Fuel for the Fire

July 2, 2011 – 12:30 PM

People keep writing about Final Cut Pro X, and the constant refrain seems to be the same one I wondered in my last article: Is Apple done with the pros?

Sachin Agarwal, who worked on the original Final Cut Pro, and then founded Posterous, flat out says yes:

“The pro market is too small for Apple to care about it. Instead of trying to get hundreds or even thousands of video professionals to buy new Macs, they can nail the pro-sumer market and sell to hundreds of thousands of hobbyists like me.”

Gruber tends to agree, but seems to think that eventually Final Cut Pro X will meet the needs of professionals:

“I think Apple plans for Final Cut Pro X to grow from where it is today to eventually meet the needs of high-end pros. What this release shows is not that Apple doesn’t care about the pro market at all, but rather that they don’t care enough to prevent Apple from releasing a version that pros can’t yet use.”

Ken Segall says Apple isn’t abandoning Pros, they’re just redefining the meaning of the term Pro:

“Because Apple isn’t actually abandoning the Pros. They’re simply redefining what the word Pro means. FCPX is only the most recent indicator.”

Of course, what he really means is that Apple is redefining what the term Pro means in their marketing materials. Pros themselves haven’t changed, can’t be redefined by Apple and continue to have certain needs that Apple is less and less willing to meet. By redefining Pro for themselves, Apple is effectively abandoning actual creative professionals.

Which neatly explains why non-professional editors like Agarwal like Final Cut Pro X, but Pros still don’t. Or more accurately, it neatly explains why Apple had the balls to keep Pro in the name:

“In the world of Apple, a Pro product used to mean ‘designed for high-end professionals with needs far beyond those of mortal men.’ Now it simply means ‘the high-performance model.’”

So don’t let the name deceive you. Final Cut Pro X is not built for professionals.

UPDATE:
Matthew Levie, professional film and video editor, is doing a whole series of posts for TUAW breaking down what it’s like to actually use FCPX. It’s quite good and a very illuminating look into both the good and bad aspect of the software from a pro’s point of view. And I like that it spans multiple days and attempts to use the software, because I think that is what learning software is really like. It’s also mercifully brief and to the point.

By systemsboy | Posted in Applications | Comments (0)

Final Cut Pro X

June 27, 2011 – 8:26 AM

Final Cut Pro X Is Here
I have used Final Cut Pro since grad school, which is to say about 1999. A bit over a decade. The first version I had that was usable was version 1.2. At that time it was my very favorite piece of software, partly because I liked what I did on it — editing video — but also because it just worked great. Better than any of its competition. Maybe better than any piece of software at that time.

Gradually, that became less and less true. Over that decade I’d continued to use Final Cut extensively, and even taught a beginner’s course in it for several years. But as the industry changed in monumental ways, particularly with the move to HD production, and Final Cut lagged behind trends and technological advances and stuck with the same tired paradigms, I grew increasingly frustrated with the application. Eventually I stopped using Final Cut and stopped making videos. I often wonder if part of the reason for quitting was that the tools had become such a burden to me.

I haven’t made a video in a couple of years now, but when Final Cut Pro X was announced I was really excited to hear it. Excited in the way you are when you see an old friend from college and they’ve just gotten a makeover. Excited in that, “God, Final Cut, it’s been ages! You look great!” kind of way. It’s not that I have any genuine interest in rekindling the friendship, I’ve moved on with my life. But it’s heartening to see an old friend with a new spring in his step.

Unfortunately, the makeover seems to have included a lobotomy.

Sources of Information
An insane amount has already been written about this release, and I don’t want to rehash much. So I’ll start by just listing what I’ve read so far, because it informs where I’m coming from. I also think these are really good sources for folks who want to learn more.

Macworld First Look
Macworld Opinion
Ken Stone First Look
Phillip Hodgetts Unanswered Questions
John Gruber’s Take

David Pogue’s Takes 1 Through 3
Take 1
Take 2
Take 3

Jeffrey Harrell’s Takes
This one’s really good, but you know what, just read the whole fucking blog, it’s all FCPX stuff, and jeff Harrell is a terrifically entertaining writer.

Art Guglielmo’s Take
Creative Cow’s List of Missing Features
Ken Segall’s Take

Richard Harrington’s Response to David Pogue (Wow)

Trends
Right off the bat there is one very clear trend here: People who don’t edit video professionally seem to like Final Cut Pro X; professional video editors, on the other hand, tend to find this release largely unusable.

Another pretty obvious trend is the sheer amount of passion people feel about Final Cut Pro. I’m not alone in having such strong feelings; Final Cut Pro is — or at least was — an application that inspired fierce loyalty and admiration from its users, many of whom have relied on it for their livelihoods for over ten years. So there’s a crazy amount of writing being done about the new release.

The Good
Here’s just a quick list of some of the stuff they got right with FCPX.

  • Performance is reportedly vastly improved with multi-core and GPU smarts.
  • FCPX is 64bit and can now address a full compliment of RAM.
  • Far less rendering is needed and most clips just play in realtime.
  • Background rendering allows you to keep working while you render. Huzzah!
  • Background import lets you edit while you ingest.
  • Revamped interface makes certain common operation quicker and easier.

The Bad
And here’s some of the good stuff they omitted or just simply gutted.

  • No XML, OMF or EDL exports.
  • No way to open projects created in prior version.
  • No way to buy the previous version.
  • No way to organize media outside of keywords and Events.
  • No video reference monitor support.
  • No support for Photoshop layers.
  • No tracks.
  • Almost no tape support — only DV and HDV are supported.
  • No RED Camera support (which I thought was half the point of this release).
  • All available media (even that of competing clients, for instance) appears in the interface at all times.
  • No multi-camera editing.

So you can see there’s a lot of good stuff there. Stuff that FCP users have wanted for a long, long time. Stuff to make you work faster, smarter, more efficiently. But it’s all completely mitigated by the huge list of drawbacks, many of which are non-starters for Pro editors. In fact it seems like every feature Apple threw out of FCPX was something Pros — and perhaps only Pros — really needed. But the thing is, they really needed it.

Some Thoughts
After reading everything I can about how FCPX works, there are three major points that come to my mind. The first is about the software itself: It seems to me that what Final Cut used to be — what made it such a good tool — was that it was flexible. You could do things many different ways, and you could set it up in a way that suited you. One of the biggest problems with version X seems to be that it is inflexible, that you must bend to its will, to its way of thinking. That’s a step backwards.

The second thought is about the development of the software: It almost seems as if Apple developed FCPX in a complete and utter vacuum. It’s as if they never once consulted a single professional editor. The implications of this are truly frightening.

And this inevitably leads me to my third major thought, the thought I can no longer avoid, the one about the very core of Apple as a company: Is Apple abandoning the Pro market?

Communication
Apple may be a secretive company, but I believe they communicate in subtle ways the direction their products are headed by the focus they give those products. I continue to believe, for instance, that the design of the iPad communicates that it is a product more for the consuming of media than for the creation of media, and thus far the app ecosystem we’ve seen grow up around this platform has largely shown that to be the case. Sure, you can make stuff on an iPad, but that’s not really its intended primary function. That’s not its specialty, at least not in its current incarnation.

So let’s look at Final Cut Pro X and see if we can’t glean some similar conclusions from its interface. And to do that, let’s look at the fundamental organizing principle around which FCPX is based: The Event.

The Meaning of The Event
The concept around which clip organization is meant to occur in FCPX is that of The Event. Each time you import footage it creates Events out of the import, placing each import into some kind of chronological order (just like in iPhoto, for instance). This is great, and really smart if you’re shooting home videos; you tend to organize them chronologically in your mind anyway, so it’s a logical way to order your videos in a project.

But if you come from professional video and film, you’ll immediately see the flaw in the thinking here. The notion that a production is organized this way is completely and utterly wrong, and based entirely in the world of home movies, the world of the consumer. Feature films are shot in order of convenience — almost always out of sequence, not chronologically — so organizing by Events is anathema to the world of professional film and video.

If you view the things that Apple makes as a sort of body language of the company, it starts to look very much like Final Cut Pro X is telling us something very loudly and very clearly: This is not software for professionals.

Couple the release of FCPX with other recent recent Apple trends — the discontinuation of XSAN and Xserve, the price drop and likely lack of development of Mac OS X Server and the lackluster recent Mac Pro builds — and if you’re any kind of Apple Professional, you’ll start to get worried. Apple is beginning to look very much like a company that’s moving away from what was once its base, creative professionals, and exclusively towards the consumer masses.

Conclusion
Final Cut Pro X seems like a step backwards for the venerable editing suite we’ve all come to love over the past decade, feature-wise to be sure, but also philosophically. Maybe it will quickly become more capable and flexible, maybe the real deal-breakers will get addressed, and maybe it will all turn out groovy in the end. Maybe Apple will ultimately listen to its professional customers, though they don’t seem to have even consulted them in the first place. It’s hard to tell sometimes with such a complete overhaul what the future holds.

But you may not want to hold your breath. Final Cut Pro X really seems to me like another, rather loud signal from Apple to the professional world that they’re done providing us with the best software and hardware around, and that their only real focus going forward will be the average computer user, the consumer. iPhones and iPads for everyone!

Apple used to care deeply about the Pro market, because it was the Pros that gave them so much good press, so much visibility. It was the Pros that really supported Apple, particularly behind the scenes, via word of mouth. Apple made the cool Pro kit, and the Pros went around and told all their friends about Apple, showed it off. The Pros contributed a great deal towards Apple’s mindshare. But now that Apple has managed to tap into the consumer psyche in a large and extremely profitable way, they seem to care less and less about their bread and butter for the last 20 years, creative professionals. Final Cut Pro X is the most definitive statement of that attitude I’ve seen to date. As someone who’s based his career to a great degree on Apple hardware and software, it makes me sad.

By systemsboy | Posted in Applications, Video | Comments (7)

Apple Announcements 2011

June 11, 2011 – 1:56 PM

Just wanted to share some of my initial reactions to Apple’s recent announcements at WWDC 2011.

iCloud
First off, iCloud. iCloud is really the engine behind the bulk of this year’s significant announcements.

As I see it, iCloud provides centralized storage and services that are primarily aimed at managing all your various devices — your iPhone, your Mac, iPod, iPad, all of it. For the most part, iCloud is meant to sit in the background and do all this seamlessly and invisibly, which is terrific. I think it’s a great start and Apple is approaching this with the right idea: Make everything as easy as possible.

The $25 portion of the iCloud service that will allow you to store all your music on Apple’s servers for anytime access — dubbed iTunes Match — doesn’t seem like something I’d ever really want or need. Other folks who are more into having all their music with them at all times might feel differently. But I predict this won’t be a huge success for the company, because most folks just won’t really find it compelling.

The free music synchronization that iCloud provides, on the other hand, should prove wildly successful, because it makes purchasing music from iTunes even easier and better. And since it’s already available in the latest builds of iTunes, I offer myself as an example of its probable success and obvious usefulness.

Until recently I’ve used Amazon to purchase music. Their songs were generally cheaper and not burdened by DRM. But now that Apple has largely (completely?) done away with DRM, the services no longer compete on that level. Now it simply comes down to convenience. And since all my computing devices are Apple kit, I’ll pretty much be using iTunes to buy my music when possible. Because now, with iCloud, I can do so from any device without penalty or hassle: anytime I purchase something from iTunes it will propagate to any other device that has my Apple ID on it. iCloud effectively provides backups of my purchased music as well, by allowing me to re-download any purchases I’ve made.

This is how it should have been all along. The fact that it wasn’t this way in the past — that getting my music onto my various devices was such a hassle — was always frustrating to me, and it kept me from buying music from iTunes as much as I might have liked to. The fact that they’ve fixed this glaring issue means I’ll likely buy a lot more music from iTunes now. In fact, I’ve already bought eight songs from my Mac. And getting them onto my iPhone was not just a piece of cake, but a complete delight.

Hallelujah.

Oh, and one last thing: I really dislike the new iCloud icon. A cloud etched on brushed metal buttons? Seriously? Blech! I hope this isn’t a new trend because I think it’s ugly.

Lion
I’ve written a bit about Lion already, and there wasn’t a whole lot of new information at this year’s keynote. There were a couple surprises, though.

For one, I was somewhat surprised to see that Apple has backpedaled on offering Lion Server as simply another “part of Mac OS X Lion.” In the original sneak peek promotional materials Apple had written:

“Lion Server is now part of Mac OS X Lion. It’s easy to set up your Mac as a server and take advantage of the many services Lion Server has to offer.”

And indeed most people took this to mean that Lion Server would be free. This is longer the way it’s presented; in fact Lion Server has its own page now. And if you read that page you’ll notice that Lion Server will be 50 bucks.

Now don’t get me wrong. At a tenth what it used to cost, Lion Server is still a bargain. I’m certainly not complaining about this. I was just a bit surprised is all. Though maybe I shouldn’t have been, as reader LeRoy had pointed out this likelihood in the comments to my original article. What can I say, LeRoy? When you’re right you’re right.

That said, $50 for the easiest, most powerful server software available is a steal. I will probably buy a copy just to kick the tires on it. If I were still a Mac Sysadmin, I’d be so jazzed.

The next surprise was the price of Lion: 30 bucks. If you’re keeping track, that’s $100 cheaper than Mac OS X upgrades used to be, about a quarter what it used to cost. That’s phenomenal.

And finally, I was quite surprised by the fact that Mac OS X Lion will be delivered though the Mac App Store. I’ve had my fair share of issues with the Mac App Store, so I’m skeptical that this will be a great delivery method for an OS update. But Apple’s pretty good at making great OS update experiences, so they might manage it after all.

iOS 5
The notifications look great, as do many of the refinements in iOS 5. But then, that sort of stuff is to be expected in any iOS relase.

The real game-changer, in my mind — and it’s deeply tied to iCloud — was PC Free. The iPad and its ilk are clearly the future for Apple, and likely for the computer industry as a whole. But, as I’ve said before, the iPad doesn’t become a real computing device until it can stand on its own without the need for a Mac. Well, now it can.

The iPad is now a full computing citizen. If it serves your needs it can be your only computer. And I think that will be the case for huge numbers of people. PC Free really sets the stage for the iPad to be the revolutionary device its been hailed as. It’s a very important step.

Conclusion
Overall I’m pretty impressed by this year’s announcements. I really wish there had been a revised iPhone announcement, or at least a hint of when it might happen. I’m dying — really dying — to switch to Verizon as I can hardly get calls at work anymore. But I don’t want to switch right before they announce the new phone. So I wait…

Still, it was a good year, with lots of cool advancements for the platform and lots of cool stuff to look forward to in the near future. I think (despite having just renewed my MoblieMe subscription — Doh!) iCloud is on the right track, enabling all kinds of great things, from better music purchasing to PC Free iPads. And, of course, I’m totally psyched about Lion.

By systemsboy | Posted in Applications, iPhone, MacOSX | Comments (18)

Subtle, But So Much Better

May 2, 2011 – 9:33 AM

I recently complained about the the Lion Finder’s iOS-style toolbar buttons, which look like the sort of slider-style switches found on iPhones and iPads. This metaphor works great on those touch interfaces, but to my thinking isn’t so well suited to the mouse-driven desktop OS.

Well, it looks like someone at Apple has agreed, at least where such buttons are used for Preferences sub-panes:

I much prefer the standard sub-pane buttons for an OS in which clicking — rather than gesture — is how interaction will occur. It just makes sense.

I’m glad to see this reversion. It may be small and subtle, but this is a change for the better.

And I love that Apple still thinks so hard about these things.

By systemsboy | Posted in MacOSX | Comments (1)

A Few Modifications

April 21, 2011 – 9:00 AM

I’ve made a few changes to the site’s appearance. Hopefully these will help with readability, which was the intent.

To start, I’ve pretty much gone with a black and white color scheme. Body text is now a dark gray and links are black. The only place we see color, really, is in the rollovers. Hopefully this is easier on the eyes than the muted blue-gray I had before.

But perhaps more importantly, to my tired aging eyes at least: body text size has been increased to 16 pixels and the line height has been increased as well. This (for me anyway) greatly increases the readability of posts. Before I found myself hitting command+ all the time; now it feels just right.

As I’ve said before, I’m not a designer by any stretch of the imagination, so I’m totally open to comments and suggestions. But hopefully most folks will find the changes to be an improvement.

By systemsboy | Posted in TheBlog | Comments (4)

Final Cut Pro X Sneak Peek

April 20, 2011 – 10:00 AM

Apple recently gave a sneak peek to some very lucky folks at NAB of the upcoming release of Final Cut Pro, now dubbed Final Cut Pro X. The “X” seems appropriate as it looks like Final Cut has finally made it into the world of modern applications written for a mature, modern and cool-as-hell Operating System.

Which is to say that FCP will finally be able to do all those things like threading and taking advantage of multiple cores, using as much memory as you’ve got, background rendering and exporting, and simultaneous ingestion and editing.

Image Via The Loop

Essentially, Final Cut Pro X is a complete, ground-up rewrite of the app, as well as rethinking of what a non-linear digital video editing application can and should be. Much like they did with iMovie — and likely drawing from many of its lessons — Apple has sought once again to redefine how we approach video editing. In fact, FCPX even looks like a mashup of the elder FCP and iMovie. It also looks to me like they’ve got a winner.

In addition to finally leveraging core OS components, the new FCP both removes the annoyances of yesteryear — things like the inability to use the application when you’re performing an export (God, that was frustrating!) — and adds forward-thinking improvements like the addition of metadata for faces, places and tags, as well as a far better ability to deal with today’s complex CODECs and cameras. It’s very cool and makes me wish I still did video. Frankly, despite the fact that these days I am not making nor teaching video, I may buy Final Cut Pro X anyway, just to play with it. Yeah, it looks that cool.

It’s also fairly reasonably priced at $299 (no more Final Cut Express, apparently), and available from, of all places, the Mac App Store. While I’m not quite yet a fan of the MAS, I am kind of excited at the prospect of being able to get FCPX on a whim with nothing more than a credit card and an Internet connection.

At any rate, even though I’m no longer a video guy, I’m so very happy to see one of my all-time favorite applications, Final Cut Pro, finally, after years of neglect, get the upgrade it so richly deserves. The actual video guys must be so psyched! Lucky bastards!

By systemsboy | Posted in Applications, Video | Comments (2)

Looking Forward to Lion

April 18, 2011 – 10:00 AM

I admit it: I’m an OS nerd. I get very excited about new OS releases, particularly (okay, only) those of my OS of choice, Mac OS X.

Mac OS X 10.7 — or Lion as it’s affectionately codenamed — is certainly no exception. In fact, Lion looks to be a very exciting release, both for its wealth of new features and for its refinements to Apple’s already sparkling OS.

It’s an exciting time to be an OS junkie, really. Snow Leopard was a wonderful release that brought stability and refinement to what can finally be called a mature Mac OS X. From here on out OS development seems to be less about making Mac OS X work quickly and succinctly — less about the guts of the OS —  and more about making it work well. That is, from here on out, Mac OS X developers are concentrating on making the Mac OS X experience a wonderful one. And that means even further refinement to an already polished OS, with maybe a dash of experimentation thrown in for good measure, thanks to convergence with Apple’s mobile OS.

I haven’t installed the beta, but I’ve read as much as I’ve been able to find. Here are some images and links, with just a dash of commentary from yours truly thrown in.

Mac OS X Server
One of the shockers about this release is that Mac OS X Server will be included, for free, with the standard Lion DVD. It will be a separate install, but has been discontinued as a separate, paid release. Looks like Apple’s professional server platform is dead, but I’m glad it will live on in some form, at least for the time being.

Images Via AppleInsider

 

Administrative Tools and Goodies
One of the great things about OS updates — particularly the latest Mac OS X updates — has been further expansion and refinement of any and all administrative tools. This is, needless to say, of particular interest to SysAdmins like us. Here are some updates that Lion brings to the table baked right into the About This Mac window.

Images Via AppleInsider

The Finder
Of course I’m always, always, always happy to see Finder improvements and refinements, and it looks like there will be plenty in Lion.

We have some new and potentially very useful Finder views, though I must admit to not being a great fan of the iOS-like buttons in the toolbar. The sidebar is also toned down (a-la iTunes) and features some new and potentially useful items.

Image Via AppleInsider

Spotlight in The Finder is now smarter and more useful.

Image Via AppleInsider

And my favorite Finder view, column view, even receives some love.

Image Via AppleInsider

And finally, the big Finder news: windows can now be resized from any edge. Just like in Windows.

Image Via TheAppleBlog

 

Other Improvements
There are a bunch of additional refinements to the core OS. One of my favorites is support for automatically saving documents, or Auto Save as they’re calling it.

Images Via AppleInsider

Auto Save is accessed just like Time Machine, which is just brilliant.

 

A signature capture utility also makes its way into Preview, allowing you to sign digital documents using that app and your built-in iSight camera.

Image Via 9to5Mac

 

Dock and Exposé get refinements as well.

Images Via Engadget

 

Even Spotlight gets better, with larger icons and inline previews.

Image Via AppleInsider

 

All-in-all, from what I’ve sen so far, Lion is shaping up to be a very nice release. I’m sure there will be under-the-hood improvements that will add performance gains as well. I am, as always, really looking forward to using Apple’s next OS release.

By systemsboy | Posted in Interface, MacOSX, Server | Comments (5)

Third Time’s a Charm

April 16, 2011 – 11:50 AM

Another Xcode update, another bad App Store experience. This one was the best so far, but still not perfect.

After the last update I pretty much just gave up and started keeping the Install Xcode.app in the /Applications folder where it’s expected, despite the 4.5 gigs it takes up. So when I went to update to Xcode 4.0.2 I expected everything to just work. I ran the Updater from the App Store, which took about 20 minutes as the entire Install Xcode.app, we now know, must be downloaded and installed from scratch (which, to be fair, was how it always worked in the old days as well).

Once that completed I knew, from cold hard experience, that despite the App Store reporting that the update was complete, the Install Xcode.app still needed to run and update the actual Xcode components. I find it very sloppy that you are not instructed to do this. Or, hey, better yet, why doesn’t Install Xcode.app just launch when the update in finished? That seems like the best way to go. Either way, some instruction here are really needed to make this work like an Apple product. Fortunately, I know the deal, so I ran Install Xcode.app, and this is what I got:

If you’re following along at home you’ll recognize this as the same message I got when I first bought and installed Xcode 4. Nice to see somethings never change. This is what the log said:

Apr 16 10:33:07 hassium installer[39689]: Free space on "SysApps": 9.96 GB (9962598400 bytes).

Apr 16 10:34:28 hassium installer[39689]: install:didFailWithError:Error Domain=PKInstallErrorDomain Code=110 UserInfo=0x10817b630 "An error occurred while extracting files from the package “OtherDevDocumentation.pkg”." Underlying Error=(Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=2 UserInfo=0x106722570 "The operation couldn’t be completed. No such file or directory")

 

Apr 16 10:34:28 hassium installer[39689]: Install failed: The Installer encountered an error that caused the installation to fail. Contact the software manufacturer for assistance.

Not particularly helpful. So I decided to hit that “Try Updating Again” button, see what happens. This time, at least, I get some useful error info:

Okay, so this is just like before. We’ve run out of space and I need to clear some off. I still think this is the wrong place to bring this up, or at least not the ideal place. But still, I know what to do.

And sure enough, once I’ve cleared some space up (by deleting /var/vm/sleepimage, btw) the update works fine and dandy and Install Xcode.app automatically launches my updated Xcode (oh! sure, now you auto-launch!).

So it looks like, for me and Xcode anyway, third time’s a charm.

Oh, by the way, if you’re looking for the plist editor that used to be included with the Developer Tools, it no longer exists as a standalone application. Instead, it’s built right into Xcode itself (makes sense to me). So if you want to edit .plist files, you just open them in Xcode now. Simple enough.

By systemsboy | Posted in Applications, Interface, MacOSX | Comments (0)

But Wait… It Gets Worse

March 25, 2011 – 7:01 PM

So after purchasing and downloading Xcode via the App Store only to discover I didn’t have enough disk space to install the app, I came up with an acceptable, if less than ideal, workaround. I’m not terribly happy with the state of things, but hey, at least I was able to get things back to a working state.

Today Apple released an update to Xcode. And here we go again.

Let the Good Times Roll
First off, there appears to be no way to update the software from the application page:

Nor does it appear in the Updates section of my Mac App Store:

To install the update I had to go to the Purchased section:

Ah! There it is, and it appears to see my current install. But this is what I get when I click the UPDATE button:

Nice. More useless error messages. See, I am signed into the account I used to purchase Xcode. So this makes no sense whatsoever.

Fortunately, I’m a SysAdmin, and this sort of thing is our forte. I figure App Store is probably confused because I moved the original installer app off my main hard drive due to space constraints that were causing the original install to fail. Putting the Install Xcode.app back in to /Applications should do the trick, I reason.

Sure enough, doing so allows me to run the update from App Store. Now I get this:

Well, that’s pretty ironic! Seems like that’s the message I should have gotten the first time I attempted to install Xcode 4.0. I’ll call this progress though, as it’s the first error message I’ve seen that might make any sense to a normal user. Still, though, there’s no indication of how to fix the problem. Just how much disk space I’ll need is never specified. Not before I began the process, nor during the process. This is simply terrible UI, folks. Simply terrible!

So I decided that probably the best way to clear up the needed space was to completely delete the current Xcode 4.0 install. I’m pretty sure that no matter what you do, the Install Xcode.app is going to overwrite everything anyway, so I may as well delete it.

Unfortunately, this leaves me with the original problem with the Update. I get this thing again:

So now I’m in a catch-22: If I keep everything I need for the Updater — the Install Xcode.app and the entire Developer folder — I don’t have enough space to complete the update. But if I remove any of these items, the App Store isn’t able to perform the Update because it doesn’t seem to recognize the app as being fully installed (despite the fact that it sees it on the product page as installed) or as having been installed by me.

The first thing I tried was using a symlink pointing to the Install Xcode.app on another drive to clear some disk space. No dice. The actual Install Xcode.app needs to be in /Applications.

Next, I tried deleting just a portion of the Developer install, particularly the folder /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform, which is just under 4GB. And now we’re back to the “sign in to the account” message again. I also moved this folder and tried using a symlink to it as well, with the same result.

Next I tried removing the Install Xcode.app payload, a hidden folder that lives inside the app that’s full of PKG bundles. Also no go.

It looks like the only way to update Xcode is to actually have Install Xcode.app and the Developer folder in their expected locations, and then, if you’re short on disk space, to find several GBs of non-Xcode files — how many GBs I can only speculate, but I’ll guess around 4 GBs (to give me a total of 10 GBs free) — to temporarily remove while I complete the update. Then, once the update is complete, I should be able to remove the Install Xcode.app (or move it to a backup disk) and put back the temporarily deleted files. Fun times!

Okay! So, after clearing up some space, the update still doesn’t work! Argh! I am STILL getting the “updates for other accounts” message.

I’m at a complete loss at this point. And what do we do when we’re at a complete loss, kids? That’s right: Time to reboot.

Reboot to the Rescue
After rebooting and opening the App Store, and signing in to my account, here’s what I see in the Updates screen:

App Store now sees my Xcode install and recognizes it as something it can update. This looks very promising. And this is what I see when I hit the UPDATE button:

Ahhh! Sweet blessed mercy! At last! It’s working!

But wait… After the 20 minute “Update” process completes, App Store says my app is updated:

But Xcode begs to differ:

Turns out it’s only the Install Xcode.app that’s been updated:

So I run the Install Xcode.app, and this is what it tells me:

Un-fucking-believable.

Now What?
In theory, the best way for me to clear up disk space for an Xcode update is to delete the older version. I tried this before, however, and App Store got confused. But, ever the glutton for punishment, I simply must know if the Install Xcode.app will work under this scenario. It absolutely should. So I delete /Developer. Again. I rerun the updated Install Xcode.app and:

Seems to be working. It’s about frickin’ time.

The Deal
So here’s the deal: Apple simply doesn’t provide an accurate figure for how much disk space is required for installing Xcode. If you’re wondering what the actual number is, I think I’m able to glean it from my experiments and am happy to provide this figure.

Also, there are a number of possible issues that can crop up if you happen to be low on disk space and are working around those constraints, so I’ll provide some info on just what’s going on under the hood with these updates.

Total Disk Space Required: 15 GBs

Itemized Disk Space Requirements:

  • Install Xcode.app: 4.5 GBs
  • Xcode and Related Developer Tools and Libraries: 10 GBs

What’s Actually Happening During an Update:

  • When you update Xcode from the App Store, you’re not actually updating Xcode. You’re updating the Install Xcode.app.
  • You must have enough disk space at update time to accommodate this update, about 4.5 GBs.
  • After running the App Store update, you must run the Install Xcode.app to actually update Xcode.
  • The Install Xcode.app does not actually update existing components, it instead wants to completely overwrite your current install of /Developer, and so will need the full 10 GBs of disk space that install requires.
  • At this point, however, if you want to clear some disk space, it’s safe to delete /Developer.

Additional Possible Issues:

  • In order to update Xcode, bare minimum, App Store obviously wants to see that Xcode is installed under the active account.
  • If App Store is complaining about your install or your user account, I highly recommend a reboot of your system before proceeding. This will likely cause App Store to fully recognize the install and account info, particularly if you’ve been mucking around in any way, shape or form.
  • The easiest way to manage all this is to keep the Developer Tools where they’re expected — in /Developer — and to keep the Install Xcode.app where it’s expected — in /Applications. If you have the disk space, this should make everything work more smoothly.
  • There are workarounds for this, but as you can see, they’re not necessarily pretty.

All in all, I’d call this a major failure for the App Store. I’ll say again, the App Store is meant to simplify the application installation process, and is meant primarily for the installation of simple, drag-and-drop type apps. By breaking its own protocol and using the App Store to install a complex suite of applications and libraries, Apple is both setting a terrible example for other developers, and creating one of the worst user experiences I’ve had in a very long time.

By systemsboy | Posted in Applications, Interface, MacOSX, Rants | Comments (5)

Installing Xcode 4 From the App Store

March 10, 2011 – 5:58 PM

I have to say, installing Xcode 4 from the Mac App Store was one of the worst software installation experiences I’ve ever had.

Thwarted Expectations
For starters, the big appeal to me of downloading and installing stuff from the App Store is that I don’t have to manage it. All that management stuff is handled by the store itself. I make my purchase and the app installs correctly and in the proper spot. Not so with the Xcode install.

In fact, once you’ve clicked on the buy button in the store, had the $5 clams removed from your account and waited the half hour it takes for the 4.5 GB install to do its thing in your Dock, what you end up with is not Xcode installed on your system. No, instead what you get is an application called “Install Xcode,” which is essentially just a wrapper for the old-style installer you used to get for free.

Buying from the App Store in this case doesn’t seem to manage anything except Apple taking my $5 bucks, which was never a problem before because it was free. But wait, it gets worse.

Install Xcode.app
So I run this installer app — this Install Xcode.app — and it’s going okay. The inteface has the new Lion-style buttons and animations, which is at least entertaining, as well as usual stuff, license agreements and the like. Oddly, it even discovers my old install and tells me that it’s going to rename it — not upgrade it, rename it — to Developer-old. No choice here, that’s just what it’s going to do, just so ya know.

But then it fails, and not exactly gracefully. No, it fails ugly.

Um… What now? Consult /var/log huh? This is what I paid $5 bucks for? This is what you wrote an installer app for? Crappy error reporting? So you could tell me to “consult /var/log/install.log”? Not even open Console, but consult a log file in an invisible folder? Really? You think Joe Average App Store User will have any freaking idea what this means?

And isn’t this just the sort of thing the App Store is supposed to prevent?

Wherefore Failure?
So I open the lo file and this is what it says:

Mar 10 15:02:38 hassium runner[557]: Administrator authorization granted.
Mar 10 15:02:39 hassium installer[541]: Will use PK session
Mar 10 15:02:39 hassium installer[541]: Starting installation:
Mar 10 15:02:39 hassium installer[541]: Configuring volume "SysApps"
Mar 10 15:02:39 hassium installer[541]: Preparing disk for local booted install.
Mar 10 15:02:39 hassium installer[541]: Free space on "SysApps": 8.51 GB (8505917440 bytes).
Mar 10 15:02:39 hassium installer[541]: Create temporary directory "/var/folders/zz/zzzivhrRnAmviuee+++++++++++/-Tmp-//Install.541PaUH12"
Mar 10 15:02:39 hassium installer[541]: IFPKInstallElement (40 packages)
Mar 10 15:02:39 hassium installer[541]: Failed install preflight: Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=640 UserInfo=0x103555a90 "You can’t save the file “Developer” because the volume “SysApps” is out of space."
Mar 10 15:02:39 hassium installer[541]: Install failed: The Installer encountered an error that caused the installation to fail. Contact the software manufacturer for assistance.

Yup, you guessed it. Out of disk space. Now, there’s a whole list of fucked-up here, so let me just take you through it.

  1. The Xcode Installer application failed because of a lack of disk space, but somehow can’t just say that.
  2. The traditional, old-style (and, ahem, free) installers will simply check disk space during preflight and tell you if you don’t have enough space right there in the installer, but this custom app that I paid for cannot.
  3. Nowhere on the App Store does it say that you will need 15 GBs — yes, fifteen or more gigabytes, if you count the Install Xcode app and it’s payload — of free disk space to install Xcode.
  4. The Install Xcode app itself is 4.5 GBs, which is a big part of the reason my disk is too full now for the install to complete.
  5. The traditional, old-style Xcode installer always used to offer customization options so you could preen certain Developer resources from the install to conserve space. Not everyone is an iPhone developer, for instance, and not installing the iOS SDK will actually save upwards of 8 GBs of disk space. But these options are no longer present in the custom-built Install Xcode app.

The fact is, there are at least a couple points at which this problem can and should have been detected. The most logical place would be at the app store itself — preferably before I ponied up the dough — where a simple declaration of disk space requirements would be exceptionally useful, particularly for an app and installer that together take up over 15 GBs of disk space. Instead we get this, which, if anything, seems to suggest that all you’ll need is 4.24 GBs of space.

It also would be lovely if the Install Xcode app could tell me all the same useful stuff as a regular installer. But then they’d have to charge $10 bucks, and who’s going to pay that for something they used to get for free.

The Fix
After all this I decided to see what was inside this Install Xcode app. I presumed that there would likely be a standard PKG or MPKG file that would allow me to install Xcode in the usual manner. Sure enough, that turned out to be the case.

Running that MPKG file, by the way, did, in fact, allow my to customize my install, had I wanted to go that route. (Though I would point out, it did not seem to want to upgrade my existing components as past installations of Xcode had. Take that info for what it’s worth.)

Instead, however, I decided to see things through with the Install Xcode app. So I copied it to another drive partition and erased it from my /Applications folder, which freed up enough disk space to complete the full install and ran the Install Xcode app from the secondary partition (happily, the Mac App Store still recognizes that I have installed Xcode on this system).

This time, success.

Finally!

Conclusion
So that’s my tale. In the case of Xcode, it seems clear to me that the only thing the App Store is really facilitating is payment, which was never an issue in the past because Xcode was blissfully free. Unfortunately, the overall experience of installing Xcode from the Mac App Store is more opaque and, if there is any sort of problem, far more difficult to fix. Given the lack of information provided by the App Store, it also seems far more likely that you will run into problems.

My conclusion: The Mac App Store is simply not well suited for complex application installs. It works great for drag-n-drop apps — self-contained applications that can simply be dropped into /Applications (or anywhere else for that matter). But for complex suites of applications, the Mac App Store doesn’t simplify, it complicates. And that ain’t right.

Finally, I don’t mind that Apple is charging a small fee for the Dev tools. I always thought it was pretty generous that they were free in the past, and $5 is still cheap enough to grab them casually. What I don’t particularly care for is paying five dollars for a singularly crappy installation experience. Those two things just don’t mix well.

UPDATE:
For folks just joining us in this saga, please note that there are some additional installments dealing with the recent Xcode updates, how they’re handled by App Store, and how to deal with them on space-constrained drives. Installment 2 deals with some general App Store issues I had. Installment 3 deals with the 4.0.5 update, which was the smoothest — though by no means perfect — so far.

Also, one reader points out that he was able to keep his file size down but still have success with updates by simply removing the .PKG files (found inside the .MPKG mentioned above) from  Install Xcode.app. He also points out a very cool trick that will allow you stop an in-progress update: simply option-click the INSTALL/UPGRADE button and App Store will give you the option to cancel the update. Handy!

By systemsboy | Posted in Applications, Interface, MacOSX | Comments (72)