Macgirl Media Pick of the Week: Super 8 is Super Flashback

I am as pro-Steven Spielberg as you can get...a child of the 80's, I loved ET, Indiana Jones, the Goonies, and everything else Spielberg put his name to. Fast forward to adulthood, and there's JJ Abrams with Felicity, LOST, and Star Trek...more media for me to love. When I heard about Super 8, I was super-excited: a JJ Abrams movie with overtures of the Spielberg classics (Spielberg produced the film), with a plot point revolving around film - ah, good old Super 8 film! So I ran to the theater, with excitement, but also a determination to take it all with a grain of salt. This turned out to be good advice for myself.

Super 8 starts promisingly enough, with a pan shot through a steel mill, with a worker changing the count on the "day since last accident" board - to one. Reasonably subtle sign to the audience that a tragedy just occured. This is the last sign of subtly we'll enjoy in the this movie. I was still hopeful a few more minutes in, until "the train crash scene" (this is the only hint of a spoiler in this review- and it's not much of a spoiler). Oh my, the train crash scene. Where to start? The complete lack of any concern for the laws of physics pained me beyond anything Michael Bay has released, mainly because I had expectations of a simpler, well written, fun movie, not a blow-everything up (even if you already aired it in another of your feature films) Michael Bay production. So, when one train car flew 100 yards into, and through, the train station, all without leaving a scratch on any of the group of kids, I pretty much checked out. The movie jumped the sharp inside of 10 minutes. How disappointing. But, as I said earlier, I told myself to take it with a grain of salt. So I re-engaged, and found I enjoyed parts of the movie. The acting was good, and the main characters were all likeable without being too perfect. But the moments of shark-jumping continued, and the dialogue at the end was so painful, so obvious and forced, it left me with a bad taste in my mouth. One other observation (and another potential spoiler): the "bad guy" (aka misunderstood alien) had the same look that all of JJ's "bad guys" have- not that it's easy to create an alien creature from scratch, but I've seen this guy before! I'm not surprised at the reveal!

Final review- nice summer flick, some good acting, some fun Spielberg-inspired action, and some ridiculous moments where you will be jettisoned from the movie and need time to get back into enjoying the flow. 3 stars out of 5 on the macgirl meter!

Retro Tech Tuesday: Univac Computer Ad from the 50's

While we've only been buying computers for home use for about 35 years, that doesn't mean there weren't computer ads long before. Today we bring you a TV commercial from the 1950's in which, Remington Rand promotes the abilities of their UNIVAC computer, especially for predicting the weather. Talk about trying to build brand awareness: at the time there were perhaps 300 businesses that could even afford a UNIVAC, but that didn't stop Remington Rand from buying TV time.

Take a look:

Retro Tech Tuesday: Touchscreen Computers are Old News

Think those shiny iPads, and iPhones we've been carrying were the first attempt at mass touchscreen technology? Think again. Today we go all the way back to 1984 and HP, err, Hewlett Packard's attempt at a business computer that used a touchscreen technology.

The story of how Xerox left the mouse interface slip through their hands only to be capitalized on by Apple has been told many times. Maybe its time to start considering how the computer landscape would be different today had HP stuck with, and further developed this technology:

Here's a more in-depth look from our friends at the Computer Chronicles:

In Defense of Final Cut Pro X

Since Final Cut Pro X's release last week, the editing community has been largely divided by those who love it, and those who absolutely hate it. Take a look at the current ratings for it on the App Store, and you'll see it earns a 2.5, with most people going with either one or five stars: there isn't much middle ground on this one. Let me try to put this whole thing into a bit of perspective that could bring both sides together.

First, it is inaccurate to refer to this as an update, or even really a new release of Final Cut Pro. While it made sense for Apple to keep the name for marketing purposes, had this software launched with a different name, the reaction could have been a bit different...

Let's pretend that the app had another name. Let's call it SuperVidEdit for the purposes of this discussion. Now imagine it was released by a small startup programmer or two. SuperVidEdit hits the App Store at a third of the price of Final Cut Pro 7, and offers lightning-fast rendering, tremendous utilization of available processing power, and does it all with a radical new interface. Some brave editors might tinker with the program while most watch from the sidelines.

"Fresh interface!" some would proclaim. "Yeah, but it's not ready for real work; I can't even import my projects into it, or lay projects back to tape." However those who found it fitting into their workflow, would experience tremendous efficiency and get projects done in a fraction of the time compared to Final Cut Pro 7. Over time, the developers of SuperVidEdit would add more and more features, bringing greater feature parity, until almost a year goes by. Suddenly, the excuses for not using SuperVidEdit have faded away, while the logic behind holding onto the old way of doing things look like a sure way to lose business to faster, more nimble competitors. 

So let's start to mend the divide by thinking of Final Cut Pro X as a completely new editing application, that just happens to share the same name as one of the most popular editing programs in history. An app by any other name would not be facing the backlash seen by Final Cut Pro X.

Next, I have to think that the ratings are largely based on knee-jerk reactions. When you open Final Cut Pro X, frankly very little of it operates the same way as Final Cut in terms of being able to jump in right away and start on a project. This is new software. That means things are different. (David Pogue has already debunked most of those initial issues, so I won't duplicate that effort here.) I absolutely hate the most recent version of iMovie, so when I first saw the interface, I was more than a little leery. If you had asked me to write a review in that first five minutes, or even an hour later as I tried to simply get two clips into the timeline and apply a transition, I would have been firmly in the one-star camp.

It was then that I realized I needed to think of this as all new software, and make the assumption that I had no idea how to do anything, despite ten years of using Final Cut Pro. The best thing I did was to purchase some training videos (in my case from Larry Jordan's $99 training, which should be part of the official FCP X download, and that is not a paid endorsement) and start from square one.

Soon, I started to see how to do 95% of what I was used to doing in FCP. In most cases, the new technique saved time, and simplified editing in a good way. Over the weekend I had to work on a project in FCP 7, and already I was thinking of the ways I could more effectively complete the project in FCP X. 

With that said, Apple shipped this software with some real head scratchers for those working in high-end editing environments. The fact that all projects are visible in the project library pane is one major issue. Essentially this means that if you open the project library in front of a client, they could get a glimpse at the projects you might be working on for competing companies. It could be a real issue for those who work government editing, or if you'd rather not have all of your clients see some of your more unseemly projects, depending on your clientele.

Again though, I can't say it enough: If this was an all-new piece of software, the people that issue affects would write feedback, and wait to see if the software would eventually work for them. I agree with Larry Jordan that in 18 months, nearly all of us who use FCP will have made the transition to FCP X. It was no accident that FCP X does not overwrite your existing version of Final Cut. This is a piece of software that has a lot of growing to do to reach the saturation level that Final Cut Pro 6/7 has found in the market. I have sneaky feeling that the quiet Cupertino startup behind this software has the resources to make that happen.

Book review: My New iPad 2

It's been a long time since Apple included a comprehensive paper manual with their iDevices. And while this adds to the perception of the device as being easy to use, it can be hinderance, especially to those who don't follow the tech world as closely as you, frequent TDL reader.

For a comprehensive overview of the iPad 2, look no further than My New iPad 2 by Wallace Wang, published by No Starch Press. Despite his other career as a standup comedian, Wang takes a no-nonsense approach to highlighting the features of the iPad 2. While not everyone will benefit from seeing in writing how to change screen brightness, for example, the book takes the time to go over these little details. While the book is best suited for those with limited tech experience, you might still find a few helpful tips for yourself. For example, while I knew it was possible to turn off push mail, and hence save some battery life, I had completely forgotten about it until it was mentioned in this book.

Cleverly, the book has been published with the same dimensions (height and width, not thickness) as the iPad, which helps to make both feel more approachable. 

Given the amount of movement (pinch, stretch, gestures, etc.) used to accomplish different tasks on the iPad, any book can have challenges describing those moves in words that make sense. while I was never confused by the descriptions in the book, I did wonder a few times whether that was only because I was already familiar with what the author was trying to say.

At any rate, if you're getting an iPad 2 for someone as a gift, and they're not the most tech savvy of users, this book will go a long way to help them get the most out of their new iPad, and just might reduce the number of tech support calls you get from them later.