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The home computer as a cultural object is physically vanishing (2007)

contemporary-home-computing.org

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Re: The home computer as a cultural object is physically vanishing (2007)

#111

Post by foobarian »

MarcScott wrote: post #98

I've just bought my first desktop in about 20 years. The main reason, the bloody clutter. I have two (work issued) laptops, one that runs Windows and one for NixOS, both with SSDs that are too small for me to dual boot effectively. Then there are my two external monitors, my mechanical keyboard and mouse. I need a keyboard and mouse switch as there are an inadequate number of USB ports on the laptops and I want to sh…

The biggest desk/workstation upgrade I have had in years was putting my monitor onto a wall-mounted arm. The desk space under the monitor magically opened up into a vast empty plain that I could then fill up with... more cables. But at least I can do more now :-)

Re: The home computer as a cultural object is physically vanishing (2007)

#112

Post by ipaddr »

machello13 wrote: post #95
bluescrn wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A tangent, but I've found the iPad Pro to be fabulous for video editing Doesn't the sandboxing and limited access to the file system get in the way? Can you export video to non-Apple formats, collaborate with other people via a version control system, easily import footage from non-Apple devices, and so on? Can you even cleanly separate your video editing project from your personal holiday photos/videos? (Does iPad…

Have you ever used an iPad? I get the feeling you don't really know how it actually works.

Unless you were part of the team designing and building them I'm not sure you know how an ipad works. Pop Quiz: How does an ipad work?

Re: The home computer as a cultural object is physically vanishing (2007)

#113

Post by tryauuum »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #73

I have more "home computers" now than ever before. It all started when I figured out you can network boot the Raspberry Pi. Now I have one connected to a cheap monitor in nearly every room in the house. Because you can switch what OS they boot into just by renaming a symlink on the server, sometimes they play music, sometimes they show movies, sometimes they show live TV, sometimes they browse the web. I'm probably a…

That's pretty cool. I think if the monitors are thin enough and wall-mounted, they ought to give a house a sci-fi look

Re: The home computer as a cultural object is physically vanishing (2007)

#114

Post by yurishimo »

danilocesar wrote: post #29
dylan604 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it is central to home computing, I'd say audio/music workstations are a bit outside of that. However, if you allow that, then a video workstation would also follow.

Part of a musician "workstation" is already an ipad (or more). It's question of time, IMHO.

Eh, it depends on what kind of work you're doing within the music industry.

Solo studio tracking artist? Yeah, an iPad is probably good enough for you to practice with and do some rough scratch recordings for demo purposes.

If you're running a studio, you need the I/O to handle at least a few physical devices with dedicated PCIe lanes, and a high resolution input device like a mouse or trackpad to make precise edits in a DAW. Plus a keyboard. Audio/video editors love their keyboard shortcuts just as much as developers!

While it may be possible to connect any one of those devices to an iPad, connecting all of them and making it easy to disconnect the iPad, makes it impractical in reality. The iPad in it's current format is not a great device for professional audio recording and mixing, and if you changed the format to better fit that workflow, you've now described a Mac Mini and you should buy one of those instead.

Re: The home computer as a cultural object is physically vanishing (2007)

#115

Post by digitalsushi »

ipaddr wrote: post #112
machello13 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever used an iPad? I get the feeling you don't really know how it actually works.

Unless you were part of the team designing and building them I'm not sure you know how an ipad works. Pop Quiz: How does an ipad work?

It's unfair to change the verb from use to build.

Re: The home computer as a cultural object is physically vanishing (2007)

#116

Post by Talanes »

handrous wrote: post #96
ecshafer wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is honestly an absurd proposition. A 13 inch screen Ipad pro with a keyboard and 2TB of memory is $2500. Video editing is something you want power, and a lot of screen real estate, and a good form factor. Even with the GPU shortage, you can buy an extremely powerful, capable, video editing desktop with two large 27" monitors for $1k. Even before you consider limitations in sandboxing, multi-application usage, an…

It depends on what you're doing and what your budget is. Shoot & edit on one device, plus an excellent drawing experience, is pretty compelling when you're talking about a device for a kid to learn on, and the main things it'll be used for are video & drawing. You don't need 2TB of built-in storage for that, either. Only way I can see that not being the option to beat, is if your goal is to learn the UI (not the conc…

If I'm spending that kind of money on a teenager, not putting it all into one easily lose-able device is a value-add of it's own.

Re: The home computer as a cultural object is physically vanishing (2007)

#117

Post by OJFord »

mishu2 wrote: post #75
duxup wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heck in addition to my keyboard I've been thinking of building a board with a bunch of buttons just for firing off random things. API requests when testing and so forth ... for whatever reason a separate set of physical keys makes more sense in my head.

Something like this? https://xkeys.com/xk24black.html I saw it recommended here a while ago, haven't tried it myself.

Ouch, why on earth did that cost so much? That's an order of magnitude above what I'd expect.

I get the appeal, but I still have unused function keys. (I'm using.. off the top of my head, F1-5.)

Re: The home computer as a cultural object is physically vanishing (2007)

#118

Post by smoldesu »

samatman wrote: post #68
rossdavidh wrote: post #50

My 15-year old daughter just recently got her first desktop. Why? Well, because instead of just consuming (which she does on her phone) or doing homework (chromebook), she wanted to do video editing, and also drawing using a Wacom tablet. She found that the non-desktop options were just not that great. Had it been a passing fancy, no doubt she would have done without the desktop, but it wasn't, so she got a tricked o…

A tangent, but I've found the iPad Pro to be fabulous for video editing. I haven't hooked it up to a keyboard/mouse combo, or plugged it into a monitor, but it's quite capable of both of those things. I can tell you it's simply superior to a Wacom tablet for drawing, there I have a direct comparison. A PC/desktop will certainly exceed an iPad at some level: but now that the Pro model has an M1, it's unclear at what l…

The iPad Pro is a device that definitely can edit video, but I really only use it as a last resort. For me it has never been a question of power, but a question of comfort: the M1 could be the fastest CPU in the world, but what do I care when I can't run 32 bit software on it! And then there's the ergonomics... unless you're using a mouse/keyboard with the iPad, it's an insufferable experience: even then, it's not a given that your NLE of choice will even support keyboard shortcuts, and then we're back around to square one again...

Re: The home computer as a cultural object is physically vanishing (2007)

#119

Post by yurishimo »

zozbot234 wrote: post #60
munk-a wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I personally love the aesthetic of big whirring fans and blinking lights. If you offered me an M1 MacBook Pro but it would be buried in a 7 foot tall cupboard plastered in lights and fans that occasionally, randomly, sounded like a jet engine taking off... I would be in heaven.

> buried in a 7 foot tall cupboard plastered in lights and fans that occasionally, randomly, sounded like a jet engine taking off... There might be a market for rackmountable hardware with the much-needed addition of proper RGB lighting (for improved performance).

Linus Tech Tips has his personal rig in a 3u (?) rack mounted case in his attic. It can and has been done!

Re: The home computer as a cultural object is physically vanishing (2007)

#120

Post by vel0city »

mywittyname wrote: post #84
ohazi wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engineers who do mechanical CAD work using a specialized input device like a SpaceMouse [1] or similar. [1] https://3dconnexion.com/uk/spacemouse/

SpaceMouse works just fine on laptops, it's just kind of pointless when your software is pushing 15fps because of the shitty graphics card. You can't get Quattro cards on laptops, as far as I know. So anyone using CAD software regularly is stuck using desktops.

You can get the latest A5000 GPU's on the pro-grade workstation laptops.

You could Quadro cards on laptops for a long time. They're just the super thick stupid expensive models usually.

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