Smoke, Mac, and Santa

Posted by Scott McEachron on Wednesday, December 16, 2009 · Leave a Comment

Autodesk announced yesterday that it is set to begin shipping Smoke 2010 for Mac OS X, a brand-new version of the company’s high-end video post-production software. The release marks the first of Autodesk’s pro finishing tools to be developed as a native OS X application.

With Autodesk paying more attention to the Mac, and with the release of Nehalem, Intel’s wonder chip, is now a good time to think about purchasing a new Mac? Check Here for the latest Mac rumors before you buy. If you’re looking for the best value in a new system, check out the 27″ iMac with the i7 Nehalem chip and 16Gb RAM on board. Run a Boot Camp partition and you’ll enjoy the best of both worlds.

Clearly, if you need to live in the Snow Leopard world, you’ll want a robust virtualization solution. You can read literature ’til your eyes throb, but we’ve tested ‘em all and VMWare Fusion 3 is hands down, clearly, more robust than any of the competition. A clear winner if you’re looking to run 64-bit Windows 7 in a VM on Snow Leopard for Computer Aided Design.

Have you seen articles comparing Parallels Desktop 5 and VMWare Fusion 3? I benchmarked both using Civil 3D 2010, I had to. I hate to take sides, but you can’t compare the two. Parallels Desktop 5 is just not as robust as Fusion. Parallels loads fast, it creates and restores snapshots fast, and it’s sexy to look at. But once you get under the hood, there just isn’t any power; I felt bamboozled, I was looking forward to running it. But if it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck…

Tis the Season (a personal note)
The past few months have seen a whirlwind of activity for us, and our schedules are already booking into the 2nd quarter of 2010. New software typically ships in March or April, so if an upgrade is in your future, don’t hesitate to contact us to help you ease the transition.

Santa’s been good to me this year. I feel incredibly blessed to have such amazing friends, and I’m exceedingly thankful for your business. Here’s to you and yours with best wishes for a joyous holiday season.

Until next year,
Cheers!