The Online Photographer

[UPDATE Sunday March 31: Readers in the comments talked me out of my brief infatuation with RAID. I'll leave this post alone, but my backup plans no longer include RAID. Please see the next post for my backup plans as they developed from the collective advice I got from readers. Thanks! —Ed.]

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Because I am an unwilling slave to authoritarian Big Brother corporations and my mind has been taken over, I can't help thinking of the old Raid bug spray commercials that featured insects happily destroying human property until the can of Raid comes out, at which point they all shriek "RAID!!!" and flee.

But what we're talking about here is not that, but computer storage. In the computing world, RAID stands for "Redundant Array of Inferior Disks." It's an umbrella name for several strategies for ganging physically separate hard drives together in various ways to make them work less poorly.

There are several types. The first is RAID 0 (zero), so called because it offers zero protection from failure. Photographers don't need to mess with this type; all RAID 0 indicates for us is that we must momentarily become sad and feel sorry for videographers.

Then there's RAID 1, which is the important one for us. In RAID 1, two identical drives are linked together in the same volume, which are often placed in the same enclosure. The capacity of the array is the same as the capacity of a single hard drive, so you are getting one for the price of two plus the price of the enclosure (such a deal!). But the salient point is that any file you copy to the first disk is automatically copied exactly on the second one. So, if when one drive fails, you can keep on working. If you remove the bad drive and insert a fresh one that's still good, RAID 1 will immediately begin rebuilding the new drive from the surviving old one.

There are many other types of RAID, including RAID 5, RAID 10, RAID Track 9 1/2, RAID 42, and RAID TTPoP (to the power of Pi). All of these types and many others not listed may be ignored with a devil-may-care attitude and a dismissive wave of the hand on account of us not being smart enough to be IT persons.

You might think that RAID 1 means you are also automatically backed up, but oh no, bug-spray-breath. Because good backup hygiene demands that you still be backed up even during a failure. When one of the drives fails in a RAID 1 setup, you would then temporarily have all your data on one physical drive, and that is not enuff. (Isn't it annoying when people try to be cutesy by spelling "enough" like that?) So a RAID 1 box is highly reliable, much more so than a single external drive, but you still need to back it up somewhere else. How you do this is the same problem you had in the first place, but never mind.

Note that stated RAID 1 capacities must be cut in half. For instance, a 4TB RAID 1 box has two 2TB drives inside and offers 2TB of storage. I hope I don't need to say out loud that if hard drives actually were reliable, we wouldn't need RAID setups in the first place.

You might already have one
What some people don't realize is that you can set up a RAID 1 in MacOS Mojave using regular old external hard drives. I do not know if this is better than or worse than or the same as the bespoke solutions.

Start with two identical hard drives. If not new, make sure there's nothing on 'em you want to save. If new, make sure they are formatted for Mac—"Mac OS Extended (Journaled)." Do a Spotlight Search to find Disk Utility if you don't already know how to find it. Under the File pulldown menu in Disk Utility, there's an option called "RAID Assistant." You can use RAID Assistant to set up Striped (RAID 0), Mirrored (RAID 1), or something very charmingly called "Concatenated (JBOD)." This last is pronounced "jay-bod," and, this is true, it stands for "just a bunch of disks." I'd use JBOD just for the name alone if I could think of any reason to do so. A JBOD is a volume that just lumps one disk with another resulting in a larger drive.

The best Thunderbolt 3 dock

So while I wanted a super-duper hardware RAID 1 in its own fancy enclosure, they're all expensive, and I ended up just buying two 4TB Western Digital My Passport portable drives which I plan to set up as a RAID 1 in Mojave. Offsite backup courtesy of BackBlaze. Good enuff (?).

If you really want to go the Ferrari route, try a RAID5 setup with the awesome made-in-the-USA CalDigit T4. Way above my pay grade, so you're on your own with that. CalDigit, by the way, is the company that makes the best Thunderbolt 3 dock for photographers, the famous TS3 Plus, the one that has a UHS-II card slot in it and that can charge your laptop at full speed and run your monitors and has umpteen ports and on and on. There are glowing reviews all over the Web.

Enuff! (Er....) And now, many readers will write comments that I am not smart enough to comprehend, but which I am hopeful of learning something from anyway.

Mike

P.S. It's actually Redundant Array of Independent Disks. Originally inexpensive, says Wikipedia.

But you knew that.

Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Speed: "Many years ago I worked in a bank. Every Friday afternoon a professor from the music department at the local University brought in some sort of computer storage media, put it into his safety deposit box, removed last week's media, said 'have a nice weekend' and left. He was a man of few words. And fewer worries about backups."

Jim Richardson: "I must say that after a while MEGO when it comes to RAID. And since what I really wanted was data security, not data availability (as 01af so nicely pointed out) I have run my business on JBOD. To me the giveaway is that RAID users always have stories to tell. I don't want stories to tell. I want to know where the files are."

["MEGO" means "my eyes glaze over." —Yr. Hmbl. Ed., working so you don't have to.]

Bob Johnston [no (immediate) relation to the ed. —Ed.]: "Beware the RAID 1! I am retired now but used to work for a computer company. If I had a pound for every unrecoverable failure of a RAID 1 array I would be a rich man. I won't bore you with the details but there are several failure modes that can render a RAID 1 unrecoverable. The simple kind of RAID is intended to keep you working seamlessly, so for Mike there is a value. If his disk fails while he is writing his blog he won't be interrupted. But it does not negate the need for a backup. Therefore, in my opinion, unless you can afford RAID 6, RAIDs are of little value to anyone who can wait a while whilst their data is rebuilt."

Bill Tyler: "Several years ago, I was working at a very large software company on very large storage systems. We had thousands of servers, each with lots of disks attached to RAID controllers. At that time, a petabyte was a lot of storage, and we had lots of petabytes. Anyhow, the official line was that we had nice redundancy because each RAID array could withstand the loss of a disk. Fortunately, each byte of data was also stored on a different RAID array on a different server. I say fortunately, because the bit that wasn't considered in the official line was the RAID controller—the thing that all the disks attached to—as a point of failure. If that goes, the whole RAID array is toast. The point was driven home forcefully when we discovered that a batch of those RAID controllers were subtly defective.

"Whatever you're using to create and maintain a RAID array, whether hardware or software, is a single point of failure. Be warned, and use RAID judiciously."

Rodolfo Canet: "RAID 1 doesn't protect you from accidental deletions. Use one of your two new drives for data and tell Carbon Copy Cloner [MacOS only, 30-day trial available —Ed.] to back it up to the second one at regular intervals. Easy and cheap, and you can work directly from the second in the case the first dies and you don't have the time to buy a new one (that's the problem of relying totally on Time Machine)."

Edward Taylor: "If you want to be wealthy, design a permanent storage solution. There is no practical permanent solution at this time. Back up once, store in a drawer forever, no worries about it becoming unreadable in the future. I am shocked that this has not been accomplished yet after at least 40 years of widespread computer use. It is really absurd."

I'm far from a computer expert, so take this with the appropriate chunk of salt. I'm just reading and reporting back.

A friend sent me this interesting short article about picking a computer for Photoshop and Lightroom. It's a product description page for a photo-specific computer built by a PC fabricator. It's on Punch and it's called "What kind of processor do I need for Adobe Photoshop CC and Lightroom CC in 2018?"

It starts with a brief description of cores and threads, then moves on to clock speed. Turns out multi-core CPUs aren't really that significant with photo processing: "...we have undertaken testing using a range of processors from dual core right through to the huge 18-core variants. We were quickly able to conclude that both Photoshop and Lightroom are not able to take advantage of a great number of processor cores." Two- and quad-core machines are fine, the authors say, with maybe an extra two cores for running background tasks at the same time.

The situation is the opposite with processor speed. Their conclusion is pretty stark: "Photoshop performance scales directly with processor clock speed."

This would seem to emphasize the importance of turbo boost, but the authors explain that turbo boost requires CPU cooling to avoid overheating the CPU and operate at good efficiency. It's good news that the new Mini has a redesigned fan—sorely needed, in my experience—but how does that relate to what they're talking about? Beats me.

I'm not sure all this helps me choose a Mac Mini model. But then, I don't really do massive Photoshop projects—I process relatively straight, don't do a lot of processor-intensive functions like panoramic photomerges, and print small. I should probably just make do with the most basic base Mini if I go that route.

Oops
But I did some configuring, and it turns out you can slam the budget pretty easily configuring a Mini. The Mini is not mini any more in terms of $. I guess you're getting a lot of computer, but you're certainly paying luxury prices. (And before the Apple-haters chime in, I'm in the Apple ecosystem and I'm not getting out. It's not a question of just one device—it's how all of them work together.) I suppose my next work computer will be a 21.5" iMac, which is what lordly Apple decrees customers like me shall buy. Who am I to argue with a trillion-dollar behemoth?

The first Mac I did my work on, Spring 1984.
Ten pages of text per floppy.  :-)

Still, interesting article. (I love primers.) I'll be interested to hear what some of you think who know much more about the subject than I do.

Mike
(Thanks to Steve Rosenblum)

P.S. And here's an interesting thought. It's finally at least conceivable that I could go with a highly configured iPad Pro and an iPhone, and dispense with everything else. No more desktop, no more laptop? Radical.

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Thom Hogan: "As I outline in an article on my site: memory first, dedicated GPU second (if you can get one), CPU clock speed third. In broad strokes, that's where performance in Photoshop comes from. The thing you absolutely want to avoid is virtual memory or scratch disk spills out to a slow drive.

"To answer your question on the new Mini, it's unknown yet just how much heat dissipation the fan on it can manage long term. If it's efficient, then yes, the turbo boost speed is very important. If not, the base clock speed is probably more important."

[Here's that link —Ed.]

Vince: "If you’re going to get an iMac, you’ll be much happier with a 27". Especially since that’s the size screen you already have. But I don’t know why you would. A Mini with an i7 and 512GB SSD is $1,500. If you want 16GB of memory, give Apple $200 to upgrade it. (The memory is replacing the built-in, and 16GB is $170 from OWC; it’s worth the $30 not to mess with it.) If you want 32GB, give OWC $330 to upgrade it. Around $1,700–1,800 total. A comparably equipped iMac 27" is $2,500–2,600, and only has four cores instead of six. Why spend the $800–900 when you don’t have to? (Unless you also want a 5K monitor, in which case definitely get the iMac.) (Note: I own and love the iMac. But you have a Mini and a good monitor. It seems to make more sense to stay with the Mini.)

"Also, what that article really says is that Adobe apps are bloated and horribly performing. If you really want to improve the performance of your editing, get new software instead of beefing up your hardware to ridiculous heights."

Moose: "Likely not much factor for your use, but GPU is a significant factor for many Photoshop users. Your link mentions two reasons: 'The downside of utilising a processor with integrated graphics solution is that both the processor and GPU share the computers main system memory. Not only does this consume valuable memory for graphics use but it eats up memory performance bandwidth too.' A more powerful GPU also speeds up some display functions."

Joe Holmes: "After eight years with my elderly Mac Pro desktop machine I finally upgraded last year to the 27" iMac Retina 5K, with every available upgrade and 40GB of RAM. What an enormous difference, a huge amount due to moving a lot of my software to a superfast SSD. Everything is now just snappy. One thing I've long depended on for photo processing is two monitors—it's great having a full-screen image on one and all my Photoshop palettes and tools on the other. I know you love your existing monitor, but you might consider keeping it and using the iMac's (gorgeous) 27" Retina screen as a second monitor. All it takes is the right cable. Of course the iMac is much pricier than a Mac Mini, but if you, like me, expect to keep the machine for at least six or eight years, it's a very worthwhile investment."

Thomas Tveit Rosenlund: "That is not a photo specific computer. That is actually an Adobe specific computer. Because of Adobe's software architecture the applications can't utilize a lot of cores in an optimal way (only for some tasks like batch output/input). It is the same story with GPU. There exists other software solutions for photo processing and cataloging that actually manages to utilize the resources of a multi-core setup as well as the GPU capabilities in a much better way. Capture One is one, I am sure there are others as well (Capture One is reportedly better developing Fujifilm X-trans files also, so the switch should really be a no-brainer for the author of this site).

"What you really need is a Microsoft Surface pro and an upgrade to Capture One for Fuji.  :-)  "

Mike replies: I've been trying to make friends with Capture One for Fuji. The plugin I really want to keep is Nik Silver Efex Pro 2, and it looks like I should be able to learn how to integrate that. I just think I'm going to miss ACR. I've spent time and effort learning ACR and I'm attached to what I know how to do in ACR....

david stock: After decades of Mac use, I'm feeling stuck. With Apple's lack of desktop choices, iMacs are what many photographers seem to turn to. But I dislike the screens. They are pretty for viewing, and for web content. But for someone who prints photographs regularly, they are suboptimal. They are extremely bright and saturated (and too reflective). Because they are optimized for web and movie viewing impact, they are hard to profile accurately for printing. They have a history of problems with uneven illumination. And they are actually too high in resolution to allow conveniently judging critical sharpness (as Lloyd Chambers and others have pointed out). I had high hopes for the new Mini. It's powerful, with lots of good ports. Its only drawback for me is the lack of a dedicated graphics card; I can't wrap my mind around paying $700 for an external GPU box. Apple promises a new Mac Pro next year. But I'm sure it will be incredibly expensive...."

Mike replies: FWIW, I've felt that frustration. I invested in the NEC PA272W last year to have a more configurable, lower-glare display, but Apple's options of low end (Mini) and high end (Pro) desktops were both too extreme for me—no Goldilocks solution. I needed a box right in the middle. The new Minis are likely going to do the job when I upgrade next Spring, assuming I can afford to. 

But maybe the real problem is Photoshop. I just looked at Capture One's system requirements. It's a pretty basic, casual page, but they say minimum is 2 cores, 8 GB RAM, and 10 GB free hard drive space, and optimum is 4 cores "or better," 16 GB RAM "or more," 100 GB free hard drive space, and an SSD drive. Seems like the Core i3 Mini with extra RAM would serve. I just don't know about what you mentioned, which is how the lack of a dedicated GPU might affect anything. I just switched from coffee to tea; switching from ACR/Photoshop to Capture One should be easy, right?

But hey, I learned a lot today. I guess I'll just keep my ears open and read the real reviews when they start appearing, and just keep learning till I know enough.

Oh, joy.

New Mac Mini.

This will not excite some of you, but I've been waiting for this day for quite a while. The Mac Mini is exactly what I need (I prefer the form-factor because I can use my third-party monitor of choice and secure the computer when I'm away), and my 2012 is in need of updating. I'm on my computer 6–10 hours a day so little differences add up.

Photoshop CC speed performance compared with current 2014 model:

Here are the rest of the details. Available November 7th.

As my friend Steve texted when he heard: "Yay!"

iHappy.

Mike
(Thanks to Steve Rosenblum)

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Jim Kofron: "i2."

David: "New Mac mini, Yay! No SD slot, Boo!"

Kodachromeguy: "Wow, good news, I hope. I, too, am using one of the 2012 Mac Minis and have been waiting for the next version. Let's wait a few months for the first users to provide some feedback. Let them do the troubleshooting."

Keith: "Based on the extended delay between the D300 and D500...uh, wait, wrong product. Between the previous Mac Mini and this current one, you may want to buy on the high end of the spec. Might be anchored to it for awhile."

Gordon Lewis: "The reasons that same may feel motivated to curb their enthusiasm over the new Mac Mini is that, in classic Apple fashion, the cost mounts steeply with every option you add to the base configuration. For example, the lowest priced model is $799. The next one up is $1099. Want an extra 8GB of RAM? That's $200 extra. Want to double the base SSD drive capacity? That's another $200. Want a faster processor? Yet another $200. And because Apple makes it difficult if not impossible to retrofit any of these components, including RAM, you can't upgrade components over time. Instead, you have to anticipate future needs and buy everything at all once. I mention all of this as a generally satisfied Apple customer, not a 'Windows fanboy,' but I call 'em like I sees 'em. The Apple ecosystem has its benefits, but economy is not necessarily one of them."

Apple has updated its MacBook Pro with Touch Bar models to incorporate 8th Gen Intel Core processors, True Tone technology, and the Apple T2 chip.

The 15.4" models now feature 8th Gen Intel Core i7 six-core processors, which are up to 70 percent faster than 2017 predecessors, while the 13.3" models now feature 8th Gen Intel Core i5 quad-core processors, which are up to twice as fast as the previous models. The 15.4" models now utilize DDR4 onboard RAM and can be configured up to 32GB for optimal multitasking. These models feature a dedicated AMD Radeon Pro 555X or 560X graphics card with 4GB of GDDR5 VRAM. The 13.3" models utilize integrated Intel Iris Plus Graphics 640 or 655. [Text from B&H Photo.]

They seem expensive to me, but then I guess they are, for most people, arguably (and I use that word advisedly!) the best all-around computers money can buy. I probably should have bought a new MacBook Pro of the generation just prior to the Touch Bar models (which I can see myself being frustrated with—any control panel that changes itself would not get along well with my brain, or rather the other way around) to run my NEC monitor at home and detach to take on the road with me. But I went another direction, so it's too late now, until I need to update next time. Sigh.

The last time I used a laptop as my main computer, it looked like this:

...And sounded like this. (You would need to listen to the entire three minutes and 25 seconds to get the full experience, but please spare yourself.) Talk about the bad old days!

And yet it was one of my favorite computers ever, if I'm honest. I probably have readers who were "tweens" when that computer was current. And they think I'm old, only because they have no idea yet that their own lives are going to zoom by with the speed of an 8th Gen Intel Core i7 six-core processor.

:-)

But I digress. From the digression. Here again is the latest and greatest.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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louis mciver: "Yes, the physical interfaces of the Macbook Pro continue to deteriorate, with the Touch Bar taking the cake. It is a significant visual distraction and also very prone to triggering something or other when one of your fingers accidentally rests on it, which is a very natural and ergonomic thing for your fingers to want to do. Fortunately there is nice piece of free software called 'Touchbardisabler' that completely turns off the touch bar. Screen brightness and volume keys are automatically remapped and you can also remap the escape key to another key such as the caps lock key."

Peter Wright: "I am very glad to see at last a four-core MacBook Pro 13 inch, and I expect I will buy one in a few weeks to replace my old MacBook Air. I think the Thunderbolt 3 interfaces that get so much criticism are really another reason to make the purchase: At last I can expand/update the machine externally using fast SSD storage or GPUs. I’ll take high-end interfaces any day over the clutter of different low-speed interfaces we have seen up to now. All I wanted in addition was more horsepower under the hood."

My messy desk in the sitting and the standing position

It's well known by now that sitting at a desk all day isn't good for you, and standing desks—also called sit-stand desks—have exploded in popularity. To the point that it might be considered a fad.

But I love mine.

There are a lot of options. You can get just the leg set, and then you can have a local cabinetmaker craft a custom top in whatever size and whatever kind of wood you prefer (in our area we have loads of Mennonite woodshops that will provide reasonably-priced, very well made solid wood furniture of any specification or design on demand). You can buy inexpensive hand-crank models. Or you can just buy a complete desk that comes with a tabletop, like I did four years ago. (Word to the wise: do opt for the "expert assembly" if it's available in your area.) If you really want to go all-out there's even a beautiful, deluxe new type with four separate legs that comes in several colors and sizes. (This is the killer app among current options, and it's apparently considerably easier to assemble yourself—assembling the older two-legged ones like I have is a challenge. The "expert assembly" guys who came to my house worked for two hours. Two guys. Two hours. Glad that wasn't li'l ol' me.)

What you might not know is that standing all day might not be all that good for you either. The trick is to change your state a lot—get into the habit of changing position. Sit for a while, stand for a while, sit for a while. If you can mix in "microwalks" it's a very good idea, too. Take a two-minute walk to the water-cooler every hour or so. Just make sure those walks aren't to the soda machine (at work) or the kitchen (at home)! A slightly longer brisk walk (5–15 minutes) at midday is a smart idea too.

I have these microwalks built into my day because of the dogs. They're also my built-in exercise timer (theirs, but also mine.) I also touch my toes for thirty seconds once or twice a day. (This takes longer than you'd think because it takes a while to stretch all the way down there.)

Here's the right way to use a standing desk: every hour or two, raise the desk to standing height. Take a standing position with your feet comfortably (about should-width) apart and deliberately put equal weight on both feet.

When you catch yourself shifting your weight, sit down again.

That's it. Doesn't have to be any amount of time. Two minutes, six minutes, twelve minutes, doesn't matter. As soon as you shift your weight it's a sign of discomfort and you've been standing long enough. Take a load off. Sit.

It's the intermittent change of position that does you good.

And don't forget those little walks.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Speed: "The power of photography—I am now going to clean my desk."

Boy, does this feel like a grain of sand in the Sahara. It doesn't even amount to a hill of beans. Maybe one bean, at best.

However, we have several readers who work for Apple, so maybe one of them can get this to the right department. A seemingly minor thing, but I'm in dire need of a timed Do-Not-Disturb mode for my phone. I go to meetings of my fellowship most nights, put the phone on Do-Not-Disturb mode when the chairperson prompts me to do so...and then forget to turn Do-Not-Disturb back off again until sometime the next day—when I discover that I've missed one to five calls. Calls can be critical, because one might come from a friend in trouble.

Using the Scheduled mode in Settings kinda works, but kinda not, because the meetings are all at different times. And I still forget to reset it.

Either that, or maybe Apple could provide me with a younger and less absent-minded brain—but maybe even mighty Apple can't afford that.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Ray Hunter: "Perhaps you could ask the chairperson to state a reminder regarding the silenced phones at the close of the meeting, a mirror to that at the beginning of the meeting. I know it isn't a solution to a functional memory, but it's a Band-Aid."

Mike replies: Paul Butzi suggested the same idea privately. I spoke at the meeting last night, and I brought up the phone issue. We did end the meeting with a reminder to people to turn their phones back on. We'll see whether that sticks, but I'm going to try to remember to announce it at the end of meetings.

Michael: "The alarm clock function in your phone can be a big help. I have number of different pills which have to be taken daily, some at specific intervals, some two hours after eating—with nothing ingested for an hour after taking—plus eyedrops on another schedule and such stuff. The entire schedule set as a series of alarms on my phone does more than just remind me to take this or do that. If something interferes to throw me off the clock, I can quickly reset the rest of the day to accommodate the change. If the dislocation is a big one, I can incrementally time-shift my way back to the normal schedule over the next few days. This may seem to have nothing to do with your problem but give it a try. Set an alarm for shortly before meeting time and another for a reasonable interval after it’s over. Turn the phone function off when the first one sounds. When the after-meeting alarm sounds, turn the phone back on. Low tech? Yes, but it works."

John: "You've become too reliant on technology. Leave your phone at home or in the car when you go to meetings."

Mike replies: That presupposes that I can remember to do that, which would functionally never happen, given that I've been trying for about twelve years now, unsuccessfully, to remember to take the canvas shopping bags from the trunk into the store when I go to the grocery.

Well, it's going to take me a long time today to catch up with all the comments from yesterday (sorry; I've got the flu), but I have to say that I learn something with almost every single post here. Who knew that there was a little tiny button on the address bar of my very own browser called "Enter Reader View"—

Which turns this—

Into this—

I spend roughly a fifth of my life in my browser, but I didn't know that*. I can't say there's any site I would consign to the purgatory of Reader View permanently (you can do that)—I want to see their special contents—but whenever I start to get irritated by the whirring and whizzing and blasting and zinging on some random page somewhere, that little pebble of knowledge is likely to be a godsend.

Thanks, specific readers, and thanks, vast brilliant TOP-reader Cloud (VBTRC). TOP readers are seriously the smartest people on the Web. Not just in subset photorelated.

(Another question for the VBTRC: What was that site that every year does an elaborate infographic about the state of the photo/camera industry in the year just past? I've been trying to remember and/or find it for days but I can't come up with it. Does anyone recall?)

As a last word on the "ruination" of the Internet, this quote from Maria Popova of Brain Pickings: "The internet—its beauty is that it's a self-perfecting organism, right? But as long as it’s an ad-supported medium, the motive will be to perfect commercial interest, to perfect the art of the listicle, the endless slideshow, the infinitely paginated article, and not to perfect the human spirit of the reader or the writer." (Thanks to Merle for that.)

We'll continue to be part of the semi-pricipled semi-resistance,  :-)   in favor of the human spirit of the reader and the writer. 

Mike

*Every smart person is aware of the dim reaches of his or her own ignorance. In the beautiful alleged words of Isaac Newton, "I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me." (But read this. It's still a beautiful quote.)

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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I know it's the weekend and I'm supposed to be working on the book (working title: The Best Digital Camera—with Tidbits on Life, Love, Loving Life, Learning Photography and Knowing Thyself—is that zany enough? It's for those of you who contribute to TOP through my Patreon page, and it will be free to you...when it's done...eventually...), but I felt I should say that today is the LAST DAY of B&H Photo's slammin' Cyberweek Apple sale.

B&H, which I believe is the biggest Apple vendor on the planet apart from Apple itself, is closed now. But it opens again at 5:45 this afternoon, and the sale goes on from there to Midnight.

Especially recommended: the new iPads, and the 13" MacBook Pro. The latter is arguably the best Mac laptop. Despite bitter criticisms of the new Pro laptops, they've been "selling briskly" according to industry analysts, and have contributed to Apple's 15.4% sales increase in the segment year-on-year—although it is still only the fifth largest purveyor of laptops, after HP, Lenovo, Dell, and Asus.

As for the iPads...I read a survey some while ago in which owners reported that the iPad was their least essential Apple device, but the most loved. That is true for Yr. Hmbl. Ed. I couldn't even figure out what to do with the danged thing for the first five months I had it, but now it's like my toddler blankie...I take it up to bed with me every night, and it's the first thing I pack when I travel. It's my main e-reader...I can't even find the charger for my Kindle Paperwhite any more.

One thing it's very useful for: as a dazzlingly beautiful portable viewer for your photographic portfolios. The new oversized 12.9" iPad Pro is stunning in this role (you will need at least a 6-MP camera to show off its talents, heh heh), but they're all good for that, even the little guys. I watch movies on mine, too. Least needed, most loved.

Go, and behold what treasures await ye. We live in the future. Ends when the clock strikes twelve.

Now get back to work, Mike

Original contents copyright 2017 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Big (big) news in the computer world is that a trio of Apple execs led by Phil Schiller, the world's highest-paid CMO, held a highly unusual and atypical gathering, with, in Schiller's words, "no black cloth that’s going to come off something right now." An interim, between-product-announcements update press meeting. The context, according to a long but interesting article by Matthew Panzarino at TechCrunch, "is that Apple’s dedication to the Mac has taken a bit of a philosophical beating lately among its core professional customers." And the upshot is: a) yes, Apple still cares about the Mac and its many users; and, b) they're sorry(!) they haven't updated the Mac Pro like they should have.

(Er, Apple's apologizing. You got that.)

Phil Schiller said they would "talk about what’s going on and frankly be a little more transparent with some of the things we’re doing, some of the places we’re going, because our pro users desire that and we care deeply about them and we’re dedicated to communicating well with them and helping them understand what we’re doing and what we’re up to."

(Apple is concerned about transparency(!!). You picked that up too.)

The specific news is that Apple is going to rethink the Mac Pro completely, but it won't be ready this year. (Note that that is not the same as saying it will be ready next year.) This is believed to be the first official confirmation that the Mac Pro will be updated and continued.

Along the way, Apple provided some interesting figures about Macs. The Mac user base is approaching 100 million; Mac sales have a $25 billion run rate and almost qualifies as a Fortune 100 company all by itself; the current percentage of laptop/desktop sales is 80/20; and MacBook Pro sales are up 20% for the first quarter year-over-year.

You can see from those numbers both a) why they don't want to blow it, and b) why they might have been complacent. 

The meeting happened yesterday in Apple's Product Realization Lab at its Cupertino office campus. There were four people from Apple there: Schiller, whose title is Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing; John Ternus, who's in charge of Mac hardware; Senior Vice President of Software Engineering Craig Federighi; and, to moderate and watch the clock (the meeting ran for 90 minutes), Bill Evans of Apple PR. There were only five writers at the table: John Gruber of Daring Fireball; Matthew Panzarino of TechCrunch; Lance Ulanoff from Mashable; Ina Fried of Axios; and John Paczkowski from BuzzFeed.

So that chorus of critiques we were referencing and linking to a few weeks ago was being listened to. Check out the articles if you're interested.

Mike
(Thanks to Gordon Lewis and others)

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Gordon Lewis: "I find it hard to believe that Apple has suddenly become infected with humility and transparency. It's more like embarrassment. They haven't upgraded the Mac Pro since 2013. That's a long time to sit still in the IT world. Expecting their pro customers to wait another year or more for an upgrade or other new pro-market products is asking a lot, to say the least. My concern is that by this point, whatever they eventually come out with will be too little, too late."

Jim in Denver: "It's too late. I'm going to buy two PCs in the next week or so. It's been 18 years since I've had a PC, but the Mac product is just not getting things done anymore. Hopefully they hit the ball out of the park and give me a reason to buy another Mac in a couple years."

PaddyC: "It's very good news. And as [John] Gruber reported, they also mentioned they have new iMacs (including a pro-ish one) coming up. I mention the iMacs because I do have some concern over the price of the new Mac Pros whenever they arrive.

"All around great news for this late 2010 Mac Pro user."

Speed: "A competitor has surfaced."

faberryman: "So they will do something sometime unless they change their mind."

psu: "I sort of object to the framing of your headline...the Mac was never dead. Far from it. People were just unhappy that the one they thought they wanted updated was not living a fuller life."

Mike replies: Remember that I'm not a subject-matter expert in this area, I'm just reporting. Or, in this case, not even reporting, just linking to the five articles written by the writers who were at the meeting. The longer version of the quote in my first paragraph, written by Matthew Panzarino, is as follows:

"The context, of course, is that Apple’s dedication to the Mac has taken a bit of a philosophical beating lately among its core professional customers. The narrative is that Apple has not put the resources needed into making the Mac work for pros, has neglected updates and could even be working toward a future where there are no Macs, just iOS devices. That’s the picture you’d get from the think pieces, anyway."

"A future where there are no Macs, just iOS devices" is a future in which the Mac would be dead, right? Maybe I should have used the full quote in order to support the headline.

Michael Perini: "It is interesting and a little sad to note that in Phil Shiller's description of pro users, photographers never enter his mind: 'There’s [sic] music creators, there’s video editors, there’s graphic designers—a really great segment with the Mac. There’s scientists, engineers, architects, software programmers....'"

Since I have gassed on in the past about my computer shopping, I thought I would post an update.

After several months of running the 13" MacBook Air as my desktop computer, it became obvious that it was having a bit of trouble in that role. The trouble? The MacBook Air can get no air. Its tiny little stylishly miniaturized fan would kick on and dutifully make noise, but, without anywhere for air to flow amidst all the slender slimness and styleyness, the waferlike little wedge would just get hot and make noise.

So I've bought an Apple desktop computer.

This would have been easy, except for the fact that Apple does not really make desktop computers any more. Well, it sort of does, but not for people who want to use separate, third-party monitors like my lovely calibrate-able NEC. They make a Mac Pro which is not pro (more about that in a minute) and a Mac Mini, which was deliberately handicapped in 2014 to be worse than the one it replaced. The Mini in general is intended by Apple for ratty second-class citizens who had previously wandered lost in the purgatory of PC use, so it doesn't have to be any good, right? The desktops Apple wants proper Apple customers to use are the ones that come built into the back of displays...the iMacs. Otherwise, your Hobson's Choice is too little computer, or too much computer.

Since too much computer, from Apple, costs a lot, I ended up buying a late-2012 Mac Mini, my first-ever "used" Macintosh. (I have been using Macintoshes since the very first one in 1984.)

This was not easy. The competition for 2012 Mac Minis is fierce, because so many Apple customers actually need, you know, computers. (They seldom show up as Apple refurbs, for example.) The one I bought (from eBay, ye gads) is thoughtfully maxed out. It is a 2.6 GHz Quad-Core i7 with 16 GB of Crucial RAM and two hard drives, a 1 TB SSD and a 1 TB HDD, and a clean install of Sierra. The solid-state drive is a Samsung SSD 850 EVO, which seems to get good reviews. The other one is the spinning drive that came with the unit when it was new. I paid $1,009.

I also bought this:

...It's a 3D-printed replacement base for 2012 Mac Minis that has ventilation holes around the rim. The company that makes it is called Shapeways. The Internet says it lets the Mini run cooler so the fan kicks on less often. After abusing my poor weak-ass tiny-fan-having MacBook Air for several months it seemed like a good idea.

So I've bought an older computer to replace a newer computer. Then again, the Cubs won the World Series, Voldemort is president, and it was 71°F in February in Upstate New York the other day, so clearly we are in the Apocalypse and everything is backwards and upside down. So why not?

Why I'm grumpy about Apple
I'm a longtime Apple fan and I love Apple, but it makes me grumpy now.

There are three apocalyse-type signs that Apple has lost the narrative when it comes to stand-alone desktop computers. One was that the 2014 (current) Mini was deliberately crippled compared to its predecessor. Another is that Apple hasn't bothered to update the Mini and the Pro in years...not high (enough) profit areas; they're not that interested.

The third was the "trashcan" Mac Pro. You've seen it—a styley, miniaturized black cylinder, the price of which includes Veblen-Good inflation. I've heard it was good video workstation when it came out, but as a "pro" computer it's just wrong. Not a bad product, just one that does not take the preferences of its target market into account.

...And gives them something they do not need. "Pro" is a marketing word that has been applied to everything and anything (I think the most ridiculous application of it I've seen was to toilet paper, but there are more examples almost as bad), but the reason it has resonance is that the real meaning of "pro" is that it signifies that the people who use the thing, whatever the thing is, have a job to do, and have chosen the most versatile, capable, and effective tool available to do it with. The previous Mac Pro was oversized and came in a utilitarian aluminum box with big honking handles on it for moving it around. It was highly configurable and customizable; it had lots of room inside for whatever you wanted to put in it as well as for a big fan and liberal amounts of airflow. You could do anything you wanted to it, and hence with it. It was designed to be easy to repair.

In other words, a versatile, capable, effective, user-centered tool for making a living with.

By the time the 2013 Mac Pro came around, however, Apple had become a design- and lifestyle-oriented company, and it made the Mac Pro fashionable and petite. Apple also priced it out the wazoo to help the "Pro" appeal to wealthier customers, as also befits Hermès scarves and Louis Vuitton handbags.

Which, you'll note, are not called pro scarves or pro handbags. Maybe they should have ditched the "Pro" moniker and renamed it the Apple LaApple, after the Ferrari LaFerrari. It lost the workin'-for-a-livin' gestalt if you ask me.

So what about people like me who just need a computer? Well, I am supposed to use an iMac. There's no basic Apple computer in the middle that doesn't come attached to a display.

So how will this go?
Call me pessimistic, but I don't see this latest move of mine going well. I'm bad with computers, which is one reason why I've always used Macs in the first place. Buying an old computer as a new computer is something I've done only once before, when I bought a Mac Classic in 1991 or so. At least that "old" computer (basically an SE "Mark II") was a computer I could buy new. It was just old in that it was retro. That one turned out not to be a good buying decision. It lasted me only two years, when I switched to a Quadra 605. Buying a "new" computer without AppleCare is probably a fool's errand for me. I suppose in a few years I'll be back to an iMac again, with my tail between my legs, having bought myself a lot of hassle and lost a passel of cash in the meantime. Maybe I should have bought an iMac; after all, they're what I've used since the first one came out, and I fit the demographic. I just always wanted to own "separates," is all.

My bad, I guess, for wanting to think different.

Mike
(Thanks to Dave Reichert)

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Harold: "You're not alone in your thoughts about Apple 'Pro.' For example Lloyd Chambers and Marco Solorio."

Stephen Scharf: "Honestly, I think the 27" IMac is the way to go. Back in 2014, when I needed to replace by 10-year-old Mac Pro G5, I debated dropping six large for the new Pro, so in late 2014 I rather reluctantly bought the maxed out 27" 5K Retina iMac with 16B RAM and 3 TB Fusion Drive. I've been very happy with my decision; the iMac is fast and fully supports as a second display the same 27" NEC PA-series we both use. I still use my NEC for color-critical work, soft proofing, and printing, but the 5K display has completely ruined me for wanting to look at anything else. The display profiles up beautifully, is very close in color accuracy to the NEC, and the screen is to die for. Furthermore, a profiled display is stable with little drift. Looking at my images close at full size on this display is like looking at a 27" chrome. Lloyd Chambers has done testing of all the various Macs and says the Late 2015 5K Retina iMac is the best computer presently on the market for photography: the display gamut is even larger (P3 vs. sRGB), and the SSD drive enables the computer to be blazing fast when loaded up with 64 GB of RAM."

Edd Fuller: "It is quite amusing that you take a shot at 'ratty second-class citizens who had previously wandered lost in the purgatory of PC use,' while describing your experience with Apple, which sounds very unsatisfactory, not to say purgatorial."

Mike replies: Well, actually I was characterizing (or lampooning) Apple's own attitude toward its target market for the Mini, which is PC users who are switching.

Hugh Conacher: "This conversation is being had in all sorts of forums at the moment. Many of the video pros that I am associated with are moving to PC, as Mac no longer meets their needs."

shelley Stallings: "I have owned over 20 different Apple computers in the last 30 years. I did not need that many, just loved their products and often could not resist when they dropped a new one on the market. Most (90%) have been excellent machines matched with great OS. My favorites were the G5 Mac Pro aluminum tower, the first titanium MacBook, and my current MacBook Air combined with 27" iMac for desktop work. I have never been interested in the current black cylinder, but would buy one used at a great price just to add to my collection of 30th Anniversary, Cube, original Tangerine iBook, first titanium MacBook, first bondi blue iMac and Power Computing Mac clone, along with 14 others, some Apple II models including GS. Can't see why a 27" iMac wouldn't work fine for you Mike. You can use your favorite monitor with it along with the iMac monitor. Bang for buck is good and it is the system platform you are familiar with."

Rick Baumhauer: "I understand your frustration on some level, given your preference for your expensive monitor, but I'm not sure that buying used now was a better bet than waiting a bit longer to see what shakes out. We should be seeing (at minimum) new iMacs soon—possibly March, June at the latest. There may also be Mac mini and/or Mac Pro updates, as well—the latter can't be allowed to languish much longer (rumors suggest that the Trash Can had reliability issues that are forcing an accelerated rethink).

"I don't think it's quite fair to say that the 2014 mini was 'deliberately handicapped.' The issue was really a combination of Intel's complicated chip lineup at the time and Apple's desire to the keep the (low-margin for them) mini's production simple. In short, Intel didn't offer both dual-core and quad-core chips that shared the same socket design and also both offered the best integrated GPUs that Intel offered at the time. They would have had to: use two different logic board designs (not going to happen for production reasons); gone all quad-core (no good for lower-end pricing); saddled the lower-end dual-core models with slower GPUs; or drop the quad-core models in favor of dual-core across-the-board that all used Intel's better GPU. For the target market, they made the best choice they could. Unfortunately, Intel's following generation of processors didn't address this issue—the chips that used the same socket as the 2014 mini were still all dual-core, and didn't give enough of a boost to justify an update for a (comparatively) low-volume, low margin product.

"The 2014 mini did offer several meaningful updates: 802.11ac Wifi, Thunderbolt 2, lower power consumption, faster SSDs, elimination of the FW800 port, support for 4k over HDMI or Thunderbolt/Mini-displayport. For multi-threaded workloads, though, the lack of a quad-core option does sting. Unfortunately, that's a finite market that you happen to fall into.

"The Mac Pro situation has dragged on so long that there is clearly an issue beyond the usual economics of that line. The most plausible explanation is that the Trash Can was intended to be amortized over several years, but a reliability issue has forced them to go back to the drawing board much, much earlier than intended. The upshot of that is that we may get something closer to what its target market really wants—something more flexible and utilitarian. Time will tell."

Mike replies: Great comment. That explains a lot. Thanks Rick.

Here's my problem: Tim's Apple doesn't seem to make the desktop computer I need. Seems strange to say.

Here's my concern: that maybe Apple has cast itself as a "lifestyle" company to such an extent that it has forgotten that some of us need computers for, um, work. (Sounds so grubby, doesn't it?)

To some degree, computers are appliances. Lifestyle is well and good, but I still need a computer. I worry that Apple is gradually losing the basic mission.

If you want to pick your own monitor (I chose an NEC PA272W which I love, by the way), you have to pick the high road or the low road—a half-crippled Mac Mini marketed for "switchers" with everything soldered in (the resellers are still trading upgraded 2012 models back and forth), or the svelte, design-y overkill of the current stratospherically-priced Pro (you know, the one that is too small, that came after the one that was too big).

I don't need twelve cores, but four would be nice. Could the amount of memory and a separate graphics card possibly be my decision? A box big enough to fit a proper fan into would work well for me. A bunch of ports just because, ach, well, I need 'em (sorry, I'm so ashamed) is probably too much to ask for. Could I have a card reader? Could I put in the memory myself, you know, like I did the '90s and the aughts? Can I have my SuperDrive back? (I can actually hear Jony Ive thundering, "'E wants whot?!?")

"Please Sir, can I have my SD card reader on the front,
where I can actually reach it?"

If you ask me, Apple should ditch the Mini, ditch the Pro, and put out a lineup of three medium-sized desktops, good better and best, all user-configurable, all reasonably sized, all non-crippled, all user-upgradeable. It's not beyond the limits of the technically feasible.

I'll take the middle one. (You know, the one there isn't one of right now without leaving the Apple universe.) Some people just need a computer for their work, is all. In addition to all the stuff for their lifestyle...stuff that I have also bought, mind you.

Quadra 605 of 1993. 2.9" H x 12.2" W x 15.3" D. 8.8 lbs.
Like that.

Can't I get a medium-sized box (maybe the same size as the old Quadra 605 of sainted memory), with user-replaceable memory and space for more than one user-replaceable hard drive? I don't need it to occupy the least possible amount of space. (In fact it would be great if I could set the monitor on top of it.) I'd like it to not overheat. It would be nice if it were more or less affordable. If it could be quiet that would be fabulous, because...I'm listening to music. At home. Where I work.

Please?

I promise I won't flash it around in public. I just need it for work.

Mike

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B. Collinson: "Your plea to Jony and Tim's Apple is part of a growing chorus of voices. I love my Macs (we have four of them in the house), but increasingly find the road ahead to be foggy and concerning. I have previous generation 13" MacBook Pro, and I cannot even begin to fathom replacing it with the new MacBook Pro (touch strip aside, I want my ports back thank you). The total consolidation of connectivity for a 'rofessional' laptop into a single USB-C connector is simply ridiculous. That, and the fact that my Mac Minis need surgery to give them SSDs (which they desperately need) leaves me feeling much the way you do. Sigh."

Frank Petronio: "I haven't followed all of your Mac posts but the 27" iMac 5K is the best computer I've had in a lifetime of digital imaging (well since 1989). And a small MacBook Air or larger iPad (with a Bluetooth keyboard) would be perfect travel companions. Buy it once, max out the RAM, replace in 5–8 years. Well made, reliable and long-lived. Very secure unless you're a politician. I don't see what the issue is?"

Mike replies: You're right, I probably should have just bought another iMac (I bought the earliest one and have used them ever since—I'm smack dab in the middle of the target market for iMacs). But the way my new home is configured, I wanted a way to either lock up the main computer or take it along with me when I travel, for security reasons.

Peter Wright: "I think just about every serious photographer, or person who uses Macs for work will sympathize. I have a fully specified Mac mini (with the NEC PA 272W), a MacBook Air, an iPad Pro, iPhone, Apple TV and router. Everything works well for the most part, and if I have any problems Apple service is good at sorting things out. However...I have no issues with the 'lifestyle' products, as you call them, but the Mac Mini and Air are not exactly what I want, and nothing on offer at Apple seems to be a reasonable replacement.

"If the PC universe can get its act together with respect to reliability and usability, I may take a serious look at their offerings, especially for the desktop.

"My parish priest (who is definitely not a techie) decided recently to donate, with my help, one of his computers to a Syrian family who have recently arrived in town. (He mostly uses an old MacBook Pro for office work, and an iPad.) He decided to donate his PC (with a quad-core i7, 1TB SSD, and 16GB RAM), but it was a close call. He explained to me in a tone of voice that he would normally reserve for someone drifting into heresy, that he thinks Apple may be beginning to lose its way. If even my priest can see the problem then, perhaps its time to think of the Bible: Book of Daniel, chapter 5, where the writing appears on the wall, and recall what happens next!"

...Does anyone know how to prevent fly-by-night foreign merchandisers from placing unwanted advertisements as "invitations" on your Apple iCloud-linked personal Calendar?

Sheesh. I hope I don't end up having to disable my Calendar, but I will if this can't be stopped. Unacceptable.

Mike

P.S. Speaking of computers, my maiden voyage of using the laptop as a main computer was concluded when I got back from my Thanksgiving trip. Seemed to work fine. It was easy to detach it, carry it along, and then reconnect it. Not as easy as if it had one USB-C connector running to an OWC Thunderbolt 3 Dock, but not much more difficult either. Meanwhile, my main backup is my 3TB Time Capsule, which I put in a safe when I travel. My main problem now is that my laptop, which I bought to be small and portable, is not quite powerful enough to be my main computer. It does most things fine, but is slow with Photoshop.

Do you think thieves will believe the sign I put on the safe that says "Nothing in here but papers and hard drives"? In fact, there is nothing in the safe but papers and hard drives. But then, thieves might be the last people to believe that anyone else is honest. Reminds me of the fable from '80s New York City about the guy who put a sign on his windshield saying "NO RADIO" and came back to find his driver's side window broken and a note on the seat that said "Just checking."

Mike

UPDATE: Three good solutions to Calendar spam:

Ars Technica
New York Times
MacSparky

Thanks to Richard Ripley, Don Craig, Jeff Buttel, and other readers who suggested these resources and others.

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Kent: "Yup. Received a Black Friday Ray-Ban offer on my calendar here too. The methods mentioned above are about all you can do at this point. Apple: get on it please! I have a very strong, visceral negative reaction to spam that is probably not doing my nervous system any good. The idea that some a**hole is using devious means to hijack my personal computer/communication system, which I most certainly did not purchase for their benefit, for nefarious scam-marketing purposes makes my blood boil. I am not a violent person, but spam unfailingly conjures up a fantasy about shoving computer equipment where the sun don't shine, sideways, without lubrication. Absolute scum.

"Just wanted to get that off my chest. Post or not, at your discretion. I feel better already...."

Mike replies: That made me feel better too. 

Well then, I've done it. Yikes, and gulp!

My first three computers were all-in-ones, successive versions of the basic original Macintosh. The last of those, called the "Classic," didn't last very long—it was conservative, casting backwards, and progress was afoot in the computing Universe. After that came an early Powerbook, which was revolutionary in its own way but still an all-in-one. As screens got larger, I began to wish for what by then was standard in the PC world but persistingly antithetical for Apple: a separate computer and monitor. Serious and luxurious.

Can't recall when that started. I know I very much wanted a Power Mac G4 Cube, the first of Steve Jobs' design-driven CPUs. It was very expensive—the hazy figure of $2,000 comes to mind—and of course I didn't already own a display. As the Cube came out in the Summer of 2000, that means I've been wanting a separate computer and monitor for at least 16 years.

And I've finally done it! Encouraged by certain friends who are now on the hotseat (no they're not—just kidding), and after weeks of research into the arcana of displays (I don't quite understand half of some of the reviews), I gulped hard, took the plunge, and ordered an NEC PA272w-BK-SV. That's the one with the included colorimeter. (The ColorMunki Photo with any monitor is also a very powerful contender.)

A nice thing happened, though. Just as I was getting set to order the NEC at $1,549—literally that minute—the screen refreshed and the price dropped by $300.

I have high hopes for the NEC's non-glare screen

It's the Rolls-Royce option, at least for me. But it's a business expense, and certainly my computers give me back more than my money's worth—my current one has been on and working all day almost every day since 2010 (I do mean almost every day—one year I worked 352 days. I even packed it into the car and took it on vacation with me one year—Lulu and the giant box of the 27" iMac shared the back seat). But it's always tough to part with such vasty bergs of cash.

So I have thirty days to figure out if a) it's an improvement when printing with the Epson P600 and b) if I can figure out how it works. Meanwhile, I still haven't decided what to do about a new computer; given the expense of the monitor, I'm back to looking at Mac Minis. Along the winding way of my long life with Macs, though, I've learned that trying to get away on the cheap can sometimes be false economy; I'll be wary of that.

More updates anon, if you care.

Mike
(Big thanks to all of you who contribute to TOP in any way!)

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Antonis: "I have spent a year with this exact monitor (and spent $30 more than you!) and I can assure you it's a pleasure to look at all day long—and, yes, to work with as well. My calibration setup has to anticipate how my Photoshop files will print not just on my trusty old Epson 3800, but, crucially, in the pages of the New York Times and such for movie ads. I don't miss my old Eizo and saw no reason to spring for the latest from that brand. If you are looking to buy a Mac 'on the cheap' don't neglect to look at refurbs from Apple or OWC."