Ever wonder why Apple is so rich? I mean, aside from making a better OS that simply doesn’t have the issues Windows does, oh yeah, and cutting edge designs, better products… shit.. where do we stop? haha.. I can see Windoze users reading this and they’re hating, but truth is, they’re either ignorant or they just don’t know any better. (same shit) Some of you love Windows and that’s fair, it’s your personal choice and you could be Apple users, you just love your Win boxes. I know, i was one of you too… until I got sucked over to the dark side and no I realize, Apple isn’t the dark side, Windows is. Well, blue screen of death side.

I was a Win user for over 15 years, building my own boxes from ground up. I HATED Apple with a passion until I started playing with them more so for the Unix core. The servers I run are Unix so when I started to see that Apple is basically the same rock solidness as the servers I was running.. I started to like. Then i clued in that they don’t crash nearly as often and shit, I was hooked.

Yes, they are overpriced and yes, you can build a box for gaming for cheaper.. but will it have issues? yes. Will it gradually slow down because of windows bloat? Fuck yes. Hate me all you like but you know it’s true. Ideally, Linux boxes are tight. I like Apple for their shit, I just hate the commercials and the smugness behind Apple.

Then again, I have that same smugness now that i use their products. the shit works, how can you hate something that works and works well? You can hate it if you like, but if you can be man enough to truly check your bias at the door and give it an honest try for a few weeks so you can adjust to Apple’s OS-X… jesus, you won’t go back. the editor of PC Magazine, a hardcore geek Windows magazine, a Windows user for over 30 years. Ex Microsoft employee and programmer.. this guy left Windows OS after Vista and went to Apple’s OS and has never looked back, along with hundreds of thousands of others. There is a reason Apple is #1 in customer satisfaction for the past five years straight, over all companies, as well as watching their % of users climb substantially every year. No risk of overtaking Windows ever, I know.. but Apple is gaining fans all over, this can’t be argued.

You know what’s messed up? If Vista would have been decent, Apple wouldn’t be as large now as they are. Windows lost a lot of customer base to Apple with Vista being a smoldering pile of shit. I was one of them, that was the final FU FU FU FU Windows. I loved 98, XP, I even tried 2000. Windows Me was a joke and then, Vista… sigh. thankfully, Windows 7 is great. I use it daily on my second system.

I have need for Windows with the odd thing, maybe 5% of my workload. My primary box, 95% of my day, OS-X or GTFO. It’s faster, easier to manage, doesn’t break and oh yeah, I haven’t rebooted for over a month and my geekbench score is still inside 20 points of the day I bought the box. OS-X STAYS fast. Run a geekbench score on any windows box and then run the same test six months later and notice a HUGE difference. Win boxes bloat with crap as time goes on. I don’t make the rules, I just smile and I’m happy I am an Apple user. Hate me all you like, my shit works. Want to talk about security, viruses or malware? Windows fail-o-rama-jama all day long there. Apple home schools the slow kids in the back using Windows.

(I made friends with this post, I can feel the love)

One thing, we can all agree Apple is over priced right? Awesome, we’re pals again. Check this shit out -

god. damn. well played Steve.

Now who’s wishing they bought stock in Jobs and Co like, fifteen to twenty years back?

< < < < THIS KID

So, it has arrived. My new MacBook Pro 15 inch i7 with Thunderbolt.

Earlier, as in, two months ago. I had purchased the 13” MacBookPro i5 2.3GHz and it was quick, posting a geekbench score of 6353 which was faster than my earlier 17” MacBook Pro i7 2.66GHz (GB score was 6324) Upon looking at those two stats for the computers, most people would tell you no way a slower GHz i5 could beat a faster processor i7.. but the processor is merely part of why your system is fast. Bottle necking, ram, your motherboard, several aspects come into play. L2 or L3 cache? How quick is your system bus? There is a lot more to it than i5 or i7, or how much ram you have.

I loved the 13” MacBook Pro, it was fast and light but it had one draw back. Well, alright, three drawbacks. It had a small screen size. I had been used to 17” resolution which was 1920 x 1200. The 13” was not anti-glare and that sucks donkey nards. The screen size was also just a little wider than my dick. 1280 x 800. ouch. Going from 1920 to 1280 was a bitch slap for sure. The last reason the 13” wasn’t so awesome, small 320 gig 5400 rpm hard drive. You quickly lose HD space.

The new 15” I just grabbed is much stronger, posting a 9742 geekbench score, having a large display at 1680 x 1050 as well as a 500 gig 7200 rpm drive. Yes I could have upgraded to 750 gig for my HD but I’d rather use Thunderbolt external hard drives. The 15” i7 is only a 2.00GHz processor wise, also with 8 gigs of ram like the previous two but it destroys them speed wise. Quad processors means HOLY SHIT FAST. ThunderBolt allows for file transfers up to 10Gbps. It eats USB3 like it wasn’t there basically.

This unit is very much my mobile video editing station, my powerhouse. It gives me full capabilities when I am traveling, which we often do so this is kind of important. I can now run the servers on the road, easily as well as edit some HD video.

Here’s my GeekBench profile. You can create your own GeekBench profile by going to http://geekbench.ca and grabbing the free software, then running it.

This profile shows all my Macs, running OS-X and some, also running Windows 7. In some cases you also see software called Parallels running Windows 7 in the OS-X environment. I’ll detail below this image, in order they appear.

Geekbench score: 11178

This is my first Mac Pro Xeon 2.8 GHz – 2 processors, 8 cores. 32 gigs of ram.

This score is in OS-X, but normally this box is in Windows 7.. so lower score for Win 7 being that Win 7 isn’t as fast as OS-X

Geekbench score: 9742

This is my current 15” MacBook Pro 2.0 GHz i7 – 1 processor, 4 cores, 8 threads. 8 gigs of ram.

I use this for all things laptop, be it on the road running of the network or writing my books.

Geekbench score: 6324

This is my older (2010) 17” MacBook Pro 2.66 GHz i7 – 1 processor, 2 cores, 4 threads. 8 gigs of ram.

I don’t have this anymore, it was/is an amazing laptop, it was just too big for what I needed.

Geekbench score: 6353

This is my older (2011) 13” MacBook Pro 2.30 GHz i5 – 1 processor, 2 cores, 4 threads. 8 gigs of ram.

I just got rid of this, selling it to a buddy. Great laptop but not quite what I needed as explained above.

Geekbench score: 23573

This is my current (2010) Mac Pro Xeon 2.66 GHz i7 – 2 processor, 12 cores. 24 threads. 40 gigs of ram.

This is my beast I am on almost 24/7. This is without a doubt the fastest computer I have ever owned or plan to own. It’s like owning a Ferrari to go get groceries sometimes. It eats up HD video and laughs at it. To quote Ferris Bueller.. “If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up”

Geekbench score: 9668

This is my first Mac Pro Xeon 2.8 GHz – 1 processors, 8 cores,

This score is OS-X but I am using Parallels to emulate Windows 7. This is not a fair representation of speed for Windows of course, as it is running emulated. I don’t use Parallels really, it was more a test to show people the speed they’d lose in using it. Parallels doesn’t take full advantage of the speed, it doesn’t recognize the extra processors, the multi threads etc. Again, zero to do with Windows, completely a Parallels fail and yes, it was the latest version of Parallels

Geekbench score: 10890

This is my current Mac Pro Xeon 2.66 GHz – 1 processors, 8 cores, in Parallels mode running Windows 7 64 bit

So there ya go, more geek shit then you cared about. I’m excited about the new macbook pro, other than setting it up that is. Adding software and configuring it is a cluster fuck as per always when setting up a new box. Ah well.

Holy shit I love having two Mac Pro’s. One is encoding videos (HD) and I am also doing work in the new network and the other is watermarking, renaming, resizing, batch processing, uploading and downloading. It’s sweet, I have both systems running hard right now, over 175 processes on one and it’s not even remotely slowly down.

My older Mac Pro (2008 model) is a 2.8 GHz XEON quad core so 2 processors for a total of 8 cores with 32 gigs of ddr3 ram, geekbench score on it was 11178. My new Mac Pro (2010 model) is a 2.66 GHz xeon quad core for a total of 12 cores (24 threads) with 40 gig of ddr3 1333 ram. Geekbench on this system is 23573 so it was a wee bit of a speed upgrade.

Check your geekbench score for free here.

The older mac is running Win7 and the newer, of course, OS-X 10.6.6. I should point out on the older Mac Pro, the GB score is 9668 in Win 7 and 11178 in OS-X. OS-X is *much* faster than Windows anything, I’m sure Win geeks will debate this but pound for pound, the OS’s can’t be disputed. Love or hate, OS-X is built on Unix, Win7 is based on, well, Vista. (LOLZ)

I like Windows, don’t get me wrong, but I LOVE OS-X.

I lost count of friends and people online I know that were Win people for 5-10-15 years +, building custom boxes etc. they grab a mac and start playing with Terminal, unix, and yeah, Windows wut?

Not a Win hater, if Win ever puts out a better OS, I’m all for it. I just want one that hauls ass and never dies. Ask me the last time I rebooted my OS-X box. hahaha. Sucker is invincible.

I know, total overkill.. but shit, when you’re powering through HD videos running at over 50megs/sec, that takes some firepower.

/luvs my job

/er.. sometimes… usually.. mostly

I am fortunate enough to have an incredibly fast computer. It cost a pretty penny mind you, but it was bought with HD video editing in mind. It’s an Apple Mac Pro, 2 x 2.66 6 core Intel Xeon for 12 core total, or 24 cores when running in virtual mode. It has 40 gigs of ram, 1333 MHz DDR3, it’s nice, I love it very much. heh I know some Mac haters out there are all.. oooohhhh Mac’s suck etc but let’s face it, you’re talking out of your ass.

If you’d ever used a system like this versus whatever you’re currently using (no disrespect), you’d be smiling like I am.

I was a Windows user forever, right from 3.1 up to where are we now. I went through headache after headache with Microsoft. Windows 95 was amusing, 98 was alright. Windows ME? Are you fucking kidding me? Only to be outdone by Windows 2000 or whatever the fuck. haha Craptastic. I did like and do like Windows Xp, it was tried, tested, true. Vista should have been named Shitsa, it was and is a piece of steaming bile. Windows 7 is great. I used to build my own boxes, like many of you and sure, it was great… but build as I could, no way, no how was the system ever as powerful as what I have now. My current geekbench score is 23573. (my profile link). More on what I use here.

There is a reason Hollywood and music producers the world over use Mac Pro’s instead of custom built Windows boxes. Mac is built on a unix frame and well, unix is a shitload more secure/stable then Windows. Sorry to be the bad guy windows fan boys. Windows is awesome for play time, video gaming, accounting.. you know.. fun stuff but when it’s time to shred through videos, OS-X or GTFO.

That said, I still use Win 7 as well. I just prefer OS-X. Shit just works. That should be their no nonsense slogan

Apple. Shit just works.

I hate their ads, their commercials are pompous and make me sad to be a mac guy sometimes. That said… O do love this system.

digression over…

With coming back from Arizona, I have a metric fuckton of videos to encode. (that’s a lot of videos to you Americans not down with the metric system)

I need hard drive space, a lot of it. I need it to be fast. I need it to be secure/safe and redundant at times. I knew my only option was going to be to pick up another piece of the puzzle. So I did. I grabbed a Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2. 4 2 terabyte drives, set in a raid 5 format.

It will be nice to haul ass through these videos.

(gay mouse not included thankfully. I use the Logitech G9′s on all my systems)

room for 4 drives. Mine has 4 two terabyte hitachi deskstars, the quietest drive made.

HELLO eSATA. (6 gig throughput versus 3gig max with FW800)

FUCKING CHRISTMAS TREE LIGHTS!!!! AAAAAA I LOVE CHRISTMAS TREE LIGHTS!!!! wait.. no red? wtf

So, now that this is ordered… I can sit back and let my machine do what it was made to do. Make sweet, sweet love to HD videos.

So now you’re up to date geek wise on what’s new.

So if you’re anything like me, from time to time you have computer envy or system envy. I can remember browsing the web one day and I came across the photo this guy posted of his office at home. I was instantly in OMFGIWANT mode. This guy had not one but TWO apple cinema screens, and a huge lcd tv, as well as video games… movies.. shit, this looked like geek central. I had died and gone to geek heaven. I saved the photo.

This is not my office so we’re clear.. read above if you skimmed.

I remember seeing this and thinking… I can’t wait until I can get a Mac Pro.

At the time, I felt the need to take a pic of my little desktop/system and post it on my then blog..

1 – Mac Mini – It was all I could afford, my other system had just crapped out due to a power surge and I had about $700 to spend so we bought a Mac Mini. This was my first apple, the computer that started it all for me I suppose. Looks small and useless, but it had a geekbench score of 2475 so it wasn’t too bad. Quiet as a mouse, zero desktop space. It’s only shit point was lack of harddrives..  which is why (3)(4)(5) are there.

2 – Samsung 24” screen. Once you own a Samsung screen, you generally don’t like anything else. Samsung has it’s shit together and then some. GREAT screen.

3/4/5 – External hard drives. Much needed for storage of the network I was working on at the time. Keep in mind, this photo above is 3.5 years old.

6 – Lipo 6 – fatloss pills basically. I wasn’t fat but I had 5 pounds I wanted to trim up. lolz

————–

So I had a system that worked well but wow, to have my dream set up… that’d be sweeet. I just put the nose to the grindstone as they say and worked and worked and worked. This was still 2 years before we started Bryci.com  or the other Bella sites.

Then one day I come across this image…

I jizzed in my pants.

Sweet mother of god.. 30” screen in the middle, two 23” screens, not one but TWO MAC PROS. A Biomorph desk (they run around 3500-5000), this guy has audio video pro tools as well so whatever he’s doing.. daaaamn.

Once again, I had computer envy. Not quite penis envy, sorry ladies.

After a year of hard work, I decided fuck it and reinvested in myself. Business is important, so I picked up a Mac Pro and 30” cinema screen. Cost a little but fuck it, gotta invest in yourself to be better in life. If you’re a race car driver, you aren’t going to win races with a 78 Pinto, you gotta step up.

Way better than before, I could finally see things! I thought I had reached my limits.. this new system was so much faster then I was used to. Wow. I then of course was able to expand my abilities, I was able to multi task like crazy. Many of you hate Apple, you’re hardcore Windows users and that’s cool. I was that way too for many years, building my own PC boxes and thinking Windows was the way to be. Then Microsoft created Vista and well, it made my transition to getting off Windows easy. heh (Vista was the suck)

I felt like some pompus prick with the fast computer. All of a sudden I had a Ferrari for a computer. Wheeeee!

It was great, but wouldn’t ya know it, my desk wasn’t quite cutting it. Always something right? We lived in BC at the time this pic above was taken, but then we relocated to Calgary and as such, moved from a condo to a house. All of a sudden we had tons more room. Bryci picked up a new desk as well, which was freaking huge for her laptop she had at the time. (she then had a 13” Mac Book, now she has a 15” Mac Book Pro).

Thank you Ikea for the desks.

This was better. Soooo much more room. I loved this set up but in time I started doing more and more video editing and I started to see the restraints of one 30” screen. Fucking crazy isn’t it? When you’re editing HD video though, space is your best friend.

We ended up moving back to BC because Calgary was just too fackin cold. haha.. As such the offices got smaller, more cramped again. Wait, what’s that? Yes.. we left BC after another year and now we’re back in Alberta, Canada. More room again.. wheeeee.

I snapped this with the iphone so it’s not huge, but you get an idea of the workspace I am at daily for many, many hours. Hard work does pay off, but god damn… it gets to a point where you sort of forget where you started. Well, you try not to. I remember barely having two dollars to rub together. I was there so I know I could be back there if I don’t keep on working, busting my ass. I’m not rich by *any* means, but I at least have three dollars now, so I can rub two together and it doesn’t phase me too much. Thank fuck.

This pic is older, when i was still drinking Pepsi. I dropped soda about two months back and I drink water only now.

So.. a break down of what you see in the pic if you’re a geek like me and you’re curious.

left to right

Aeron chair – best chair you will ever own. Period. No exceptions. Worth every damn penny. I have owned mine for 3 years and it feels identical to the day I bought it. If you watch tv and movies, you’ll see these chairs almost always in offices and board rooms. These suckers are the Rolls Royce for your ass. Well worth it.

On desk…

Two Apple Cinema 30” screens. Shelf is just a piece of pine picked up at Home depot, then I slapped on some 4” legs I picked up online from Ikea.com. Simple, looks clean.

Two apple keyboards. Easily the best keyboard I have ever used.. small, flat, streamlined if you will.

Two Logitech G9 mice. – Amazing mouse. *HIGHLY* recommend. You can switch sensitivity on the fly so for gaming if you game, this rocks. I don’t have time top game so i haven’t tried it for gaming.

Apple 17” Mac Book Pro 2010 edition, Intel 2.66 i7 chipset, 8 gig ram. 500gig 7200 drive. Geekbench score is 6324. (it’s quick)

Under desk…

Two Mac Pros

system 1 – Mac Pro 2008 edition – 2 x 2.8 Xeon processors, 8 cores. 24 gigs of ram. Geek bench score of 11191. 4 Seagate 1tb hard drives. CRAZY fast system. This machine I leave in Windows 7 for when i need Windows.

system 2 – Mac Pro 2010 edition – 2 x 2.66 Xeon processors. 12 cores. 24 gigs of ram. Geek bench score of 23573. 4 2tb Seagate drives. Insane speed. I use this for HD video editing.

Under the desk, hidden by the chair… 7 Seagate 1tb hard drives in hot swappable caddies, all daisy chained via firewire 800. On top of the Mac Pro’s… 3 2tb  drives that are scratch disks for video editing.

No, I am not bragging, sorry of it came off that way. I just get asked often what I use, and I came across a pic of when I was wishing I had a diff set up so I wrote a blog.

Workin hard is fun, I would have it no other way.

Commence Apple hating now Danny.