News from Apple this week

[Foxbat]

You might want to take a look at Serif Affinity Photo and Designer. It's $50 per program, period. No subscription. It runs on macOS, iPadOS, and Windows (an Android version might be in the works, but it depends on the state of Android tablets), the caveat is you need to pay for each platform version (they do have 20% off sales from time to time). The biggest shortfall is there are no third party plug-ins, but that could change in the future. I'm hardly a graphical designer, so it works for me; your needs may be harder to fit into their architecture.

Affinity - Professional creative software

 

[harshness]

You might want to take a look at Serif Affinity Photo and Designer.

Alas, since the iMac doesn't do TV natively (perhaps because Apple is hell bent on using unconventional display resolutions), the graphic must be exported to hardware that does TV and that requires a Photoshop plug-in. The setup is neither elegant nor easy to use.

Live TV hasn't been easy on computers since the Commodore Amiga but Apple has made it particularly hard.

 

[TheForce]

Commodore Amiga

Boy threre's a blast from the past. The Amiga and the Toaster Last I heard Newtek was still in business. But they since went to the PC. I last saw them at NAB and they had some live "Newscaster" hardware interface they were pushing. Real TV stuck with the real thing from Grass Valley, Sony, and similar. I worked with a guy who owned a Toaster and he won a bid to record a live music concert in Gainsville. After he beat me in the bid, he had to hire me to do the engineering of the event, so I still made out. I did refuse to live switch with that toy Toaster but he did a pretty good job with 4 rental cameras. I recall the Toaster maxed out with 4 inputs. Anyway, I ended up doing the offline edit in my suite with my Video Machine which could edit rings around that Toaster, although the Toaster had Lightwave which was pretty good animation software. So he did that. I was using 3D Studio from Autodesk but the Toaster had some canned effects he could add in live. All my animation was much higher quality as it laid down the animation single frame to betacam SP. And that was my experience with the Amiga toy video mixer.

 

[harshness]

Last I heard Newtek was still in business.

Management may not be driving identical Ferraris anymore but NewTek is still around selling Tri-casters of all sizes (up to 24 channels) to all manner of organizations looking to create live video.

I did refuse to live switch with that toy Toaster but he did a pretty good job with 4 rental cameras.

Versus a $30,000+ post-production wanna be live solution, The Video Toaster was a pretty great bootstrap system.

I recall the Toaster maxed out with 4 inputs.

That it did. Four inputs is more than sufficient for small hall, business or school productions.

Anyway, I ended up doing the offline edit in my suite with my Video Machine which could edit rings around that Toaster, although the Toaster had Lightwave which was pretty good animation software.

The Video Toaster's NLE editing system, The Flyer, didn't require a second mortgage to acquire and didn't need expensive VTRs.

All my animation was much higher quality as it laid down the animation single frame to betacam SP.

Live TV is just so much easier than rendering video frame by frame. Many are willing to overlook some rough edges to save money and time (optimistically 10:1 raw to live) that post-producing video demands. Titling is usually a much bigger deal than fancy animations and the Video Toaster did that awfully well.

NewTek is still printing money after more than three decades while FAST lasted about seven years.

Editor’s Wake – Fast Video Machine

A NewTek/Video Toaster retrospective:

A history of the Amiga, part 9: The Video Toaster

All way off topic, but perhaps important perspective for those who weren't around or don't remember the state of the art in the early 1990s.

 

[Foxbat]

We still have three Amiga A4000s and an A1200 at work , but alas, they are sitting on the shelf as their day in the sun ended after our first President left the company and the Corporate Replacement thought that the TVs hanging from the ceilings were a waste of money. We were using Scala to create and present a 15 minute Company Information feed, detailing news items, weather, production numbers, company's stock previous day's closing price, upcoming social events, etc. As the Amiga natively supported NTSC (and PAL, but not in our location) it was a breeze to generate the video that fed into a Kramer AV distribution network to the Magnavox industrial TVs. The TVs in the office were programmed to turn off at night and over the weekends, turning on in the weekday morning.

We even have the Video Toaster 4000 in one of the A4000s, we used it to live broadcast some of the meetings in our executive conference room that couldn't seat the whole company, so people were able to watch the TV screens in their area. The Toaster made it easy to do a lower third with the event and speaker's name.

The TWiT Network uses the current NewTek TriCaster to produce and enhance their netcasts. Swinging back to Apple news, you can see the TriCaster in action by watching today's MacBreak Weekly which features the revamping of the MacBook lines:

​

Last bit of Amiga/Toaster Trivia: I am still using the Video Toaster 4000 mousepad that came with the Toaster on my Windoze desktop at work. I'll take it with me when I leave…

 

[Radioguy41]

It's funny how people who don't want to be bothered with programming and dealing with crashing learn the Apple system and don't go back unless they enjoy the challenges of the PC. Like I'm dealing with this weekend. I have one hard drive recovered about 80% now and the next one will be another 3 days of recovery. I have to figure out how to switch to win10 and not lose my archive drives of data. In the five years my wife has had her iMAC it has never crashed once and has been through 3 OS upgrades and it all just works before and after the upgrade. I had an android phone, a Samsung, for about 18 months and it crashed several times during that time. I only switched to iphone because I wanted the Apple Watch and was amazed how easy and reliable it was.

Where are all these people who are switching? After all these years of touting how much better Apple is it still holds barely 10% of the market in computers and 15% in phones. Apple is not all perfect. Wanna talk about the iOS 8.0.1 fiasco? Turned the iPad my son had given my wife into a brick. I've been troubleshooting computers since 1979 and that was the worst mess I ever had to clean up. There are numerous other examples. I'm not seeing any bragging rights here. Apple is an also-ran. Always has been and always will be. Pontificating will not change that. You like Apple and that's fine but it is not the be-all and end-all.

Net Applications: Windows 10 passes Windows 7 in market share

 

[Foxbat]

Kinda scary that there are still 4.5% of Windows users on Windows XP. I am surprised at the Windows 8.x numbers, but I suppose that reflects users who never upgrade.

Back to Apple, they are running their usual Back to School special of knocking off $100 from the new MacBook Air for college students as well as up to $395 off Beats headphones. Plus, AppleCare+ for your new computer is 20% off. Just need your student ID.

 

[navychop]

I could gin up a pretty good, even impressive, looking ID from the University of Hard Knocks.

But I’m not interested in buying either of those.


Sent from my iPhone using SatelliteGuys App. For now.

 

[harshness]

Back to Apple, they are running their usual Back to School special of knocking off $100 from the new MacBook Air for college students as well as up to $395 off Beats headphones.

$100 off a $999 MSRP computer is no student discount.

The Beats headphone offer is actually not a discount but a giveaway with a Macbook purchase. Next thing you know, Apple will remove the audio system from their notebooks and declare it game-changing because of the power savings. They'll soft-pedal that you likely use up that level energy or more on a self-powered Apple outboard sound system.

 

[harshness]

Kinda scary that there are still 4.5% of Windows users on Windows XP. I am surprised at the Windows 8.x numbers, but I suppose that reflects users who never upgrade.

You can pretty much bet that the make-up of the Mac user base is similarly to more tainted with bygone OS versions because the new versions aren't allowed run on old hardware that Apple users are so happy to point out lasts longer.

 

[Foxbat]

You can pretty much bet that the make-up of the Mac user base is similarly to more tainted with bygone OS versions because the new versions aren't allowed run on old hardware that Apple users are so happy to point out lasts longer.

Oh, yeah, I can agree with that. It’s like the VAX/VMS model of being able to run the same OS from Desktop to Data Center was recognized as not producing enough money for the company, so here we are 40 years later and your hardware has a finite life span because the latest OS doesn’t support the older hardware.

I guess that’s what Linux is for, breathing in new life to old hardware. My 2006 Mac Pro is running Ubuntu 18.04 and shows no signs of quitting. The Dell T7400 is showing its age but still runs Ubuntu 18.04 after Microsoft discontinued its XP support on it.

Anyway, wouldn’t you know it, my son mentioned that he’s a college student and his hand-me-down MacBook Air’s replacement battery isn’t holding a charge, hint-hint. And, oh yeah, his birthday is in three weeks…

 

[TheForce]

I've been working the past 2 days now trying to get the new win 10 computer to see my LAN. tried wifi and ethernet and it sees the NAS and printers but no W10 computers. The win 7 computers and imac has no problem just plug-n-play and set security for each hard drive. Windows 10, NADA! it's like they don't exist. I now have three win 10 computers ( one is a Surface Pro ) I've eliminated firewalls, set sharing and security so there is none and everyone cab see everything and still no win10 computers can see other win10 computers. The win 10 computers can see the iMac and win 7 computer but not the other way around.

I've watched dozens of YT videos on this problem and they all have different suggestions I have tried and nothing seems to work.

I'm not surprised that so many computers are still on win 7.


harshness- I took your suggestion and ordered an ethernet connected Raid 1 storage for my network. I'm going to test a Twin 2TB system to see how I like it. I can always add more capacity later. I've been using a Dropbox for files I needed to access on multiple computers and this local drive might reduce the need except when I travel.

 

[navychop]

You need to bow three times toward Redmond.

The burning of butter is optional.


Sent from my iPhone using SatelliteGuys App. For now.

 

[harshness]

Windows 10, NADA! it's like they don't exist. I now have three win 10 computers ( one is a Surface Pro ) I've eliminated firewalls, set sharing and security so there is none and everyone cab see everything and still no win10 computers can see other win10 computers. The win 10 computers can see the iMac and win 7 computer but not the other way around.

There are a bunch of registry settings that get in the way (even when you think you've disabled any and all protections). There's also an element of NTLM authentication level that may be causing you heartburn with much older architectures.

Windows 10 maintains two sets of settings (private networks and public networks) so you need to make sure that you set the Windows 10 network connections to private so they will be a bit more forthcoming with their presence on the network. Changing a network connection from public to home or office is surprisingly difficult compared to older versions of Windows. I think the recommended way is to run a snap-in. That's another thing I dislike about Windows 10: Each build changes things inexplicably and how you do things has to change along with it. Finding methods that work across all builds can be helpful. When you search for solutions, you should include the four-digit Windows build number (i.e. 1903) in your query as what used to work may no longer work.

By default, Windows 10 and Server 2016 won't even respond to ping requests so it can be pretty daunting to get networking up and running. Is it any more secure? Maybe. Is it harder to get working? Orders of magnitude. This is where using a NAS is helpful as they don't need to be set up with all manner of Windows protections from network-borne malware. I use a NAS for all my shared stuff and I can access it from everything from my 2013 Android tablet to my Roku 3 and all of the computers and streaming devices in between. I use a Linux box with many terabytes of storage that also has Plex on it for my media files. I can choose to play the media through SMB or through Plex. It is also my OTA DVR since I connected an HDHomerun Duo to my LAN.

 

[TheForce]

First off, the NAS drive is the best suggestion you have lately. I decided on a WD Raid 1 with two 2TB drives for starters. It had great reviews and arrived overnight for free. I set it up last night and everything worked. Very easy! It is expandable with USB 3.0. While I had no problem seeing it on my win 10 and iMAC computer, I tried to do a backup to it and got as far as the window asking where to but the backup and I selected Network but nothing was visible there. Copy and paste files in explorer does work, however.

On windows 10 Networking- I did everything you suggested except editing the Registry file. That is a little beyond my knowledge base riht now. I knew about private and public, and set the drives properties to share with Full control for "Everyone" as well as administrators. Each computer has 4 drives plus C drive set up this way I expect to see across my ethernet. The iMAC can see the computers but can't open their drives. The win10 can't see anything except the Dish Network DVR's and my new WD NAS, and network shared Printers.

 

[harshness]

I tried to do a backup to it and got as far as the window asking where to but the backup and I selected Network but nothing was visible there.

This is surely a problem with your backup software. I recommend NOT using Microsoft backup tools as Microsoft is legendary for not supporting formats across Windows versions. I use FBackup to back up directories as it has a nice scheduler service. Aomei Backupper is really slick as it allows you to "mount" the backup file so you can just restore selected files by browsing through the "drive". Both are free as in free beer.

You may need to map a drive letter to the NAS share if you're determined to use primitive backup software.

 

[navychop]

Reminds me to see if my NAS I took offline will work with Win10. If so, I should set it up as my backup destination.

I barely use my PC anymore. And I like it that way.

Sent from my iPhone using SatelliteGuys App. For now.

 

[harshness]

Reminds me to see if my NAS I took offline will work with Win10. If so, I should set it up as my backup destination.

Any NAS built in the last ten years or so should be fine. Some of the early devices don't support NTLM v2 that has been the default of Windows from Vista on so if it worked with Vista, 7 or 8.x, it should work with Windows 10. iDevices can connect via an SMB client like File Explorer.

 

[TheForce]

News-
Apple will announce a credit card including a plastic card in partnership with Goldman Sachs.

Apple has confirmed it plans to buy part of the mobile chip division from Intel for $1B. This will include facility with 2100 employees and all intellectual property rights. Intel will retain rights to the modem chip use . This pretty much seals the deal for Apple's 5G plans and excludes Qualcomm for good.

The President hinted that Apple will be adding a manufacturing site in Texas, but I believe he was referring to the Intel operation. News of this sort from any politician usually lacks specificity and hardly worth mentioning.

 

[harshness]

The President hinted that Apple will be adding a manufacturing site in Texas, but I believe he was referring to the Intel operation.

Apple is scrambling to meet their commitment to manufacturing in Texas now that they've moved the workstation manufacturing to China. Texas is probably eyeing these promises with a healthy shot of skepticism.

I recall they made similar promises in Arizona (data centers aren't particularly labor intensive).