Indecisively Restless: Bitchin' About: Technology

For all of you (har de har har) who read this blog and are wondering where I've been...I'll tell you.

I've been trying to work on some freelance video editing. But if you don't know sometimes technology is more of a hindrance than a blessing.

Getty Images.

I received this footage on Tuesday from a man who has a Mac running 10.6, Snow Leopard. I took my hard drive that was both Mac and Windows compatible (exFAT) because the first time I tried to get footage from this guy a while ago I had my drives at FAT32. I learned (the hard way) that FAT32 doesn't transfer more than 4gigs or something like that. So then I had to change the format of my drive to exFAT and I had no problems with that...until of course this project.

I don't own a Mac. I can't bring myself to shell out the thousands of dollars for equipment that hasn't been updated in two years. But to do this project I borrowed a Mac running 10.5, Leopard. Now, it's an older computer but I didn't think that the OS changes would be that big of a difference.

Apparently I was wrong. Any Mac OS before 10.6 won't read exFAT. So though I was able to plug in my Mac/PC compatible hard drive into my HP and the guy's Snow Leopard, this older computer couldn't even read it.

After some Googling I realized the problem but didn't know how to fix it. And therefore have been trying to not only transfer my 80 gigs of stuff from one computer to the other but also trying to future proof my hard drives so that this won't happen again. The best bet I've found is just to have two separate hard drives. Which really, really sucks.

Here comes the Bitchin' part:

Getty Images

Why do so many companies have to be so proprietary? I know people have heard this before, especially if you're on the G+ circuit (#boycottapple anyone?) but it's true! It's tiring and frustrating to have to go back and forth between two similar machines and have them not communicate with each other. I mean, it's not like I'm trying to stick a VHS into a DVD player. I'm trying to transfer one folder from one Mac to another with a hard drive as the middle man.

What I have to do is:

Take my exFAT hard drive to a Mac running 10.6 or later.
Put all the 80 gigs of files onto the computer
Reformat the drive exclusively for Mac (Mac OS Extended)
Put all the 80 gigs back onto the hard drive
Take the hard drive home to my older Mac 10.5
Transfer the files onto my Mac

That is entirely too many steps. I thought the whole point of this technology age was the fact that things can be shared easily and quickly. All I should have to do is put my folder onto my hard drive and take it to my computer and bing, bam, boom! Done.

Now this isn't only an Apple thing. Sony does it and so do many other programs, software, formats but the whole idea of it stupid.

If you have a good product you shouldn't have to make all these hoops of fire for customers to jump through. If you have a good product that you believe in then let everyone use it. If it really is a good product people will use it and they will buy it whether it's on a Mac, PC or Linux.

I don't even think my problem is a proprietary one it's just the whole technology sucks thing. Sometimes doing something simple becomes something hard and tedious and makes me wanna just give up and start using an abacus.