Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large. 

Utilitarian longevity

At work we deal with plenty of computers of varying vintage. A constant I’ve seen is just how robust Mac desktops can be. We’re still comfortably deploying machines dating as fast back as 2015! Can’t say the same about Mac laptops, however: those tend to get absolutely abused. Any MacBook Air/Pro with the dreaded butterfly keyboard returns to us fairly useless. iMacs on the hand, because of their unmoving nature, will simply solider on until Apple ceases support in the latest macOS update.

These days I’m all about functional things lasting a long time. Which is to say I’m trying to be the type of person who keeps stuff for an extended period, instead of replacing them with the latest new shiny thing soon as it is available. Today is as good a day as any to start. I’m still going to trade in my iPhone for a new one every year, but at least the old phone goes back to Apple to live another day for a new master. Last week I returned a pair of AirPods Max headphones, instead choosing to keep using a pair of Bose QC35 headphones that’s been with me since the mid 2010s.

There will be no computer upgrade for me this year as well. I’ve trade in for a new MacBook Pro for the past three years, and the trend stops now. I don’t care how awesome the M2-powered MacBook Pros will be this year - I’m not switching! This M1 Max 16-inch MacBook Pro costs a whole lot of money, and it is still plenty fast for my purposes. I’m looking to get at least five years out of this one. Besides, my general workflow these days involves nothing heavy: a browser to access the Internet is all I need, really. I’m typing this right onto Squarespace’s CMS!

The reason we can still deploy 2015 iMacs into the field is precisely because the typical user only needs it to access the Internet. Add in Microsoft Office and Adobe Acrobat to the mix, and that’s pretty much all there is to it. I reckon those iMacs can be of service for at least three more years. A decade of use! Now that’s longevity.

Nice.

Finally a new iMac

Yesterday, Apple announced the awaited proliferation of its magnificent M1 chip to the iMac. However, it’s just not the one people like me are waiting for. Serving duty in the totally redesigned iMac is the same M1 chip in the 13-inch MacBook Pro and the Mac mini. An amazing chip in its own right, but us power-users are looking for something more worthy of a “pro” suffix.

This is just the beginning, of course: the new iMac announced yesterday is only the replacement for the entry level 21.5-inch. The 27-inch iMac we know and love soldiers on for awhile longer with the Intel chips, until more beefier Apple silicon is ready for the show. Apple have set the stage nicely for an iMac Pro lineup, whenever the more capable M1 chips arrive. I myself am waiting for that same chips to show up on a new 16-inch class MacBook Pro. Fingers crossed for later this year.

Nevertheless, the iMac gets a major design change in nearly a decade. It’s now essentially the biggest iPad imaginable (24-inch wide, this new entry-level iMac is) fixed on a display pedestal. That’s it: there’s no bulge, no curves, nothing extraneous. Due to the impossibly thinness, there’s now an external power-brick, which is something laptops users have been used to for the longest time. Finally there’s now a keyboard with Touch ID, again, something MacBook Pro users are familiar with, though it’s going to cost $50 dollars extra over the standard keyboard.

Very worth it to tick that option, I would say.

I think the new design looks fantastic, especially the return of colors that isn’t a shade of greyscale. If I were in the market for an M1 iMac, the blue would be the one. I do wonder if the forthcoming iMac Pro will keep such a colorful palette options. Probably not, because professionals are serious people, and only blacks and silvers will suffice!

The roundabout, confounding Americans since inception.

Not too much to ask

Today is one of those days where I don’t have one concrete topic to write about, so here comes a string of thoughts until I’ve achieved the appropriate length for one these blog posts.

My 2017 era iMac is middle of the line in specs with extra memory installed, yet somehow it’s struggling to run Adobe Lightroom smoothly. There’s a noticeable pause between toggling a setting and having it reflected on the image I’m working on. My 2019 era 15-inch Macbook Pro does not have this lag, which is baffling because there can’t possibly be this much advancement in processing power in the span of two years. The blame is squarely on Adobe for putting out a product that can’t run smoothly on a two-year old high-end computer.

Then again, Lightroom was never known for its smoothness and efficiency. Sadly, I can’t move away from Adobe to something like Capture One because my entire catalog since the very beginning of my photographic journey is in Lightroom. Having to migrate and learn a new system is more bothersome than whatever deficiency Lightroom has running on “old” machinery. So I simply deal with it; I could move all my editing work to the newerMacbook Pro, but the 27-inch screen real-estate of the iMac is difficult to give up.

Indeed this is a first world problem, but it’s a problem nonetheless. I get the sentiment of detaching from our issues and taking a different perspective when people remind us that our problems are of the first world variety; it’s a good exercise to remain humble and see that maybe the significance of an issue isn’t what we had initially assigned. However, it’s wrong when people use the “first world problem” refrain as a dismissal of what others are dealing with, as if taking another perspective would magically make the problem go away. That’s not how it works.

Perhaps my particular example of griping about the speed of Adobe apps is hilariously trivial even for first world standards, but let’s see you try editing through hundreds of photos while dealing with the lag. Those seconds of waiting for the interface to respond can add up really quickly. Professional photographs aren’t upgrading their computers every year, so I think the onus is on Adobe to make sure Lightroom doesn’t run slowly on PCs and Macs alike that aren’t of latest iteration in hardware.

I’m not holding my breath.

No filter needed.

No filter needed.

USB-C dongle life

Due to life circumstances, my trusty 5K iMac (2017 edition) got removed from my possession, and needing a replacement device to do all my creative stuff, I recently acquired a 2019 15-inch Macbook Pro. I’ve gone mobile again, after five years of running desktop macs of varying style. The immediate reaction isn’t from the nearly half-size reduction on screen real estate, but rather the sheer advancement in computing power in only two years’ time.

The 5K iMac remains a beast of a machine: 3.4GHz quad core chip, 40 gigabytes of ram, and 512 gigabytes of super fast storage. It handled everything I needed to do creatively, so of course I had zero plans to replace it anytime soon; unfortunately, other plans got in the way. Armed with a 9th-generation Intel processor with six cores, my new Macbook Pro absolutely chews through 85 MB RAW files as if they were iPhone jpegs. Making adjustments to photos is incredibly immediate, with no discernible lag; it makes the 5K iMac feel rather stilted in comparison, a difference I didn’t even know existed.

Latest Apple computer is fast. News at 11!

Ever since the latest restyle of the Macbook Pro was introduced back in 2016, the constant joke is that owners have to live the ‘dongle life’. In the constant pursuit of forcing users to buy high-margin accessories, Apple engineered the Macbook Pro with only four USB-C ports as IO. USB-C was relatively nascent technology back in 2016, and three years later, the landscape hasn’t exactly improved. Other than a GoPro 7, none of my other peripherals and electronic devices offers a USB-C connection, so in order to use this new Macbook Pro, I am indeed living the dongle life.

It’s absolutely absurd that fresh out of their respective retail boxes, the latest iPhone is (still) unable to connect directly to the latest Macbook Pro.

But there’s another problem: official dongles made by Apple are not exactly cheap. For a basic USB-C to SD card adapter - replicating the SD card slot that’s built-in to the iMac, Apple charges $39. An external display adapter is even worse: $69 if you wish to plug your Macbook Pro into a TV.

Seeing that I just dropped over $2000 on the laptop itself, I am actively fighting having to spend additionally on extra dongles. Thankfully, I actually do have USB-C to USB-A adapter, so I’ve been using that for everything. The process can be somewhat cumbersome: what was once a simple motion of taking the SD out of the camera and plugging it in to iMac, is now a multi-step challenge involving the camera itself, a USB cable, and the aforementioned USB-C adapter. Transfer over camera USB is much slower than the card straight in, too, so that’s quite a pain when dealing with many gigabytes of photos.

I think soon I just might give in and get a small docking station, with all the IO I’ll ever need.

Now this is a sort of commute I want.

Why is Adobe Lightroom so slow?

Adobe Lightroom is one of worse applications in terms of proper usage of computational resources. I’ve recently upgraded to the latest 5K iMac, quite the snazzy with ‘Kaby Lake’ Intel Core i5 processors and AMD Radeon 500 series graphics, which one would think should chew through Lightroom tasks with surgical ease. 

Completely not the case.

Lightroom ran the same on my new 2017 iMac as it did on the 2014 Mac Mini it replaced(!), which is to say, inadequately slow. It’s unacceptable for a company like Adobe to be putting out products like this (Premier Pro users on the Mac platform should understand my pain), wholly unable to utilize the computational reserves to the maximum. How on earth can there still be agonizing lag when applying sharpening to my Sony A7R2 RAW files when the iMac’s got 40 gigabytes of memory and the fastest consumer flash storage yet available?

And it isn’t like I can simply switch to another editing platform. Apple has long abandoned it’s once glorious Aperture app, and my blood isn’t rich enough for Capture one. At least Adobe has recently (finally) acknowledge the utter slowness of Lightroom and is supposedly working hard to remedy the situation in future releases. 

Perhaps late this year, Adobe? Pretty please?