David Pogue wrote a MacBook review, but the driving interest from most his pining over the dropping of FireWire and reflecting on that and losing old videos. See it at http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/30/the-macbook-makeover/.
This is my comment in reply, based on the letter I sent to David, which I also used to create several comments at the review location on the NY Times' site. Please note that it is a bit more personal than you may expect, but that is with good reason. I lost my father in May 2008, and sitting in my place here is his old films, dating all the way back to the 1950s, at least. Those I must find a way to make copies, usable ones, for my siblings and myself, sometime. Read on and you'll get a clue as to where I am coming from.
This is my comment in reply, based on the letter I sent to David, which I also used to create several comments at the review location on the NY Times' site. Please note that it is a bit more personal than you may expect, but that is with good reason. I lost my father in May 2008, and sitting in my place here is his old films, dating all the way back to the 1950s, at least. Those I must find a way to make copies, usable ones, for my siblings and myself, sometime. Read on and you'll get a clue as to where I am coming from.
David,
Your review of the updated MacBook was sad for me, too, as you noted it was for you. It has been a banner year for sad for me in some ways. So - good job, David!
Seriously, I was reading your piece and some pretty grim realities struck me. Forget the MacBook review, the other part drew more of my attention -- it is something that calls for more attention. That is, the legacy items of everyday people -- like you and me, let us say -- need to have a safe place to survive for our future selves, at least, if not future generations. So what if we just dump raw footage -- better than losing it all.
The demise of CREATING home movies on film or tape is coming fast. Ouch - life moves on - ouch again. Movie films (and then tape) have been around since the concept of moving pictures happened (obviously) more than 100 years ago (obviously). We're going from what is essentially the original idea to a whole new way of looking at filming -- recording. Calling it "filming" will be thoroughly inaccurate, except for sentimentality or out of habit, won't it?
To think we are not too far from seeing tape and film relegated to the sentimental status of the vinyl record is pretty awkward to me. It's as if we were to no longer drive automobiles, but we instead have personal mag-lev transportation devices. So, where's mine? I have far less affection for a gasoline car than for my movies. (Although I do still sorta miss the Firebird I had years ago.)
One jolly thing: It is quaint that we apparently care more about advancing our ways of collecting our memories more than we care about how we get around. (That's me putting a very positive spin on something, knowing there's an environmentalist or other dissenting thought lurking close by. Ignoring it.)
After getting into your column, I started to get the feeling my life is losing something out of scenes from M*A*S*H, when they would watch movies in the mess hall (or, tent). It was rarely -- in the show and thus in the characters' lives -- that what mattered was that they were watching movies. Just like us, they had other stuff going on. The movie-viewing was a drastically different event in their days, not something disposable. Watching movies was a distraction, sure, but it was not merely a distraction.
If I recall correctly, on M*A*S*H they viewed home movies a time or two, had comments and gibes over what was happening on the screen (just as with the Hollywood films they watched, only more). The effort and preparation, the sense of community, togetherness, the snickers and laughs -- that's what home movies are about. Not about laying down a great soundtrack, or using special effects (all cool, all cool), or how many hits your video gets. Not YouTube, definitely not that exaggerated depository for videos.
I hope the get-together idea behind seeing films isn't so easily relegated to merely sending a link, just as entertainment films are not relegated only to cinemas filled with odd smells, sticky floors, parent-less kids, and self-appointed narrators. (Nasty -- one reason to love analog and digital tapes and DVDs, and now downloads and DVRs!)
Among those films, I understand my dad had some shots of early 1960s Vero Beach, Florida, from back when he was a jet pilot stationed at now-closed Bartow AFB (near Lakeland, FL). That fact came up during one of the rare times in recent years that Dad and I had talked about those films. See, almost 50 years after that, I took a contract job there in Vero Beach with Piper Aircraft. I probably saw that footage as a kid, and it meant nothing to me. I only remember my Dad, his dark black teardrop-lens sunglasses on, in his flight jacket, his buddies, and jets. My Dad flew jets! Holy cow! Vero Beach, though I moved on from that job a while ago, and those films, both hold some really solid value with me. What concerns me is that I might have a far better chance of seeing Vero Beach itself than those films again -- or my own Hi8 stuff, for that matter.
I haven't watched those 8 mm films since the early 1980s, perhaps the late 1970s. I'd asked Dad about the status of the projector, the condition of the films -- he didn't crack them open anytime recently. The camera still does it's thing -- it is a wind up, I wound it up and it clattered away, just as I remember from when I was 8, or 10, or ever 3 or 4. I am going to have a heck of a time trying to transfer those films, I fear. I am going to have one hell of a time explaining to my wife what the heck I've turned our little dining area into to watch those films! But, as soon as things settle down a bit for us, viewing those films and finding a way to conserve them -- cost-effectively! -- will be a project of mine. I better find a way to put those things on a better media for the days to come. I never got into film with VHS tapes, but I recall a friend with a VHS camera, and I had used that one. In any event, we're talking old school's old school for movies!
And I also happen to be another fan of FireWire -- as I saw noted here, the speed issue is significant, not small. And USB2, well, that's great for my little thumb drive, but what about, as one commenter put it, hobbyists? These guys spend a lot of cash on their hobbies, and it seems to me FireWire is more than an option versus USB2 - even stubborn Win PC users know USB2 is second-rate. Sony recently offers a device that can transfer most analog tapes to DVD, however. That might be worth a buy, but I was hoping I could go straight to my Mac. Shocked, but not too shocked, that all this streamlining is also cutting devoted users out. That is a bit too aggressive, isn't it?
Bottom line is: Time marches on, we better get our priorities straight. All that tech means diddly if it distracts us from worthwhile reasons to have it, use it, or invent it. Let's focus on making our tech fit our lives, not trounce the legacy materials we have every three years or so (or have to pay BIG BUCKS to transfer them). That kind of progress says only one thing: progress is good but legacy is not memory, but old and useless. That's just a bit too capitalist for me, and a bit too lacking in any sentimentality.
Jon Osterholm
