Mac OS X. True Color. Built-in PDF. Perfect Output.

I now turn this thread over to thalo...

I now turn this thread over to thalo...

Oh come on, John. If there's one thing we don't allow here it's a Supe-like post-and-run without any opening commentary*. Just tell us you had a bad day with OS X or sumpin' and want thalo to salve your wounds by dipping it's Pigtails in the Aqua well.

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*We actually do allow post-and-run as I've done it myself just recently. Not all comments by the moderator are to be taken at face value. Some disassembly of his meaning is required. Assault and battery not included.

Sigh. There is so much wrong with that I don't know where to begin. But hey, it's a beautiful dream. It's certainly what all pros WANT. Those three things. Although I'd also add the following:

Excellent type rendering and management. That we certainly don't have.

And DGMW (don't get me wrong), there's stuff that is kind of exciting... like color features (icc profiles, calibration schemes) which are growing ever more consistent and predictable. TFT technology is exciting... That's a good thing. I've had, in general, real success with the Cinema Display as an accurate color device. But because the OS and its relationship with apps (and prefs) is so damn flaky still, it can still FEEL unpredictable and if you don't nursemaid the operating system, you can run into plenty of color issues because all your i's ain't dotted and t's ain't crossed. And you'll get crap like spending hours tweaking your Adobe color settings, only to see them vanish when you push the OS by going asses and elbows on it.

Likewise with PDF. Workflows are improving, what it's TRYING to be, I'm all for. I can get it to SORT OF work... there's a move toward more power and consistency and predictability of output. We just aren't there yet. Mostly because, again, the OS isn't up to the task. I hate to put this all in OS X's lap... uh, wait, no I don't, because that's where all the fucking insanity is.

Anyway, right now, without knowing the quirks and workarounds to get reasonable distillation, pros working in PDF are pretty much fucked. Evolving a smooth, consistent workflow for print is pretty much a full time job. And personally, I find you end up having to slack cut, compromise, and go really soft on the Mac. Else you head directly into the chopper and die.

I use PDF a lot now. That's actually proof that something is going right (because I avoided it in the legacy as much as I could)... there are certainly things that are improvING... but I can't go so far as to say this technology is rock solid by any stretch. Certainly not if you're doing anything fancy or difficult. It's still WAYYYY to easy to fool and confuse PDF going from the big design apps to final distillation. There's a lot that can go wrong, and both murphy's and thalo's laws are in full effect.

How do you get by the bullshit? BY DOING SIMPLER THINGS. As is the pattern with this operating system, you generally have to cut back on what you ARE ABLE to do, to see good results. You have to go easy on the operating system. It can't take a real pro with all the visual tools at his or her disposal throwing it actual work to do. There doesn't appear to me to be as much flexibility anymore. It's like somebody's telling us, OK, you can TRY that, but your odds of success go down measurably with every flaming hoop you make OS X or Adobe jump through. Now, you can almost FEEL it when you're giving the distiller too much complicated stuff to handle. For a company that's apparently gone over to the eye candy business, they ain't very friendly when they have to deal with people who want to create their own eye candy.

Now, as for "Perfect" output. I've had DAMN GOOD output. Much of that was a function of finally getting a decent driver rev for my comping printer, which included better Postscript 3 support with OS X.

I've had perfect output going right to film from Quark or InDesign... but again, if I take the detour through PDF, and the project has any wildness (oh anything, compound paths, kooky gradations dropping into masks... really elaborate clips on top of custom fills) sometimes I get unpredictable results. No wait, USUALLY I get unpredictable results. I swear to christ, I have my fingers crossed every time. And I can't tell you how many times I've had to rebuild a job from scratch because something somewhere was unforgiving.

Didja hear? The next rev of OS X is going to be called "TIGER"... that's the big cat with the orange and black stripes (shudder), and the huge appetite for fresh meat.

If Apple wants to make the dream of True Color, Built-In PDF and Perfect Output a reality, I think what we definitely need is more maturity in the OS. It's still too half assed to be ready for primetime.

Pro workflows, thanks to the stupid interface, are holding a lot back... and instead of being clean and consistent and predictable, none of it really behaves. I need to RELY on my Mac for perfect output... I need to know when I do x, y, and z, I'll GET predictable results. But jesus christ, this software is still at the stage where I'll be working, and out of the clear blue sky, simple OS level Mac editing commands will stop working. They keyboard and mouse will start misbehaving... shit gets so slow to update that you lose your place... start burning clicks... and yeah, maybe the kernel stays afloat, but the job gets just as pooched as if you had a system wide OS 9 hunting dog crash. Without the loyalty and desire to please and do the job right of your basic hunting dog.

Without better font rendering and management, the other stuff falls apart. Fonts are still way too flaky and unpredictable in OS X too. I've tried the font book... I call that torture software. It LOOKS like it should work, it's designed like something pros would love. Doesn't work. Flakes out routinely.
I tried suitcase. Nursemaiding fonts, like nursemaiding the OS, again, a total drag. One of the best analogies I ever heard, was OS X being like the princess of the princess and the pea. Well, friggin' fonts are the Pea.

I'm guessing it still has something to do with what had to happen to Type 1 postscript to get it to gel with OS X/Quartz PDF. Remember my theory of homogenous mush-zone, instead of resolving letterforms. I think that causes trouble somehow. Stuff is getting parsed back and forth from some kind of outline/vector state, to the raster/screen state, and stuff gets lost in translation. We see artifacts, get oddness and eye rolling bullshit.

That banner caught my eye and I just figured I could get Thalo to make GoGurt come out his nose when he read "Perfect Output"...

But, I see it is no longer the outlandish hype that it used to be. That's good to hear.

Yeah, but it's still kind of a stretcher. And like I said, it's pretty much "perfect" on a sliding scale, based on what you're trying to do. It's only outrageous if you look at it from the standpoint of a veteran pro user who needs CONSISTENT perfect output.

That's kind of the story with OS X in general, though, isn't it? There's a whole "nominal" world, where stuff KINDA works, here and there, and then some people go ahead and start claiming this comprehensive perfect experience... I have always maintained that they're not really putting things through pro paces.

Getting stuff to work OCCASIONALLY, ain't perfection. I wish it was perfect half as much as it fucks up.

Trust me, GoGurt DID come out my nose when I saw that, though. Ya did good.