QTR-Quadtone RIP

This will definitely push the OT envelope and my intent is not to start a
silly brand war, but rather introduce a little Friday contemplation and
levity. So Roy and Tom Moore, please don't kick me off! 
 
I read this horrific Mac OS stuff with utter dismay. A few years ago I had
to upgrade nine Macs for the AA Gallery Workshops. Not only did AA have to
pay for the PS upgrades, they had to upgrade the OS (to 10.4 I believe) in
order to install the PS upgrade. Not to mention my 12 hours of time. WTF?.
The color management nightmare that has since ensued is lunacy. Apple
effectively forces people to continually buy OS upgrades while leaving a
mess in its wake. I firmly believe that many people buy Macs because Apple's
are cool - and in many ways they are. Apple's product designs are
unquestionably inspired and deserve the industry awards they receive. I use
a Mac keyboard on my screaming-fast, power-grid melting, carbon spewing Dell
8-core Intel 3GHz Xeon, SSD, 32GB workstation. (I think it's responsible for
creating shipping lanes through the Artic). Dell server/workstations are
built like tanks (mine weighs 70 pounds), but why they continue to churn out
ugly, clunky wannabe laptops is beyond me. It was true that Macs were more
graphically oriented/friendly and clearly superior in those ways. But to the
extent that might still be true, the gap has closed to a thin crack. Apple
is now Big Brother, bigger than Microsoft and with a pinwheel-eyed cult
following to boot. Unfortunately for Apple, most businesses have CFOs and IT
geeks with dollar-signs in their eyes. Mac monitors are gorgeous, bright and
flashy and make Avatar an orgasmic experience, but they are nightmares in
terms of calibration and color accuracy, especially if you're working in
B&W. Where did their commitment to the graphics industry go? To the masses
at Best Buy. Dollars and pinwheels. 
 
When the silly stolen/lost iPhone 4 affair happened, Jon Stewart rightly put
Jobs' feet to the fire (this from my memory): "Steve! I love you guys, but
WTF? Have you become. The MAN? Commandant Gates is ridding the world of
mosquitos and you're kicking down doors in Palo Alto! You should be kicking
down the doors of AT&T who make your gorgeous iPhone useless as a phone!". 
 
The Macs, iPhone, iPad do often have a wonderful slick seamless quality. My
friend's MacBook Pro is a lightweight, monolithic, sculptured thing of
beauty, right down to the magnetically-released power jack. I've played with
an iPad and I WANT one, but when I quit sweating and remember that it
doesn't do Flash (because of Jobs' snitty war with Adobe) I can't find a
reason that fits my personal needs. I wish I could. I have an iPod. Two
actually. I would have bought an iPhone if I hadn't many years ago sworn to
deny AT&T another penny. 
 

People love to hate Microsoft and Windows but the fact is that Windows 7 is
a superb, stable, fast, flexible, and nearly glitch-free OS - Microsoft
finally got it right. It seamlessly connects to enterprise systems. When
tweaked a bit (which it shouldn't need to be) it searches the system as fast
and completely as a Mac. Yes the lovely new taskbar is lifted from MacOS,
which it should have been years ago. But it has unique Libraries, jump
lists, eye candy, and window positioning features to die for. (In the
interest of fairness and full disclosure, it's been a long road - Windows 98
was the most wretched, vulnerable, unstable, POS software ever unleashed on
humanity). 
 
Oh right - my point:  ANY version of the heavyweight programs I need to use:
AutoCAD, Revit, Lightroom, Photoshop, Office, QTR, Studioprint and Xrite
will run on ANY (NT kernelled, color managed) 32 or 64 bit version of
Windows: XP, Vista (yuck), and Windows 7. Microsoft issues major OS service
packs every year or so, but these are FREE, they actually FIX things and
they IMPROVE compatibility. I upgraded to Windows 7 and it's comforting to
know that I don't have to hold my breath waiting for the next expensive and
time-consuming version of Snow-Squirrel to screw things up. 
 
OK. I finally said it. :-)  And I fully acknowledge that some points are
subject to debate. Anyway, whether it be with Nikon, Canon, iPhone, pinhole,
Holga, Leica or Linhof:  Let us go forth and make great photographs!
 
Cheers,
 
Tom
 
 
 
 
 
  
Hi Phil,

I have not actually tried Lion yet but I have read most of the info
available.

The main thing that I know of is that the new OS is Intel chip only
i.e. no support
for old PPC programs. The bulk of QTR is already intel 32/64 bit but there
are
few of the the programs like QTR-Create-ICC that need to be updated. I have
fixes for these. The place where this is particularly a problem is
the MeasureTool
program that is used for reading the Eye-One Spectro. This will not
be supported
as an Intel program by X-rite as far as I know. Keep a bootable Snow
Leopard around.

Although there will undoubtably be things to update for Lion, I don't
imagine
there will be any unsurmountable issues for QTR on Lion.
If you know of particular issues let me know.

Thanks,
Roy





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