6 posts tagged “powermac”

I'm back, at last! Well, it's been a hectic couple of months and, without going in to all the details of when and how, I am now the proud father of a little girl who has, it has to be said, settled in amazingly well, but has taken my attention away from my blog here and other things that I would usually do i my spare time. In fact, it's simple to say that I have had no free time. I wouldn't change a thing, however - she's perfect and mother and baby are doing astoundingly well.

 So what's new in the world of tech and gaming that I have been tinkering with? Well, first up would be iPhone OS 3.0 - it's funny how a few minor tweaks can turn something cool but not so practical into an indispensable tool, but that's just what OS 3.0 has done. The ability to sync Mail and Calendar to my Google account without requiring extra steps or interconversion on my part, the ability to search the entire phone, the ability to Copy/Paste and, best of all, tethering (where you use your phone as a wireless modem for your laptop) have made my life so much easier - I can copy text from web pages into emails, I don't have to send all my work appointments to my Gmail account, then import to iCal on my laptop, then sync them by connecting my phone and, joy of joys, I can now surf the net on my laptop whilst on the train without requiring a pre-paid dongle for £100+ and pay an arm and a leg for data usage (or pay yet another monthly contract fee). Ok, if you are stupid, your network provider will figure it out and block your phone, but for checking emails and browsing eBay on the move, it totally transparent as its the same level of data trafic you'd get surfing on your iPhone.

 To be honest, the latest Apple Keynote didn't wow me so much - the iTunes news was cool (DRM free songs, etc), but the rest left me a bit cold. With the iPhone 3GS, which has video (big whoop) and is marginally quicker than the standard 3G iphone, I don't really feel the need to rush out and upgrade, unlike the jump from iPhone to iPhone 3G, and the cost of upgrade is potentially huge (O2 and AT&T are not letting consumers upgrade part-way through a contract, depsite the fact the handset will cost £300ish). I also think that, because there was no true "Killer" product (no new Mac Tablet, or iNewton, etc) that Apple probably missed Steve Jobs' presentation style more keenly. Steve is cool in a way that Bill Gates could only dream of and the slightly portly fellow who did this keynote (whos name escapes me temporarily) is obviously a committed board member, who follows the Church of Jobs - I believe he has assisted in a few keynotes before - just didn't have the same charisma. He spoke the same sort of words, but they sounded like a school teacher trying to be "down with the kids" - I truly believe that a lot of Apple's ability to weather the global financial crisis is going to hinge on Steve Jobs' health as without him, Apple struggles to maintain its ice-cool image and begins to look like a bunch of middle-aged men trying to hang on to the image they had in their College days. There is also the danger that, without Jobs, Apple could slip back into the Gil Amelio-era style of iterative design and focus-groups - Apple is only competitive when it stays ahead of the game in terms of design - anyone could build a Xeon-based PC for the cost of the MacPro, but it's the qualit of the design and build and the superlative OS X that gives Apple that edge - lose that hip feel, need to innovate and design culture and Apple would sink faster than SGI, who went from top dog in the Supercomputer and 3D workstation market to bankrupt in a very short space of time and their arena of competition was far smaller. Get well soon, Steve, for Apple's sake not just your own!

  Sticking with Apple, the other news is that I have had to scale back plans to buy a new MacBook Pro 17" and an iMac (babies cost a lot ) and have just purchased a replacement for my old G4 Powermac (which now lives with my Mother who is in love with her "new" Mac) and also for the Dual Xeon PC that has been the staple of my home office for about eight years. This machine (Dual 1.7GHz Xeons, 4GB RAMBUS memory, RAID SCSI 10k drives, DVDRW and NVidia AGP 6800 card) has been more than quick enough until recently, when I just started to feel that it was becoming a bit long in the tooth - as PCs go, it's been great - reliable and fast, but then again, you do get what oyu pay for and, with the huge cost of RAMBUS memory when new, this beast weighed in at £10,000, including a (then) huge 18.1" LCD screen, DVDRAM backup drive and SoundBlaster Audigy with LiveDrive (connection breakout box in a drive bay, basically). Oh, and the Wildcat 5110 workstation class graphics card cost £1500 but was obsolete within 18 Months...still, such is the way with PCs.If you're ever in the market for a PC-based workstation, I can really recommend Boxx - their customer service was amazing over the life of this machine, but I never really enjoyed owning this computer in the same way I have a soft spot for my Macs (and my SGIs). So, rather than put it on eBay and get a pittance for it, I'm turning it over to the network for use as a video and music server and I'm also sacrificing the beloved Blue Dalamatian iMac G3, which is going to live with my parents in their guest room so that visitors can surf the net and check emails, etc. I've already got a G3 Pismo laptop serving that purpose here...

  So, what did I buy? Well, after much hunting, I've just taken delivery of a Dual 2.0GHz PowerMac G5 with 6GB of RAM and the 256MB X800T ATI graphics card. The silver hot rod also has 500GB of drive storage, which means I should need to upgrade for a while. I was after a Quad 2.5GHz machine, but my budget wouldn't quite stretch (although, in true sod's law fashion, minutes after I'd paid for mine, I had someone offer a Quad for not much more - ah well) and whilst I could have gotten a dual 2.7GHz, I picked this one as it had a good solid spec with a lot of RAM (one thing the Boxx did teach me is that 4GB or more of memory can really be worth a good 500MHz of CPU speed, as you'll lose more time writing to disk than you would waiting for a slower CPU to read out of RAM). I'm just awaiting the 22" widescreen TFT that was sent separately and I'll see if I can't get some photos or video of it all when I'm up and running.

 Given that I have a PS3, I'm not too fussed about not having a Gaming PC - I'd like to play Empire Total War, but, frankly, it's more important that the machine I use is stable and lets me do my work on it; I will work from home on it more than I will get to play on it - if I have leisure time it will most likely be spent with my family and games will be played in the lounge, socially, on the PS3.

 The other big reason I am happy with the G5 is that I'm not interested in running OSX 10.5 (Leopard), as it has no support for the old Classic applications and games that I have many of - I'm more likely to want to run the apps I spent money on than games I won't have time to play or be forced to pay out a fortune to update apps that still do the work I require just so they will work on OSX 10.5.

 I know that there is a good business case for dropping the legacy code now that Apple are aligned with Intel, but how many people bought a G5 at a cost of £4000+ that is still useful (and fast) as a work machine only to find it basically being phased out after two years or so - Leopard doesn't support anything less than an 800MHz G4 (according to Apple, anyway, although it might run if you hack the install), but Snow Leopard is due to drop all support for PowerPC systems, which means that machines that are still not end-of-life in studios and small businesses are effectively being made obsolete.

 Not since System 7 dropped support for the original Macintosh machines (68000 CPU series), forcing users to buy LCs or Macintosh Classics, has there been such a cull - by the time OSX rolled around, anything pre-PowerPC chip was basically landfill and most of the Beige G3 machies could run it, so it was a gradual process. A small business (and I know because I am, and have been, one) does not pay out £6k for a top-spec Mac and large screen only to replace it three or four years later - that machine will stay in service until it is literally of no practical use or it breaks down. It might not be the go-to machine after two eyars, but it will be used by junior staff, or as a back up, or for temps...then it might be used as a server or as a render-node, or even just to surf the net and write letters, but it will still be in use. Hell, last year I even saw a Blue and White G3 tower being put to use by an art department who needed all hands to help get a project out the door - sure, it wasn't quick and it ran an older version of Photoshop, but it still actually did the work and that's what businesses care about. The gamer culture of must-have-latest-and-greatest which is vaunted by the PC fanboys in their breating of Apple products is actually not sensible for business users, as those uber-quick gaming rigs tend to be unstable and unproven - agencies and the like need machines that are quick enough but, more importantly, are rock-solid and dependable - hence the proliferation of Apple machines.

 I guess that there is an incentive for Apple to force people to buy the new Intel machines, but there are a lot of XServe or G5 PowerMacs in academic use (Virginia Tech built a supercomputer for $5.2Million using them) and the custom apps on them either may not recompie on Intel x86 or it might be cost-prohibitive, so what about those users? I know for a fact that the media editing department of a multinational oil company still has a whole bunch of G5 towers under their desks, with only those which die beyond repair being replaced with Mac Pros - the investment is huge and corporate finance dictates that as long as the machines are useful, they won't be replaced and, unfortunately for those trying to sell you a new Intel Mac, Apple machines stay useful for far longer - Snow Leopard feels to me like an artificial attempt to force corporate buyers to replace machines in order for OS support contracts to stay in place, etc. In short, it feels a little cynical - what happened to Apple only phasing out sstem support when it was no longer a viable OS for the platform?

 Given that my old G4 which, although fitted with a Radeon card, larger hard drives and a lot more memory, was only a 400MHz CPU and still felt snappy enough for most work (ok, it chopped a bit when rendering out video and also could take a while to resize HUGE images) - especially Flash and web design work, where the files tend to be smaller, and the Dual 1.7GHz Xeon box was always quick because of the RAM and the drives, I can honestly say that my G5 will be the core of my studio for some time to come - especially as I want to be able to run my Classic apps. I dare say that in a year or so when I have some decent spare cash, I would like to get a Mac Pro 8 Core with all the bells and whistles, but actually....I think I'd much rather buy 5 G5 Quads for the same money and get more work done on a distributed workflow.

  I know it sounds stupid, but I have always preferred the RISC CPUs of MIPS on Silicon Graphics and Motorola/IBM's PowerPC on Macintosh to anything Intel have come up with. The Intel machines tended to run at faster cycles, but their instruction set and bad architecture tended to make them hot and not actually that quick in real-world terms (same goes for AMD). Basically, the G5 I have was proven to be 40% faster in real-world terms than a Dual 3.06GHz Xeon PC (which given I am only now running down a dual Xeon 1.7GHz machine gives an idea of how much more competent the Xeon workstation-class boxes are compared to a normal PC). I know for a fact that my Core Duo machine running at 1.6GHz (a £2000 Sony Vaio) was nowhere near as quick and, whilst I can get a quad core 3.0GHz Xeon for £LOTS, I really cannot justify the expense on a new machine when £500 on eBay has just upgraded my studio to be at least 50% more efficient for when I am working and made an infinite upgrade for my leisure time as I've got more power in less space and have freed up room for miniatures that need painting, the coffee maker that has been languishing in a cupboard and things are way more organised now I haven't got the extra machines taking up space.

 Life is never simple and now the money which was going to buy my new Mac G5, a new mic for podcasting (the Blue Snowball...mmm, yum!), a new set of paints and brushes for my miniatures, some clothes, some PS3 games and Bluray movies and a few days out and meals for myself and my lovely wife (and baby) has now been ear-marked for two single beds for the guest bedroom (not that we have that many guests), more baby clothes (our house looks like a branch of Mothercare collided with a Baby Gap already), a sewing machine (why?) and shopping spree around Babies'R'Us. Still, at least I have my PowerMac, the paints and the prospect of a few nice dinners....can't be all bad!

 As the Euromillions peaked at over £85Million this week, I thought I'd take a punt and bought a ticket (of course playing when there's a mere £15Million in the jackpot would just be a waste of money...). Of course, I didn't in, but I did spend an interesting half an hour contemplating what I'd buy if I did. Of course, I'd build my wife and I the house of our dreams - traditional oak framed manor house with Art Deco interior, using reclaimed tiles and bricks, etc, to make the house look well-aged. I'm not saying we've thought about much, but I can even tell you where the door handles come from. So, we have somewhere to live, but what to put in it?

 Well, there is the question of cars - we'd need a couple to cover all eventualities. We're good for a saloon as we already have a well-loved and cherished Jaguar that my wife calls Honoria, after the forceful girl in the Wodehouse books - I don't know why, but somehow it makes sense. So, what other four-wheeled delights would there be? A Veyron, perhaps? Perhaps - but what is it for? It's too flabby and large to be a back-road scorcher, but it's got zero luggage room for continent-crushing touring. A DB9 or even a Merc SLR is far better suited to whisking myself and the wife off for a weekend. It's too refined to give that seat-of-the-pants driving experience you'd wat from a sports car...ultimately, it's just about two things - the top speed and the price tag and, much as I think it's a lovely piece of engineering, I think it's just basically a £3Million game of Top Trumps. With this in mind, I think I'd pick up a DB9 or a Bently GT for the touring side of things, a Ferrari 430 Spider for the backroads and a Jag SS100 replica from Suffolk Sportscars for sunny weekends and picnics. Oh, and I'd still have only spend about 1/3 of the cost of a Veyron at most. Add a Jaguar XJ220 to the collection and maybe a green or orange Lambo (Murcielago) or an orange Zonda for my wife (god bless her, she does love the lairy Italian hypercars). Finally, my wife would need a Range Rover for snow/horsebox-pulling/trolling around the farmland. So, we have the cars and the house...and we've still only spent maybe £5Million. £10Million including building stables, buying a horse and associated ephemera for my wife, kitting out a nice gym and building the indoor heated pool...

 Ok, let's just say we got a quarter share of the jackpot - a mere £21,250,000. We've spent under half of it and we're already living like royalty, albeit without the claims of racism and detachment from reality...

 So, let's up the ante and be generous. Let's buy houses for our families - £1Million to each set of parents and, say £500,000 to my brother-in-law. We've still got £8.75Million to account for...ok, put £2Million in a high interest account and live off the interest (10% flat rate gives an annual income of £200,000 tax-free for life, over an above any earnings). What next? £1Million to charity, I think - £250,000 to Great Ormond Street, £250,000 Macmillan Nurses and £500,000 to Comic Relief should help a few people, at least. Well, with the remaining £5.75 Million, what is there to do?

 Well as with all computer geeks, there's the techno-porn list - the ultimate haven of computer hardware. That list, for me, would look a little like this:

NeXTs:

NeXTStation, NeXTStation Color, NeXTStation Turbo, NeXTStation Turbo Color, Next Cube (with accellerator, maximum RAM, 4 GB hdd, CDROM, Two NeXTDimension boards and a second motherboard), all with monitors (3 in the case of the Cube). Add a NeXT color and a NeXT laser printer, too. Hell, the Internet as we know it now was basically created on this hardware. Punches well above its weight as far as being useful with a really slow CPU.

SGIs:

Crimson Reality Engine, Tezro - quad CPU, Onyx 2 Infinite Reality deskside, O2 with 1600sw monitor (or should I say, another O2). I like Irix and part of me really wants to run some 3D work on the Infinite Reality hardware...the Crimson would just be there for the love of it and the Tezro and O2 would be used for Maya and Video work, etc.

Apple:

PowerMac Quad G5 - max out the RAM and storage, add a top-flight GFX card and a 24" display. It's fast enough for Flash, Photoshop and the like, more than quick enough for Final Cut and Combustion and still runs my old Classic games and apps, so I wouldn't want a maximum spec MacPro. Oh, what the hell, throw in a IIfx and a Classic for giggles, too - they can keep my iMac company.

PC:

The temptation here is to go for a single all-in-one wonder PC, but we're not exactly stretched for budget, so I think I'd go for a Tesla-based GPU machine (the Nvidia Personal Supercomputer, for example), dual booting both XP Pro64 and Linux 64 (running OpenStep/GnuStep on Ubuntu seems the best bet) - this would probably default to linux, running as a cluster/render box for the SGI machines and as a really fast server and SETI@Home, etc, box on the Unix side of things. When booted to Windows, it'd be used for transcoding DVDs, etc, at about a million miles per hour.

On the leisure side of computing (not that video editing, coding and writing tech docs is not my idea of fun), I think I'd like something truly funky - something I could game on, watch movies on and do some creative tinkering on and which is relatively future-proof. Ideally, it should be easy on the eye, as this would be in my office/den for home-working, not in the "tech bunker" with all the other stuff. Enter Alienware and their ALX series of "luxury" gaming PCs. I'd probably go for one of their green cases, as it's different and suits the case design (although the black looks good), I'd also be tempted by one of Panoram's lovely multiscreen displays, as I'd have the graphics output to power this bad-boy. In fact, I might also be tempted to use one on the Tesla machine, because this screen is so nice.

 I've become very weary of laptops lately - I have a lovely old Pismo but I need a new battery for it and that will cost probably more than I paid for the machine. i have a white MacBook for work and I really don't get on with it - the sharp edge to the wrist-rest area, the awful keyboard, the constant dropping of wireless signal and the crashing of Safari and Firefox on a regular basis under OS X 10.5 - it's also got less 3d capable graphics than my 10 year old Pismo. The Vaio is nice enough, but is now my wife's machine, despite my upgrading her desktop PC, as she likes it to shop online, browse Youtube, etc, whilst on the sofa. The Dualcore CPU and 256mb GeForce card are rather wasted now she's stopped playing Medieval Total War, but I'm not one to complain. I don't like the new MacBook, I'm not exactly bowled over by the specs/price of the new MacBook Pro (let's face it, they are basically high-end PC notebooks nowadays), so I could see myself coming round to Alienware again, but the machines aren't as funky as they used to be, as they dropped the rounded "alien face" case in green in favour of a more "tech" orientated all-black system that looks like a Toshiba with lights...it's smart, but not cool, I guess. Still, anything that allows me to use SLi graphics in my lap is fine with me...

 So, whilst it staggers me to even think it, I'd not be buying an Apple for either of my three highest-spec machines. Which, as an Apple/NeXT die-hard, is rather worrying to me - how is it that the MacPro is under-powered, or the new MacBook so uninspiring?

 I think the reason is basically that, in standard trim, these machines are great - they are great for designers, or for the office/studio, where they offer more than enough grunt, combined with ease of use and stability. The problem comes in that the hardware is not cutting-edge - there's no 2GB NVidia 295GTX your MacPro, despite it running 8 Cores and 16GB of RAM, so you end up with weak graphics ability for the cost. Even if you stuff the Mac full of cards, you'd still only get 4 512mb 180GTX cards, which is less than impressive when you consider the machine would be settnig you back £7k or more...

 So once we've wired the house up for high speed wireless and internet and have installed a UPS array in the basement to ensure we don't lose power, what's the point of all this? Well, the Alienware is unashamedly for play-time - it's an ultimate gaming rig to allow games like Crysis or Empire Total War to run at huge detail and with zero frame-rate drop. It's the toy I've always promised myself and never bought...oh, and I love the idea of being able to watch a DVD on one screen, surf the net on another and be messing around in photoshop on a third with no slowdown. Basically, anything that makes me feel like Cypher from the Matrix is fine with me!

 I know that we've had the eight-core Mac Pros and the the MacBook Air and, in fairness, the aluminium iMac (a machine I think is stunning, but I really don't like the keyboard), but they aren't, well, new.

Bear with me, as I think this needs some explanation - yes, we have had a myriad new products, but we haven't had anything to change the world in the same way that the original Macintosh did. Or, I suppose, the Macintosh II in the way it overturned the entire print and design industry and made Desktop Publishing mainstream. The iPhone is lovely, especially now it has 3G and GPS, but it's really nothing more than a logical extension of the Newton, although the Newton had handwriting recognition and the iPhone doesn't. I love my Blue Dalmation iMac G3, but the all-in-one form factor and simple, easy-to-use-yet-powerful design ethos are merely an update of the original Macintosh and all successive iMacs are iterative, rather than revolutionary. The Mac Pro is based on the Power Macintosh, which evolved from the Quadra series which grew from the ashes of the Macintosh II, whilst the consumer/low-end systems went from Macintosh to....well, Macintosh Classic, Colour Classic, LC, Performa (essentially reboxing the same technology), to the iMac. All compact, all usefully quick without setting your hair on fire and all pretty well designed and screwed together.

 So where is the new paradigm shift? It's easy to watch the launch of the original Macintosh on youtube and think of it as hokey and rather sweet in a "aww, look at them going mad over something with less power than my phone" manner, but in 1984 the technology being unveiled was a world apart. In those days, even so-called "Personal" computers required expertise to use, as you loaded your games via a command line, or had to use a DOS Prompt to find your text documents and disparate interfaces and menus for your different packages. To put it in context, your PC keyboard used to have a clear plastic flap at the top under which you'd put your inlay (that shipped with each package you used) that told you what the 12 function keys did (at least three commands per key - the key, the key with Shift held and the key with ALT held). The Macintosh changed all that at a stroke. A child could use it, it worked logically and the interface was consistent across all packages. One of the least thought-about and most beneficial things that Microsoft hijacked when they pillaged Apple's IP during the creation of Windows was that idea of a consistent set of commands - CTRL+C for copy, CTRL+S for save, etc.

  It is very hard for those people who grew up after the fallout of the introduction of Macintosh to understand just how far-reaching its impact was - they expect things like copy/paste and drag and drop. They expect their standard key commands to be consistent and they really fail to grasp the fact that all of it, every single thing they now see as "computing" is, in some way, linked back to that little beige box that spoke like Stephen Hawking and played a bleepy version of "Chariots of Fire" when an excitable guy with floppy hair and glasses pulled it out of a bag. Yes, I am sure that people will come out of the woodwork to point out that Xerox Parc had developed the bones of the WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointer) interface and that, no doubt, some guy had created a full windowing, multitasking interfaces for UNIX in the 1970s that I don't know about, but the original Macintosh created the desktop computer revolution as we know it.

  The Newton created the first usable PDA (before we even know we needed one) and the Mac Portable was, despite the execution, the first attempt to make a portable computer that was a full equivalent to a desktop machine (remember, at the time you could buy an Collosus PC which had a 10" CRT monochrome screen and an 8086 CPU and a couple of floppy drives and that was about the size of a suitcase, so the Mac Portable wasn't that bad).

So, the question remains, what's the next paradigm shift? Personally, I don't think it's the "cloud", with everything on the web and computers just accessing information and applications when needed - the restriction of bandwidth precludes any idea of it being faster than a decent machine on your desk working with local files. Besides, we already have web-based applications and data storage, so it's nothing new. Touch and gesture control is just a way of integrating the trackpad or mouse to the screen, so it doesn't really bring anything new and whilst we are already seeing some convergence with data push/pull from handheld/phone to web to desktop and back, you could sync your Newton to your Macintosh many moons ago. I think that where we'll see the next revolution will be in convenience. Think about it - at the moment you might have a MacPro or iMac, a MacBook of some kind for working away from your desk and an iPhone/PDA phone for keeping in touch when you are travelling. This means you have at least three devices, but imagine if you had something like and iMac with a Wacom Cintiq (the display/tablet) that acted as your keyboard/input and document "dock". If you wanted to save a web page you drag it off the main screen and onto an area of the "tablet", which might have a keyboard attached (given how thin the new mac keyboard is, it could slide out). When you then go out of the office, you unplug the tablet and take it with you and it's a fully functioning mobile Mac - low power CPU (like a MacBook Air), maybe even built-in 3G, with an iPhone-esque interface for your stored web pages, documents, etc, but which has fully-functioning desktop applications and, say, 20gb of flash drive - enough to store a few tunes, your presentations and your documents for the meeting, all in a tough A4 sized slab that fits in your bag neatly, unlike a laptop - hell it could even have solar cells to top up the battery. If it's got 3G, you could bluetooth a headest to it and make calls, then get back to the office and dock it back to the main part of your Mac where it automatically updates your files with any changes made to the copies on the tablet and recharges the tablet battery.

From a users perspective, your work becomes seamless, you're not having to use USB sticks, or email yourself files to transfer from desktop to laptop and you don't even need a phone. It's nothing new, really, as it's a logical extension of the old Powerbook Duo/Duo Dock system, but I think it's something that would appeal to home users (surf the net from the sofa or stream movies to the tablet whilst the main machine burns tunes to CD or suchlike) and business users, for the reasons described previously, alike.

I know that it's technically not a new paradigm in computing in the same way that the original Macintosh was, but I think that something that is so flexible and useful would become indispensible to consumers, students and professionals and the fact you wouldn't need to physically transfer files from one machine to another takes a lot of the pain out of using a computer for practical tasks and makes it much more acceptable to those resistant to technology. I think it would be the first step towards making the Macintosh as ubiquitous as the TV remote or the microwave - which is no bad thing, as such a product would form a sound base for stronger Pro-grade machines, or even tie-ins with car manufacturers to create in-car Mac/GPS entertainment systems, for example.

After a fairly heavy weekend, this seemed like a sensible suggestion, but I'm willing to hear your point of view!

 There are a lot of magazine articles (not to mention books and websites) that are dedicated to the theme of getting started as a digital design agency, either as a freelance going it alone, or as a group of designers forming their own business. Mostly, these are concerned with things like building your company website and ensuring your logo translates well from the screen to a printed business card or letterhead. Now, I'm not knocking such articles and, to be honest, some of them even inspired me when I was getting started in the wonderful world of work. However, most of the focus is given to the "design" part and, for the most part, little is given to the "agency" part. They talk boldly about sticking to your creative roots and espouse the idea that good creative will always win the pitch. Obviously, when you are selling to aspiring digital designers, such articles offer hope and encouragement to your readership. It has been in the back of my mind that, as someone who has run his own digital business, before moving into the folds of the big Ad Agencies and working client-side in the digital marketing world, that I might be able to offer a slightly different viewpoint and that, potentially, I could help those people who are looking to start out on their own (or even those who are starting out in the industry full-stop) by writing a book. A sort of learn-from-my-mistakes effort. I doubt I'll make millions, but if it helps some future icon of the industry get started on the right course, it'll have served its purpose.

 Fundamentally, there are a few lessons that can be quite hard to stomach but which are undeniably true. Of course, I'll expound on these in my magnum opus, but I'll give you the benefit of my insight here and you can let me know what you think.

Lesson 1: You don't need to be creative, you need to be organised

 We've all been to those great agency offices, where they have segways to get around, or organised Fussball tournaments and where you can create your own office cubicle out of over-sized Lego bricks, etc. The fact is, you'd love to work there, but if you run your own small business like that it'll be out of business within months. If you want an office where more effort is placed on fun than work, get a job working for one of those places, as they will inevitably be part of a huge multi-million pound company. If you want to work for yourself, or start a business, you'll be looking at VAT returns more often that you organise inter-office ping pong tournaments. The sad truth is that a lot of creative people think that they are being stifled by the company they work for, so they go off to set up their own company that works how they want it to. The problem with that is that your local Tax Office and your bank don't care if you had to work late on a deadline, or that you felt your profit-and-loss would look better as a Flash animation - all they care about is that the paperwork is correct and things are paid on time.

 Also, the next time you visit one of these big, funky, agencies, you'll notice that the finance staff and the teams that negotiate the contracts are generally wearing smart business wear and are surrounded by binders and filing cabinets. Much like an office, really. The sad truth is that the creative and technical teams in such businesses are given a lot of freedom and that when you take the plunge to work for yourself, you're more likely to end up more involved with paperwork and internal organisation just because you won't have a team of people doing it for you.

Lesson 2: The best creative doesn't always win the pitch

 Here's a secret - you don't always have to have an award-winning piece of creative to get paid. In fact, some companies would be scared off by things they see as too left-field or outside of their comfort zone. Also, more pitches nowadays are being won on the strength of delivery methodologies and Project Management in the agency, as larger businesses especially are wary of giving business to "wacky" creatives who then go over budget or push back on deadlines. They would rather have less outlandish and more derititave creative if it's guaranteed to be under budget and delivered on time, flawlessly. So, be realistic in your estimates and provide exacting details of what you are proposing and what is going to end up costing extra. Outline deliverables clearly and limit the creative work to fit the budget unless the client agrees to extend the budget before you do the extra work. It's all simple stuff, I know, but it does make the difference between turning a profit and going broke. The hard part is reining in your creative urges to suit a budget - you'll be tempted to think "well, I'll just do this for them and make it look nice", but that's billable time not being paid for, or a potential argument over the value of the estimate compared to the final bill. A lot of agencies are now pitching their Project Management skills as hard as they are pitching their creative abilities. So, the secret of success might be to ensure you think about contingency plans and always have the budget foremost in your mind, as opposed to going crazy with the Sharpies and creating a million Mood Boards.

Lesson 3: Newest isn't always best

 You don't need that Eight-Core Mac Pro with 30" display. You don't always need to work in CS3 and, you can make calls on something other than an iPhone. Given that a lot of clients will have restrictive IT policies that means they won't have up to date browsers or Flash players. So, given that and the fact that a lot of adservers only allow Flash 8, why spend thousands on the latest and greatest gear and software just to do the job of making a few Flash banners for a client? Unless you're the size of Saatchi and Saatchi, you only need the minimum tools to do the job in hand. Of course, it means you're not going to win the bragging contest down the pub, but you'll be turning a profit.

 The fact is that, whilst I'd love a 17" MacBook Pro to take to client sites, an iPhone 3G for use as a PDA and the mother of all MacPros on my desk, I can run a multimillion pound project using nothing more sophisiticated than Mac Project II on a Macintosh Classic. I could do my company accounts on it, too. If you want a "funky" office, equip your reception area with Tangerine G3 iMacs running Airport cards, so that the secretary can check their email and use Word and visitors can surf the company website. Your designers might want £4000 of MacPro, but they can work on £1000 of quad CPU G5, or even a brand new iMac. And the machines will look just as nice on the desk, for those people who worry about such aesthetic niceties.

 There are plenty more ideas I can share and, because I'm a nice guy, I'm happy to, but I'll be getting on with the book soon enough, as I've finally finished writing a custom project delivery framework for a multinational company to work with their rostered agencies and have some evenings to myself again!

 Sorry there weren't too many jokes, but I thought it'd be useful to some of you to give a different angle on setting up in business for yourself. I hope it doesn't put any of you off, as the truth is it's a great adventure, but you just need to focus on the important things that aren't necessarily why you'd thought of going into business for yourself. Good luck!

 

As we all know, Microsoft used the tagline "what do you want to do today?" (or "where do you want to go today?" in web-related ads) in a lot of PR, whilst Apple tended to stick with "Think Different" or, in earlier advertisements, "Tomorrow's PC, today" or variations on that theme. So, putting aside all the hyperbole, it seems that both are focusing on pushing the user experience, as opposed to the hardware itself. Windows' advertising aims itself at the audience by asking what you want and, by implication, suggesting that Windows has the ability to get you there. Apple tedns to position itself as a bit left-field, more creative in its thinking and thus better able to understand your needs. In fact, in reality, its products do tend to meed the users' expectations far better, so maybe it's a case of the ads just reporting on the reality. However, all this talk of advertising is getting me away from the crux of what I wanted to talk about, which is that, whilst I love older Macs, just how useful are they? Should I stop lusting after a quad G5 with full RAM and top-spec graphics and settle for a brand new top-of the line iMac instead, given the cost of G5s at the moment? Is there any value in buying last-gen technology when the current stuff is available from such (comparitively) low costs?

 Well, maybe not in the case of a G5, as it's no longer the top-dog workhorse and prices are artificially high from all those private owners who are trying to recoup the cost of purchase and are, thus, maybe being a little unrealistic in their acceptance of depreciation. For example, I bought a Xeon-powered Windows workstation in 2002 that cost in excess of £10000 (for a business I was running). It had 4GB of RAMBUS memory, a 128mb Wildcat graphics card, Audigy soundcard with I/O box, etc and is still usefully quick today. However, it's worth about £4.50 if I stick it on eBay and I think the G5 towers are suffering the same thing - they're more than just useful (in fact, only those who are doing feature film editing or working on high resolution images for use on billboards are likely to call them slow, but adding the full compliment of RAM would help with that). However, if I can buy an old quad G5 with monitor and it costs £1000-£1500 by the time the bidding stops, why wouldn't I just save up a bit more and get a new quad-core, dual CPU  MacPro? Or buy an iMac 24" with dual-core 2.8GHz and 512mb Nvidia graphics? I'm not being a nay-sayer, as I still love the old G5, but the fact is that people are being unrealistic in the market value at the moment, so I'd steer clear for a year until they drop through the floor. They'll still be able to edit your video, or tinker with your photos, but you won't pay through the nose for it.

 So why do I like the G5 so much? Well, aside from the design, which is a thing of Bauhaus-ian beauty inside and out, the fact is that I like the ability to fire up Classic mode and use all my old applications without the need to run an emulator. Not only that, but as someone whose home computing is mainly web-surfing, blogging and the occasional bit of image and video work, a G5 is more than adequate. Even my desire to get back to doing some Flash and Director coding is not going to tax it. Also, I'm always nervous about my main workstation being an all-in-one, as if the screen dies, I can't work, whereas if my old PowerMac screen died, I could change the monitor and carry on. That, and I'd really like the 30" display on my desk for artwork and layout work. Then again, the 24" iMac would be fine for that, too. Basically, whilst I am what would be considered a power user, the G5 would do all I need and be fast enough. Hell, my old G4 was fast enough. This is really the point - do you want the latest, greatest, oh-my-god-it's-so-fast machine to boast to your friends, or do you want to actually get stuff done. If it's the latter, then most Macs still running are useful (for a given value of useful). You can word process, do some DTP or web design, look at your photos, listen to tunes and edit/watch a movie. Who can honestly say they use a home computer for much else? Especially if you own a PS3 for gaming? Not me, that's for sure - I want something reliable (so I don't come in from work and then get stressed during my leisure time by a computer that won't work), well designed and that is quick enough.

 So what is "quick enough"?

 Last post, I talked about my love of Silicon Graphics machines, but the truth is that the central processors in them are slow. The machines are usable because of the huge array of custom hardware taking work away from the CPU, but in the Megahertz wars, they are trounced by cheap Intel chips. What they are, though, is stable. my old Iris Indigo was only ever rebooted when software installations required it. My Powermac G4 was also stable - working quite happily for weeks at a time until Software Update asked me to reboot. This means that renders can be left overnight if needs be, safe in the knowledge that they'll be done in the morning. If I left my windows machine to do that, it'd crash and reboot or run slower and slower until I restarted because Windows leaves junk in the memory and bloats its registry. So, in real world terms, the Windows machine was screamingly quick, but because it would require at least one restart a day, the truth is you only got the same amount of work done. Now, if the MacPro has all of the clock speed and none of the instability of a high end Windows machine, then it will be a thing of wonder, but in the real world, I think I'd get a good two or three years out of a quad G5 mac, because I don't really care if it takes an extra half hour to render out my hour-long film - I'll be billing for time if it's work and drinking tea and chatting to my wife if it's something I am doing as a hobby. In fact, the ability to let it chug away whilst I stare out of the window is a plus point in my books - it forces me to slow down and relax a little, as opposed to tearing along at 90mph all day, then getting in and doing the same in my leisure time. "Quick enough" means that a machine doesn't take two hours to respond to a key-press, but that it might take a little while to think about some hugely intensive task. It means you might not be able to do fifty things at once all at a million miles per hour, but that you would surely be able to do the tasks you were trying to do. Given that criteria, the G5 is perfect for me and, depending on the cost, I hope to pick up a quad G5 with maximum RAM and top end graphics ASAP.

 So, there you go - buy a G5 and avoid a heart attack. Surely that's a tagline that someone can use?

  Apple recently launched the new aluminium iMacs and very nice they are too – all brushed metal and glossy black, it seems strange that the same material combinations were used so effectively on my old Bang and Olufsen stereo, but then again, that was one of a few pieces of technology to be recognised as a design masterpiece and displayed as “art”, so maybe there is something in it. Or maybe I, like all the other thirtysomethings associate such aesthetics with quality through some memory of seeing such a stereo that belonged to a friends’ dad and coveting it. Who knows? The end result is that, as with the release of the first OS X, Apple have once again created a product that (in the words of Steve Jobs) “looks so good you want to lick it”.

 

  In days gone by, the review would have taken a bit of a downturn, if I wasn’t a total Apple fanatic, where I’d have to say that it was a lovely design, but it was expensive compared to the performance I could have got from a similarly-priced Windows PC. If I was a rabid believer in the Cult of iSteve, I’d probably have trotted out some line about performance not being all about Megahertz and being more about usability (and, admittedly, I’d have had a point), but ultimately I’d have had a really tough job of convincing you that the machine was worth switching away from Windows and the world of the dirt cheap PC in preference for a machine that looked nice but seemed over-priced for the performance it seemed to give on paper. However, those days are over – with the death of the G5 (something I actually feel a bit upset over – I like true RISC architecture and wish IBM/Motorola could have got it up to speed), we’ve now got a Dual-Core Intel processor with some nifty Apple architecture around it, so we’re talking about a machine that uses the same CPU as a PC, but which uses it better. Not only that, but if you absolutely have to have Windows, because of a Windows-only application (Microsoft Project springs to mind – we really could use a port of that, Mr Gates!), then you can simply install Windows on a partition or run any one of a number of programs that allow you to run Windows as an application on your OS X installation.

 iMacs in previous iterations were always a bit underwhelming – great if you just wanted to surf the Web, type letters or send emails, but a bit lacking in grunt if you wanted to play games, or work with video or large PhotoShop files. If you were anything approaching a creative professional, you had to lash out and buy a PowerMac  and a separate monitor costing thousands of pounds. The new iMacs, however, ship with high-end ATI Radeon graphics (128mb or 256mb, depending on your preference) and the minimum of a 2.0GHz Dual-Core processor means that you can revel in PhotoShop on your lovely glossy 20- or 24-inch screen. Not only that, but because the hardware is all DirectX 10 compliant, you can play the latest Windows games if you boot to XP or Vista (whichever you choose to install). No longer do you have to wait three years to get a game that was released on PC and now costs £10 when the Mac version is £40 – it could be the ideal compromise: Work on a Mac, play your games on a PC, all in the same machine.

  A quick note about the screen as there is a lot of mixed reaction about it on the internet and in various reviews. Yes, it’s glossy, so it can make it harder to match colours across media when working, but the Sony Vaio I am writing this on has a glossy screen, too, and I would rather have the higher image quality when viewing video and have a few viewing-angle issues than go back to the dull screens I used before - the same can be said for the iMac screen. Also, if you are that worried about how things might look when you work on digital work that has to match print work, then either use the Pantone number or a hex code to define the colour used in the print work and simply ensure you work to that. It’s not difficult and the rewards offered by the glossy screen far outweigh the negatives. Photos look vibrant, DVDs look fantastic and even a task as menial as writing a letter in Word or Pages becomes a joy to behold. Trust me, as long as you don’t aim a lamp at it, you’ll be fine – whether the screen is matte of glossy, it’ll still wash out to grey if you sit in strong sunlight or by a window, after all.

 There was an advert for electric shavers in the 1980s where the CEO would say “I liked it so much I bought the company”, well, I am going to follow his example and put my money where my mouth is – I will order myself a 24” 2.8GHz iMac with 2GB of RAM and 750 GB hard drive as soon as possible. After a few years away from the fold, I have returned to Macs and the joys of OS X and given a choice between a second-hand G5 Powermac and 20-inch Cinema Display or the new iMac, I would pick the new iMac any day of the week.

 A wise man once said: “In a world without wall, or fences, to constrain our imagination, who needs Windows and Gates?” – come with me and bask in the glow of Apple!