Goodbye Film, Hello OS X: Brian P. Lawler
I spent part of the year going to the industry trade shows taking photos, interviewing vendors, looking at what was new, what was discontinued, guessing what might be coming soon, and gathering facts and figures for several presentations I make annually to affiliates of the Printing Industries of America.
In the process I unearthed a guarded optimism among vendors that things are getting better. Business is OK, not great, but getting better all the time. I also made note of a few trends: Imagesetters are dead; film of all kinds is dead (not just dying). From movie theaters to platemaking machines, everything is digital now, and the quality is better than ever. I saw “Star Wars” on a digital projector in May (fabulous image quality!); I saw dozens of platesetters at GraphExpo in October (new, lower prices and great quality); I have received about dozen calls from friends and relatives asking about consumer digital cameras (no one will be buying film cameras this season). No one would even consider buying an analog video camera anymore. The digital revolution is essentially complete, and I am grateful for this.
Macintosh OS X has become the operating system that I use full-time. Its companion applications (Image Capture, iPhoto, Mail, etc.) are surprisingly good. I use them all the time, and the quality of my computing life is enhanced as a result. I now encourage creative pros to move to OS X. It’s really worth it. My favorite of the Apple-cations is iPhoto, because I can get those fabulous linen-bound books printed with my photos and stories in them. These make great gifts, and marvelous mementos.
Adobe’s graphic arts applications work really well in OS X, and the integration is superb. I can use all of my favorite applications easily in OS X (with Quark running in Classic mode) and everything works well. My productivity is up as a result of fewer crashes.
I spent a lot less time on airplanes this year (I won’t qualify for Gold or Platinum status this year — darn!) and I feel better for this. Being home more means that I spend more time with my family and my community, though it also means that I am making less money than I have in past years. It’s an adjustment I have been happy to make.
In 2003 I expect to see brighter statistics about printing sales and business in general. My personal economic indicators are all showing increased optimism and a more cheerful outlook on business.
Read more by Brian P. Lawler.
Performance Puzzles, Quality Conundrums: David Morgenstern
The year past has been a busy one for the Under the Desktop beat, covering the wide range of hardware and software that keep your digital workflow moving. With the new year but a toast away, here are a few trends that have made their impact in 2002 and will continue to develop in the year ahead.
- Processor performance. We began the year with a series of articles that compared Macs and PCs as platforms for content creation. That debate never seems to end (no surprise there) and is refreshed with every new announcement of processor, CPU model, and OS update. The Mac is very strong in some key areas and the PC keeps up the pressure in others.Throughout 2002, however, I was struck by the widening gap of processor performance between the platforms. Intel and its competitor Advanced Micro Devices have maintained a blistering pace in improving clock speeds of processors. Recently, Intel started shipments of a 2.2-GHz Celeron, its low-end line based on the Pentium 4 architecture. As of this writing, the fastest PowerPC processor used in a Mac runs at 1.25-GHz.Now, before you start to dash off that flame mail, I’m well aware that the current PowerPC G4 models come with two processors instead of one; that the PowerPC offers much better floating-point performance that’s useful for many content creation applications; that it’s difficult to compare completely different processor architectures; and more importantly, processor speed isn’t everything to real-world performance of graphics applications. All this and more I’ve discussed in many previous columns.
Still, raw speed does matter at times, and I find it telling that Apple’s processor comparison page now compares current performance to older Macs, not PCs. But the Macworld Expo approaches in a couple of weeks and perhaps, the gap will narrow for a while. However, no doubt this speed gap will continue to widen over 2003, as Intel seems to have very deep pockets that are able to keep improving its R&D and manufacturing operations.
- Operating systems. Throughout the year, I have been encouraged by the continuing improvements in Mac OS X and with the solid introduction of Windows XP. The OS X offers a great imaging model and color capability; while Windows XP is more stable and convenient for a number of tasks. Yet, many users are still waiting to move their workflows to either new-ish OS. I think it’s still wise to proceed with caution.Any new OS brings challenges of transition — for the extra costs of upgrading the OS, applications and even hardware; and even more importantly, for the extra time it takes from you and your staff. Upgrades are supposed to make you more productive, right?While I’ve been running OS X every day for more than a year, I’m just now making the transition to Windows XP for my desktop machine. Like many of you, I’m still stuck in Windows 98, but I plan to purchase a new (or newer used) PC in the near future and will discuss the experience here.
- Quality. A theme that I’ve touched on over the past year is one of quality, its cost, and our ability (or inability) to pay for that quality. The continuing poor economy and the resulting decline in print and Web advertising have been tough on content creators, big and small. When marketing budgets tighten, so do ours and it makes purchasing decisions for hardware and software — always a tough call even in good times — even more difficult. It also complicates the assessment of ROI (return on investment) for our workflow.
So the question I’ll be pondering for 2003 is: What is quality really for graphics pros?
Read David Morgenstern’s Under the Desktop columns for 2002.
The Year that Delivered (Mostly): George Penston
The year 2001 was nothing like the worlds science fiction has made it out to be. In fact, it was one of the worst years for us all in so many respects. It was a year of overwhelming sadness meanwhile the technology side of things left me full of anticipation. So with 2002 winding down, it’s that time again to introspect what the year has brought us and consider what’s to come.
Apple has had some real milestones this year. First, it realized that to gain market share, they had to entice the rest of the market share… mostly Windows PC users. With the onslaught of the rather annoying but effective “Switch” ad campaign and the Windows-compatible iPod that even Dell is selling, Apple has made tremendous inroads to bring new users to the Mac — very smart. However, for its dedicated family of existing Mac users, Apple decided to do a couple of things that weren’t as well received.
Apple treated us to what many consider the first “ready-for-prime-time” version of Mac OS X 10.2 “Jaguar.” Although many users found the $139 price tag, with no special upgrade price, a bit much to swallow. Along with the release of Jaguar, it was announced that the free iTools services would be going away and replaced with a fee-based set of .mac services for $99 a year. Was this a dumb move on Apple’s part? Alienating their existing user base? Hard to say. I suppose many of us Mac faithful were a little disappointed to realize Apple is in the business of making money not just great hardware and software.
Even though no brand new hardware made its way into Apple’s set of offerings this year, after new models of the iMac and eMac early in the year, we were given regularly scheduled speedbumps and nice revisions to just about every Apple product. And while both Power Macs and PowerBooks have finally reached the 1GHz mark, the gap between the processor speed and performance between the PowerPC and Intel/AMD chipsets has dramatically widened. Rumors have alluded to a next-generation chipset for Apple for some time. Hopefully we’ll have something soon to replace the long-in-the-tooth PowerPC G4 chip. How much more performance can they actually squeeze out of this one?
As far as applications go, we had Adobe deliver OS X-compatible versions of Photoshop,
Photoshop Elements, GoLive, LiveMotion, Premiere, After Effects, Acrobat and InDesign. It’s obvious that Adobe sees the merits of OS X. It’s good to know that many of us can go about our business now without every needing to launch the Classic environment. Thanks Adobe.
Hats off to Macromedia as well. With its MX line of products, we finally could get our hands on OS X versions of Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash and the just-released Director. I can get back to co-existing with my long-file-naming PC co-workers using Dreamweaver MX.
So where is Quark in the mix? Well the company is still working on a solid, bug-free OS X version of XPress. I honestly don’t see why people are hanging on to Quark. Taking a look at Adobe’s InDesign 2 feature set, I wonder if many users are just set in their ways or gluttons for punishment. It’s not as though Quark has been known for the great customer support or Mac support for that matter. Just consider that when and if Quark does come out with a version next year, Adobe may be putting the finishing touches on InDesign 3.0. Let the flaming commence.
Read George Penston’s Creative Toolbox columns for 2002.
This article was last modified on January 18, 2023
This article was first published on December 31, 2002
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I’ve been reading with some interest writers such as David Blatner and Sandee Cohen singing the praises of InDesign while chastising poor, unimaginative QuarkXpress. I suppose over the years Quark has not been its own best champion. Pretty stodgy. Set in its ways. I wish for a better table editor, for instance. Transparency. Fuzzy drop shadows. The next level, perhaps, of typographical controls. It seems this time that InDesign has sped ahead of Quark in every aspect but one. It’s a simple one, but one I’m finding it more important with every InDesign job I do:
Quark works.
InDesign (often) doesn’t.
What do I mean by “works”? Quark makes plates that can be used on a press to bring my conceptions to reality. Each color, every element, goes its proper way into its proper place, ultimately finding its way into a printed piece that pleases my customers and keeps them coming back. Even more than that, it pleases my boss who continues to make enough money to keep me employed.
InDesign? It makes really pretty pages–on the screen. Its direct export of PDF is usually at odds with the real world of production, often not working at all. Often crashing my platesetter. All of this causes heartburn. This is something I’m not sure reviewers who are comparing InDesign’s built-in PDF generation with Quark’s Distiller-based feature know about. In my industry (medium-sized printers), Distiller provides the consistent workflow we need for efficiency and profitability. It’s possible to use Distiller with InDesign, but it pouts when you do (double-click on a .ps file generated by InDesign and up comes the InDesign program–not, as one would expect, Distiller).
What about OS X? I think Gene Gable’s right that this issue is “more emotional than real” (/wp-content/uploads/sites/default/files/story_images/feature/18378.html). We in the printing industry are a lot like those Windows NT network guys that want to keep what works and let the newer things prove their worth–and work out their bugs.
Adobe, obviously, is not finished working out its vision for InDesign, but it has its work cut out for it. In heavy-duty ink on paper applications, Quark has nothing to fear from the current generation of InDesign.