polymnia

Though I like my Apple TVs, I trust Sonos to better execute on connected media devices. I LOVE my Sonos gear. Their neutral support of pretty much every streaming service, without favoring an in-house service is refreshing. Loading a queue of mixed content from various services is a superpower that I really like. 

Draco said:

In three years, a MacBook Air will be faster than this machine. 

In three years a MacBook Air will still have zero internal PCIe expansion. 

I’ll be quite satisfied with 96 GB of RAM. I can’t replace my 2017 iMac and it’s 64 GB RAM with a MBP until it offers a higher RAM ceiling. I do advanced Photoshop editing in my work that taxes any RAM configuration. I had guessed at this capacity after seeing the M2 MBA 1.5x it’s max RAM. Good to see that guess pan out (?).

This is the Stream Deck I've been hoping for. I have programmed many obscure Photoshop commands into my 15-key Stream Deck and I love floating commonly used commands right up to the surface without having to memorize even more obscure keyboard shortcuts, but I've always hoped they might incorporate control surfaces into the Stream Deck. This could be perfect for manipulating Brushes in Photoshop, a most tedious task especially when holding a stylus in one hand. Now that I think of it, I'd probably dedicate this whole device for brush manipulation and use my 15-key Stream Deck for all other controls.

Hear's hoping that Elgato can integrate tightly enough with Adobe apps to permit the visual feedback of the manipulated settings as shown in the article photo, eg. Master Output 63%. Perhaps they could even animate an icon, like a hard-to-soft brush icon as shown in the Photoshop Brush Setting panel.

AppleZulu said:

ITGUYINSD said:

melgross said:

mikethemartian said:

ravnorodom said:

Greedy executives from Pantone company. Adobe needs to create their own color swatches and ditch these blood sucking leeches. 

No different than Apple.

Use Windows.

Why?  What does Windows have to do with Apple, who makes huge profits selling iPhones, iPads and Macs.  Apple doesn't sell their OS.

I think the point @mikethemartian was making was that everyone stands behind Apple when it comes to huge profits on hardware and services and their controversial 30% App Store "fee", but when Pantone wants to get paid for their product, they're "blood sucking leeches"?

Apple created, develops and updates a reliable, secure platform that quite literally generates the customer base that app developers want to tap into. Their cut of App Store sales is earned. 

What, exactly does Pantone do that isn’t just self-promotional hype? Standardized color tones were done decades ago. Everything since is just labeling colors with names, and announcing arbitrarily chosen “this season’s colors” for the fashion industry. 

On another thread, someone mislabeled Apple’s App Store as rent-seeking, but Pantone is really a far better example of an unnecessary business inserting themselves into the process just to take revenue from others for very little added value  in return. 

All most people see of Pantone (a division of X-Rite, which is essential to the point I'm going to make) is the color-of-the-year post and perhaps a style guide they use in their work that specifies a few Pantone color numbers that are for use in their printed materials. If all Pantone did was maintain a historical database of printing color formulas & name a color-of-the-year then, sure, they might be blood-sucking leeches.

In addition to naming these colors and defining their LAB values objectively, Pantone also develops & maintains ink-mixing formulas for printers to offer the full palette of Pantone colors from a set of standard ink donor colors. This is not a trivial endeavor. Ink suppliers use these references to manufacture ink for various printing processes. This has been the traditional Pantone business:

1. Define colors for designers to use, generating revenue from selling swatch books & licensing the library for inclusion in design software
2. Provide manufacturing specifications to ink suppliers and printers, again, generating revenue by selling swatch books & licensing suppliers

Several years ago Pantone was bought by X-Rite which makes color measurement & management technology. They play in a much larger league than just printing. They are into textiles, plastics, paint, etc. As part of X-Rite, Pantone has become the creative-facing part of the color pipeline for all many industries. X-Rite uses its measurement & management technology to manage color matching across mediums. When you license the Pantone Connect app you get access to much more than the printing ink libraries traditionally included with design software. You get the textile library. You get the pigments & coatings library. With these reference libraries, X-Rite offers solutions to implement these color systems into plastics, paint, cosmetics and others. To be clear: This is overkill for the average designer or brand. But this is the business Pantone is part of now, and it is very complex and high-end. The current owners of Pantone are not just milking printing ink color definitions from decades past. They are incorporating traditional color libraries into their multi-industry product portfolio.

On the other hand...

The Pantone Connect App is garbage. App design is clearly not a core competency of X-Rite. Currently, the App is a huge step back in productivity for a busy designer working with different colors daily.

Perhaps...

An open-source industry group could develop & promote a color reference library that could be freely distributed with design software. They would need to do more than collate a list of LAB color values with names & numbers. Table stakes for this library require an ink-mixing formula guide using standardized printing ink donors (not sure if there are royalty-free donor inks available for this purpose, they might have to be developed along with the system) to create spot color recipes for all the colors defined in the library. This would replace the legacy functionality of the Pantone Matching System. It is a lot of work and it would have to be monetized somehow. But it wouldn't have as much overhead as X-Rite's business which is where Pantone lives now, thus theoretically less expensive to license than X-Rite's Pantone.