Category Archives: Software

Mac OS X is Ten years old

Software

The OS that made me switch.

Say what you may about Mac hardware (I’m in the ‘overpriced, poorly heat managed, form-over-function-even-if-gorgeous-to-contemplate’ camp) the compelling reason for switching to the Mac today is the same as it was ten years ago when OS X was launched, replacing OS 9. I had long thought about switching from Windows by that time, but was aware that OS 9 was every bit as buggy and unstable as Windows ’98, so when OS 10.0 (Cheetah) came out, I decided to wait a while for the bugs to be worked out. But early trials set the heart racing – clean, quick, logical, uncluttered and with readable fonts.

So when OS 10.3 ‘Panther’ arrived and with it the first LCD iMac came out, so did my credit card and the new iMac was soon at work. (I skipped OS 10.1 ‘Puma’ and 10.2 ‘Jaguar’, as the original iMac hardware with its luridly colored translucent shell was ghastly to look at and had very modest specifications for the price). The excellent Epson 1270 ink printer plugged in and ‘just worked’, all sorts of other peripherals did likewise, and as a photographer I have never looked back. The first task was to start scanning all my negatives and slides using a Nikon Coolscan 2000 scanner. After connectivity agonies with Windows it was an unforgettable experience to plug the Coolscan in and find it was ready to go. Thereafter I simply had high quality scans made of all my negatives when they were processed and dumped them on the iMac’s hard drive.

My first Mac – $2,632.79!

At today’s prices, using the US CPI, that comes to $3,149.39, almost twice the cost of my quad core, three screen, SSD equipped Hackintosh! But it was worth every penny and more.

I bought the iMac for the OS, not the OS for the iMac though, strangely, that G4 iMac ‘screen on a stick’ continues to be the only one that has not failed and works to this day. It’s called proper heat management.

There’s an argument to be made that OS X saved Apple from oblivion and for the whole fascinating story of its development, chronicled by estimable British journalist Leander Kahney at Cult of Mac, click the picture below. Leica used to design a camera like this – prototype after prototype – until it worked right.

Click for the story.

The latest changes to OS X are at the margin and mostly icing on the cake, as the primary effort must go where the money is, meaning iOS. But while desktops and laptops are in inexorable decline, I expect that future versions of OS X will build on the iOS experience and only make things better. And as my quick check of the latest version of Snow Leopard the other day confirms, Apple is not letting code bloat slow things down. Indeed, Snow Leopard appears to be the fastest version of OS X yet.

Here’s to the next ten years. Well done Mr. Jobs and the whole team at Apple.

Snow Leopard 10.6.7

Hackintosh, OS X

The latest release.

Snow Leopard 10.6.7 came out yesterday, with bug fixes and security enhancements, and before you could say ‘Hackintosh’ I had it installed on the HackPro.

It’s worth the upgrade. Running in 64-bit mode here is the Geekbench (OS performance as reflected in CPU and RAM throughput – no disk factors, so the SSD I have recently installed is irrelevant to comparisons) report:

Snow Leopard 10.6.7

Here is 10.6.6 with the same configuration:

Snow Leopard 10.6.6

That’s 2.4% faster. Not enough to notice, but nice to know that the newer version is not the victim of performance drag from code bloat. The biggest component of the overall change is in the memory performance result which is 8.0% faster. Nice code optimization, Apple!

On the 2010 MacBook Air (mine is the 11″ with the base spec and minimum RAM) the change in speed is +5%. Once again, not noticeable but nice to know.

Collections and Slideshows

Lightroom, Photographs

Useful Lightroom tools.

Two powerful tools in Lightroom which perhaps don’t get the recognition they deserve are Collections and Slideshows.

Collections allow you to group selected images in one place, suitably named. No catalog bloat results, as a Collection is simply a set of pointers to existing pictures in your Lightroom catalog.

Collections in Lightroom.

The other day a relative asked for a selection of recent snaps so that she might choose one or two for display in large print format. I simply placed four dozen into a Collection, based on her taste for the simple and uncluttered, then went into the Slideshow module of Lightroom, choosing that Collection for the slideshow.

The Lightroom Slideshow module.

I saved the whole thing in low quality, to keep the files size down, exported it to DropBox and, minutes after receiving the request my relative had a file of proofs for review. The only things I did in the Slideshow module were to add a face page, which you can see below, and numbering, so that she need only report back the identifying numbers of the images she wants printed. The slideshow was saved as a PDF file in 1024 x 768 page size, formatted for her iPad. (The images break up if viewed larger than that).

If you like you can even embed a sound file to accompany the slideshow and can also save the slideshow as a video in a wide variety of sizes and formats. Adobe is totally on the ball here. Be warned that video creation really stresses your CPU and owners of iMacs should think twice before doing this, owing to the atrocious cooling design of those machines. Even the extraordinarily well cooled HackPro I use showed its quad core CPU temperature rising from the usual 115F to 165F when processing the related RAW files into a video, with the process taking 10 minutes. To put that upper temperature in perspective, I have the overheating warning buzzer in the HackPro’s BIOS set at 175F, near the CPU’s service limit, so that’s getting up there. The video, whose delay between slides can be set in the Slideshow module, came in at a whopping 88mB in 720P format.

Don’t try this on an iMac. Dramatic CPU temperature rise when
creating a video in the LR Slideshow module – all four cores shown.

The PDF file is a modest 4mB in size, by comparison, and you can download it by clicking the picture below.

Click to download. Best viewed in GoodReader on the iPad or in Preview on a Mac.

EyeOne and OS X Lion

iPad, Software

Problems, problems, problems

October 4, 2011 update: Xrite has now released a Lion-compatible version of its software. Click here to read about it.

As I mentioned yesterday, OS X Lion will no longer support PPC Rosetta applications. That really matters little as 99.9% of software has been updated to tun on current Intel Macs. But the fact that the PPC (G3/G4/G5) Mac has not been made for some 6 years now has not motivated the people at xrite to update its colorimeter software to work on Intel Macs. So once you convert to Lion or buy a new Lion-equipped Mac, your old EyeOne or Monaco Optix colorimeter is junk. It will not work as the software cannot be loaded.

Here is the reply I received from xrite to my question as to when they would release EyeOne Intel Mac software:

Forcing the noun ‘task’ into service as a verb is enough to make anyone ill.

Well, that’s encouraging. A guy who has no idea points me to a product that does not exist with an unknown release date.

Here’s an extract of the brochure he points to:

The bottom line is EyeOne and Monaco Optix (and maybe ColorMunki and Huey – all come from xrite) colorimeter owners will need the i1BasicPro software which the fine print states is a Universal Mac app (meaning PPC or Intel machines are fine). The software is not available yet, there is no stated availability date that I can find and there is mention of costly upgrade coupons ($400!), though it’s unclear whether you will need one for this app. This all makes me feel about as confident in xrite as I feel about U.S. energy policy.

It’s taken xrite 6 years to not release an Intel version of their app so I wouldn’t be holding my breath. But I would be holding my wallet.

Read on.

A simple and cheap workaround to Xrite’s sloth:

It generally pays to upgrade to the latest version of any Mac OS, with the sole caveat that it also makes sense to wait a while for the first version (meaning Panther->Tiger->Leopard->Snow Leopard, etc.) of a major upgrade to gel, allowing any undiscovered bugs to surface and be quashed in the first amended release. So you will likely want to upgrade to Lion when it hits version 10.7.1, skipping 10.7.0. Thus you have a couple of months at least. I doubt xrite will have their product out by then.

There are a couple of simple solutions, as subtle as a sledgehammer, but you can be absolutely sure they will work and that your excellent EyeOne colorimeter will continue to do its job.

They cost $0-$60, depending on which you choose.

  • Buy a $20 8gB USB flash memory drive.
  • Buy a $40 250gB 3.5″ SATA HDD for your Mac. If you have slots in it, you can install it internally. If not, use a disk cradle or separate enclosure, another $20-30.
  • Buy a 2.5″ $25 100gB SATA notebook HDD (MacSales has them for that right now!) and an external enclosure if needed
  • The free option – repartition an existing HDD and set aside some space for your Snow Leopard + EyeOne install

In each case the process is simple as can be.

Format the USB stick or HDD and install Snow Leopard and the PPC EyeOne Match software on the device. Don’t forget to include the optional Rosetta installation! When it comes time to profile your monitor(s) restart the Mac while holding the Option key on the keyboard. Your display will give you a choice of start-up drives. Select the one with Snow Leopard on it (or Tiger or Leopard). Start EyeOne Match and do the profiling.

The Free option: This one is my favorite! If you have an existing back-up HDD with lots of free space, then you can repartition it, if you use Leopard or Snow Leopard, without losing any existing data. Go into Disk Utility, select the drive then drag the lower right corner of the drive map (after clicking on ‘Partition’) to reduce the size of the existing partition and create a new partition for your Snow Leopard + EyeOne Match installation. You can then rename the partitions to something sensible using Finder. The picture of Disk Utility below shows the result after creating a new partition of 50gB on a 500gB notebook drive, reducing the original single partition from 500gB to 450gB. The 50gB partition will be for SL + EyeOne Match. Data in the original partition was not lost or erased by doing this.

A new partition has been created on a back-up disk.

If you rename your original partition be sure to rename it also in any stored back-up scripts used with the likes of Carbon Copy Cloner or other back-up applications.

Finder will now report your back-up disk as two disks and you can install SL and EyeOne Match to the new partition. When you are done you can go back into Disk Utility and reduce the SL + EyeOne partition to the minimum necessary so as to make as much free space available in the main partition on the HDD. I have tested booting from this partition back-up, attached the EyeOne colorimeter, ran the EyeOne Match software and everything worked perfectly.

Your profiles will reside here on your new device:

The screen snap shows the latest profiles for my three Dell 2209WA displays used with my HackPro.

Now reboot starting from the regular OS Lion boot disk, leaving the profile device attached so that you can copy over the latest profiles to the like directory on your Lion HDD. Do the copy now. Erase the old profiles.

To check the correct profile is being used go to System Preferences->Displays. If you have multiple monitors, move the white bar in Arrangement to the monitor you are checking. In this case quit and restart System Preferences->Displays to make sure you are addressing the selected monitor (OS X does not do this without restarting System Preferences).

Check the ‘Show profiles for this display only’ as shown below:

If the correct profile is not selected (your naming convention used when you save the profile from EyeOne match should be clear and obvious – I use ‘Left’, Center’ and ‘Right’ for my three displays) select it now and repeat for all other displays.

You are done and you can disconnect your Snow Leopard drive and stop worrying about Hans, Fritz, Helmut, Adolf and their fellow duffers at xrite coming out with a new version of their application for your EyeOne or Monaco Optix colorimeter. And your wallet will be safe, too.

And whatever you do, keep that Snow Leopard install disk or buy one now ($29) before Lion comes out, if you have lost your original!

Aperture cheap

Software

There’s a reason for that.

Apple just opened its App Store for the Mac, but to get at it you must first update to OS 10.6.6 (free).

The update places an App Store icon in your dock, thus:

The format of the AppStore remains the same, confused, poorly laid out and hard to find one used in the iTunes store and the iPad/iPhone App Store:

And if you like photo processing software that is buggy, slow, needs costly hardware to run and may well lose your pictures, you can now get it cheaper than ever. It’s Apple’s Aperture brought to you by the company which never discounts its software. Aperture started life at $499, dropped to $299, dropped to $199 (and kept dropping photos from your catalog) and has now crashed, like the Mac you are using it on, to …. $79.99.

So now you can lose your pictures for less than ever before. Now if you had a crappy product you needed to sell to keep the developers on board, would you be increasing the price? Hardly.

For those seeking to escape the tyranny of Aperture (I exited at v2.0, ten times bitten twice shy) you can see my piece on how to escape here. Lightroom continues to be bog reliable, fast, ever better with new noise reduction and distortion controls in v3 and doesn’t need a supercomputer to run fast. It never locks up for this user. Lightroom is $300 and given that it works, it’s worth a boatload more.

Think things have improved in Aperture v3? Think again. Here’s today’s screen snap from the Apple Discussion Board – notice anything?

Grumbling aside, the OS X AppStore is a move in the right direction, should expand the market for independent developers’ work and adopts the ‘register once, buy easily thereafter’ model familiar to every iPhone and iPad user. That part is well engineered and there is no evidence to suggest that Apple is lying when it says it does not sell your ID.

And you know the best thing about it? It runs perfectly on the best OS X machine made, a HackPro, and supports that third monitor just fine.

Finally, for those of you in high sales tax jurisdictions, buy from the AppStore and you will be charged sales tax. Buy direct from the developer and you will not pay any. Hey, it’s your choice.