Technology Woe

Who's running this show? The photo demonstrates how I have to deal with art. Center stage is the new iMac, which I am still trying to develop a relationship with. The laptop was the transition purchase I had to make in order to use the software (ancient) I already had. It runs Snow Leopard, which graphic designers hold onto for dear commercial life as Apple abandoned supporting a bunch of stuff after that cat. To the right is my brain in a jar - what was retrieved from the G5 that crashed permanently after 10 years. The arrow points to the least nimble of the 4. Me. The worst time to discover it was a good idea to keep up with technology as you go along is when it's too damn late to do anything but start over. Or operate with this mess of machines and wires and software that will not play nice with others. What isn't in the picture is the camera I was downloading pictures from - it too is ancient, and won't work with the new iMac, and when I force the issue by hand-downloading jpgs, the new iPhoto claims it has already downloaded the pictures (NOT) and that it cannot repair NO NAME. And the new scanner/printer/toaster combo I bought has a lousy scanner. Here's the list of tech I need: camera, scanner, photo editing and art creation software. Adobe stopped discounting a newer purchase of Creative Suite 3 versions ago. You can buy access to The Cloud for $29.99 if you have a license for CS3, but only one program of the entire offering. I can access all the products of the renamed Creative Cloud for $49.99 a month, which is more than my phone. Is it worth more than my phone? Probably. But I hate the idea of paying for access to a thing forever. That's a terrific scifi story concept. In future, we all have to have a subscription to our lives. Pay or lose access. Sure would handle population control. But in order to write the story I have to use Open Office because I am not paying for access to Microsoft Word forever. And forever isn't forever in technology. Forever is until the prices go up next year.

My Plugins Are Out of Date

As if. One of the many reasons that computers will never replace humans is they're stupid. I'll grant you some humans might qualify, too, but no human on this planet will point out you have toilet paper on your shoe repeatedly after one reveal. "You have toilet paper on your shoe." Done. The plugins message banner is there every time I do anything. I've just endured 10 days of trying to get my entry to the 3 Minutes in Lyon Film Festival ready to mail, using old technology. Deadline May 25. Late April I completed the prep work. Early May I filmed on good days. Footage extends, and I get better at shooting each day; learn to pan slowly, hold steady, stay out of the direct sun. All prepared, I attempt to upload the film to my middle-aged Mac. Nothing. Nada. I try bribes, small sacrifices to the film gods. Nothing. I get a pretty picture of a laptop on the camera screen and not a damn thing else. Okay. Back out with a still camera to recreate the scenes. Open iMovie, and grind my way through learning how to work it on the fly. I cut audio tracks, do flips, transitions, fades and titles. Meanwhile I have the yellow police tape about my plugins and their current status on every single tab I open now. Google doubles down with a reminder that it does not, will not, and absolutely refuses to, support my version of Firefox. It forces me to Dismiss twice on every entry into the realm of the untrainable Google. Meanwhile, back in Filmland, I finally get iMovie to cooperate somewhat, move the masterpiece to Quicktime, and view a few glimpses of brief encounters, some tracking lines that look like a printer gone bad back in the 1980s, and no sound. Back to iMovie, wrestle it into submission again, playback works, back to Quicktime, back to phantom movie. Check the internet for forums, nobody wants to talk about iMovie 4. Nobody supports nothin' as old as this. I hop some more hurdles, get a good result with Quicktime and hustle the DVD to the post office. Mailed. Done. Get an email the next day that the file is 16 kb and not readable. Load all onto a stick, go see the computer guy at the library. He tries, he prints a conversion plan for iMovie to MP4 files via Saturn, to whatever. No, the library does not have a Mac. Who's buying all the Apple stuff? Huh? I stop by the technology store in town with its gleaming new Mac in the window. Do they have a working Mac? No. Damn. I think they have a lot of nerve selling Macs without one in the shop. Back to the phone store because my new phone has seized over all the calls to the film festival guy who was nice enough to tell me that if I was having more trouble, call. Guy at phone store loads my stuff onto a new phone, and says that will be $79.99. I said what? no, that's not the deal the other guy and I talked about. Well, the other guy ain't here. Fine. Load the shit back on the malfunctioning phone. Good bye. Meanwhile, back in Filmland the festival director calls and tells me if I can load the film to youtube with an unlisted address, send him the link and he can see it, we're good to go. Rosemary calls during the upload process. She becomes the film birthing coach. Pant. Breathe. Hold breath. Stop pushing. We, together, are the proud parents of a .dv. Rosemary said congratulations! I wanted a cigarette. Meanwhile, my plugins are still out of date. So's my car. So's my phone. So am I. I'm going to put yellow police tape around all of us.

Diminishing Returns of Apple Love

npr is offering a free download of best new music of 2010 using iTunes. I love npr. I used to love Apple. Since my first IIC I've spent more money on Apple products than clothes. Apple used to be the Madame Curie of innovation. Now Apple is the Marie Antoinette of technology. Apple was creative, elegant and I felt terrific being a user. Since I bought my G5 in 2004, I have spent more money on Apple than clothes and food. Apple stops supporting its own stuff in order to make you buy its new stuff. I bought the G5 with Tiger, and now, several cats down the road, my latest OS purchase at $150 decided it doesn't recognize my $2,000 printer. Forums report that the issue was fixed one cat up the road, and then lost again the next cat. One cat forward, two cats back; the dreaded Microsoft zoo. I downloaded the free music from npr yesterday and had to sign not one, but two iTunes agreements. One reminded me that I only rent from Apple. So does Apple, but Apple owns the turf and the rental is fixed, except to us. It's all about money. It used to be about something else. A business associate tells me that to put an app on iTunes, Apple must first approve it, then take a significant chunk of the sales. Fine. That's a cost of doing business. But Apple also will not share the list of people who downloaded the app with the app creator. That is egregious - beyond the costly upgrades, the abandoned legacy support, the expensive tech support, and the intellectual property usurpation, this surpasses greed. There is a sliding scale of Apple love and now all of it involves money. I wonder what that makes Apple?