I wrote this over a year ago, but for some reason I never posted it. Since writing this, Creative Suite has been released for Intel Macs along with the Multi-Touch trackpad for the MacBooks.

As I work on my four year old G4 I can’t help but imagine that graphic designers are becoming useless to the likes of Apple and to a certain extent Adobe. I can think of very few software or hardware upgrades that were made in the last couple of years that have made our job significantly faster, better or easier. Sure we will be able to work faster when Adobe comes out with software that is ported for Intel machines, but do we really need anything much faster? When it seems that iTunes takes up about as much processor speed as Photoshop, I realize that it is not designers that are driving the technology anymore. So what industry is driving the market for faster computers? The obvious answer is video.

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Sites all over the internet are reporting that Toshiba is finally, finally pulling the plug on HD-DVD. Thank GAWD. Not that my wife is going to allow me to pick up a Blu-Ray player anytime soon, they are still far too expensive, and the movies are even more overpriced than DVDs.

It’s WIRED, though, that offers the best assessment of the situation: “This leaves Blu-Ray as the presumptive victor in the irrelevant optical disk format war. It now must face up to the real competition: the continuing success of DVD and the growing popularity of downloads, both on the internet and on-demand cable TV.”

Well, that’s all well and good. I personally still prefer to have a physical disc that I can take around, watch on my computer, watch on my TV, watch whenever the hell I want to, as opposed to say, getting a 30-day window to watch something one time over a 24-hour period that is only actually available on your newest line of products so fools like me that spend $5 on them get shafted by your staunch refusal to either refund my money or support my still-functioning fifth-generation iPod. Dicks.

When I set out to create this post, I was thinking that we might be able to determine the outcome of the Blu-ray vs. HD DVD format war by the quality of their logos. I wanted to determine from recent history if the format with the better logo usually won. While I don’t really like the Blu-ray logo, I simply cannot stand the grafted unbalanced nature of the HD DVD logo. So my vote is for Blu-ray even though I have no real knowledge (or care) of either format. And with Apple’s support of Blu-ray, aren’t we always supposed to agree with their decisions?

With two other video format wars represented in the above logos, I would have to pick the DVD over the DIVX logo. And yes, I do know that DIVX wasn’t a completely different format, just a different setup for movie rental. When I found the Betamax logo and put it next to the VHS logo, I was surprised that I liked the Betamax logo just a little more. Although … I don’t think either is all that strong.

Wouldn’t it be easier if we could determine a corporate success on the quality of their logo?

If you listened to NPR this morning you most likely heard the story about the missing Apollo 11 moon landing footage. Of course the footage that we all know and love (one of the most historic pieces of film ever recorded), is not missing, but the original footage that we never saw has been misplaced. Read the story on NPR.org to get the whole picture, but I will try to summarize it. The footage being beamed back to earth was not compatible for broadcast, so they actually … well I will just quote the NPR article.

“To convert the originals, engineers essentially took a commercial television camera and aimed it at the monitor. The resulting image is what was sent to Houston, and on to the world.

‘And any time you just point a camera at a screen, that’s obviously not the best way to get the best picture,’ says Richard Nafzger, a TV specialist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. He worked with Apollo’s lunar TV program, and says that conversion was the best they could do at the time.”

Somewhere between 1969 and now the footage has been lost. They have some ideas where it might be, but they are not sure if they will find it.

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Because I went to the Color Control Freak Seminar, hosted by the GIA, gretagmacbeth, among others. “Just admit it. You’re a Color Control Freak. (But don’t worry. We can help you make the most of it)”

Here’s a review:

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Apparently, Quark 7 will be a decent release, according to MacWorld. Quark 7? I had forgotten all about Quark. Silly me. Anyway, it’s in public beta stage so you can try it out and offer feedback if you’d like. The way I see it, I’m glad they have a new release–the competition will force InDesign to become even better.

How many of us are actually going to upgrade (or switch back) to Quark?