lorin schultz

roundaboutnow said:
Isn't it possible to make the function keys display permanently in Touch Bar when using Protools? 

Yes. After I typed that I remembered the reason I carry a keyboard is for the number pad, for navigating memory locations.

Still, for reasons I don't completely understand, I have trouble with virtual keys. I quit using my iPad and picked up an old MBAir to use in its place because I found typing on the iPad so awkward. I seem to have the same problem with the F keys on the Touch Bar. I constantly miss the key and wind up with either the wrong selection or no selection at all.

That may be just me though, and not necessarily an argument against the Touch Bar. Personally I'm indifferent towards it. It doesn't particularly bother me that it's there, but I wouldn't miss it f it went away.

fastasleep said:

mistergsf said:

jimh2 said:

ITGUYINSD said:

Is it really rocket science to figure out how to share a cloud-based folder?  You have to wonder about Apple sometimes...

Ignorance is bliss. You, I, and others have no idea what the issue is. I’m happy to wait for Apple to get it perfect and not deliver a half-baked solution that is just pushed out the door. 

I have no idea what the issue is and I'm not a programmer. But it still surprises me when they can't get this done. I share files and folders in OneDrive, Box, and Dropbox without any issues so what can the problem be if you had to guess?

The “problem” is that it’s not finished yet. Why is that hard to understand? Because another product that’s been around for years has already done it, Apple should be able to do it instantly? 

Apple obviously thought it WOULD be finished by now or they wouldn’t have announced a delivery date then postponed it twice. Ipso facto it seems perfectly reasonable to wonder what’s up.

slurpy said:

digitalclips said:

As a user 7 days a week of Macs I for one miss some of the perfectionism

Macs, and MacOS were never "perfect"- not even close. However, a strong argument could be made that Macs and MacOS today are the most "perfect" (ie. best) that they've ever been since inception. At least, as someone who uses a Mac every single day and makes 100% of my revenues from it, that's my experience.

That's probably true, but it's easy to feel otherwise when each generation seems to come with an "Oops, sorry..." period during which things that used to work stop working until someone gets around to fixing them.

My purchase of the new MacBook Pro Touchbar has been the most frustrating technology experience of my life so far. It's not that there's been a major problem that crippled it, but rather a litany of little annoyances that, cumulatively, have made what should be a fun and exciting time feel like being inside a tank full of mosquitoes. When that experience is added to the knowledge that this is, by FAR, the most expensive computer I've ever owned -- 20% more than my last maxed-out, top-of-the-line MacBook Pro -- it's extra annoying to be dealing with things that don't work.

It won't play some of my video files. The same files play fine on our other Macs, our iPhones and our iPads, but not the brand-new supposedly super-machine. Quicktime opens, starts trying to "convert" them for some reason, then throws an error message. There doesn't even seem to be any common theme among the failed files that would give me a clue how to deal with it.

For years and years I've been using my laptop to control the Mac mini in the living room via screen sharing. Since this machine entered the mix, screen sharing periodically slows to a crawl, with the cursor jumping and skipping and lagging so far behind my actions that I long for the speed and consistency of dial-up internet. Restarting both machines corrects it for a while until it seemingly arbitrarily goes in the tank again.

I have five folders with audio files in them that I drag into iTunes one at a time to create playlists. Four of them load normally, the fifth loads so slowly that I left it overnight for it "digest" less than 5000 titles. The import window showed it importing songs at the rate of roughly one every three to four seconds. When I wiped the machine and started from scratch it did exactly the same thing again. Obviously there's something about that particular collection of files (that moving them all to a new folder didn't fix) that iTunes doesn't like, but why on only this machine? None of our other devices seem to have that issue. Just this one. The newest and most expensive one.

iTunes also refuses to recognize some metadata flags in mp3 files (AAC files work correctly). We create custom playlists using the "Grouping" field. Every other machine in the house works fine. This machine shows that field as blank, even though the other Macs and a third-party metadata editor running on the offending machine show the contents of the field.

iTunes "stalls" between tracks. If I'm playing one track and double click another, it will just stop doing anything at all for three seconds or so, then I get the pinwheel for eight to ten seconds, then it plays the second track. 10 to 15 seconds to change songs is insane.

Transcoding a test video file took exactly the same length of time to complete on this machine (2.9 GHz Quad i7 with world's fastest storage) as it did on the 2.2 GHz Dual-Core Air it replaced. To the minute. No improvement at all. Maybe the particular software package used for that particular task is failing at something, but since I have no choice but to use it, I'm left wondering if it was a good idea to pay $5,000 for a Pro when there isn't any improvement over a $2,000 Air.

Last night it decided it didn't want to shut down. I had to force it off with the power switch.

File transfers to external devices are usually quite quick, via both USB and Ethernet, but every so often, for no apparent reason, it'll just choke and transfer rates drop to a few hundred Mb per minute. If I restart the machine the transfer rates go back to normal. For a while. Within hours I'll get another case of slug speed.

The two third-generation Apple TVs in the house have recently started misbehaving. They sometimes report that they're not connected to the network, show a black screen and no audio while a movie "plays," or just refuse to play anything at all until they're restarted. Once restarted they work okay for anywhere from a few hours to a day or so, but then they get goofy again.

So assurances that the current state of Apple's line is the best it's ever been isn't much consolation to me. It's hard enough to swallow all the misbehaving hardware/software glitches that suck all the happiness out of using this stuff, but it's particularly annoying when it costs this much.

thewhitefalcon said:

You can call someone a bigot all you want, but it doesn't make it true. The bigots I see are those who demean honestly held religious beliefs of others with great frequency. 

Using religion as the basis for a position in ANY argument is as weak as it gets, because it doesn't have to have any basis in reality, logic, or justice. Anything written down by an ancient control freak may be presented as Absolute Truth and we're supposed to accept it as more than just the governing bodies of the day (usually a day of profound ignorance) establishing laws the same way we do now because it's somehow sanctioned by an invisible being who is reported to know EVERYTHING, even though there's no possible way anyone could know whether he, she or it does or doesn't, and who cannot be be questioned, queried for clarification or even known? The premise is so ridiculous it wouldn't even make its way into a comic book, yet I'm supposed to RESPECT that approach to matters that actually affect real people in real life?

Don't hold your breath.

I don't know where transgendered people should pee (or even understand why anyone would care), but I sure as hell know the decision should be based on something more reasonable than anyone's religious "beliefs."

This would be a good solution at half the size and half the price. Better than nothing though.