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It’s not obsolete, it’s “vintage”…

July 27, 2009, 11:59 -05 by chris
Filed Under: Rants [0] Comments


Cry me a riverSo in order to actually use the “new” features in the Logic Studio and Final Cut Studio updates that Apple released late last week (which competing apps have had for years, and never mind that they only got to 8.02 on Logic with a metric *&%@$-load of bugs never addressed – thanks a lot for a “final” .02 version over the course of two years, without real bug fixes before moving on to the next full-number version, guys…) I’d have to shell out over four grand for a (used) new multi-Intel-core Mac Pro, another arm and a leg to replace UAD-1 cards with a UAD-2 since the new Mac Pros have a “new improved” kind of PCI slot, and then several hundreds of dollars for the actual updates themselves.  

Yes, those “flex time”, “drum replacement”, and other handy editing features sure would have been useful, oh, starting two or three years ago, thanks (doing in a couple quick clicks what I now blow entire evenings doing), but for the effective “gotta buy new hardware if you wanna use the new software” price of admission, one could arguably buy a workable drum set, tape machine, editing block, and razor blades.

Which, unlike all too many of our contemporaries, we actually do know how to use.  Then again, one reel of actual tape costs almost as much as the software update these days.

I totally understand not wanting to continue development for PPC users in the “gotta keep payin’ if you wanna keep playin’ ” Great Apple Abandonware Tradition, and I was already resigned to sighing dramatically, staring wistfully out the window, and making an appointment with a therapist to help deal with the deep-seated shame, anguish and humiliation of not running the latest versions of Logic and Final Cut until a hefty chunk of change falls from the sky for a new “studio computer”, but really, Apple, did you have to add injury to insult by having the most recent “Software Update” automatically break stuff that was working just fine before?

Since the last “Software Update” did its thing, I can’t use Safari on the ol’ dual-2.7 G5 now (well, technically I can, if I want to wait literally a couple hours for the “beach ball” to stop spinning as it grinds away – and manually downloading and reinstalling Safari, repairing permissions, and the rest of the usual rigamarole doesn’t make any difference either), the MacBook Air is permanently set to Greenwich Mean Time no matter how many times we tell it that no, really, we want PST, and dad-in-law’s MacBook Pro assures us that the licenses for all of his purchased-at-the-Apple-Store-Apple-branded apps are now stolen or otherwise illegitimate.

Now, I’ve never been one of those pain-in-the-boohonkus “Cult of Mac” people who drive around with an Apple sticker on my car cruising for hapless Windows users to poke with sharp sticks (after moving from 16-track reel-to-reel and hardware sequencers, to computer slaved to SMPTE on the reel-to-reel, to fully-computer-based, our first CD was done in part in Cubase on Windows, and part in Cubase on Mac, so I’m more of the “personally, I prefer a Mac now, but whatever works for you is cool” camp – and besides, it doesn’t suit my bleeding-heart-liberal side to make fun of the disadvantaged), and consider such behavior to make no more sense than it would to slap “My Other Dishwasher is Also a GE”, “Powered by Kitchen Aid”, “Make it a Subzero or Let It Rot”, “Spatulas by OXO”, and “My Cuisinart Shreds” stickers on the back window of one’s automobile, but it’s still a bit disappointing that Apple’s just “less bad than the alternative” in my mind, at least for this week. 

“It just works.” Except for when it actually doesn’t.



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