So I’m at the end of my third week of MAC ownership and I can say for sure that it hasn’t (yet) changed my life. I’ve been able to debunk a lot of MAC myths, in the process, but I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing. So let’s jump right into them:
* MACs don’t come loaded with trialware. FALSE. MACs come loaded with trials of MS Office and iWORK. Sure, they’re not as annoying as some of the PC trialware out there, but it’s a total lie to say that they don’t come with trialwear since a small chunk of your hardware is devoted to programs you may never use (well, without paying the price).
* MACs are ready to go out of the box, no need for security updates! FALSE. On the day I got it I had over 100mb of updates waiting for me — including a 25mb download of security updates. While there hasn’t been another security update since then, the fact that the very first batch of downloads contained a security patch debunks any claims of MACs being perfect out of the box.
* MACs make multimedia a breeze! FALSE. Okay, I’m going to condition this one — if you know what you’re doing and you want to save in Quicktime, sure, it’s a breeze. However, for the past 5 or 6 years I’ve been taking movies and TV shows off my dish in MPEG-2 format, editing out the commercials and putting them on DVD so I can watch them later. On my PC the process consists of this: capture with Pinnacle Studio in MPEG-2 format. Edit in Pinnacle studio in MPEG-2 format. Save finished project in MPEG-2 format. Total time? Whatever time it took to capture plus about 10 to 15 minutes to edit and save.
Why is MPEG-2 format important? Because that’s the format DVDs are saved in. I save in native MPEG-2 format (even though it’s a quality hit compared to other formats) because I want to save the files onto DVD without an extensive conversion process. I just either save the files to a DVD as a straight .MPG file or throw them into a DVD burning program and make a playable DVD with them. No mess, no fuss.
On the MAC? Well, that’s where it gets interesting. Like Microsoft did with the XBox 360, Apple didn’t pay for the rights to the MPEG-2 codec. So, while it does convert to MPEG-2 when you’re about to burn a movie, there is no way to save in the format if you just want a MPEG-2 file. MPEG-4? Sure. Qucktime? Sure. DV? Yup. But no support at all for saving as a MPEG-2.
I must note that you *can* buy Quicktime support for MPEG-2 playback for $20, but it’s not going to save in the format. Don’t waste your money because the $20 support is awful and I’ve learned this the hard way.
So, the process for the MAC? Whatever time it takes to capture + an (roughly) equal time to save as a DV (the only codec I’ve found so far that works without losing picture/audio synch) file + 20-30 minutes to transfer said huge DV file over my network to a PC + 5 minutes to open in Pinnacle + 10-20 minutes to edit and save as a MPEG-2.
I’m using a top of the line MACBook Pro, mind you, going to a near top of the line PC setup. So I’m not skimping on processing power on either machine and, as you can see, it’s not helping at all here for what I need it to do.
* MACs play nice with everything! Just plug and go! Well, TRUE and FALSE. So far my biggest complaint is that Apple didn’t pay for the rights to use Microsoft’s NTFS hard drive format. Why is this important? Because if you have a PC and you want to share an external hard drive between your MAC and your PC, unless you buy a MAC specific external, that thing is going to be formatted in NTFS. Out of the box, MACs don’t fully support the format so, while it’ll read all your fancy PC formatted files, it can’t save or write to that disc without outside help. Be warned, I didn’t know this and blew $250 on an external hard drive for video capture and have had a devil of a time trying to get a third party program to work with the MAC. Is this Apple’s fault? Well, yes and no. They should know by now to pay for the extras. NTFS access is so common that it would be SO much easier to support MACs in a mixed household if they did.
So enough of the negatives, what do I like about the machine?
Answers in the next post!
Jim