Reviews, tutorials and news (previously: IT Enquirer)
The golden oldie for anyone involved in text editing, HTML and CSS coding and yes, MarkDown, has been upgraded with new and improved features once again. BBEdit 12, the oldest and best all-round text editor on the market has reached its 12th generation. Twelve is a magic number and that’s a good description of this new version too.
Here’s a puzzle: you’re shooting video or photos on location, using a CalDigit AV Pro 2. At your workstation you have a RAID system that you normally use for offloading images or video clips shot when in the studio directly. The AV Pro 2 is also used as a secondary offload drive for those studio-shot clips. That introduces a problem: how can you make sure — easily, quickly and simply — that everything on the AV Pro 2 is synchronised with the RAID? The answer can be to change your workflow, buy a new AV Pro 2 that’s going to be used only as secondary offload station, or buy a $50 licence to a software called ChronoSync.
With its new storage product range, CalDigit takes a completely different approach from its competitors. The company seems to realise more than any other supplier that Apple’s portable solutions are poor in legacy connection capabilities. Hence, the upcoming T4 RAID system and the recently released AV Pro 2 single-disk solution will charge your laptop and adds a USB 3.0 hub to get more connectivity without adding extra devices.
Bombich Software recently released an upgrade to its backup and disk cloning application, Carbon Copy Cloner. Carbon Copy Cloner 5 offers complex task filtering, coaching tips, smarter pruning, task grouping and scheduling and more. It still allows you to create exact — bootable — clones of a startup disk and enables you to check if a backup or clone hasn’t been corrupted due to bit rot or other errors. And while I was at it, I had a short talk with Mike Bombich, the developer and publisher of Carbon Copy Cloner, on backing up, offloading and securing your backups.
Corel Roxio quietly released Toast 16 with a new accessory app, MultiCam Capture. As tradition wants it, the Pro bundle includes yet other new apps, including FotoMagico 5, WinZip for Mac, Corel Painter Essentials and Corel Aftershot 3. I went through all of the new offering, but not without first taking a good look at the new Toast features. After all, the suite’s core still is Toast, the app to burn DVD’s, Blu-Ray discs and CD’s.
The OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual features two Thunderbolt 2 ports, one USB 3.1 Gen. 1 port and all of the cables you need to start using it immediately. You can set this small-footprint unit to RAID 0, RAID 1, disk spanning and JBOD modes. It has a black minimal design and you can buy it as a bare enclosure or with disks already installed. I got the chance to test the 2TB version.
Thunderbolt 3 docks are being released at a fast pace. The CalDigit TS3 Thunderbolt Station has been around for a month now and it has an edge. Not only does it provide 85W charging power on one of its ports to Apple's Thunderbolt 3 MacBook, but it's also tiny compared to others. And it can be positioned upright, saving space on your desk.
Verbatim is the only manufacturer of optical media that makes dependable media. Even as they’re well over a decade old, their Archival Grade recordable DVDs and their recordable Blu-ray discs can still be burned and read without a glitch. I tested their M-DISC Blu-Ray disc that can hold a whopping 100GB.
Ever since the late Steve Jobs declared war on optical discs for distributing music and movies, the industry and media have been telling us the optical disc is dead. Far from it, I'd say, especially if you think about whether you're comfortable with entrusting your precious data with cloud service providers. There isn't a month going by without a hack or a security breach, ransomware being demanded and other such alarming events. Backing up to optical media has its benefits. And with the right equipment and the media to match, your risk of data loss is considerably lower. The OWC Mercury Pro Optical Drive might fit the bill.
Another year, another release of Corel Painter. The new version is packed with new features that guarantee jaw dropping awesomeness. There just seems no limit to Corel’s ambition to develop an application that is meant to create digital art that looks like the real thing. Combined with the newest Wacom Intuos Pro and its amazing natural feel, Painter 2018 is for digital artists to drool over.
