First, a disclaimer, I’m an Apple fan boy. Always have been. I’ve used an Apple computer since I was in elementary school when they allowed each classroom a day with the computer playing Oregon Trail. Now, that’s going way back. Ever since then, I’ve been more comfortable doing whatever I needed to do with a computer on a MacIntosh. In fact, I’m typing this post on an iMac. Maybe, a bit of overkill, but it gets the job done.
Macs are made for the creatives.
When I started my career in television and video, everyone said that since I was a creative, that’s what having a Mac was best for. Creating video, doing animation, doctoring photos, etc. everyone assumed I used a Mac because I was in the creative field. They weren’t wrong, completely. I, and everyone, I worked with and my colleagues who were doing creative work was using a Mac. When Apple started developing professional video software like Final Cut Pro, it just seemed that I was destined to continue using this company that not only supported software in which I made my living, but also the hardware. I continued using Macs for when I started my business and the immense amount of software they developed. So even administratively, I switched to using their productivity apps and iCloud to run business.
So, when they developed for mobile, my staff went with iPhones, because of the ubiquity of the device to plug into our ecosystem. Even at home I have two Macs and 2 AppleTVs. It just seemed natural. I felt that I was on a roll with a company that has been a part of my success and growth for the past 20 years. I bought into their changes and upgrades and enjoyed the advancements in technology that has help ushered major changes in my industry over the last 10 years.
The confusing keynote
Then the last keynote came out. And it hit me. Is Apple, the company I know and loved changing enough that it is phasing itself out of what we are doing? I sat and thought about that for a minute. It hasn’t really upgraded any of its desktop hardware in years. We haven’t yet upgraded to the last two iterations of the OS due to legacy software that we still use. This is weird. The new keynote didn’t go into any new hardware upgrades aside from the laptop, and I’m not interested in that as a main editing machine. The highlight was the the reference to a new Final Cut update. That’s great, but what about machines to put around that new interface? I was dumbfounded. Do I have to look to another platform to continue on what we have built? Administratively, that’s easy. The Google platform would be easy to transition to. As well as the Pixel is an interesting mobile device. Creatively, I know Adobe makes software that is cross platform, but do we really want to support a Windows 10 environment? I don’t know how to troubleshoot that one as well as the Mac.
There are a lot of questions that need to be answered when we decide to do a full upgrade of our systems next year. Let’s hope that in those 12 months Apple has some better answers and solutions for going forward.
