From Andrew Orr at AppleInsider. Wow, I didn’t realize GitHub is just allowing all this malware and telling you to run it in the Terminal, basically bypassing any security! be careful!
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.
Simon Wyndham at RedShark News has a good read on why he is considering moving back to PC after the lackluster Pro Laptops and the lack of a real Pro Mac.Now I have been saying this for years now. I don't want to leave Mac, as I like it much better than Windows, but Windows has really become superior for Professional Computer work. There is not the choice with Mac, and the fact that the MacPro is from 2013 and itself has no upgrade ability really limits the Mac. Sure I could go Hackintosh, but working on a Quo at work I have seen the issues with upgrading, and don't really want to deal with it.Apple has given up on the creative professional, and Microsoft has stepped up. Look at the next Windows Update for Creatives, and the Suface, Surface Book, and Surface Studio are really for creatives!I think Apple is making a huge mistake by not making machines for the market that kept them afloat through all the bad years, but Tim Cook doesn't seem to agree, and Apple will suffer for it.
Other World Computing has a great article on how to install a bootcamp partition on disk larger than 2.2TB.I wish I had seen this earlier. As I recently replaced my 2TB that had bootcamp on a partition on it with a 3TB drive that I took out of my Synology, and I could not restore my old BootCamp partition using WinClone because I could not make the partition. I could do it again now, but would have to reback up the drive and then move it back afterwards, and am not sure I have enough hard drive space for this, unless I wipe out the old disc with BootCamp on it. And I have yet to do a WinClone Restore so I am not sure it will work and don't want to lose the BootCamp partition just in case.
So if you read this blog you already know that I have pretty much come to the decision that my next computer will not be a Mac. I love my old MacPro 4,1 but it is getting long in the tooth, and I haven't even been able to do the Firmware Upgrade to get it to 5,1, so the next OS Sierra will not work on my current MacPro as it will only work on a 5,1 (I haven't tried putting in my old video card before the upgrade, which might help, but it looks like El Capitan makes it harder).Unfortunately in 2007 I moved over to Pages to do my invoices, resumes and cover letter. Now you can individually export your documents to the modern word format docx, but I am talking hundreds and hundreds of files that I may want to access at some point, so I wanted a way to batch those files.This requires applescript, and while I used to be OK at Applescript all those skills have since gone away.A quick google search showed one page dedicated to scripting the iWorks suite, and it is iWorkAutomation. Specifically there is a script to Export to Word, but it is not a batch export, just a single use, and so not of use to me, except for stealing some of it's commands.So then I went back to the old faithful applescript forums MacSpripter, and did a search. And I found an awesome script from Yvan Keonig, which automates the process, allowing you to pick a folder with you pages documents and then chose a destination folder, and it batch converts to PDF files.Luckily my limited Applescript skills and the fact that the script was so well written, let me use the Microsoft Word commands from iWork Automation and combine them to make a script to convert to Word documents.Just copy this script and paste it into Script Editor and run the script. You can also save the script to your scripts folder.set theSourceFolder to (choose folder with prompt "Select a folder whose files you wish to convert to word:")tell application "Finder" set filesArray to every file of theSourceFolder whose name extension is "pages"end tellset theDestinationFolder to (choose folder with prompt "Select a folder where you want the converted files to be placed: ")tell application "Pages" to activaterepeat with aFile in filesArray tell application "Finder" set fileAlias to aFile as alias set fileName to name of fileAlias set fileExtension to name extension of fileAlias end tell set theOriginalName to fileName -- remove extension set prevTIDs to AppleScript's text item delimiters set AppleScript's text item delimiters to "." & fileExtension as string set fileName to first text item of fileName set AppleScript's text item delimiters to prevTIDs -- prepare desktop folder path and name set docPathAndName to (theDestinationFolder as text) & fileName & ".docx" # EDITED tell application "Pages" -- open the file set targetDocument to open fileAlias -- EDITED : was aFile which is a Finder reference, not what…
BlackMagicDesign's Davinci Resolve 12.5.1 has been released and it includes Quicktime ProRES decoding on Windows! You can check out all the new features here.With Apple having ended Quicktime support for Windows, and now Adobe and DaVinci adding Quicktime Pro Res playback on Windows, that basically means that you can use all the old ProRes files you have, but it is time to move on. And it is unfortunate as ProRES HQ had really become a great intermediate format and ProRES 444 is an awesome alpha format.And it looks like it is time to move to AVID's DNxHD format, since like ProRES it is pretty much visually lossless at higher bitrates.
Well a company called TroubleAcres has an app that can play music off a USB stick on your XBOX one. It is free and it works, but it is very simple. It only plays MP3, WMA and FLAC files on a FAT32 or NTFS USb drive within a folder called "Xbox Music Library" and it has a limitation of only 200 files and plays them in alphabetical order. It does read files in folders, but only to add to the alphabetical list.It works and I can finally play my own music. Just have to keep it to 200, and put music on I want at the time.I am on a Mac and use ALAC files, which are not supported, but luckily the $5 M3Unify app from the awesome Doug's Scripts will convert to MP3 and put files in folders by artist and album. Of course for now those folders are useless, but hopefully it will work at some point. And ALAC support would be great too, since the One does support AAC in it's Media Player app (which also supports a DLNA, and folders, but for some inexplicable reason doesn't support Background Music making it next to useless).
So if you have been reading my posts you know that my MacPro is nearing the end of it's life. The next version of OS X, macOS Sierra, officially does not support my MacPro 4,1. Now it does support the MacPro 5,1, and I can do a firmware flash and make my Mac think it is a 5,1, since the only different was a firmware upgrade and newer processors. So I will be able to Install Sierra, but the writing is on the wall and Sierra will likely be the last OS to support a 5,1 MacPro.And it is not like I have a stock 4,1, it has an SSD, an NVIDIA GTX 670 with 4GB of RAM, and a ton of Hard drives, but the big issue is that Adobe Creative Cloud big updates tend to only work with the latest Mac Upgrade so my MacPro has maybe a year or at best 2 before it can no longer get OS upgrades, and will literally be a paperweight. Sure I can still run it for some things, but it won't be getting security upgrades, and software will stop working on it.Now for most software I can easily move it to a PC, or if not easily it can at least be done. I can resave all my Pages files to word docs, and things like that, but for Web Site Creation it is not so Easy.I run Rapidweaver 6 for web site creation. I used to make my own web sites in HTM, and have run many many programs from Net Objects Fusion when it was Mac, to Dreamweaver, but I don't want to code anymore, as basically when the web moved heavily to CSS I moved to WYSIWYG completely and gave up on coding for the most part.So now I run RapidWeaver 6 (I know 7 is out, but do I really want to upgrade, when in the next few years I will be likely be moving to windows? Not really!) and do my 2 web sites, as well as my mom's web site for her business.Of course RapidWeaver is unfortunately Mac only. So the question becomes what to rebuild my web sites in that would work on a PC. The obvious choices are not so obvious.I already run Adobe Creative Cloud, so Dreamweaver makes sense if I wanted to code HTML, but I don't.So I recently took a look at Adobe Muse, it's WYSIWYG web creation tool, that was created not by the Dreamweaver team, but by the Indesign team. And MUSE looks fantastic and powerful, except for one major thing, BLOGS!And it is blogs that hurt the whole equation! I have one local Wordpress Blog, my Movie review blog, and 4 google blogger blogs. Now I know that not having a blog local means that it won't show up in search for the site, though I get around this in RapidWeaver by user the Loghound SiteMap plug in, which scans all of your blog entries and…
This is my second post on this subject, but I just can't believe that Microsoft has released background music and not updated Media Player to work with it, so you basically can't play your own music on the XBOX ONE. This was a release feature on the Xbox 360, WTF Microsoft!The first app was a damn Podcast app! What is that? And now I guess that Groove Music, Microsoft's paid music service will work in the background. And supposedly it will play music you have copied to your OneDrive, if you have enough space, but you seem to have to have a paid account for that to work (though I could be wrong on that). The thing is that the 360 worked off a DLNA server from your computer, so with the help of an app, I could stream all my music from my Mac to my XBOX and pick tracks and play them. I want to play my own music, not paid music, and not even Pandora (which is supposed to work soon). I want my own music!And honestly the fact that Microsoft's paid music service GROOVE will work soon makes me very wary! WTF! Let me play my own music! Hell if I have to I will rip CD's to my One as I could with my 360! It is better than just streaming or paid music! Hell even if I have to put them on a USB stick and do it that way, it is at least my music, but again that would require Microsoft to update their Media Player app!
Microsoft released it's summer 2016 update, and finally after 2 years they have released Background Music, which was released late on the original Xbox and a release feature on the Xbox 360. The problem is, they didn't update their own apps! Seriously the only app that supports it is CAST, an app to listen to Podcasts! WTF!Now they have announced support for the crappy Microsoft Groove, it's paid app, and Pandora, but no word on Media Player and that is the rub! On the Xbox 360 you could stream music from a dlna server on your computer, and control it via the app or via a quick pop up. The Media plays music from DLNA servers or USB, though you can't rip music to the hard drive like you could on the 360, but no the app does not support Background Music, and there is no world when it will.