It seems that Microsoft has decided to take advantage of the current stagnant nature of Apple in the computer world.  Oh sure Apple introduced a “touch strip” calling it “new” but PCs have had a version of the touch strip for a few years now.   And of course, Windows PCs have been available with full touch screen displays for years now as well.  But Microsoft sees an opening to not only the creative world, but the general public through some very innovative and “Mac-like” products.

Apple has, rightfully, become a lifestyle company built around “things” with the centerpiece being the iPhone.  The iPhone put Apple on a completely new track arcing away from computers and towards consumer goods.   The iPad, the Watch, the AppleTV.  All consumer goods designed to make the lives easier of those who own them.  They’re all mini-computers to be sure, but they’re consumer items with more or less specific purposes.  And consumers have rewarded the company well.  So it appears that Apple’s current position is the general consumer doesn’t need much more than a laptop these days and they don’t really want a touch screen.  I personally believe Apple is just waiting for the death of the “computer” as an item in the home and you’ll just use your phone / tablet / watch as all the computing you’ll need along with a wireless keyboard to use cloud based apps via your TV or tablet.

Now how did Apple come to be “THE” lifestyle company to the masses?  Well it wasn’t through blazing computer sales.  Apple computers sales ALWAYS lagged behind PCs.  Generally far, far behind PCs because you could only get them from one company, they were more costly than PCs and you couldn’t just build one easily of the shelf.  Only “artists” would use a Mac because….. well we liked working with them and they were generally “cooler” than PCs.

That “cool” factor helped Apple when it was ready to make the leap from computer to lifestyle company.  Enter the iPod.  10,000 songs at your fingertips and in your pocket.  No matter what the competition threw at Apple, the iPod was too cool to beat and Steve Jobs was the ultimate cool salesman.   The iPhone sent the company to the stratosphere and suddenly computers were no longer front and center at Apple.  The iPads and MacBook Airs followed along with the Watch as the old bread and butter towers of yore faded to the background.    But it was those cool computers that gave Apple the clout and the consumers the confidence that their innovative devices not only looked good, but would work reliably.    And now we’re at the point where Apple is no longer a computer company first.

I believe Microsoft sees an opening into the hearts and minds of both consumers and professionals alike by re-inventing the computer experience around touch screen.  Consumers are already used to touch screen tablets and phones.   While the Surface Tablet has steadily improved, sales are far behind the iPad, though Apple is no longer the dominant tablet maker with less than 25% market share as of Q2 2016.   So by taking a step “back” and re-invigorating the personal computer experience with an over the top Surface Studio and more powerful Studio tablets, Microsoft has suddenly become the “cool” computer company.    Their Surface tablets run full desktop software putting it on par with the MacBook Air.  Microsoft has a buzz around their products that resemble the Apple buzz of old.

So taking a page from the Apple playbook, Microsoft could use the reinvigorated computer experience which includes Windows 10 as an entryway into the full lifestyle experience.   The Windows Phone failed to catch on and the Zoom audio player never got anywhere.  But the living room is probably the next great battleground with streaming video services and devices.   If Microsoft gets the Surface re-launch right, they could re-introduce Microsoft as an innovated lifestyle company.   Right now Microsoft, HP and other PC companies are getting noticed for innovation in the computer space while Apple treads water.

As for me personally, I have probably made my final Apple purchase as I’ll trade in my current MacBook Air for a Surface Tablet.  For my professional computers, the 27″ 5k Retina iMac will be my final Mac for work.  What will replace it remains to be seen, either a custom PC desktop or the Surface Studio.

Where does the computer and lifestyle space go from here?  It will be interesting to see how this Apple / Microsoft story plays out over the next 2 – 5 years.

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Now this is my PERSONAL MacBook Air so I didn’t mind being a guinea pig for this new OS.  It would not affect my paying work.     I would NOT install Mac OS X Sierra on a professional workstation or any machine you use to make a living at this time.  

Observations so far:

Overall operation of the entire MB Air is slower and hotter.   One fix Apple Support suggested was to restart in Safe Mode to force the machine to clear out a lot of cache and it sounded like it did a bit of cleaning up on the startup overall.  After doing that and then restarting the machine it does seem to work marginally better.  The machine continues to run hot for no apparently reason.   That area of the keyboard just below the “MacBook Air” name is almost continuously hot.  Prior to installing Sierra, the machine would only really heat up if I was doing a render in Premiere Pro or After Effects which would be expected.  But generally I’m only using this machine for writing and organizing photos.

Battery life is definitely degraded, seems I’ve lost at least an hour to 90 minutes of battery working time on the Air.  Now this is probably connected to the hot machine since that’s due to the CPU working hard so something is making the Air work harder than it should.

Mail app is much slower to retrieve incoming mail and slower to open each piece of mail.  It also has a weird refreshing behavior each time I open a new piece of mail.   The entire screen refreshes when I look at a new piece of mail.

Safari and Opera continually shut down a page due to a non-working extension or other similar error.

Printing to an HP wireless printer is not working, but printing to an Epson is.   It’s an HP OfficeJet all in one model that’s about 5 years old.  I can’t print to it.  But I can print to an Epson all-in-one wireless model we got earlier this year.

I have NOT launched any Adobe software on here yet.  Am

On the upside, Wi-Fi connectivity seems to be better.   I have several networks at my office and for whatever reason the Air would NEVER connect to one particular network.  Now it does.

So if you want to dive into the OS X Sierra pool early, proceed with caution.  ALWAYS CHECK WITH SOFTWARE MANUFACTURERS BEFORE UPDATING AN OS.   The folks at ToolFarm have created a great Sierra Compatibility Chart that’ll get you started.  But just because you don’t see your software on your list, doesn’t mean it will work.

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Adobe just responded on their blog and it appears that editing ProRes could be a problem right now if you uninstalled Quicktime on a Windows Machine.  Click the link for the full announcement.

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WallyCam is decidedly low tech and casual. I’m covering both the tech and creative of NAB Show along with some of the fun and experience of Las Vegas and the awesome people who come here every year. It’s a reunion and networking event all rolled into one.

The post #WallyCam #NABShow 2015 | iOgrapher for iPad and iPhone with Kevin Bourke appeared first on WalterBiscardi.com.

I’ve been pushing Adobe for a few years now to make a much simpler version of “Anywhere” that would only run on an in-house system to allow multiple editors to work off the same project via one shared storage system. Hoping to learn more on the Avid / Adobe collaboration on the ISIS media server and hoping that the collaboration there might lead to even more open sharing and collaboration between the NLEs.

All these rumors are really getting me excited to see what April 13th brings!  Yes, I’ll be reporting from the show floor as I can and of course stay tuned to CreativeCow.net for up to the minute news releases and reports.

WallyCam is getting packed and ready for NAB 2015 and maybe a bunch of reports on Editor Collaboration.

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Big shout out to Carl Olson for all his help these past two years setting up the site.  He’s a great designer and a good friend.  Be sure to check out his DCP podcast with great interviews with many industry leaders.

Walter

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The main use of this machine is email and writing (like this).   Even the salesman at the Apple Store told me that if I needed to do any “heavy lifting” such as video editing or Photoshop, this machine would choke.   At NAB 2014 I was impressed I was able to edit something like 20 “WallyCam” videos off the Air and a single USB 3 hard drive.   This thing just continues to impress me as I’m able to continue working on a much, MUCH larger project in the evenings at home.

Because the screen is only 13″ I used it to run a full screen timeline.

I connected a 24″ Dell UltraSharp monitor as the secondary display to hold the Source / Program / Bins and my now favorite “Markers” Window.

All the media lives on, plays off a single 1TB USB3 Seagate Drive I picked up for about $75 at Costco.   This particular project was shot over 5 days.  Each day had up to three cameras shooting.  5 different camera types were used.  Canon, Sony, Panasonic and GoPro all represented in the footage.  It’s all 1080p / 23.98 and it’s around 650GB of total material.

And it just…. works.   Yes, I drop the resolution in the Source / Program displays to 1/2 or 1/4 but I can edit without delays, without lags.   An underpowered laptop and a single USB 3 drive.  NEVER in a million years would I have believed something like this could work.   Would this work as my primary system?  No.  Render times would kill me.   But for rough editing, editing in the field, editing at home…..  absolutely.   Even for finishing simple projects like the “WallyCam” videos were a breeze.

This machine is performing better than my 3 year old iMac with a 4 drive, 8TB FW800 RAID.

I’m running this with Adobe Premiere Pro CC and CC 2014, but I have to imagine both FCPX and Avid would run pretty smoothly on this as well, especially dropping the playback resolution.    I know Smoke 2013 has been demo’d on an Air but I’m not sure the specs on those machines.

Keep in mind that when you purchase an Air, you get what you get.  You can’t ask the store to add more RAM or anything like that.  Everything is soldered together so if you want something different than what’s in the store, you’ll have to order it.  I didn’t need anything more powerful for what I’m doing.  Heck I never planned to edit video with this at all, but it worked so well at NAB, I just decided to keep pushing it.  Can’t imagine what the performance would be like with a fully tricked out Air.

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If I wanted anything else beyond this base setup, I would have to order it from Apple since everything is soldered together.   There’s no way to even add another 4GB RAM at the Apple Store anymore, it has to come preconfigured.   Yes, Apple DID have a model in the store with 8GB of RAM but it was also the top of the line machine and way more than I wanted to spend on a laptop.  So off I went with the base Air for less than the MacBook Pro.   Less RAM and slower processor than the Pro, but so much lighter in the weight.    Because the hard drive is so small compared to what I usually use, I picked up a 1.5TB USB3 Seagate from Costco on my way home, I think it was $70, to hold my iPhoto Library.

At NAB 2013 I started shooting selfie interviews with a portable camera I borrowed from a local DP.  The idea is to just capture the essence of the show with some useful information but in a VERY informal style.  I think it’s fun to use such simple handy cam techniques in a ridiculously technology heavy showcase.  Folks really enjoyed them last year and Marco Solorio dubbed them #WallyCam so I was determined to make them even better this year.   But then I remembered…. MacBook Air.   And not only the Air but the most basic model with just 4GB RAM.   Hmmm, will it even RUN the Adobe suite?   Why yes.   Yes Indeed it does.

So what IS WallyCam?  Well this year it was a Canon Vixia HD R400 camcorder that shoots 1080i AVCHD onto those small SD cards.

A whopping $200 at Best Buy and loaded with features like manual audio level, control, manual white balance, manual exposure, external mic input, focus tracking and even manual focus control.   Oh and it has audio meters and record time remaining on the SD card.   In short, this thing has more features than some of the more expensive cameras out there AND it fits into the pockets of my cargo shorts.  Perfect for walking around Vegas and the NAB Show Floor.  I even found a neat extendedable stick on the Strip in Vegas to make shooting even easier and give me some wider shots.  Thank you Tim Kolb for finding it.   See just how simple this is?

At the end of each day I transferred the footage to the USB 3 drive using the onboard SD slot.  VERY VERY fast data transfer, I’m really liking USB 3.  Fire up Adobe Premiere Pro and…… edit.   No problem at all.

As you can see, generally these are one video track with some additional B-Roll on Track 2.  Tracks 3 and 4 are the bug and #WallyCam / Twitter identifier which are in the entire video.  And then I’ll use tracks 5 and 6 for the Lower Third identifiers, all created in the PPro Title Tool.  Running time averages 3 minutes though the #PostChat meet up was so epic it featured a 20 minute video.   Generally I put no filters on the videos to help with the rendering times because I’m just trying to get these out quickly, get them uploaded and get to the next NAB event.

You’re probably noticing the red line above everything.  That’s in there partially because I actually drop the the video into a 720p timeline for the edit.  Yeah I could use AME to convert the footage to 720 on the way out, but editing in 720p already puts the footage into the format I want to output with and if I want to reframe anything, I can do so.   Editing was surprisingly snappy, the USB 3 single drive worked brilliantly and even render time was impressive.  I averaged a 10 minute render time for a 3 minute timeline.    That’s converting everything from 1080 to 720 plus the graphics plus converting to an H264 for upload.   That was very impressive for a machine that the Apple salesperson rightfully assured me, “you don’t want to use this for editing.”   In the 5 days I was in Vegas I turned around 20 WallyCam videos.  Premiere Pro and AME never hiccuped, crashed or otherwise burped during those 5 days.

Would I use this as my ONLY editing system?   Nope, I’m sure you throw some large projects at it and you’re gonna be in a world of hurt.  But smaller on site jobs, video reviews, etc….   It’s definitely something that does work and it’s certainly very light.   My next step is to purchase another USB 3 drive, install the Mac OS on there and then install the entire Adobe Creative Cloud there so I don’t fill up my 256GB internal drive with that suite.   Then anytime I need to pull up Premiere, Photoshop or anything else, I’ll have it on hand, just reboot to the external drive.  Yes, you MUST have the OS on the same drive as the applications, I already asked Adobe about that.

So Yes Virginia, you CAN Edit Video on a basic MacBook Air and you can do it surprisingly well.

Here’s a search of all the WallyCam videos.   And here’s the epic #PostChat NAB Meet Up video.

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