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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Operating System for Professionals

Steve Sherrick

Steve Sherrick

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Full disclosure: I have not used Mac OS Sierra. But from what I can see in the preview, this seems to expand the OS to do more things for you, to be more involved. It wants to be your personal assistant. I think for some people this may be a welcome evolution. For me, I want the OS to get out of the way, to serve the tools I use in an invisible manner. I want it to be stable, reliable. If I need to get under the hood, that option is there. I understand there is a large segment of the population that Apple and Microsoft are trying to appeal to. I understand that we are in an ios era with smart phones and tablets dominating the market. But where does that leave the professionals that need something else? Will we simply have to adapt to the whims of A & M? Linux and other OS are intriguing but not all of the tools I use are compatible.

For those who know this stuff at a deeper level, i.e. Jeff, Eric, etc where do you stand on this? Do you feel it's heading in a good direction for the slice of the user base that doesn't feel the need for Siri on the Mac desktop or lots of things trying to run in the background? Does anyone else desire a clean, streamlined OS or am I just becoming the old guy resistant to change?
 
I'm with you.

I prefer Windows over OSX because I feel like it's more customizable, but I'd love a totally stripped back, performance-minded install. I think it's somewhat fairly achievable in Windows by just shutting off the window dressing elements.

I need to do a clean install of Win10 anyway, so maybe I'll see how stripped back I can make the install.
 
Siri:

"Turn off? I am sorry, Steve. I am afraid I can't do that. Let me re-edit your last version into a final one. I understand you have been struggling."
 
Jonas Rejman said:
Siri:

"Turn off? I am sorry, Steve. I am afraid I can't do that. Let me re-edit your last version into a final one. I understand you have been struggling."
Click to expand...
Something tells me we're not too far off from that. If Siri can do all of the assistant editing tasks and let me just do the creative editing, I might be open to that. :-)
 
A little background - my career deals exclusively with Windows servers.

On an OS X vs. Windows level, I feel like Windows has a ton more "background" processes that run without immediate user input. I know that at least in OS X, I can turn most of those off. The newest Windows start menu is a good example of everything I hate seeing in my OS. At least at the core of OS X, it's Unix based (which gives me a little more confidence on what's going on). I would love to see something like a stripped Linux distro, like Ubuntu used to be, but with the usability of OS X.

I absolutely agree with you, however. These OS's are starting to adopt that sort of "speak-and-spell" methodology which, in a way, is insulting to power users.
 
If anyone wants to collaborate on a parody of the old Mac vs Window's guy commercials where it would be new OS guy vs old school power user, let me know. :-)
 
When I was growing up in the '60s it was cool to work on your own car. It was accessible. many young men (almost exclusively) took pride in tuning their engines, changing their oil and spark plugs, "upgrading" their exhaust systems, etc, etc. Times were simple. These men grew up with an understanding of the internal combustion engine. But times change. Today, cars are just a collection of computers all bound up in a plastic shell. To my knowledge, it's pretty hard to do much work on your own car today - at least without access to diagnostic machines that cost big bucks and some very specialized tools. One could argue that this is all a bad thing but I would disagree. Cars are more reliable, more environmentally friendly, more capable and generally, less expensive to run (in inflation-adjusted terms). And, in the not-to-distant future, they will drive themselves - and better than we currently do it.

Computers are getting more capable and yes, more complex. Fewer and fewer people will have the skills to "customize" them. And the manufactures won't really try to accommodate those who want to. Then again, with a few voices commands, they will probably be able to configure themselves in any way the user might want. Will there be growing pains? Yep. Will they be prefect? Nope. This will frustrate and infuriate the "tinkerers." Progress or "dumbing down?" Depends on your perspective.
 
Steve Sherrick said:
If anyone wants to collaborate on a parody of the old Mac vs Window's guy commercials where it would be new OS guy vs old school power user, let me know. :-)
Click to expand...

Sounds like fun.

I used to always buy the top of the line Mac Pro the minute it was available. But not anymore. Working in Resolve it don't care what OS is running in the background. I just want to be able to use the latest and greatest GPUs.
 
I don't doubt there's a lot going on under the hood and maybe even some things that help us in the long run. But I also know there are too many things going on under the hood sometimes and everyone is looking to get their tentacles into your machine from the outside world. I used to maintain the Avid systems for a production company back in the late 90s/early 2000s and we would keep those machines away from the outside world as much as possible. My goal was to keep them clean, optimized so that the editors could do what they do best - edit.

I respect the need for piracy prevention. But there are some compromises that come along with having to "check in" with the homeland. I've always licensed software. I think it's the right thing to do. But it does feel like I have to keep the machine connected to the outside world more than I would like.

I guess one of the other frustrations I have is that I see more software being released in what I would deem beta stage. Too many bugs, too many new features that sometimes don't work. It just makes me wonder where the breakdown is happening. Is stuff being rushed to market? Are there changes happening in the OS that break things? Are the drivers in a cat and mouse game with the OS? Does anyone else feel this? We see it every day with various threads that pop up.

I guess my expectation is that the tools I use (editing, color, some sound design, graphics) should work like appliances. You turn them on and for the most part they just work. Maybe my expectations are too high.
 
I felt this way with the transition from Mavericks to Yosemite - but more aesthetically. Loved the old "down to business" dull grey look of the Pre-Yosemite OS's, and the new "Playskool" look I wasn't much a fan of for a while. Running on El Cap now so I dealt with it, but I do wish it was an option. But now I'm building a workhorse PC just for editing and keeping the Macbook Pro as a personal machine, so I'm liking the iPhone integration more and more.
 
If the subject of the thread is to be taken seriously at face value, majority of professional color grading and compositing software, that requires a lot of brute force to move all this heavy data for real time performance is running on Linux. Case in point:
1. Resolve- CentOS
2. Baselight- CentOS
3. Lastre/Flame - RedHat
4. Mistika- SUSE
5. NUKE- CentOS
There are couple of other grading platforms, that run on Windows- Nucoda, Rio and yes Resolve, but their penetration in the high end market is a bit more limited. Lustre on Windows had been discontinued.
With ending of the Apple OS support for many legacy MacPro hardware (pre 2010) the wring is on the wall. Trashcan is what Apple wants you to use going forward.
Draw your own conclusions.
 
For VR workflow I had to move my "big" machine over to windows 10 (and I'm kind of a MS hater too). There's just a ton of stuff that doesn't work in the VR world very well outside windows 10 (i.e. a lot of this stuff is so new that I needed the most recent patches). This is especially true for steamvr vive workflows. So far windows 10 is working on my z840 way better then i expected (first time I tried z840 on windows 10 was a disaster, but now just the thunderbolt access on windows 10 is real crappy though - so I'm working off of local drives and NAS on win10). So far nuke is running fine on windows 10, though it's not officially supported. I do run my file servers, editing station, maya and protools on mac's though. On all cloud stuff I'm running linux on AWS.
 
Everything good about Apple is almost everything bad about Apple. Microsoft offers the richest computer platform considering expandability, power, and flexibility. Although, Microsoft has ended support for EOL OS's, quite frequently the platform is still viable even with drivers and overall software compatibility. Which is increasingly not the case with Apple. We've frequently thrown away good third party video hardware because it's no longer supported under a newer Mac OS update.

Windows based software & hardware just tend to survive longer. I'm still able to use Combustion 2008 with all my old 32 and 64 bit plug-ins on Windows.
 
Rather than eol is support MS, should offer $10, a year update service and open the old os to open source security and comparability improvements, just to keep systems safe, and many of them are not great to run the new os, even $20, buy packs of 2-5 years. If they have any sense they would retrofit the old os's with some modern common components through updates, allowing in future the same updates to be shared across most platforms rather than separately write these things.
 
Steve Sherrick said:
If anyone wants to collaborate on a parody of the old Mac vs Window's guy commercials where it would be new OS guy vs old school power user, let me know. :-)
Click to expand...

Excellent Steve, keep us informed

The problem with modern OS's personal assitants software.versus a real personal.assistant. Dies your tral personal assistant spynon you where ever you go.
 
Wayne Morellini said:
Rather than eol is support MS, should offer $10, a year update service and open the old os to open source security and comparability improvements, just to keep systems safe, and many of them are not great to run the new os, even $20, buy packs of 2-5 years. If they have any sense they would retrofit the old os's with some modern common components through updates, allowing in future the same updates to be shared across most platforms rather than separately write these things.
Click to expand...

Allowing open source means, that ALL underlying code must be made public as well.
Do you see a problem with your argument in light of my statement?
 
Not, at all. It does not in anyway require that, the owner can decide which parts to open. Why say that? I was not addressing you or taling about anything you were talking about in that quote. I'm talking about many personal and business PC's machines that are useful but not good enough for the latest OS. I think Microsoft did open source a few defunct OS's a decade or more ago too.
 
Jaime Vallés said:
You certainly aren't the only one.
Click to expand...

That was the draw of Alien gaming computers back in the day. They came without AOL, Netscape, Virus shit and 1000 other asshat programs pre-installed. Just clean Windows
 
Wayne Morellini said:
Not, at all. It does not in anyway require that, the owner can decide which parts to open. Why say that? I was not addressing you or taling about anything you were talking about in that quote. I'm talking about many personal and business PC's machines that are useful but not good enough for the latest OS.
Click to expand...
Look up the meaning of the open source before making uninformed suggestions. If you release anything as an open source you can't decide which part you release and which you do not- it'l all or nothing. Anything you release as part of open source ceases to be an IP. Letter P in IP stands for property and once you release it, it's no longer your property. And last time I checked, IP is still the bedrock of business. If we don't protect IP, then we would turn into China...
Wayne Morellini said:
I think Microsoft did open source a few defunct OS's a decade or more ago too.
Click to expand...
Do you care to provide an example?
 
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