This feels like a sequel to the @johnaugust piece on his Mac Pro tower. My story is a little more immediately frustrating, I think.

I produce over 100 hours of video a year. And for about 45 of those days, I am producing segments on the road. This has been a very time-intensive proposition, as waiting on HD video to process on a laptop can be an all-day activity. But it has steadily gotten better over the years.

My 5-year-old laptop became a relic in the last year or so, now too old to have the newest Mac operating systems and thus, to old for Final Cut Pro X, on which I am now cutting.

So I bought a 15-inch MacBook Pro in Salt Lake City on my way to Sundance and used it for a few days. It felt small, not terribly fast, and generally “meh.” I could have juiced the ram, etc, but I didn’t really want to… the rumors about a new MacBook Pro that was expected to land in March and change the direction of the earth’s rotation had started in earnest. So I returned it.

In March, there were still rumors an April release of the new MacBook Pro… but no announced release date. I waited.

In April, there were rumors of an early May release of the new MacBook Pro… but no announced release date. People started attaching the announcement to the Mac conference in June. I waited.

I was heading to Cannes and needed to cut. I was looking at the daily ebb & flow of rumors, but none of those rumors could edit an interview clip. This time, I bought another 17″ MacBook Pro, pretty sure that it was going back to the store on the day after I returned. I secretly hoped that the big machine, now being phased out (according to rumors), would feel solid and classic and worth keeping in spite of the extra weight. I had/have no intention of throwing the thing on my shoulder each day. I just had to get it through a trip and place it on a table for the couple of weeks.

I also bought 2 new FireWire 800 1TB portable drives for video output, figuring that I would be able to use them with the new laptop or any older equipment.

I put nothing on the machine except for Final Cut. It worked fine, though in the back of my head, I think I felt the couple of pounds.

I returned the machine when I got back, the new MacBook Pro still a rumor, but said to be readying for release in mid-June… tiny, powerful, and life-changing.

I started looking for Thunderbolt external hard drives then. There were a couple of 4TB and 6TB G-Tech (my preferred brand) machines at the Apple Store and on Amazon. But I had just bought new FireWire 800 drives early in the year and didn’t need big storage. You see, my 18-month-old iMac, which is where I do most of my work, is not Thunderbolt compatible. I just needed portable drives that were compatible with my current FireWire drives AND the coming MacBook Pro Thunderbolt ports (which are much faster, which is very important for video editing).

No luck.

There was, literally, one product on the market. And it involved a Seagate drive and a Seagate-only converter. $250 for the pair.

I bought my new MacBook Pro within 5 days of the release. I couldn’t buy right off the shelf for two reasons. One, the stores were sold out. And two, the retail stores had either the lightest powered version of the machine or the heaviest. Everything else had to be ordered online. And 5 days in, the wait was already projected at 4 weeks. Another trip was coming – not a shooting trip – and I was faced with spending an extra $1000 for more stuff than I needed or waiting. And by the way, the biggest on-board “hard drive” available was 512g. The cheaper one was 256g, which given that 512g didn’t do much for me, clearly requiring an external drive, I went for the cheaper one.

So, I waited.

Still no external hard drives available at that time. But the Apple Store offered a Firewire 800 to Thunderbolt converter, as seen in the original presentation of the new machine. I was already waiting a month or so, so what harm could that do.

The computer arrived. No converter. 6 weeks after the announcement, still no hard drives. So I have a great machine that can barely do any of the work I bought it for.

Apple says they have no idea when the converters will land… or when more external storage options will land. Carrying a 3 pound external drive on trips kinda misses the point.

It feels a lot like the rug that Apple has pulled out from under customers before. Great new products, but little help with the basic tools we need to make them work.

I suspect that I will spend the next 4 years loving this MacBook Pro… once the kinks are worked out. But in the meanwhile, I am worrying about the Toronto International Film Festival and whether I will be at full speed when it lands.

These are high class problems and, I guess, shame on me for being an early converter. But I need to do the work and Apple has made it an App-driven world. No one wants to own last year’s model a month before the new models land… at least not in computers or without a big discount.

So there you go… my fine whine…

Be Sociable, Share!

• 
•