The current Mac Pro update disappoints actual pro users. Image: Apple Computer

Apple recently released, after over a year in waiting, an update to their Mac Pro line of tower configuration computers. They introduced the Westmere line of the Xeon workstation processors and now a version with 12 computing cores is available. But for many Apple watchers, the update was a bit of a disappointment.

For openers, while Apple has been determinedly cutting edge on their new flagship mobile products, iPhones, iPads… were notably conservative on this update. New tech such as USB 3, Firewire 1600, Litghtbridge, or even established desirable standards as eSATA were skipped. Few expected Blu-Ray support, since Steve doesn’t like Blu-Ray. The video cards options offered by Apple are decent, but somewhat mediocre by contemporary standards. But all in all, commentary in the tech blogs has negative commentary edging out positive reviews. The general consensus seemed “meh,” with a lot of dissatisfaction centering on performance versus price issues compared to alternatives on the Windows and Linux side.

The machines are pricey.

“The upgraded desktop is available in three standard options: a quad-core 2.8GHz Intel Xeon “Nehalem” processor with 3GB of RAM for $2,499; an 8-core machine with two 2.4GHz quad-core Intel Xeon “Westmere” processors and 6GB of RAM for $3,499; or a 12-core system with two 2.66GHz 6-core Intel Xeon “Westmere” processors and 6GB of RAM for $4,999.” – Apple Insider

The pricing here is without display, so add anywhere from $799 to $1800 for Apple display. The upcoming 27” LCD display will be priced at $900 and replace both the existing 24” and 30” displays and will be glossy-only.

Much of the following is taken from my  grumpy comment at Engadget. I’ve taken the liberty of cleaning up some of the unpolished language and clarifying some remarks in this version.

First off, the disclaimers, I am a Design Pro, not an IT person, gamer or semi-pro geek tinkerer. So most if this is OPINION, not hyper scrutinized lists of facts. Bear with it. I am also not going to dis down anybody’s personal choice of hardware or OS preferences. Or debate fanboyism at any level. It’s been done already. To death. Seriously.

That said, as a Graphic and Web Designer, I’ve been a Mac user for many years. I’ll say that in the day, the Mac OS offered clear advantages over window and all non-graphical OSs. And also in the day Apple hardware also offered some unique qualities unavailable in the WinTel world. But that day is PASSED. The only reason anyone should chose Mac hardware or the Mac OS is personal preference.

When Apple was releasing G4 and G5 Towers, they were cutting edge machines at the absolute top end, and provided performance that was just not available at the desktop level elsewhere. But that is clearly no longer the case. Now that Macs and PCs are essentially the same guts under the hood, there are far less differentiating qualities. For the Mac Pro, while they may be shiny, spiffy, and fairly stout machines, they are NOT the ultimate computing machines Apple would have us believe. There are comparable workstation class machines available from HP, Levono, Acer, and even *gasp* … Dell at better price points. Yes, I looked. The current lineup just manages essential parity with Windows workstation-class machines out there, and offers downright mediocre graphics cards, which have become much more important components in modern computing.

It’s been pointed out by my geekier colleagues that more powerful configurations can of course be assembled from off the shelf components for leaner budgets if that’s your thing. Some of us do like to tinker in the garage. Some of us just want to say, “give me the keys, I’d rather drive.” It should go without saying, your mileage may vary.

Are the Mac Pros overpriced for the tech level offered? I may be a bit of an Apple loyalist and I still have to say, OH HELL YES. I will offer that the overall reliability, build quality and case design is superior, even if the internal components are decent but fairly standard. And yes, while Apple has evolved the case internals to a very refined level, it’s still a seven year old overall case design. It could absolutely use a refresh.

The galling point for us Design Pros, and I am talking about Publishing, Photography, Graphics and Web Design, is that Apple has tossed us to the curb YEARS ago to the tender mercies of Adobe. Go into an Apple store and good luck finding any serious pro gear, such as an tabloid size (11″ x 17″) printer or press quality scanner. Not for the likes of us. And we’ve been crying for a mid-range Mac for frakkin’ ages. The majority of us would probably be quite comfortable with the performance range of the 27″ i7 iMac in an expandable tower configuration. The price gap between the i7 iMac nicely appointed and the Base Mac Pro and Display is enough to buy a decent laptop and the Adobe CS5 upgrade. Which I might mention is a non-trivial sum. Adobe enjoys a near monopoly in the must-have graphics applications that design pros use such as Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, Flash and Actobat, and charge us accordingly. The further fact that Apple has done away with all non-glossy screens except for the BTO MacBookPro, shows their disdain for Design pros over “oooohhh shiny,” which does look spiffier in the Apple Store lighting.

The present scene now is all about Apple’s current relentless pursuit of the “consuming” computer user… hence the iPods, iPhones, iPads and the like. I feel that Apple keeps the Mac Pro remains in the lineup merely to say that they have a high end machine for the very needful (climate modeling and 3D rendering anyone?) and quite affluent users. But the Mac Pro line is no longer the champion of the Apple universe, or does it seem to have much of Steve’s attention.

Since the current Adobe CS5 Applications requires an Intel multicore processor minimum, this will retire a LOT of still working G5 machines. As design has becomes a much more marginal profession in the current economy, I expect we’ll see a lot of “downgrade upgrades” to iMac, laptops and Windows machines as design pros look at their bottom lines and budgets.

I don’t think Steve will miss us much. We complain.

Links:
Mac Pro @ Apple
Engadget
Mac Rumors
Apple Insider
Adobe Creative Suite 5

Tweaking Bleeds in InDesign for the Tri-fold Cut Line. Yes, I'll explain...

For openers, I have been reminded that if I want to keep people’s attention with a blog, I actually have to POST, at least more regularly than I have been doing. The current occasion is the Hudson Valley Business Edge 2010 Conference, an event that I highly recommend if you’re in the region and work in a small to medium size business, especially as an Owner, Proprietor or Principal. The presenters are all very knowledgeable, and the content is presented in a very dense manner, in short, accessible sessions. Last year I presented on “When Do You Need a Design Pro?”, and hope to do so again on subjects graphic. But to the point, while I fairly recently posted back on June 7th, the one before was March 20th.

I have been busy, hence the lean posting. So this time around I’ll talk about a recent client experience.

This is a long term client that I have been working with for many years. I’ve built and rebuilt his website, will do it again soon. This time around I was updating his brochure. This is a fairly standard tri-fold brochure, a pretty common and useful staple of business marketing. This item is usually not a terrific chore if you have a focused client, and their graphic identity is already in place. Typically brochures are put together after logo design and identity projects are complete.  But what happens when your client is perhaps over focused

The short answer is: 63 design comps, seven candidate “final” versions. Three rounds of pre-press, PDFs and AAs. Hundreds of photo retouches and composites. 2.4 gigabytes of  data. And sent the press proofs back to press… twice. What on earth happened here?

I am not going to say what this project cost,  but it blew well past my initial estimate by several multiples. Suffice to say that the sum was either impressive or embarrassing, depending on which side of the checkbook you’re looking from. I accept installments. I am not railing against my client, who I actually think quite highly of, and is a stone cold expert , a top craftsman and designer in in the luxury fabrication market he makes his profession. But yes, the project was unusual in the scope, number and and detail of the multiple rounds of revisions.

I suspect some of the Design Pros out there might be wondering, when did I lose control of the Design Process? But I don’t think I did. I did keep him appraised that the meter was indeed running as the revisions mounted up, and tried to wave the yellow flag. I was working hourly, which most freelancers prefer, as it keeps us honest and clients only pay for work actually done. I do grok that most clients would rather have flat fees, to budget accurately. So I try to make my estimates and quotes reasonably accurate. But typically I expect to turn a brochure project around on 2-3 initial designs and 2-4 rounds of revisions and tweaks including proofreading. On a flat fee project, unless you detail revision charges, you can get killed here. This can become a nightmare on an open ended project like a web site were the design and production process is much more organic, and the final product can moprh a lot till the project is completed.

Of course, some say web sites are never actually finished, but that’s a separate rant.

But my client wanted, well, exactly what he wanted. After fine tuning many details of design and copy to create an extremely crisp and tight showcase for his products, it was on to the product photography.  It was critically important to him that his product photography be as close to perfect as humanly possible to image, process, color correct, clean, retouch and composite.

Most folk would confront the mounting hours and costs and get to a point where a project is “good enough” and sign off on it. After all, some details are so minute that most readers will not notice a lot of very tiny glitches. Obsessive revison is just not cost effective for the average small … or even moderately large business. Mind you, when Ferrari or Maseratti does a brochure, it’s a 16 page super glossy piece  with giant full bleed photos and tiny blocks of copy on stock just short of cardboard and every photo is glistening perfection. But when a single car costs more than my house, “price is no object” in selling them has a certain resonance.  A used car dealership will pour all that copy into a tri-fold with a stack of digicam photos one of their salesman took.

It’s all a matter of perceived value, versus the actual cost of the work.

So how much is enough?

Mind you, of the over 50 hours on the project, over half of it was spent in Photoshop doing photo work. This is in addition to the work the photographer did on most of the images as well. By the way, this was not Joe in the Mail Room with the boss’s pocket digicam; this is a very good pro photographer who’s work is very sharp. But every detail had to be perfect. But I did call him on cleaning up the color of a reflections on a detail no wider than four benday dots.  I also found myself nudging parallax errors picked up in a wide angle lens that I could not discern on a 20” monitor without a layer of guidelines.

To note the level of detail we persued, one tweak was both revising the cropping and placement of photos to account for the 1/16” of  additional trim (see image)  that some printers nick off the fold-in panel so that the borchure folds neatly.  (geek alert: not always the case, some printers use very slightly assymetrical folds to allow for a sightly narrower folk-in panel, depending on their machinery.) In most cases this would not a big deal, but there were details in the product photos that my client felt were critical to preserve, and worth the time and expense to address.  We also did some furher adjusting in the photos as well to allow for more bleed.

The Maserati web site. Crispy. Shiny...

A local area Used Car Dealer's web site - To the point.

To return to the car analogy. When Ferrari or Maseratti publish anything from brochures to bar napkins to their annual report, their entire brand and image rides on it, For that market, they make sure every bit of their marketing material measures up to the same lofty standards as their automobiles. For the Used Car Dealership, the owner’s image and reputation would be based on being a perceived as offering square deals and good value, especially considering he is selling products he was not involved in designing or producing. So very high end marketing materials might actually hurt, and cause the business to be perceived as overly expensive. Most Used Care Dealers want to been seen as trustworthy “regular guys”, literally “one of us.” You know, the folks who are not buying Ferraris or Maserattis.

Is all of this “apple polishing” worth it?

To my client, he expressed that it was. In fact he felt it was critical. At the level of his market and product, if the results of all this exacting refinement produce just ONE more customer for him, he will be ahead. In essence, he held me, the photographer and the printer to the same standard of demanding craftsmanship that he applies to his own work. And I’ll have to say that it’s very good work, among my very best this year.

Will that level of craftsmanship and exactitude be worth it for your project? I can only say that I approach every project with an open mind and a professional attitude, evaluating each project and then providing my best professional opinion on producing it. When a client has a clear idea of their needs and message, it makes my job a lot easier. Going high end on a job also raises my game to that higher level, and its often a pleasure to do really sharp work. Ideally, a project’s costs should match both the budget and the message. Some things might call for “fast and dirty” so long as things are neat and professional – and proofread, they’re ready to go. Other mission-critical projects might very well call for numerous and detailed review, revision, and tweaking to a high level of polish.

How far you want to go is entirely up to you.

Taking Print content to the Web

Yes, it’s been months since I’ve posted here. And haven’t been that active in my Live Journal or Facebook pages either. The Studio’s been busy, folks. And have been shoving a number of projects through the house.  And when you’re a self employed Creative Pro, paid bookable hours trumps blogging. I had been tempted to rant on about the evolving throwdown between Adobe vs Apple vs Google (sort of) vs Mircosoft, centering around the mobile market, web standards, web video, HTML5 and Flash. But the simmering war of words, with flaming fanboy camps tossing off on each side has grumped me out, and it can wait.

So I decided to talk about some of the under the hood tech that makes contemporary web sites work, with a bit of diversion about bringing print content online.  I’m going to pitch this to the web user and business reader, so my fellow web pros will probably be bored to tears. But for the rest of you, we’ll demonstrate the main idea of the marriage of HTML and CSS by taking a look “backstage” with a print and web design project called, Living in The Petri Dish.

The past few years, over the winter I have been designing and Art Directing an annual calendar for an Interfaith Sanctuary, and in the 2010 Edition of the Wheel of the Year Calendar, I wrote a short Editorial Article for their Earth Living/ Earth Spirit section, focusing on global environmental, sustainability and climate issues. I wrote Living in the Petri Dish under my “spiritual” name, referring my Native American (among others!) Ancestry.

The Print Version from the Institutional Calendar

PDF

In times gone by, the most direct way to get print content online was to post a PDF version of the document. This is quite straightforward in layout tools such as Adobe InDesign, with a powerful export PDF function. But many applications, including Microsoft Office now have similar capability. In Mac OS 10, any document that can be printed, can be output to a PDF file. And here is the PDF version of the article. which is the print version of the Calendar Page. Depending on your browser settings and capabilities, the file will open in a new window, or download to your local drive. While PDF files preserve the formatting and structure of the original print document, and does not require the recipient to have the creating application, graphics or fonts, it does have some limitations for the web.

Web Coding, Old and Modern.

The “Old School” method of laying out a web page involved rather intricate coding, and creating tables to arrange elements on the page, like a mosaic, which were not their intended purpose. In more contemporary coding, the HTML page contains the content, and it’s information structure. And the display and presentation information is contained in a separate CSS style sheet. CSS refers to Cascading Style Sheets, which is a powerful method for marking up how a page is displayed. The main advantage is that you can have a separate style sheet for every page in a site, or just one for ALL the pages in a site. Or individual style sheets for unique elements, such as the home page, and a general one for the site’s content. The HUGE advantage is that if you need to alter an aspect of the site’s visual design, I make the change in the style sheet, and the change will appear in the entire site, or every page that accesses that style sheet. This is a much more efficient approach than painstakingly re-coding every instance of the design element in every page individually!

I recently had occasion to demonstrate the capabilities of CSS for a user group, in this particular  case, I took the SAME page, and used three different Style Sheets to radically alter the layout and appearance of the page. So let’s build a web page version using XHTML and CSS. As the author, I have the original text of the article, and was able to quickly code it into a basic web page, and collect some relevant links.

Coding HTML and CSS

The text is organized into paragraphs and headers. And I divided the page into logical sections using “Div” tags. Otherwise there is no layout markup.

Original images for the "Petri Dish" article.

I also had the original images used for the article, so I sized them for the web at 72dpi, and we’re good to go.

Take a look at the “pure content” version of the page, without any CSS Styling.

it’s all there, but it’s sooooooo  1998, and kind of boring.  So lets build a CSS Style sheet and connect it to my HTML document.

This is where the magic happens...

The highlighted code is where the HTML page refers to the CSS style sheet file that tells the browser how to display the page.

The CSS that will style the Petri Dish article page.

A portion of the CSS file.  As you can see, I have started to define the look of the page. The overall typeface and size, background colors and the styling the headers. You can look at the full coding here, if you’re geeky and curious.

And the completed page now looks like this. Living in the Petri Dish.

As you can see, it’s much cleaner and feels more like a contemporary web page.

“Presto-Changeo”

But I am well aware that clients might want something different. So why not? I created another CSS document, and went back and changed just one line of the HTML to implement it.

<link href=”styles2.css” rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” />

I added some alternate graphics and the page takes on a radically different appearance.

Some clients might want a little more IMPACT… happy to make it “Pop”.

<link href=”styles3.css”…

I call this version “Hot Head Red”. It’s probably not the most tasteful design, but it was meant to show variation for the demo. Also for the sake of the demo, I added the navigation bar across the top to easily swap across the versions. Note that I’ve set the nav bar to pick up the link styling in the three versions.

Remember, no other code was changed in the HTML page other than the single line referring to the style sheet. Now there are a few caveats, older versions of some browsers have uneven support for CSS, most notably Internet Explorer Version 6 which handles CSS in a non-standard manner. But modern browsers support CSS very well. IN the near future, we’ll be seeing the deployment and support in browsers of HTML 5 and CSS3 which will bring additional enhanced capabilities and features.

Links

Living in the Petri Dish variations:
No Styles
BlueWhite Clean
GreenWorld
HotHeadRed
PDF of Print Version

Four Quarters Interfaith Sanctuary
Earth Living~Earth Spirit Complete Supplement (PDF)
Union of Concened Scientists
Rolling Stone: As the world Burns
Rolling Stone: The Climate Killlers
UCS: “It’s Cold and My Car is Buried in Snow. How Can Global Warming be Happening?”

Now this blog is powered by WordPress, WP hacks can tell from the very lightly modified default Kubrick page design. But one of the things I love about WP is that there is not only an abundant supply of themes, but also a HUGE zoo of plug-in to perform all manner of digital legerdemain. Since I have been manually posting notifications on FB about my Blog Posts here, I figured, with the rising popularity of Facebook, there was probably an app or plug-in that would allow Me to post notices to the page automatically. So after a bit of research, I’ve installed the  WordBook Plug-in on the blog. This was literally it’s test flight.

Alas was not to be. WoodBook does not work on Fan or Business FB Pages. See below for comments on keeping my personal and Pro/Biz bloggage separate. So I am trying another application, a bit more involved, but we’ll see if it works. It may have the virtue of earning the blog a little more exposure.

I am also looking at adding “Share on Facebook” functionality. Yes, there’s plug-in for that too. Which is probably the next thing I’ll be testing. If a “Share on Facebook” link turns up on my posts, I got it working. Of course there are equivalent tools for Twitter, but I am seriously dragging my feet about getting into that. I do have to spend some of my time actually working on client’s projects. Imagine that, so demanding. But the ability to buy groceries is a compelling argument for discipline.

The emergence of Social Media as an important Web trend for both individuals and businesses, due to it’s particular reach and ability to connect individuals TO businesses and organizations, means that Creative pros like myself have to pay increasing attention to an ever widening array of venues, and techniques for leveraging them. What makes this interesting is becoming a net.schizo. I have this blog for the Studio, where I can wax-on, wax-off on themes relating to my profession and related tech subjects. I have a personal Live journal since about 2003 or so… If you know it, you know who you are. My personal rantage. I’m on Facebook as me, but then have a Page for FRS. The twitter account… like 4 tweets (Ha!) is me, and I should make a separate one for the Studio… Keeping my personal and professional lives separate is an interesting exercise in information management. Not withstanding that as a self-employed creative pro, with a studio in my home, my professional life is pretty darn personal! But the overall approach is that I’ll refer to my professional live from my personal side, but I’ll be keeping the personal from the professional side.

That didn’t stop a client from trying to call Me at 7PM on a Friday, looking for a project and a quote. Not that I don’t work evenings and weekends, like many creatives and self-employed, that’s a choice, not an expectation. But seriously, WTF?

He can wait… till Monday.

Fantastic Realities Studio on Facebook
WordBook Plug-in
NetworkedBlogs

“This has all happened before. And it will happen again.” – Cylon Hybrid, Battlestar Galactica.

That said, catalogs are SO fun…

At the Production Meeting with the publishing team the previous Friday, we reviewed the pagination, cover content, and set the catalog size at 200 pages. We decided to aim at an art to press deadline for the end of the month as reasonable, if tight.

So last Friday morning, while I am well under way with stripping in the 2010 pricing to the re-designed 2010 catalog and setting the folios, I have an email from my contact. The Sales Force needs us to add 9 pages of critical products to the book.

Fine. Re-Paginate, 212 pages.

TECH ALERT, but read it anyway. Pros, you can skip this paragraph, you already know what’s coming.  [ For most print processes, bound books have to be set in multiples of 4 pages, and some large scale print methods such as high speed web presses, use signatures of 8 or even 16 page sheets. So adding ODD numbers of pages is always problematical. Even the very common stapled booklet needs to be printed 4 pages art a time, each sheet printed both sides, folded once on the spine. Okay, get it now? ] End Tech Alert

Midday: I take a call with one of the content editors, adding three more pages. Re-Paginate the book again. Still 212 pages, but just barely. Now the Index is crushed to one page and half of the inside back cover.

Oh yeah… put back all the little icons they had you delete last round. (&#%$#@!!!)

4:15 PM. Another email. Adding four more products. Thankfully one requested was already in the book. But will have to expand two items to a two page spread from one, to keep from TOTALLY fouling the right | left spreads and re-laying out the entire book from the insertion point. Even with the formidable tools in InDesign, it’s a non-trivial task. But at least now we are back to having two full pages to use for the Index. (That inside back cover space is still there to invade!)

Re-paginate. Book is now 216 pages.

Email back: “Of course this is complex enough that the “end-of-the-month” target is likely well trashed —with an anvil, but we’ll forge on.” Can you see the look on the Coyote’s face as he plummets into the canyon? Well, I’ve had that look. And will probably have it again before I retire.

Meanwhile, every other project in the Studio gets pushed back, and my clients circle like hungry wolves. Somehow I will tag-team some of the most pressing work into the rotation. This has all happened before. And it will happen again.

Of course, one of the advantages of being a self-employed freelancer, you can choose work on the weekends. Certainly motivated. Which is time to stop mucking about on the Studo Blog and get back to it!

But I still dread each approaching Friday with appropriate suspicion and paranoia.

Till next!

The Credit Crisis Visualized by Jonathan Davis

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

“The goal of giving form to a complex situation like the credit crisis is to quickly supply the essence of the situation to those unfamiliar and uninitiated. This project was completed as part of my thesis work in the Media Design Program, a graduate studio at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. For more on my broader thesis work exploring the use of new media to make sense of a increasingly complex world, visit my website here. or email me at: jonathan.jarvis@gmail.com

Visit The Crisis of Credit Visualized.

I sometimes (um… actually, routinely) rag on Flash, for being mostly used for the internet equivalent of dressing a whore as a Lady, essentially being …well…” flashy.” Mostly shiny objects and pretty lights, web 2.0 ooooh-shiny and little substance. It is also a very challenging application to master. Frustrating to both designers and programmers, as a development platforms that is decidedly schizophrenic, requiring both artistic and design skills on one hand and programmer and coding skills on the other hemisphere.

But this is possibly one of the best, and most useful uses of the application that I have ever seen. Aside from being graphically tight and beautiful, it also gives an overview of a complex, and lately emotional topic with amazing clarity. And furthermore it isn’t selling sneakers or dressing up another sketchy blockbuster film site, it’s providing useful social purpose!

“The Crisis of Credit Visualized distills the economic crisis into a short and simple story by giving it form. It is also argues that designers have the ability to see a complex situation, then turn around and communicate it to others. By giving graphic form to the credit crisis, it becomes comprehensible. Not only do economic activities take shape, but new relationships can emerge between these shapes.” – Jonathan Davis

If ever I pray to the gods, it’s to get to do work this good! **Applause**

Well, I went down into NYC for an Adobe Creative Suite 4 Launch Tour seminar last Friday. And got a reminder of why I took the bus when I had a NYC day job… it was 50 min inbound at 7:00-8:00 yesterday… but over TWO hours outbound at the height of the evening Rush Hour. Left the Javits Center at around 5:30… pulled into the driveway between 7:30 and 8:00.. OUCH. But the very evil part was walking the block or so from the parking lot to the Javits Center into the wind off the River… AIEEEEEEE!!!!! Oh my FACE! So you can see why I was less that excited about walking down from Port Authority in the Artctic Blast. Which put me rather out on hiking off to 8th or 9th avenue for lunch. So I ended up having very overpriced very blah and ordinary concession food at the center. FEH. On the other hand, I scored an $14 Early Bird rate at a lot LESS than a half mile from the Javits, so I think I’ll call it even and move on.

That said, Creative Suite 4 is pretty frakkin’ awesome, with lots of clever enhancements, with many peeves addressed and wish list items suggested by users added. This is of course a FAR superior approach than Microsoft, that just DOES STUFF to their apps, usually Office or Windows itself, and then shoves the “enhancements” down your throat. Often this breaks things that might have actually worked well in some of their products. So yes, I WANT IT. Very shiny. As Tim Taylor once said.. “More POWER! Utt! Utt! Utt!”

I did end up choosing the Web Design Track – Fireworks / Flash / Dreamweaver over the Print Design Track – Photoshop / Illustrator / InDesign – in the afternoon, since there is a bit more Web Design volume in the Studio these days than Print. I have a LOT less experience in the moving target that is the very technical side of web site production than I do in Print production and Prepress, where I am a frakkin’ NINJA. I’ve been designing for print since 1980.

But seriously, WTF people? There seems to be some impression that Web and Print Designers are these two separate and warring tribes. And seems like seminars ALWAYS have the Web and Print sessions on two tracks in direct conflict. But the reality of the current marketplace is that you HAVE to have Print AND Web skillz if you are going to survive as a solo freelancer or small studio. Or if you’re hired as some small company’s ENTIRE ART DEPARTMENT… where you are doing all of their print, managing the web site, making PowerPoint presentations, answering the phones and running the network server. So hell yes, I needed to attend both tracks. I use all SIX applications regularly. So why do hey ALWAYS do this crap???

But of course, this is the version of The Adobe products that will BREAK G4 macs and PCs under 2 GHz processors… And seriously, Adobe’s apps EAT RAM and Hard Drive space.
Go ahead, look it up: www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/design/systemreqs/

Does your system measure up?

So all things considered, I am planning on digging in my heels, and holding out till a client or vendor sends me an InDesign CS4 or .fla file that I can’t open … then cough up the $600 that costs Me from somewhere between $2500-$5000…*cringes*  Glad I am fairly booked.

The studio vs. household budget in these trying economic times will more likely dictate an iMac, but when the time comes will most likely go for the big 24″ screen version. Graphic Designers DO need some screen real estate! I’d DIE if I had to go back to a 17″ Display… I hadn’t been keeping up with the notebooks as I am more of a desktop person. But in doing the math it DID occur to me that I could get a 2.4 Ghz Macbook Pro AND a 24″ iMac for about the same cost of the mid-range 3 GHz Mac Pro with a  20 ” Display!  Course I COULD get a piece of crap, plastic case Dell or Acer, or E-Machines PC for $799 at Office Depot… but the service life of a PC is distressingly short, and I’d have probably gone through 3 of the damn things since 2001… Seriously, the IRS only allows 3 years depreciation for a PC, while you can take 5 years for a #&^%$ CHAIR. Plus the usual security issues beating off Viruses, Spams, Scams, Worms, Trojans, spyware, adware, phishing and random hackers … and the utterly screwed color calibration… yadda yadda… you’ve probably hear all the trash talk before.

I do like Apple and their machines a lot, they just WORK. They just DO what they’re asked for the most part.. and the OS (mostly) stays the frak out of my face, and sometimes even helps out. But I am a little narked off that they really don’t offer a good machine at the Mid-range level. Up your soft parts, Steve. But will holding off sticking a crowbar into the IRA till I absolutely HAVE to.

Your milege may, of course, vary.

Find out more at www.adobe.com/creativesuite