MacRumors is saying that they have found new parts numbers for 3 new MacPro models, which would be huge news for Mac Professionals, but still would be nice to hear a real commitment to the MacPro from Apple, and support for NVIDIA graphics cards.
Macstories has a little article on a new command line shell called Fish, which has color syntax highlighting, web based configuration and auto suggestion. I have been giving it a try and have been very impressed.
For years I have lamented the dumbing down of Apple products for the masses, especially when OS X is build on the so powerful UNIX operating system, but it has certainly gotten much worse of late. Just look at Lion. It now hides you Library folder where all preferences and other user system files are stored, and it even password protects your Utilities folder. This may be fine for an average user, but for a power user they are just frustrations that add steps to the normal things we do every day, but that is not the worst of it. The worst part is when they dumb something down too much and it doesn’t function right. It is not like Apple has good customer support, unless you want to go into an Apple store, and I am not brining in my tower, ipad and iPhone to get iCloud to work right!
A little explanation is necessary here, but I use both Firefox and Google Chrome as my primary browsers, not Safari, but I do have an iPhone and iPad, and like them to have the same bookmarks as my main browsers, so I use X-Marks to sync my bookmarks between all browsers, but recently it stopped syncing my bookmarks correctly to my iPhone and iPad. I looked on Apple’s forums, and tried all sorts of methods to clear my bookmarks off of iCloud, which seam to have become corrupt, but nothing seems to work. With iSync you could always set to overwrite the bookmarks in the cloud, because these things happen (and you can do it in X-Marks), but they have dumbed down iCloud to the point where it has basically zero controls, so when something like this happens you are just SOL!
And I already had to give up cloud syncing for my iPad and iPhone as when I moved from my trusty iPad 1 to my the New iPad, I tried syncing my iPad from the cloud and it basically hung every time, and I had to revert to my last backup from iTunes, which was 4 months old, but at least that worked. Now I don’t trust iCloud at all, and use iTunes to backup and sync bookmarks as that actually seems to work with some consistency (though don’t even get me started on how old and out of date iTunes is).
Now unfortunately iCloud is completely useless to me as it is broken on two fronts, and I have no way to reset things in the cloud to make them better. No way to see those files, or delete them and start over. Maybe if I went into an Apple store I could get them to do it, but honestly I don’t have time. And for files i have moved away from the now defunct Mobile me to services from SugarSync, DropBox and Box.net as they work and won’t have features pulled as I continue to use them, only get better.
I have been an Apple man for years and years, since I was a little kid and got an Apple IIC, but really the company is making many stupid decisions and I think a lot of them will end up biting them on the ass, like the whole killing Final Cut Pro 7 thing. I continue to like Apple products, have have never been a fan of windows, but have been considering getting a windows machine to edit and do graphics on, and possibly that will mean that my only Apple products are my iPhone and iPad, and the computers I so loved will no longer matter to me, but I sure hope that doesn’t happen.
Apple you are not perfect and your products are not either, please restore a modicum of control to us users to fix thing when they do have issues.
Larry Jordan has an excellent article on the new Adobe Prelude CS6 for ingesting and logging footage.
I knew it was for logging and even cutting a rough assembly, but didn’t realize it could export to either Premiere Pro or Final Cut Pro 7. Very cool.
And it sounds like the biggest issue is the lack of ProRES presets for Media Encorder, which I always found odd, but not hard to create for oneself.
Larry also offers a complete 2 hour tutorial on how to use Prelude at his site.
The biggest here for me is selective past and remove attributes which I use all the time in FCP and it will be an adjustment for sure.
Still all livable changes, just have to get used to it.
DigitalFilms on AVID Media Composer for Final Cut Pro Editors. And must read for any recent switcher to let you know about the features you need to look into to really become an expert in AVID.
Sounds like the non-CUDA acceleration is pretty damn good, though as I have said I keep wishing for more NVIDIA on the mac, but it looks less and less likely to happen every day.
David Lawrence has an excellent article over at Creative Cow.
He really sums it up in a Creative Cow Forum Post.
Believe the hype, the Conan boys are right. It really is Adobe’s Final Cut Pro 8.
Though later says:
Is Premiere Pro 6 Adobe’s Final Cut Pro 8? If you ask me, the answer is no. It’s something different and potentially better. Is there room for improvement? You bet. If you miss certain features, let ’em know. They’re listening.
I am so looking forward to Premiere CS6, and do hope it is an FCP 7 replacement, though that also makes me wish for more NVIDIA CUDA cards for the Mac, or it looks like editing is going to move all PC in the future.
Richard Keates has a good article on why he dropped FCP X after trying to use it to cut corporate video, and why Premiere Pro is the solution for what he needs to do (graphics heavy productions).
Unfortunately I see many places moving back to Media Composer which I do find inferior for graphics work and hope that Premiere CS6 can make some inroads. I just wish that Apple would re-commit to the MacPro and push to get powerful CUDA Nvidia cards across their line to allow people who are unhappy with FCP X to use the products they want to and stay with Mac!
Walter Biscardi has a good post on editing for now, and or now that is AVID. And Premiere CS6 will be or some things as it is getting better, and Smoke will be tested and he is giving the ideas for their next version, both will possibly be implemented for him in 2013. For me it looks like AVID will be part of it, but I am hoping that CS6 is really a good replacement for Final Cut Pro 7.