The time has been filled with completing the tech editing of Martin Evening's next book in the Photoshop for Photographers series, working on the design of a versatile link plate to improve the mechanical advantage of working with a gimbal head when using shorter focal length telephoto lenses on such heads, meeting and discussing the concept with local precision engineers, and later bringing up the idea with manufacturers and distributors at Focus on Imaging at the NEC in Birmingham.
Then there was discussion with clients on the upgrading of digital equipment, and the implications of and interaction with new software. Carrying out some retouching for clients, and also helping one with tackling their own retouching; this was an interesting and challenging period that began as a discussion, but grew over several days into a full-blown remote training session involving mutual screen-sharing using iChat and my doing some examples on their three-screen setup a couple of hundred miles distant! More recently, I found myself helping someone recommended to me as the person to help in the move from Windows to Mac platform and in the choice of software for video editing. As was pointed out by another photographer, was this the best time, bearing in mind my personal experiences with Apple over the Lion transition, and the direction that company is taking and it's effect on its traditional business users. I am unsure on that particular score, because I do think Apple is failing to appreciate the differences between the controlled ecosystem it enjoys within its consumer products and the pre-existing open and diverse environment with minimal Apple control over its traditional Macintosh using marketplace. It maw want to dominate and control that as witnessed by the Mac App Store, but it is not there yet, and that is very much a place with many well-established third party players, and the end users are very happy with that situation. 'Third-party' is rapidly being expunged from the Apple dictionary.
My main objection to Lion is in its memory-handling, and assumptions being made in this regard, and its clear direction the system software is taking as evinced by Mountain Lion. Almost no thought is being given to its loyal users within the Creative community, as the numbers are insignificant in comparison to the purchasers of the iPad, iPod Touch and iPhone, now rapidly becoming derogatively described as iToys. I number myself as an owner of some of these, but I view them as tools, but I do not mistake them for workhorse Macs.
I have found some time to take photographs, but never in enough numbers to involve a gallery, and whenever the light has improved in the last fortnight, work has kept me tied to the computer or the telephone!
No comments:
Post a Comment