Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Update to iMac - RIP iMac
Today, after prompting, we attempted to update the iMac. Now the iMac is dead, tried booting from a DVD and running First Aid with no success. Maybe this is Apples way of making you upgrade to a later model?
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Update
Now it's some 6 months or so since I got my Mac. I still have to re-start it practically every day if I am using it. Photoshop CS5 still crashes (the last time - 5 mins ago I had just saved a document and the document could not be edited, force close of CS5), I found that Photoshop could be made to go a little faster by changing some setting in the preferences file and I found that if I used Photoshop and ANY other application everything starts to go super slow.
The latest minor annoyance is that I installed Carbonite on the Mac and after deciding it would not work for me I could not uninstall it and I still have the annoying little symbol in the task bar.
The Windows/Linux network works one day an not the next, no apparent reason. None of the other computers on the network have any of these problems, except, of course, our iMac.
If I want to create a folder on the network I can only use one of the Windows machines because (new with 10.6 OSX) folders created on the Macs are locked to any other users. Also with two identical Buffalo NAS servers set EXACTLY the same on the same Switch one connects automatically and appears on the desktop and the other can only connect using a manual connection.
My trusty old Sony Vaio has not bee re-booted for, well weeks. Despite its age and processor if performs practically the same as the Mac except its more reliable. I am thinking of dumping the iMac and getting a new PC at the moment.
The latest minor annoyance is that I installed Carbonite on the Mac and after deciding it would not work for me I could not uninstall it and I still have the annoying little symbol in the task bar.
The Windows/Linux network works one day an not the next, no apparent reason. None of the other computers on the network have any of these problems, except, of course, our iMac.
If I want to create a folder on the network I can only use one of the Windows machines because (new with 10.6 OSX) folders created on the Macs are locked to any other users. Also with two identical Buffalo NAS servers set EXACTLY the same on the same Switch one connects automatically and appears on the desktop and the other can only connect using a manual connection.
My trusty old Sony Vaio has not bee re-booted for, well weeks. Despite its age and processor if performs practically the same as the Mac except its more reliable. I am thinking of dumping the iMac and getting a new PC at the moment.
Friday, June 4, 2010
File Sharing Mac to PC
Well I finally found some information direct from Apple which, at least, lets me understand whats going on.
To recap our old I-Mac worked juts fine on our Windows and NAS network until we upgraded to OS 10.6. The MacbookPro, which runs 10.6 has never worked correctly.
For example we can create a folder on one of the NAS servers but when we try and copy a file to it we are informed we do not have permission, we also do not get the message until the file has copied over and then is rejected, a process that takes a long time with a large file.
Well it seems that Apple stopped supporting Appletalk protocol with 10.6, why this make a difference, I don't know, but it does.
The bottom line, in order to move files from the Mac to the PC network we have to use an external drive - i.e. move files from the Macs to USB drive then move USB drive to any PC and move the files from the USB drive to the NAS server. Of course on the PC's we simply save to the network drive.
I am sure that I am doing something wrong but I did call Apple Care and had my call escalated to a "specialist" and he could not help at all. Except by saying that Mac's might not support NAS drives!
MacbookPro = Double the price and complexity (but it does look pretty!)
Friday, May 28, 2010
More Permission Issues
Oh my god what a pain OSX Leopard is. Do they call it Leopard because it's scary and untrainable. How about being able to do a SIMPLE task like copy a file from a Mac to a NAS network drive running Linux.
Most of the thousands of posts about this suggest opening up terminal and using Unix line command, what is this fucking MS-DOS
Most of the thousands of posts about this suggest opening up terminal and using Unix line command, what is this fucking MS-DOS
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Great!
Here's another great feature of the Mac (not) so this morning I opened a file on the network, adjusted it and saved it. Then a little later I opened it again, printed it and went to close the file and it gave me an " cannot save this file because of permissions" message.
No matter I thought, I have not changed it since I saved so I just closed it. The file has now gone! Disappeared . . . wha . . .the f . . .
No matter I thought, I have not changed it since I saved so I just closed it. The file has now gone! Disappeared . . . wha . . .the f . . .
Thursday, May 13, 2010
File Permissions - This time with Zipped files
I think I have mentioned before the nightmares we are having with file permissions on the Macs with Leopard. I guess it's because, like Windows, everyone is worried about security. Judging by the thousands of posts you will find if you type "Leopard Permissions" into Google I am not alone (the first post is Leopard permission Nightmare).
Today I received a two files from a student, both of which were zipped on a Mac at school. Can extracted them on any of the Macs here NO. Windows can!
It's a real P*I*T*A that every small job I try to do on the Mac offers up some kind of roadblock that make me go back to my trusty Vaio.
Today I received a two files from a student, both of which were zipped on a Mac at school. Can extracted them on any of the Macs here NO. Windows can!
It's a real P*I*T*A that every small job I try to do on the Mac offers up some kind of roadblock that make me go back to my trusty Vaio.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
New kind of Crash
Wednesday another Pizza wheel of death but this time with Finder, trying to connect to a Network drive it just stopped and finder crashed, on trying to re-open finder I get "The application finder can't be opened -10810".
I did a survey of Windows users on the network and over the same period of time, i.e. since we have had the Macbook Pro, we have NOT had any crashes, no fictional blue screens of death, nothing. Our I-Mac, which has recently been upgraded to Leopard and has limited use, thankfully, has only crashed twice in the same period - but we don't use it much.
I was running Photoshop, Skype was open and Open Office.
I did a survey of Windows users on the network and over the same period of time, i.e. since we have had the Macbook Pro, we have NOT had any crashes, no fictional blue screens of death, nothing. Our I-Mac, which has recently been upgraded to Leopard and has limited use, thankfully, has only crashed twice in the same period - but we don't use it much.
I was running Photoshop, Skype was open and Open Office.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Printing Issues
Today, after Photoshop did it's daily crash and I rebooted, (I was working on a 240 dpi file of 35" x 25" with 20 or so layers) I sent a file to print.
It seems that, unlike Windows systems, if you send a file to the printer (in this case an Epson 11880 using IP) and the paper is not loaded, then you load the paper, it will just sit there until you pause the printer and re-start it in the control panel. Again no big deal once you know it happening but on Windows systems it would start printing one the paper was loaded without intervention.
It seems that, unlike Windows systems, if you send a file to the printer (in this case an Epson 11880 using IP) and the paper is not loaded, then you load the paper, it will just sit there until you pause the printer and re-start it in the control panel. Again no big deal once you know it happening but on Windows systems it would start printing one the paper was loaded without intervention.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Crash Report
Photoshop Crashed badly after opening a 1.5 Gbyte file, changing it a little and saving. PShop did not want to cooperate so I closed all other applications, no luck. I then force quit Photoshop through the Finder although it did not say it was not responding. Tried to re-start and once again the spinning Pizza wheel of death.
Left it spinning for some time and then did a hard reset - the second today.
Information: The 1.5 Gbyte file was created and edited on my Windows 7 Vaio with no problems except those normally associated with editing such a big file.
Left it spinning for some time and then did a hard reset - the second today.
Information: The 1.5 Gbyte file was created and edited on my Windows 7 Vaio with no problems except those normally associated with editing such a big file.
Battery Life Experiment
Just for the hell of it I decided to see how long the battery would last under pretty normal usage. I did not change any of the standard settings.
4 hours and 47 minutes with 4% left.
I know that they claim 7 - 8 hours but compared to when my Vaio was brand new that's probably double.
My usage was pretty heavy but with not much hard drive access, mostly Dreamweaver, creating new web sites, e-mail, Excel and Word and Internet access. A few times I logged into remote desktops. I also had to re-start once.
4 hours and 47 minutes with 4% left.
I know that they claim 7 - 8 hours but compared to when my Vaio was brand new that's probably double.
My usage was pretty heavy but with not much hard drive access, mostly Dreamweaver, creating new web sites, e-mail, Excel and Word and Internet access. A few times I logged into remote desktops. I also had to re-start once.
Good things about the Mac
I must be fair and I have to say that there are some things i really like about the Mac. First is the battery life, while it fall far short of the 7 - 8 hours promised it still runs for a loooong time on the battery, way more than any Windows laptop I have, even more than my Netbook.
I also really like the keyboard and back lit keys, I often work at home and being able to see the keyboard is great. I still like the touch pad which is better than the Vaio. I am still enjoying the Mighty Mouse especially in Photoshop where the left-right movement is really productive. Windows 7 has the same feature on some Mice by tweaking the mouse wheel left and right but it does not work nearly as well as the Mac Mouse.
I also really like the keyboard and back lit keys, I often work at home and being able to see the keyboard is great. I still like the touch pad which is better than the Vaio. I am still enjoying the Mighty Mouse especially in Photoshop where the left-right movement is really productive. Windows 7 has the same feature on some Mice by tweaking the mouse wheel left and right but it does not work nearly as well as the Mac Mouse.
Adobe Products
I use obviously use Photoshop extensively but also Dreamweaver and Illustrator. We also have a lot of big Photoshop files.
I the last week the Mac has crashed in Photoshop practically every day. Over the weekend I started using Dreamweaver on the Mac and this morning it stopped working for no apparent reason. I tried the Command Option Esc but in the end the only way I could get the computer to work was by doing a hard reset (yes, holding down the power button).
In the same period and doing pretty much the same tasks my Windows 7 Vaio has not faltered.
I the last week the Mac has crashed in Photoshop practically every day. Over the weekend I started using Dreamweaver on the Mac and this morning it stopped working for no apparent reason. I tried the Command Option Esc but in the end the only way I could get the computer to work was by doing a hard reset (yes, holding down the power button).
In the same period and doing pretty much the same tasks my Windows 7 Vaio has not faltered.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Lightroom continued part 3
I decided to copy all of the image files from the USB drive to the Firewire drive but half way through the copying process the Mac hung again. One re-boot later and it seemed I had copied a lot of the files but not all. With Windows if I drag a folder from one drive to another of the same name it will give a number of options but not so on the Mac it's either replace or stop. Maybe I am missing something.
So in trying to determine what was copied of the 10 or so main directories I used Command I to find out how big the folders were to ascertain if all files were copied, a cumbersome process. In Windows I can just roll the mouse over the folder and it will give me the size. In the end it was easier to simple copy all of the files again, I hope it's not going to crash again.
At the same time as I am doing this on the Mac I am moving files around on the various Windows PCs and across the network. Despite the fact that at times I have had over 20 copy windows open on my Vaio it has not uttered a murmur of complaint and has not crashed, in fact I can't remember the last time it crashed.
So in trying to determine what was copied of the 10 or so main directories I used Command I to find out how big the folders were to ascertain if all files were copied, a cumbersome process. In Windows I can just roll the mouse over the folder and it will give me the size. In the end it was easier to simple copy all of the files again, I hope it's not going to crash again.
At the same time as I am doing this on the Mac I am moving files around on the various Windows PCs and across the network. Despite the fact that at times I have had over 20 copy windows open on my Vaio it has not uttered a murmur of complaint and has not crashed, in fact I can't remember the last time it crashed.
Lightroom Continued . . .
Restarted the Mac and restarted Lightroom and managed to get the files into Lightroom but then I got the pizza wheel of death and the computer died.
Restarted again and all seems to be well. so far
Restarted again and all seems to be well. so far
Lightroom
I have been using Lightroom on my Vaio for a long time. I have a bunch of small (they were big at the time) USB hard drives with tons of images on them. The Mac is THE machine for images and graphics, right? So I bought a new 500 Gbyte Firewire drive and decided to consolidate all of my images on the new drive using Lightroom (latest version).
So I connected the Firewire drive and the first of my USB drives and started a new catalogue in LR and proceeded to copy all of the images from the USB drive to the new Firewire drive. After 4 hours or so I figured out Lightroom was "not responding" tried force quit and the computer completely hung I had to do a hard restart. Still trying to copy the files . . .
So I connected the Firewire drive and the first of my USB drives and started a new catalogue in LR and proceeded to copy all of the images from the USB drive to the new Firewire drive. After 4 hours or so I figured out Lightroom was "not responding" tried force quit and the computer completely hung I had to do a hard restart. Still trying to copy the files . . .
Friday, April 23, 2010
Network Printing
I am sure this is a time out issue but today when I try to print to our Epson 11880 network printer it sends for some time and then just stops. The file is 593 Mbytes but I have NEVER had a problem printing from any of the 5 various Windows PC's.
Frustration grows ...
Frustration grows ...
File Sharing Nightmares
Oh the fun continues. So I have copied a couple of files to the desktop of the Mac and I cannot copy them to a network drive no matter what access rights are set.
I found a ton of information on the web about this problem but most of the suggestions suggest I open a terminal window and use UNIX command lines.
There WAS a reason I stopped using MSDOS about a million years ago, I don't really want to go back to a command line interface...
I found a ton of information on the web about this problem but most of the suggestions suggest I open a terminal window and use UNIX command lines.
There WAS a reason I stopped using MSDOS about a million years ago, I don't really want to go back to a command line interface...
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Most Expensive mouse I have ever bought
My frustrations with the mouse were getting too much to bear today, as a heavy Photoshop user I need the mouse to be very fast and very accurate. The the track pad, while excellent, was not up to the task and the Microsoft wireless mouse had started to jitter. So off to Best Buy and I purchased a Magic Mouse - $70 plus tax (thankfully I am a member of Best Buy rewards and I had $15 of certificates but still $70 for a mouse!
As usual with Apple products it is a thing of beauty... and functional as well. Took a few minutes to set up but I really like it. Now whether it is any more functional than the Microsoft Wireless Mouse 4000 which I use on the Vaio is another question.
As usual with Apple products it is a thing of beauty... and functional as well. Took a few minutes to set up but I really like it. Now whether it is any more functional than the Microsoft Wireless Mouse 4000 which I use on the Vaio is another question.
Network Problems Solved
So after reading a lot of on-line posts I seem to have sorted out two of the major problems I had, speed of Internet access and speed of Ethernet access.
The Internet access problems were solved by opening system preferences - network - advanced - Ethernet and then configuring it manually and setting the speed to 1000BaseT and duplex to full or dull-duplex, flow control (did not seem to make any difference which one was chosen).
The Ethernet connection was a little more difficult to solve, it was taking a full 50 second to move a 50 Mbyte file, it was way faster using wireless. But this was solved by changing SP4 configuration to manual and setting the IP address to the same address as the wireless. The same file now downloads in less than 5 seconds.
But hang on isn't changing from a Windows system to a Mac system supposed to be easy. How many people know what an IP address is, let alone how to change it.
The Internet access problems were solved by opening system preferences - network - advanced - Ethernet and then configuring it manually and setting the speed to 1000BaseT and duplex to full or dull-duplex, flow control (did not seem to make any difference which one was chosen).
The Ethernet connection was a little more difficult to solve, it was taking a full 50 second to move a 50 Mbyte file, it was way faster using wireless. But this was solved by changing SP4 configuration to manual and setting the IP address to the same address as the wireless. The same file now downloads in less than 5 seconds.
But hang on isn't changing from a Windows system to a Mac system supposed to be easy. How many people know what an IP address is, let alone how to change it.
Internet Speeds
Just tested the relative speeds over the internet between my old Vaio (see previous posts for specs) compared to the new Macbook Pro.
Best of three
Macbook Pro - Fastest Ping .39 - Fastest DL 5.03 - Fastest UL - 0.73
Macbook Pro - Slowest Ping .41 - Slowest DL 1.4 - Slowest UL - 0.73
Sony Vaio - Fastest Ping .26 - Fastest DL 6.57 - Fastest UL o.73
Sony Vaio - Slowest Ping .42 - Slowest DL 6.55 - Slowest UL 0.73
I am going to check to see if there are any settings on the Mac that I am missing
I also added a Microsoft mouse to the Mac which worked OK until I tried adding another monitor and then it started jittering.
The second monitor I added was an LG which has an identical resolution to the Mac which set up seamlessly and seems to be working fine. I have also color calibrated both monitors on the Mac and the Vaio to see if there they all look the same. I am using a Color Munki from X-Rite.
They don't . . . but they are pretty close.
Best of three
Macbook Pro - Fastest Ping .39 - Fastest DL 5.03 - Fastest UL - 0.73
Macbook Pro - Slowest Ping .41 - Slowest DL 1.4 - Slowest UL - 0.73
Sony Vaio - Fastest Ping .26 - Fastest DL 6.57 - Fastest UL o.73
Sony Vaio - Slowest Ping .42 - Slowest DL 6.55 - Slowest UL 0.73
I am going to check to see if there are any settings on the Mac that I am missing
I also added a Microsoft mouse to the Mac which worked OK until I tried adding another monitor and then it started jittering.
The second monitor I added was an LG which has an identical resolution to the Mac which set up seamlessly and seems to be working fine. I have also color calibrated both monitors on the Mac and the Vaio to see if there they all look the same. I am using a Color Munki from X-Rite.
They don't . . . but they are pretty close.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Easy to use?
Still can't find out how to connect to the Windows printers, tried many searching in google but none of the suggestions worked so I have given up for now. Now just using the Macbook Pro for Photoshop work.
While I like the track pad it's not really that good for Photoshop so I have attached a Mac mouse to the computer, I really hate the way the mouse works so I am going to try and find another mouse.
Just tried opening a large file in Photoshop and it crashed, I am trying a complete re-boot and I'll see what happens.
While I like the track pad it's not really that good for Photoshop so I have attached a Mac mouse to the computer, I really hate the way the mouse works so I am going to try and find another mouse.
Just tried opening a large file in Photoshop and it crashed, I am trying a complete re-boot and I'll see what happens.
The Second Day
Today I needed to start printing, I had two jobs to run, one to the Epson 11880 and one to one of the Epson 9800's.
I downloaded the 11880 driver and it installed quickly and seemingly cleanly. I cannot find any of the Windows shared printers so I have given up on that and ran that job from an aging XP machine.
The file I prepped for the 11880 was around 500 Gbytes, not an unusual size for us to print.
I sent the file to the printer and . . . nothing happened for a long time, maybe 20 minutes, the famous pizza wheel of death spinning . . .
I stopped the job, checked the print queue (nothing there), restarted Photoshop and tried again, this time after 5 or so minutes Photoshop came back to life and everything indicated that the job had been sent and should be running but no. Again nothing in the print queue.
I don't have time for this so I printed it from my Vaio.
One possitive note, I have an HP 6210 which I connected to the Macbook Pro and after a couple of minutes setting it up it works great, no scanning features but doing a new install on a Window machine takes forever...
I downloaded the 11880 driver and it installed quickly and seemingly cleanly. I cannot find any of the Windows shared printers so I have given up on that and ran that job from an aging XP machine.
The file I prepped for the 11880 was around 500 Gbytes, not an unusual size for us to print.
I sent the file to the printer and . . . nothing happened for a long time, maybe 20 minutes, the famous pizza wheel of death spinning . . .
I stopped the job, checked the print queue (nothing there), restarted Photoshop and tried again, this time after 5 or so minutes Photoshop came back to life and everything indicated that the job had been sent and should be running but no. Again nothing in the print queue.
I don't have time for this so I printed it from my Vaio.
One possitive note, I have an HP 6210 which I connected to the Macbook Pro and after a couple of minutes setting it up it works great, no scanning features but doing a new install on a Window machine takes forever...
The First REAL day of Work
The first problems I have encoutered is connecting the computer to our network. We have what can best be described as a peer to peer network. We have two RAID NAS (Network Attatched Storage) devices, one has two USB drives attached as back-up and then all of the Windows machines can also act as servers. One of them has two 1.5 TB shared drives connected via USB and another has a BluRay BDROM which we use as a seconday backup.
One of the printers (a 64" Epson 11880) has an ethernet port and the others are connected to Windows computers which act as print servers.
The first problem I encoutered was trying to connect to the network drives, only one NAS drive showed up and none of the Windows shared drives. After screwing around a bit I found that I could force the Mac to recognize them by using smb://drivename this allowed me to connect and it seems to work fine although whenever I try to access the drives through Photoshop a window opens for no apparent reason and I have to close it to get back to Photoshop.
The network access seemed very slow - much slower than my Vaio working wirelessly - so I hardwired the computer and it got a little faster.
Photoshop seems to run well and it's quite fast but nothing to write home about and certainly no faster than my old Core i7 desktop.
One of the printers (a 64" Epson 11880) has an ethernet port and the others are connected to Windows computers which act as print servers.
The first problem I encoutered was trying to connect to the network drives, only one NAS drive showed up and none of the Windows shared drives. After screwing around a bit I found that I could force the Mac to recognize them by using smb://drivename this allowed me to connect and it seems to work fine although whenever I try to access the drives through Photoshop a window opens for no apparent reason and I have to close it to get back to Photoshop.
The network access seemed very slow - much slower than my Vaio working wirelessly - so I hardwired the computer and it got a little faster.
Photoshop seems to run well and it's quite fast but nothing to write home about and certainly no faster than my old Core i7 desktop.
Turning it on!
Back at home with my new toy I had it set-up, connected to my wireless network, and running in a few minutes. I installed Photoshop, color calibration software and Open Office ready for the real test, working in the studio the next day.
So far so good, it starts up much faster than my Windows system and after a little work I began to really like the touch pad controls, especially the two finger scrolling.
So far so good, it starts up much faster than my Windows system and after a little work I began to really like the touch pad controls, especially the two finger scrolling.
The Shopping Experience
I arrived at the Apple store at 7 p.m. and left some 10 minutes later laptop in hand. Despite the fact that the store was packed I managed to get a sales person and he sold me the computer all with a few clicks of his iTouch, no hard copy of the receipt, it was e-mailed to me... very cool, this surely must be the shape of shopping to come.
The Beginning - Background
OK so I am a hard core PC user and have been since the very first GUI for Intel based PC's, the excellent GEM system.
I run a fine art digital printmaking business, we have four large format printers which are mostly driven by Windows XP, Vista and 7 systems. We use Photoshop extensively again on Windows based machines, Core duo and Core i7 systems. In the studio we also have an Intel based iMac (Leopard) and an older Mac running system 9 (which we have to run so that we can still run our SCSI based scanner).
My personal computer is (was) an HP Core i7 with 6 Gbytes of RAM and my laptop an older Sony Vaio (VGN-CR220E - Intel Core 2 Duo CPU T7250 @ 2.00GHz with 4 Gbytes of RAM).
So… I decided about a month ago that we needed a new computer in the studio so I decided to keep my Sony Vaio to run accounts and stuff and get a Macbook Pro as my “main” computer to run Photoshop and print from. I knew that a new model was imminent so I waited and on the very day they announced the new models I rushed down to the excellent Apple store in Delaware and purchased a brand new shiny MacBook Pro 15” Core i5 model. As we work pretty much exclusively with artists I could only afford the $1,799 model, which, incidentally, is probably twice what I could have bought the equivalend Windows based laptop.
I run a fine art digital printmaking business, we have four large format printers which are mostly driven by Windows XP, Vista and 7 systems. We use Photoshop extensively again on Windows based machines, Core duo and Core i7 systems. In the studio we also have an Intel based iMac (Leopard) and an older Mac running system 9 (which we have to run so that we can still run our SCSI based scanner).
My personal computer is (was) an HP Core i7 with 6 Gbytes of RAM and my laptop an older Sony Vaio (VGN-CR220E - Intel Core 2 Duo CPU T7250 @ 2.00GHz with 4 Gbytes of RAM).
So… I decided about a month ago that we needed a new computer in the studio so I decided to keep my Sony Vaio to run accounts and stuff and get a Macbook Pro as my “main” computer to run Photoshop and print from. I knew that a new model was imminent so I waited and on the very day they announced the new models I rushed down to the excellent Apple store in Delaware and purchased a brand new shiny MacBook Pro 15” Core i5 model. As we work pretty much exclusively with artists I could only afford the $1,799 model, which, incidentally, is probably twice what I could have bought the equivalend Windows based laptop.
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