Dom Davis (The Blog)

In the late 90 I was working in a support team for one of the large investment banks. The nature of the job involved having 3 computes on my desk: A Windows NT box, which I hated; a Sun Workstation which, while powerful, was looking a bit antiquated compared to what Linux machines could do; and a black NeXT which was woefully underpowered and my absolute favourite machine for many years afterwards. My love of the NeXT was down to the operating system, NeXT Step. It was just light years ahead of anything and an absolute joy to use.

It’s actually this machine that started my rabid fanboiism with Apple because NeXT was the brainchild of none other than Steve and, when he returned to Apple, it morphed into OSX.

At the time the only Apple I had was a Mac Cube, a gorgeous bit of kit hamstrung by the fact it was running System 9. System 9 was shit. It was old, clunky and crashed lots. It made you yearn for Windows, it was that bad. Then came OSX and it was NeXT on steroids. Over the next few years I replaced every single machine I owned with macs.

OSX has undergone a number of iterations since it first came out and I’ve eagerly anticipated each release, buying it working hours of it coming out (seconds in the case of Lion) and every single release has just made things better… until Lion. The fact is I just don’t like it. Now, I’m hoping that much of this dislike is lack of familiarity but some of it is rooted in the direction OSX seems to be going in. I’ve put upgrade plans for my big machine on hold for now and I worry that, if this trend continues, the next iteration of OSX could lead me to start having a crisis of faith :S

Anyone who knows me will know I’m a rabid Mac Fanboi and have been ever since this little baby came out. As a result I tend to run the latest versions of OSX on all my macs. Yes, there have been some early adopter issues, but generally it’s been fine. Unfortunately I’ve just found myself caught by an upgrade trap. I upgraded to Snow Leopard the day it came out, it’s on all 4 macs in the house and, until now, it’s given me no problems. Today I tried to launch Final Cut Studio (which is a very expensive professional video editing suit), specifically Final Cut Pro… and watched it crash. Now I don’t do that much video editing any more, but I do enjoy it and I do like having the power of FCP, Motion, DVD Studio Pro and all the other goodies but after trawling the internetwebs it appears I have very few options:

1. Downgrade my big machine to Leopard – not going to happen
2. Use iMovie ’08 on the big machine – would rather not, great though it is, it’s a hell of a step down from Final Cut Studio and won’t do some of the things I’d like to do
3. Use iMove ’09 in the laptop – kind of defeats the object of having the two stonking great big monitors on the big machine if I’m just going to use a little laptop for video editing
4. Upgrade to iMovie ’09 on the big machine – will cost money as I’d need to get iLife ’09 and not really get me much, and even if I could copy iLife ’09 from my laptop I’m not sure what it gives me over the version I already have
5. Upgrade to Final Cut Studio 7 – Lots of shinyness has been added since version 5, but it’s over £250 and I’m not really made of money any more… but then I’m also loath to give up on the vast amounts of money that was spent getting the software in the first place

Something to ponder. In the mean time I’ll try editing the stuff I want to edit in iMovie and see how it goes.

Steve¹ will, in the next hour, get up on stage and finally release whatever it is that Apple are releasing today. Being a rabid Mac fanboi I’m interested to know what’s being released and no doubt I will absolutely have to have one as soon as I know whatever it is (it happened with the iPhone, the cube, the 30″ monitors to name but a few). The problem is I can’t afford one. This is new to me² and no doubt the fact that I can’t have one will mean I want it even more.

Tempted as I am to delve into my savings to get one I need that money for other things (food for one thing :S) so instead there is a plan, not a great plan mind, but a plan none the less. A small (depressingly small) sum of money will put placed on what can only be described as a punt on the markets tomorrow. Should that punt pay off then all the winnings will be placed on another punt and so on and so forth until either one of the punts fail (highly likely) and I’m left with nothing or I have the money to get the new shiny toy. In theory I could turn £10 into over £700 in 4 trades. In practice £10 will probably turn into £0 in one or two, but hey well, nothing ventured nothing gained, and perhaps the gods of technology will smile on me and grant me the money for the iMustHave before it’s released.

¹Because those of us indoctrinated into the cult of Jobs are on first name terms with him

²OK, I had to wait for my big current computer but that’s because it was stupidly expensive and just going out and buying it when I first decided I wanted one would have left me paying off my credit cards for 5 years at a stupid rate of interest. That’s not to say I was doing without as I had less silly macs to play with in the interim.