until the end of the 2 years and I will likely be disappointed with the results, at least at first.

AppleInsider reports that Mac OS 11.4 has added support for AMD Big Navi 6800, 6800XT and 6900XT

 Wesley Hillard at AppleInsider is reporting that MacOS 11.4 adds support for AMD Big Navi graphics cards 6800, 6800XT and 6900XT.This is great news, Big Navi are what are in the new Xbox Series X and Playstation 5, are more powerful than anything in the current MacPro. It would be awesome if these cards were to be released for the MacPro and even better if they were to be added to an Pro variant of the M1 with PCI card and hopefully thunderbolt eGPU support.There is the possibility that the M1 cards will never support PCI based graphics cards, and that would really be a shame, but this keeps the possibility alive.Big Navi should be great for both Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve. I would still prefer the addition of NVIDIA, but that is unlikely to ever happen.

Harry McCracken article on the iPad Pro needing Pro Software and my thoughts

 Harry McCrakken at Fast Company has an article about how the iPad Pro just got way more Pro, but now it needs more Pro Software.And I wholeheartedly agree. There is no overall user interface, everyone does it differently, and for me at least I don't see the stability to use it in a work environment. Like Final Cut Pro X apps on iPad are supposed to just save and, but every time I have tried to really use art software on an iPad it crashes and I end up losing not a small amount of work, but most of my work, admittedly the same thing has happened to me with Final Cut pro X and it's auto save with everything you do, if you are forced to use autodave and on the iPad have no way to backup your save definitively, then it can't be used in a work environment and feel safe.Now I hate windows, but I have an old Surface and even though it is far slower and doesn't have an impressive touch interface, being able to use a full version of Photoshop is far superior to anything on a much more powerful iPad. It is too slow to edit on, but photoshop if far superior.And while I have tried some editing on the iPad, and it works for simple stuff, it just isn't pro. Even though an iPad can play back H.265 footage better than any Mac I have ever seen, the software on the iPad is not conducive to the Pro Work that the hardware is capable of. Of course again I kind of feel the same about Final Cut Pro X, it has some amazing high level technology, but it just isn't put together how it should be or how an experienced editor would want to use it.And programs just crash on an iPad, there is now way to see the memory used or how it is being taxed. Even the simplest apps like web browser crash and I lose all my tabs all the time.And since every palm pilot had a way to store the pencil securely within the device, why can't apple figure this out? The Apple Pencil is only useful if it is charged and attached. Having to keep it safe separately is not ideal.I love my iPad because of convenience, but I have to say I would rather have a mac equivalent of a Microsoft Surface Book. A laptop with a touchscreen and a graphics card in the keyboard for editing work, but that I can take off and use as a tablet. And now that they both use the same chips this certainly should be possible. That would be ideal, though it would need to add Thunderbolt External GPU support to M1 Macs.

The importance of Monitor Calibration and the datacolor SpyderX

 As an editor, colorist and motion graphics artist, I of course use dual monitors. And they are 2 very different displays, but even if they were the exact same type of display you need to try and balance them as mush as you can, and that is why I own and us a datacolor Spyder X (and yes the printing is smudged and coming off on mine).This is the menu bar launcher.And where you calibrate the displayers, you will then put the device on the spot on the display and turn up the brightness and it will measure your displays.It measures both displays, has you set matching brightness, and then lets you adjust based on perception. It can be difficult if you have very different displays but is certainly worth it so your 2 displays are as close to each other as can be.My only complaint is that having bought the device, the software is linked to my computer. And I would love to be able to take it with my to match monitors at work, especially with rental computers, but obviously they want them to buy there own, unfortunately most companies won't bother.

Why is Mac OS Finder iOS Sync so inferior to the previous iTunes Sync

 I have said this before and I am sure I will it again, but why when Apple split up iTunes to make Music, Podcast and TV apps and moving iOS music sync to the finder did they make it so far inferior to the previous sync?Now I know they want you to pay for Apple Music to get your music there, but they were already getting you to pay for music through them. I think they just don't want you to sync your own music libraries anymore, they want you to just stream your music.And why is it worse. Well first off if you plug in your iOS device and go to it in the finder, and try and sync any local music (going to the Music tab and selecting any songs or playlists the sync button switches from blue and and press-able to grey and not press-able).Before any changes it has a sync that you could hit, but not if you make any changes.This makes the whole iOS thing seem broken, but there is still a way to sync, but you have to get through the whole syncing process once, which can take a very long time. And all it shows for status bars, is a little circle in the sidebar and a syncing thing on the bottom, but both are extremely slow.The sidebar shows the whole process.And this is just showing the backup stage, but no indication of how much of the synching this is.Of Course in some steps you get this wheel, which is pretty much as unhelpful as you can get.And this process can easily take 30+ minutes.One it has done a full backup and finished. You can then go into music and select what music you sync and hit sync (it will not be grayed out this time) and only then will your local music sync. And it has to do a whole other sync to get your music over.Honestly What the Absolute Fuck??!?!?And even worse sometimes it doesn't work after 1 sync and you have to do another sync before you are able to move your music over. Really?!?!??!? FUCK YOU APPLE!!!iTunes never did this.And with iTunes I could use Wifi Sync. Now I am sure you are saying that you can use Wifi sync with Music, and yes you can, but you can't stop it.With iTunes if you had to stop any iOS sync you could force quit iTunes. Sure not an ideal solution, but it worked, and say you could restart or shutdown your computer.With Music if you have WIFI sync on, you can't restart or even quit the finder to get it to stop. The only way to get it to stop is to hard reset the computer, which is beyond not ideal.You can least stop the cable based sync by unplugging the iOS device!And don't even get me started with Apple Music. If you sync your library with Apple Music you can get into tons of trouble. There are more…

My favorite keyboard launcher, LaunchBar will speed up everything outside of your editing and graphics software

 So I have written about LaunchBar in the past, but now I am writing about it as something to speed up your workflow when using editing or graphics software. I have been using the amazing LaunchBar from Objective Development for years, and whenever I am in an office using a computer there I feel stunted by not having it.Now LaunchBar is a tool that does so many things, but my favorite is to the ability to launch application using keyboard shortcuts, and it will learn your shorcuts quickly to speed things up. You hit a quick keyboard shortcut, which brings up LaunchBar and then you type your keys and if the application shows up hit return or push to the down arrow and select what you want to launch. After selecting the thing a few time LaunchBar learns and moves your choice to the top of list.So to launch I hit Command-Space and the last app I launch shows up, if I want to launch it, just hit enter and it launches.Or more powerfully you type the initials of an app, and LaunchBar will give you a list, and you select what app you want.If I want Word, I try Wo or MW.Then select the App and return and it will learn your initials and move the app up the list and eventually to the top.This way I can launch any application without ever touching the mouse, and this is HUGE! IT WILL SPEED UP EVERYTHING YOU DO ON THE COMPUTER OUTSIDE OF YOU EDITING OR GRAPHICS APPLICATION!And Launchbar does so much more. You can do calculator functions, instant web searches, go to web sites, create e-mails from contacts, merge files, check your ClipBoard History, and it is all customizable.LaunchBar is the so worth $29 or $49 for a family license. It speeds up everything I do on the computer and it can speed things up for you as well.

I can’t believe I didn’t know how to paste unformatted text until I read this post from OWC, I always just used TextEdit

Dennis Sellers at OWC Rocket Yard has a post on how to paste non-formatted text on your mac, and I can't believe that I never knew the keyboard shortcut Shift-Option-Command-V to paste without formatting.I always used Textedit to past into and turn it non-formated.This is huge, I always have issues with pasting formatted text, just as the article talks about.

Your GPU is very important with Adobe Premiere, so control your monitor resolution with SwitchResX to save video memory, especially on an iMac or iMac Pro

 When my MacPro 4,1 finally kicked the bucket I was devastated, especially since the new MacPro wasn't out yet, and I needed a machine to edit on. The solution was the very powerful iMac Pro with the Radeon Pro Vega 64X 16GB. Now that blew my old video card out of the water, but video editing apps can use every bit of power you have and more, so you want to save as much video processing power as you can.The problem is that the default settings or even scaled settings on an iMac Pro or even an iMac are made to make the screen look amazing, not save on video memory, and for a long time the OS X control panels have removed the important statistics on the display control panel.Now if you hover over the choices it tells you what resolution it is like and that scaled resolutions might affect performance, but they don't tell you what the default resolution is actually doing.This is where the awesome SwitchResX comes in. The app is $16, or $250 for a site license. It takes a little playing to get it all set up nicely (especially turning off all the resolutions that you don't want).It runs in your menu bar, and you can customize to remove all the resolutions you don't want, but when you go into the iMac Pro or iMac's resolutions you see where I am going.You can see I have chosen 2560x1440 which is the normal default resolution, but I have not chosen the HiDPI version. HiDPI is what Apple does to make the monitor look great, it takes your resolution and runs it twice to subsample and make it look better, but basically whatever video ram it is using for your primary display it is doubling it to make the display look nicer.For a video editor this is a huge no no, don't waste your video memory, it is precious! Make sure to set your display to a non HiDPI resolution so that you are not wasting your video memory!Of course this isn't all that SwitchResX can do, you can actually set different resolutions for different apps and have it change as you switch apps. Now I have tried that out and it worked very well, but I have realized I just like one resolution for my 2 monitors, and try and save as much video memory as I can, so that is why I use SwitchResX, and the less video memory you have the more important this is.I am assuming this will be the same with M1 iMacs, but they don't exist yet. If they stay like the current M1 macs and share memory with the mac, then it is even more important to use less memory for your display so that you can use more for editing!

Mac Performance Guide on Upgrading to Big Sur, all downsides except the Thunderbolt Hub support

  Mac Performance Guide has as an article on how the upgrade to Big Sur has been nothing but negatives, except that you need to upgrade to it to get Thunderbolt Hub Support which was added in Big Sur.I know this site is usually very negative on the coverage of Mac OS upgrades, but the upgrades do seem to add more problems than they add, and usually add hits to performance.And I have personally held off on the upgrade to Big Sur, though I really do need the Thunderbolt hub support so I can have more drives connected than I currently do.Of course I also can't upgrade because where I am currently working refuses to upgrade past Adobe Creative Cloud 2019, and that version does not work on Big Sur, you need to run at least 2020 to run on Big Sur. Now when the built in Speech to Text comes out of Beta maybe I can upgrade, though I might as well hold off for now.