Bar Steward Vista
This is the first in an occasional series from Sidepodcast, giving you a behind the scenes look at podcasting, specifically in the Formula 1 genre. We want to share the pitfalls, the problems, and the triumphs that go into making the show what it is. As this is a joint effort, to provide you with both sides of the story, I will be writing in plain text, whilst the geeky one will add his two cents in italics.
I’ve always been on the PC side of the Mac vs. PC debate. I appreciate everything that a Mac is and I will gladly stand up and say it is easier to use, has some stunning applications, makes you want to create stuff, and is generally just better than a PC. But, I am a control freak and there’s something about Finder that puts me off. The thought of it makes me anxious. How will I ever find anything? The file structure, it scares me.
I did use a Mac for about six months a few years ago, and I don’t remember it being a problem, but just a simple glimpse of the Finder icon brings me out in cold sweats.
True. As a person sitting on the Mac side of the debate, I’d agree that the worst thing about Apple’s operating system is file navigation. It’s better in the new version, but still geared to finding files rather than organising them correctly in the first place.
I had a PC laptop and life was good. Then, gradually, it wasn’t so good. It was slow, there wasn’t enough hard drive space, and sometimes the screen wouldn’t start when you switched it on. I was getting frustrated, and I needed to upgrade.
I knew about Vista. Trust me. I’d listened to enough TWiT podcasts to know that Vista left a lot to be desired. But I figured that the little annoyances everyone seemed to be talking about were worth the fact that I would be upgrading to better hardware.
Ha.
Very, very silly.
Soon after Vista was my operating software of choice, I started to hear audio glitches whilst creating podcasts. Some of them were simple ‘clicks’ on playback, some were ‘pops’ in the recording. There was the occasional glitch in recording that was much, much worse, almost as though it had skipped a word. If it was a tape, I’d imagine that the tape had folded over on itself and covered up a second of recording. So far, I’ve been using my editing skills to the max to either chop out the damaged audio, or at least minimise the effects.
Can’t say I’ve noticed, so you must’ve done a pretty good job. What I have noticed is the incessant swearing coming from your direction since the upgrade, so I imagine it hasn’t been much fun.
Obviously, we’ve been narrowing down where the problem actually occurs but all the signs point to how Adobe Audition works with Windows Vista. The download trial of Audition 3 was supposed to be my saviour, but the glitches still occur, and there’s another problem to add to the mix.
Load up Audition and it works fine. After five minutes, it gets sticky and slow. You’re moving something, you’re clicking somewhere, and it takes a second or two to catch up. It sounds like nothing when I’m writing it down, but it is not at all practical, and I find myself having to restart the software. Every. Five. Minutes.
Ahh, the Adobe approach to software development strikes again. Release early and patch later sounds familiar. It’s a shame because Audition 2 was a great bit of software, version 3 is sadly worse than useless.
It seems like the only way to work with Microsoft at the moment is to downgrade everything. Audition 3 is bad, so stick with Audition 2. Vista is laughable, better to stick with XP. I just can’t fathom how a company as big as Microsoft could be satisfied to produce something so bad that it’s better not to upgrade.
Personally I blame Bernie, not for any specific reason, but it must be his fault somehow.
I heard PC World’s hardware sales recently dropped so low, that they had to re-introduce XP machines to the shelves. A rather embarrassing affair all round. don’t worry though a new OS will be available in a few years.
Like I said at the start, I’ve always been on the PC side of Mac vs PC. But now…
November 26th, 2007 at 4:37 pmbrendan stallard said:
“Vista is laughable, better to stick with XP.”
Christine,
Ahem….methinks I dun tole ya, gurl:)
IF you decide to downgrade to XP pro, be careful that the drivers for the internal machinery like the sound card and Nic are available: otherwise it can be a reet pain in the tush.
Vista is awful, and if MS aren’t very careful: it’ll kill them.
When time comes for me to change machinery: I’ll be going mac.
brendan
November 26th, 2007 at 6:31 pmChristine said:
I know, Brendan, I know.
Everyone told me so.
November 26th, 2007 at 7:16 pmbrendan stallard said:
“Everyone told me so.”
Christine,
Sorry: I didn’t mean to be unsympathetic.
Truly: its a ghastly situation, and I hope it works out for you.
I’m dreading going back to Atlanta on Saturday (as far as Vista is concerned): I have at least eight computers I have to downgrade to XP after their furious owners who were all desperate for Vista have had their offices turned upside down as a result.
brendan
November 26th, 2007 at 8:02 pmChristine said:
I don’t expect any sympathy (although thank you!), I knew what I was doing when I made the choice.
But I think deep down I couldn’t believe that Microsoft could really release something that bad. It boggles my mind, it really does.
You’re right when you say MS need to be careful.
November 26th, 2007 at 11:29 pmbrendan stallard said:
“Personally I blame Bernie, not for any specific reason, but it must be his fault somehow.”
Me,
I have this deep need within me to state here:
You are wrong, Bernie is a toad: and a lot of what he does is toady…..
But you are firstly just wrong and McLaren are right.
Just needed to tell you:)
brendan
November 27th, 2007 at 12:52 amme said:
would now be a good time to mention the microsoft / mclaren ECU partnership?
thought it might.
remind me brendan what you were saying about those 8 computers, about buying a mac and about mclaren being right?
November 27th, 2007 at 9:35 amF1bloggen » PC vs. Mac-debatten möter Formel 1 said:
[...] möter. Men sidepodcast, som gör podcasts som namnet säger, har publicerat en klart intressant artikel om just PC vs. Mac. Finfin läsning för oss som har typ två nörd-intressen på samma gång, [...]
November 28th, 2007 at 1:47 pmClive said:
What annoys me most about this whole PC/Mac thing is that Linux would be a perfectly good alternative to both systems if only they fixed three things: the obtuse filing system (sounds as though it might share this with the Mac), the insanely complex procedure for intalling programs, and the stupid way files are named to give no clue as to their purpose in life.
Had they fixed these three minor problems ten years ago, Microsoft would now be a little company making computer mice and keyboards and Apple would be defunct.
November 28th, 2007 at 6:37 pmme said:
the problem i have with linux is that everybody who uses it thinks the applications are good enough. but they aren’t.
mostly they’re shoddy, arcane, obtuse and unintuitive. take this comparison chart for example. apparently linux users believe audacity to be on par with audition or blender comparable to 3d studio max. frankly ridiculous.
from what i can tell, linux users set a very low bar when it comes to acceptable quality.
apache is pretty good and so are a couple of the other networking apps, but it’s useless on your desktop.
November 29th, 2007 at 12:50 pmClive said:
I believe that, if they got the basic user interface systems right, the applications would follow, Me. There are some good ones although I agree that many are designed by geeks for geeks. A classic example is the much-admired GIMP, Linux’s answer to PhotoShop; it’s a weird assortment of the strangest ways of doing things ever devised. And that’s where Linux has its weakness - it needs some geeks working on it who understand the point of view of non-geeks. It is no good asking an ordinary user to type anything into the command line - if it can’t be done with a mouse, we won’t do it.
Not that I am anti-geek - I believe it to be a title of high honour and without them, we wouldn’t even have Vista. But they rarely understand the problems of the common man.
November 30th, 2007 at 8:41 amme said:
i’d agree with that.
the only thing i’d add is… what you’re describing already exists, it’s called Mac OS X.
fantastic user experience, underpinned by a solid and secure Unix operating system. what else do you need?
November 30th, 2007 at 2:58 pmClive said:
Twice as much money, if I’m going to buy a Mac.
November 30th, 2007 at 10:47 pmbrendan stallard said:
“A classic example is the much-admired GIMP, Linux’s answer to PhotoShop; it’s a weird assortment of the strangest ways of doing things ever devised.”
Clive,
Interesting comments. I’m personally of the opinion that photoshop is laughably complex. Ridiculously, in order to keep the books coming through.
I agree, GIMP is a nonsense, although the geeks still try and yap about it on my PS forum.
The major PS types need to worry, very deeply about Picasa: Google are developing it apace and while it isn’t as able as most of the major players: for the snappers in the world, it does a reet fine job and has a gig of online space for free.
brendan