I recently went down to Roanoke and took a bunch of pictures. And, what may not be apparent is that when I get back to the computer, it requires literally hours of sorting images, rotating them correctly, selecting the right ones, altering color space, performing edits, cropping, beaming up to the server, and making a web page with all the thumbnails and descriptions. A few pictures is fine, but I often come back from a photoshoot with two DVD’s worth. Yes, you read that right.
Enter in Apple’s new Aperature software. This thing, while friggin’ expensive, is friggin’ amazing. It solves the whole workflow problem end to end. What takes hours (or days) is done in minutes.
So, I run out and buy a copy, slap it in my machine, and discover nearly instantly that I didn’t have the minimum recommended equipment. This was surprising, as I had a really beefy Macintosh.
Turns out the problem was the graphics card, and upon researching which new card to get, it was suggested to me that maybe it might be worth it to upgrade to a new machine, given all the video and photography work I do in addition to development.
So, as I’m trying to ease the wife into the problem, she jumps to the end of the equation and suggests I get a new Mac. Acting quick before whatever cold medication she was on wore off, we ordered the Mac. And thus the slipperly slope began.
A new Mac meant new memory, new drives, new mouse, new keyboard, new software, a new table to put it on, and so forth — normally this isn’t a problem faced by regular users, but it’s something us developers bump into when we try to create a whole new work environment.
Anyhow, as I write this data is flowing seamlessly between the machines.
No in retrospect, I ponder — did I really get a brand new machine because I took a picture of a friend’s baby? You betcha.