Tag Archive for: switch

Wacom Mobile studio Pro review Part II from Mac to Windows

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As mentioned in a few blogposts before it’s not as dramatic as it seems. I won’t leave Apple completely.
In the studio I will still be using Macs in the form of a MacBook Pro and an Apple MacPro, however I don’t exclude the option that the MacPro will be replaced by a monster PC, if someone can deliver me something that’s really faster than a MacPro (when it’s released) for a lot less money. But a MacBookPro will always be there, for the simple reason there are things I love about the Mac and I like having the option to work on 2 OS systems.

But for the Mobile side I’m now officially switching to the Wacom Mobile Studio Pro, it’s a wonderful machine and after working on it for 2 days now and having a good idea of it’s speed and stability I think I can safely say…”why not try it for a longer time”. Because it’s “just” my mobile machine I can always switch back.

Ok so what’s the status so far.
Well it’s not all good, but most is not the fault of the Wacom, so this part of the review will be more about the differences I encounter between windows and MacOs and letting them talk to each other.

First off
External harddrive
I had a great WD double drive passport on TB.
Great unit, configured in Raid1 (mirroring), very fast but most of all it gave me ease of mind knowing my data was secure.
I tried the dongle from USB-C to TB and (as expected) the drive did not boot up, it wasn’t even found.
So I’m now using an older USB2 drive which is pretty slow, but all our other drives are on TB (aaaargh, what about that new standard TB2). So I have my eyes out on a new solution that can be configured in Raid1 and doesn’t cost an arm and a leg for a 2TB version.

File formats
All my drives are formatted as HSL so Windows doesn’t “get” it.
Simple solution is using software to be able to read this, or reformat in the eXfat system which is crossplatform. For now I won’t do this for my drives for the simple reason I only need ONE drive, but if also my main machine would become a Windows machine this will become quite the challenge because we’re talking about several terabytes. So if anyone has a good and working solution let me know.

Trojans and viruses
Oh my, I installed ESET virus software which we used a lot when still running the IT company and which for us proved to be the best solution. And although I didn’t visit any weird sites except downloading software from trusted sources I already have two Trojan and malware messages from the software….. pffff so don’t even THINK about running Windows without a virus scanner as it seems. I almost forgot how annoying and troubling this was.

Problems with the screen
On the Mac everything is scaled nicely and when you run in Retina mode everything looks the same, this is where windows literally disappoints me A LOT. Photoshop and Manga Studio and Capture One look great, not too big not too small, it’s perfect for the Wacom mobile studio Pro. Windows itself is PERFECTLY scalable in incremental steps (at the moment I prefer 150% on the 4K display). So for people (like me) who haven’t worked with Windows in high resolution environments, let me explain what I encounter.

The software itself looks great, would love to be able to scale it a bit more/less but I understand that can give artifacts so I’m ok with (actually much more than OK, it’s more the control freak talking). But as soon as I run a plugin from Photoshop the story changes, sliders, menus are incredibly small, you can still read it (I have really good eyes) but hitting it with your finger is out of the question, and even with the stylus it’s aiming and being grateful the Wacom is so accurate, but it’s not a happy experience. I mailed this to several plugin manufacturers and actually got the reply that it was not something they could fix now but were working on a solution to be released soon. Except Alien Skin…. a simple regedit (oh oh) and a small manifest file and voila everything looked great, so I think this is just a matter of nagging and complaining and the solutions will be there soon.

Ok now the other things….

Airdrop
I LOVE the idea of airdrop but in all honesty we never got it working flawlessly, if it worked its awesome, but most of the time it was a frustration and waiting game to see if maybe airdrop would recognize another device, but when it worked… wow. Because I often post from my phone and want to also drop drawings from procreate on the iPad pro to my phone or laptop I needed a replacement…. and preferably free of course (hey I’m Dutch). Luckily there are several options and I choose for Zapya a very simple program without the need for scanning QR codes etc. just install it on Android, PC, Mac or iPhone and you’re all set. Transfers up till now all went flawless and recognizing was instant. Highly recommend this one, even if you are in an 100% Apple Ecosystem, I also asked Annewiek to install it because now we always know it work (well up until now it does)

Airplay
Also here are several solutions.
I don’t really need it on my laptop but sometimes it can be handy if I teach in a location where there are AppleTVs.
At the moment I don’t have something (free) that I like, Airparrot I use on the Mac and works fine (unless you mirror 2 highres screens), and they also have a PC version but I haven’t tested that one yet. For the moment I’m testing 5Kplayer which promises to do the same thing but more, but on the Mac I couldn’t get it to work but I’ll try it on the Wacom tomorrow morning.

A few other things really surprised me, seeing the trouble I had in the past.
It seems iCloud is now working great on PCs.
I synced my favorites, although I first had to install chrome to get my favorites and after that synced Edge with Chrome, it’s a weird workaround but when I synced Edge straight away it didn’t take over at least 2 folders and Chrome did, now is this hardly a problem because I always want 2 browsers on my machine for testing purposes. And uploading larger files to YouTube often doesn’t work in Safari or even Edge and works flawless in Chrome.

Also all our Email accounts are up and running (well ok that would be weird if that wouldn’t work) I do run into the problem that I can’t add any images or hyperlinks to my signatures in the standard Mail app, so I’m now looking at alternatives, although the standard mail app does look VERY good, it recognized all my contacts and agenda without a problem also.

Plugins
ALL plugins I use are available on the PC side.
Alien Skin, DxO filmpack and Optics, Imagenomic Portraiture, Perfect Skin (still testing that one) and the Topaz suite… all up and running.
Yes, yes I hear you asking “what about MacPhun”…. yeah well….. no fun with MacPhun yet.
Let’s hope Luminar comes to the PC because that’s the plugin I use A LOT at the moment, in fact it replaced almost all my other plugins on the Mac. But there is not a real problem for me. I always learn myself to use different plugins for the same thing (it did happen a few times that plugins acted up, so always have an alternative). For the hyperdetail from Intensify I’m using Topaz Clarity at the moment which does a great job and gets me app 95% there, so that’s good enough in my book. If Luminar is released for PC it will be 100% again, and if I really need to do something with a very specific look I will save that image for later when I’m on the Mac.

So how does the Wacom behave?
Absolutely awesome (I know I use that word way too much)
Drawing in Manga studio is breathtaking on the 27″ cintiq but this one comes very close, it’s less impressive due to the screensize, but the pen and feel of the mobile studio pro is REALLY a step forward, and I really love the 27″ cintiq, but man that mobile studio pro is one cool display for digital drawers. I can see a boat load of comic book artists and digital artists having a field day with this device. It has the potential to literally change lives. (queue dramatic music with loads of up tones)….

Speakers and keyboard and stand
I’m waiting for the official stand but found that my trust stand I use for my iPad pro (which doubles as a remote control in our home) is perfect for the job (although a bit less comfortable if I have to carry it with me). Keyboard wise we ordered the Logitech K830 which is BT and backlit via a build in battery, and it seems the touchpad is very good. And sound wise… our son still had a philips “hand grenade” BT speaker which is now being used on the Wacom and improves the sound A LOT and it’s a very small unit that can fit easily in my bag with the keyboard.

Anymore?
No not for now.
It’s been a real busy day yesterday and in between I also had to finish the installations on the Mobile studio pro so I hardly had any time to do something else, but this weekend I will start really diving into programming the keys and doing the first full retouch session from A-Z on the machine.

I hope you enjoy these little insights, if so let me know and we will continue them for a while, until everything runs smoothly.

 

The switch…. apple to windows…. well ok not that dramatic

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I think this will be the first post in a series, if you guys like it that is.
After the announcement from Apple about the new MacBookPro’s, the discontinuing of their displays (which might hint at an end to the iMac, I hope I’m wrong) and the fact they stop producing airports I’m feeling pretty worried about where Apple goes for the pros, I’m not repeating everything I wrote before, please read those articles here, here, and here 

So the reality will be for now
I continue using my MacPro with D700s for the simple reason I LOVE MacOs and the MacPro is still pretty fast.
For mobile use I skipped the new MBP because my old one works fine and has all the ports I need.
For mobile however I do want more than what I have now and it seems like the Wacom Mobile studio Pro 16 is exactly what I need. Being able to edit on the road or during a workshop is an awesome addition to speed up my workflow, add a keyboard with touchpad you have a laptop, what more do you need.

But there are problems
By switching from Mac to PC can be a nightmare when you think about it.
Loads of people will tell you that all software runs the same and there is not really much to it… yeah well those are probably the people that use their computers for some light editing and surfing (with all due respect) we have a BOAT load of problems I have to tackle and I thought it would be interesting to do that via the blog and of course via our Vlog.

Software
Let’s start with the obvious and easy to solve.
Photoshop, Captureone, Lightroom etc. all no problem…. check
Alien Skin, DxO, Imagenomic, Topaz all no problem….. check
Manga Studio Pro, already have a PC version, no problem….. check
Apple iWorks, well that will be MS office or a free solution, for this device we only need Powerpoint actually… check
Email and calendar, nowadays both systems should be nicely compatible (time will tell) but for now I’ll say … check
MacPhun…… oops big problem, there is no PC version…… problem

The other thing is Final Cut Pro X, and let’s look a bit more at that.
Most of my editing I do on Final Cut Pro X, but this is mainly because it runs buttery smooth on my MacPro and I LOVE the magnetic timeline, I actually HATE the way it saves libraries etc. but I’ve learned to work with that.

Alternative is Adobe Premiere.
Not a big problem, I always used Final Cut Pro and when that stopped I switched to Adobe Premiere which was a very slight learning curve for me and I’ve used it for a pretty long time, so it’s more “back to an old friend that does very well”, I don’t see any problems there, especially because what I will edit on the road will be the vlog and that’s not multicam and it’s a pretty easy edit.

For MacPhun there are alternatives although not as good, for example Intensify is a plugin I use a lot, Topaz clarity comes VERY close but it’s slower and that will be very noticeable I’m afraid in my workflow, but it’s an alternative.

So software wise no problems so far, so lets look at where it gets REALLY tricky.

Hardware and interaction
On the road we don’t need any fancy stuff.
We will keep my MBP for digital classroom so all the capture cards, wirecast etc. will all still run on my mac.

What I do use a lot on the road is :
SD card reader…… is inside the Wacom…. check
But more importantly we also make backups on the road, at the moment we use a Western Digital My Passport Pro for this, a rather big (but still mobile) harddrive solution with 2x 2TB drives configured in RAID1 with a FIXED Thunderbolt connection, this works like a charm, it’s powered from my MacBookPro and it’s pretty fast and I feel much saver with a RAID1 solution than with “just” an external drive.

You have to realize that on the road we are pretty much filling up the harddrives of the laptops pretty fast with video and photos so before the end of a week we are often already running everything from the external drive, and call me paranoid I don’t want all my data on just one drive. A solution would of course be to get 2 USB-C drives. When the Wacom is here I will actually try to use a USB-C to TB convertor but I’m afraid that won’t work because the Wacom is not Thunderbolt but USB-C, but you never know. And other wise it will probably be 2 USB-C drives that we have to keep in sync somehow.

Another issue (also under integration) is of course file systems.
All my Mac drives are formatted as macdrives and not PC format.
The main operating system will probably be NTFS of course but for external drives we have to find something that both systems can read, and luckily there are solutions for this, you can buy some software that can read the Mac Format (or NTFS on the mac) but you can also format the backup drives as Exfat which would make it possible to use the drive on both the mac and pc.

So overall not a lot of problems you might think, only really MacPhun, but even that is solvable.
On the first glance one would say… done.

But wait…. there is more
We use a LOT of copying from one machine to another via Airdrop, I’ve already looked a bit online and there are alternatives so this will probably be a non issue when you’re willing to do some concessions.
The other thing we use A LOT is Airplay, all our Macs are connected to Apple Tv’s to show CaptureOne, lightroom and Photoshop on big screens in our studio, but also here there are alternatives for PC users.
iTunes is another one, according to many a real piece of bad software on the PC (and some also claim on the Mac), the fun thing is…. we won’t be needing iTunes for the mobile devices, the only thing I sometimes do is copy movies to my iPad Pro and that can also be done via a webserver, so also this problems is solved.
Another thing I ran into during a previous attempt to switch to Windows for mobile use (Yeah I tried it before) was the integration with iCloud and agenda/contacts, but we switched over to Google Calendar at that time and we never switched back, so that should work without a problem and from what I understand also iCloud integration is now MUCH better.

Leaves us with one thing….
The OS itself
And indeed that’s where I’m REALLY REALLY worried.
I’ve had more than 20 years of experience with selling, maintaining and giving support to windows machines, and let’s be clear there actually never was a problem we couldn’t solve, and my machines always ran pretty smooth, but when it went wrong….. oh boy. Also when I switched machines…. oh boy. When I switched to the Mac I loved the simplicity of the OS, I could do the same things but it was just easier, plus when you get a new machine it’s a matter of just copying everything over to the new one and it works, wow… that’s awesome. With Windows a new machine was always a HUGE frustration, new installs, copying everything over from backup drives with documents, music etc. it’s something I didn’t miss for a second, I actually still run on my first OS install on my MacPro since I bought my first MacBookPro about 10 years ago, it’s copied from machine to machine and every time updated to the new versions, never had to reinstall from scratch.

Windows 10 looks nice, but make sure you get the pro version was the warning, and indeed I knew.
I’ve seen to many examples of people working and not taking notice of the small alarm that there are new updates which would mean that your machine would just start updating itself leaving you “jobless” for a while, and with our slow internet that “a while” could very well be 2 hours. And that’s also the biggest fear I have. On my production machine I NEVER update before I know something works, and in all honesty Apple hardly updates it’s software, sometimes a small security update or a fix but that’s it. When I boot my Windows 10 Pro machine (I’ve always also owned a windows laptop) it’s ALWAYS updating, I use it app 3-4 times a week and it’s never without updates and it doesn’t run a lot of software actually only one program (for calibrations), but the updates are always 1 out of 20-30-40-60 which can take a pretty long time sometimes. What will happen in the middle of a job where I know everything worked the day before…. And what about hotels where the internet craps out every so often and my laptop is in the middle of an update, that would be a TOTAL disaster. So with Pro we can luckily time the updates and for example do it only at night or next week. pfffff

The other thing… viruses and malware.
As a PC shop owner for many years I know how you get them, and I also know that you can be pretty save, but on the PC you really need a virus scanner, and with the work and travel we do a pretty good one *(many unknown wifi networks etc), and this will slow down the PC every so slightly. Not a big deal but I never liked them, so now I have to go back to using and configuring them.

 

For now the conclusion
For the moment it all looks pretty easy, I’m 100% confident I’m going to enjoy the Wacom Mobile Studio Pro as a device, but I’ll have to get used to the change of OS, but Windows has come a LONG way, and Windows 10 Pro actually looks very good and I actually love the Metro style they use for tablet use. Also the support from Microsoft I got has always been absolutely awesome. I’m however also 100% confident that although I did my homework and my software is already ready for the Wacom I’m sure I’ll find a lot of stuff that won’t work, that will not work, that will drive me nuts etc. but I’m also sure I’ll solve it. And that’s I think where this series will be fun to read and follow.

For the future
I’ve been reading a lot on the subject Mac vs PC lately and also with my own experience with Windows 10 and if my worst nightmare comes true and Apple indeed doesn’t update their pro line anymore OR I have to donate one of my kidneys for the new new MacPro (nnMP) I don’t rule out a complete switch to Windows, which would be a TOTALLY different undertaking that will be very “dramatic” in terms of time, money etc. but I also enviously look at some of the killer PCs that render 4K material in seconds where my mighty MacPro takes several minutes, I also see the amazingly nice PC casings (which I always loved) and SLI connected power GPUs and double CPU setups with blistering speeds…… let’s just hope Apple wakes up and gives us an affordable MacPro soon…..

 

Anyone with good connections in the PC market that can build KILLER PCs workstations?
Just kidding.
For now let’s see how it goes with the Wacom Mobile Studio Pro 16 soon.