What happens when your client realizes they’re running the wrong version of two commercials in all thirty-nine of their stores that have a theater setup? You spend all night pushing the new versions down to those stores. That’s exactly what happened on my third day of work, my birthday no less.
Apple wants its current commercials to be popped in to the video loops shown at the retail stores with theaters, and the latest iPod commercials (HipHop, Rock, and Dance), were either wrong or nonexistent. We received the raw footage from Apple on DV tapes in the morning, spent the afternoon capturing and cutting a new video loop, then uploaded the new loop to a staging server–all 1.2 GB of it. Then it was waiting until the stores began closing, and staggering the push across the time zones.
Crawled in to bed about five this morning, got up about noon. Standard operating procedure is nothing but support calls on the day after a big push, and I don’t know enough about the systems to take any calls, so I get a day off. Pretty simple editing in Final Cut Express, but it has whetted my appetite for more.
Tag: Mac
The December issue of About This Particular Macintosh is out. Articles of interest include Ellyn’s look at the changing face of research, part six of Andrew’s excellent design tutorial, and Ted’s continuation of his intensive outliner series. Eric has a review of the Risk game for OS X (no, it’s not from Milton-Bradely), Chris Lawson gets everyone addicted to Snood, and yours truly reviews iPhoto 2: The Missing Manual. The usual great stuff abounds.
Thinking that my iPod’s battery may be dying–it is an original 5 GB model–I’ve been looking around for replacements from third parties. The fine folks at iPodbattery.com have even elected to show you how to disassemble your iPod to make the battery swap. Kudos!
If you really want to get the most out of your web code, and don’t have a Mac, please, please, please use this.
Karl Dandenell reports to Ric Ford on MacInTouch that Virtual PC 6 is not supported on Power Mac G5s. There is potential hope in that Microsoft states in the tech note they are working on G5 support for the application. This avoids a Retrophisch™ “I told you so” moment for the time being. After all, how long did it take Microsoft to bring HALO to another platform?
In the most recent Macintosh Daily Journal, Matt Deatherage & Co. take Information Week to task over their recent PC Vendor poll and rankings. MDJ correctly points out what’s really behind the buying decisions of most corporate IT managers:
IT buyers list many important factors, but when Apple meets them, they ignore them because Apple is not the “standard.” The most important consideration for IT buyers is not cost, customer service, quality, reputation, or proven technology, even if the magazine’s survey said so. The most important factor is that the PCs be Intel-compatible so they can run Windows, but no one wants to say that because it makes them look inflexible. Windows is the elephant in the middle of the room, and rather than talk about it, InformationWeek made up reasons why Apple doesn’t meet criteria when it obviously does. It’s hard to see how that is information, even if it does come out weekly.
It’s certainly looking that way to Apple. The iPod is the highest-volume item the company moves right now, with 1.4 million sold.
”It’s something that’s as big a brand to Apple as the Mac,” is how Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, puts it. ”And that’s a pretty big deal.”
Today was my first day at my new job. The company I’m working for is AMX, based in Richardson, Texas. In business since 1982, AMX specializes in audio/visual automation and control systems for both commercial and residential customers. The project I’m working on happens to be the Apple Retail Stores.
AMX has partnered with Apple to deliver and maintain all of the control systems for the Apple Stores’ theater and music setups. All those movies that play on the store’s big screen? The cool tunes you hear playing over the loudspeakers? All run by a combination of AMX’s hardware and software and Macintosh systems.
My new boss Mark just had a hellacious holiday weekend prepping the Ginza store opening. Things look to be fairly quiet for a couple of weeks, then it’s time to prep all the content the stores will need after the Stevenote that first week in January…
When I pick up a new 40 GB iPod, it will get sheathed in one of these.
Joe Leblanc rescues a dead G4 Cube and builds Gil a new home.