Non-Photographic

Guess it is time for one of my long rants.  This time I am going to unload on computers.  I will begin by saying I really hate computers.  A computer is a machine and in being so, for me, it should perform a function.  It should perform its assigned functions flawlessly and without me having to waste a lot of time coaxing it into working.  I have been on this subject before and I think it is clear that about three years ago we set all of our PC-type boxes on the curb and went 100% Apple.  This was the most intelligent move I have made in my life.  Maintaining these machines has been a pleasure.  I would estimate that I have spent 1/1000 of the time hassling with OS X as I did each year maintaining Windows.  Never again!

Now this is where I start, that was just the background, in case you have not kept up with my rants.  Once going Apple the only annoyance to me is the lack of support for OS X by some developers.  It is an annoyance to have to run some form of Windows to gain access to several applications that are not supported.  Fortunately for me, there are only about three applications that I have to hassle with.  I have been able to somewhat use these apps by installing Windows XP using OS X BootCamp.  They work, but not without some functions failing to perform.  This has been a thorn in the side, but doable. 

I understand how a very small company cannot afford to support two operating systems.  I dearly love my BTZS apps and used them for  graphs and plotting VC paper grades.   I whole heartily applaud Fred Newman and the View Camera Store for making this great software available and continuing to support it.  The film community is a small dedicated group and we need more like Fred to help keep film alive.   By the way, did you know you can calibrate your enlarger to every VC paper you use?  Take a look at my article HERE.

What I do not understand is how a multi-billion dollar company that sells their products in every corner of the world can refuse to support OS X?  They do have the resources and should support their customers without discrimination to their choice in computer.  I will not mention any names, but there is one very large company that is on my list.  What list you ask?  The one that says, would not buy water from these people if I were dying of thirst in the desert.  That list!  Trouble is, I use one of their products and it requires I use their software.  Little I can do except complain. . . and I am not alone on this one.  Yet this company refuses to listen.  Oh Well!!!

We have struggled with BootCamp and I have to admit it does work pretty well.  It is a pain to have to restart to switch operating systems though.  An old friend of mine is an avid amateur astronomer and he has to have a copy of PhotoShop for manipulating the images he makes.  Thing is, he is stuck with an older Windows copy of PhotoShop and refuses to pay to rent the latest version (this is a very sore subject from what I have heard from other photographers that use PS) and legal older versions of PS software is off the scale price-wise now days.  This friend of mine and I have been searching for a more convenient way to run our old Windows apps on our Apple computers.  Seems my buddy really got hot on the trail when this PS thing hit a few weeks back and did some serious research into a cost effective, working solution.  Thanks to him, we found a working answer.

If you are in the same boat as my buddy and me, and are looking for a solution to running Windows apps on an Apple, at an affordable price, here you go.  Take a serious look at VMWare Fusion.  You can download a 30 day trial to make sure everything works for you.  In my case, I had already installed BootCamp and it was extremely simple to add this working partition to  Fusion.  I had it all up and running, without having to reinstall any of the Windows apps, including Windows, in about thirty minutes.  The real thing is, it just works.  Even my network printer works now with my BTZS apps.  I can run my Windows apps on my OS X desktop just like a native app.  My buddy, never having installed a BootCamp partition, had to install everything new and this took him much longer, but he does report that PS and all of his astronomy apps run as expected.

Here is the link to VMWare Fusion.  At this writing it will set you back $49.00 and if you dig around on the Internet you may find a $10.00 off coupon code like I did.  As I said, I hate computers, but they are a necessity these days.  It is just that computing shouldn’t be a life altering, time consuming, event when you need to do something.

Rant over. . . though my love/hate relationship with computers has not changed.  Now back to photography, as Edward Weston said, “my favorite subject!”

JB