(Insert stupid Blog name here)

Stella will work.

 

Dunno about Freehand but I do know CS2 stuff has issues, some bigguns. As do many of Adobe's video apps. Oddly enough my CS1 still seems fine with some oddball anomalies.

 

I'll be interested in hearing whether or not your Preview will still work properly though. That's the one that drives me nuts. Pics are almost always blurry or invisible until I resize the window.

 

Good luck!

Since I'm going with CS3, I'm not too worried. I can't run Premiere Pro on a G5 iMac anyway (requires Intel) so that's not an issue, and Adobe recently patched After Effects. All of my Photoshop plugins have been updated as well, so I think I can leave CS2 behind.

 

The update seems to have gone okay so far. I'm in the middle of the extremely long Final Cut Studio content install marathon. Then I get to start in on CS3 and all of its updates.

Preview seems to work fine for me so far, as do most other things. Had to download more than a few updates, in addition to running Apple's software update three times, and running (or more like crawling) Adobe's updater. I think Adobe has the worst installers and updaters now - I can't imagine why they run so slowly, when they aren't copying all that much to the hard drive. It literally took it several hours to just install about 400 MB worth of updates.

 

The interface seems slightly slower now, but my Mac hasn't been exactly zippy anyway. I think it's a bit much to ask it to push around all that eye candy.

 

FreeHand doesn't work yet, since the update borked my serial number, and I have to dig it out of wherever I cleverly put it so I'd easily find it. However, the most important apps - Quicken, Stella and Restrospect do work, so that's good. Although Retrospect was too stupid to locate the back-up catalog (which had never moved) without me re-linking it. It doesn't give you the option of re-linking it, either. You have to trick it by choosing a catalog file to rebuild, then canceling out of it. Then it knows where it is.) Very user-hostile. I look forward to getting Time Machine running.

 

Anyway, it looks like I'm updated now. So far, I haven't seen much appreciable difference. But the Quick Look feature is nice.

I'm loving Leopard. Time machine in particular is pretty damn cool, as is Quick look. Stacks are pretty useful too.

On the speed issue, what Mac are you running? Although I've only ever known Leopard on this new MBP, my wife's Macbook is definitely running slicker on the new OS.

iMac G5 1.8 GHz. I'm not sure if it's actually slower, of if I just expected it to be faster than before and it wasn't. Either way, it hasn't picked up any performance gains. It could also have to do with the FireWire drive I added. I've noticed little lags to due it spinning that back up now and then.

 

Admittedly, my iMac has been looking a little tired since I got a new Mac Pro at work last Summer. I'd really like to get a new Mac at home, but that won't happen for awhile.

Pffft! That iMac is a new Mac. I remember when you first got it and it was all brand new and shiny. It was right around the same time I bought my G5. Sometime around...2004? Wow. Time flies, doesn't it? Still, I think both of our machines have to last for a loooooong time if they want to fill those big shoes left behind by our old Macs. These things are still brands new.

I'm just spoiled by an eight-core 3.2 GHz monster at work.

 

(The 30" Cinema Display doesn't help, either.)

Okay... FreeHand works! This is good news, since a lot of my work (including Artie) is done in FreeHand still.

 

I was in a panic mode for awhile, since I couldn't find my serial number for it, and it was asking for me to re-enter it. Fortunately, I found the license file in the old OS archive, and copied it over. Once activated, it worked just fine. Or at least as fine as the last version of FreeHand ever did.

 

Anyway, it gave me a good reason to go through and sort some more of my junk. (I still haven't found the serial number...)

Well, I finally hooked up my back-up drive for Time Machine. Very easy, very slick. Apple has really nailed the whole idea of making backing-up accessible to everyone.

 

Although, the initial back-up might just take awhile...

 

 

It'll be interesting to see how well restoring/reverting to old files works.

 

Oh, and I did finally find my FreeHand serial number. It was literally in the last place I looked, which was just a few feet from the first place I looked.

 

Edit: I do wish, however, you could tell Time Machine more specifically what not to bother backing up. Applications, the System folder, iTunes libraries, etc. As it is, it backs up everything on a given volume.

Yep, it's pretty slick. You can exclude things from the backup - I need to set mine up to exclude Parallel's disk images.

 

Mac 101: Using Time Machine in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard

Adjusting what Time Machine backs up

 

If you want to minimize backup storage space, or just limit your backups to certain data, you can exclude certain files and folder from Time Machine backups.

 

1. In Time Machine preferences, Choose Backup Disk, then click Options. A list of locations that are backed up appears.

2. To add a new "do not back up" location to the listing, click the "+" button below the list, navigate to the location you want to exclude and click Exclude.

To delete a listing, select that listing and click the "-" button.

3. Click Done to return to Time Machine preferences.

4. Drag the Time Machine OFF-ON slider to turn Time Machine on or off.

Thanks for the info!

 

I assumed the "do not back up" only referred to specific volumes, rather than folders.

 

Serves me right for not reading the instructions first.

Much better...

 

Getting forgetful, looks like I already excluded Parallels from the backup.

Okay... I'm feeling the love for Leopard now.

 

First, I'm starting to use Coverflow. Very handy for seeing image files (which I have a lot of). It doesn't work with everything (FreeHand files, for instance), but it does come in handy where it does work. For example, the Stella at 20 footage:

 

 

Although, since most of the Stella videos start off with color bars, Coverflow doesn't really help me very much there.

 

But Quick Look takes care of that. Being able to skim through footage without having to open QuickTime makes it worth the cost of Leopard by itself! This is a huge time-saver for video editors!

 

 

Finally, is Time Machine. Pure back-up genius. All of Stella at 20 is now backed-up*, and it was effortless to do it. Well, almost. I did have to disable back-ups while I was copying the footage (around 180 GB) from the old drive I was using to my new one. The problem was, the copy was taking so long (3+ hours) that Time Machine kept trying to back it up while it was still copying, slowing the whole process down to a crawl. Once I shut it off temporarily, then I could finish the copy, and then turn it back on, so it could back-up all of the footage to a second new drive. (I couldn't take a screenshot of Time Machine... but it's really, really cool looking.)

 

So now I finally have the Stella at 20 footage at home, on my own drives, and backed up. This was due to a nice grant I got from CalArts (where I work) towards the project, which also got me new versions of Final Cut Studio and After Effects, so my system is loaded up, up-to-date and ready to go.

 

Now all I need is the time to work on the thing.

 

* In case you were wondering, Stella has been backed-up all along, since it was digitized. The footage is on the Mac I use at work, and on a portable hard drive, which is also at work. What this does, is bring the footage to my home Mac along with a back-up of it, so I can work on it there.

I don't use Cover Flow much, but it is handy when I do use it. I use Quick Look daily.