tech – Life in Pixels

Going SSD: Breathing new life into a 2012 MacBook Pro

I’m not the first to extol the virtues of upgrading one’s computer to a Solid-State Disk. But man does it improve your computing experience.

First, some context: I use my Mac a lot. I constantly push it to keep up with my digital projects that range from simple word processing (like writing this blog and some academic essays for university), to really complex tasks like desktop app development via a virtual machine using C# in Visual Studio, manipulating 3D geometry in ARCHICAD, SketchUp, Rhino and Grasshopper, drafting and graphic design with AutoCAD and Illustrator, and some heavy Photoshop work; even the occasional render with ARCHICAD’s CineRender. Then there’s the side stuff like some motion graphics work and video editing for SKKSA.

So the kind of tasks this mid-2012 MacBook Pro has handled have been quite diverse. But the machine was showing its age; boot times were extremely slow, ARCHICAD took forever and a day to load-up, and it was generally a very rough experience toward the end-days of the “old” MacBook Pro ride. There was also this annoying bug where stock Apple apps would crash after a few hours (and I think it had something to do with ARCHICAD or its BIM Server component…)

Without forking out the new Apple tax to get a completely new machine – and my Mac is indeed old enough to justify a full computer upgrade, being in service sine the beginning of 2013 – I’ve managed to extend the longevity of an already solid machine with the upgrade of my RAM earlier this year (to 16GB), and now adding an SSD as the boot drive.

Here’s the run-down. I found a good deal on an SSD from a local Apple service center in Durban. So earlier this year, on the recommendation of my good friend Bryan, I upgraded the RAM from the stock 8GB to 16GB while I was in Cape Town. According to Bryan, macOS (or OS X, whatever you prefer) loves to be fed more RAM. This OS is RAM hungry, and my first upgrade definitely showed it: I used Activity Monitor to check up on my system, and it was evident that the system wanted to push past the 8GB limit; I was frequently hitting 11GB at times after the upgrade.

Adding RAM allowed me to do more with my Mac. But adding the SSD… that just made this thing feel like a new beast altogether. SSDs, as you know, read data via flash storage; there’s no spinning platter hard drive that needs to spool-up before you can access data. To give a simple example: it used to take over 2 minutes for my MacBook to fully boot-up and be ready to use; sometimes longer, as the Finder and other media took a long time to initialize. With the new SSD installed, my boot time is 20 seconds – that’s 20 seconds from the time I press the Power key to having a fully ready system waiting for me to give it commands. This kind of speed means a heck of a lot to me, as I spend most of my life on this machine.

The Setup

I opted to remove my Superdrive (CD/DVD drive). I reasoned that I hardly use optical media these days. So I moved my existing 750GB hard drive over to that bay, and installed the new 280GB SSD in the original hard disk slot.

macOS Sierra now boots from the SSD; I’ve got all my apps installed on this drive as well. My documents, iTunes library, pictures and other media are sitting on the old hard drive, which is permanently attached to the system (think of it like an always-connected external hard drive). I used a few Terminal commands to create symlinks (System Links) from the folders on the SSD to their corresponding folders on the HD. This ensures that Time Machine backs up all my data correctly. Having my larger media files on the HD allows me to take advantage of all that space, whilst still having the lean speed of the SSD for booting the system and other apps.

Going forward I might use the SSD to store ongoing project files for quick access, and then move them over to the HD once those projects are done.

Going SSD on my Mac was indeed like night and day. I’m still amazed how snappy ARCHICAD is now; AutoCAD is operating like a dream, as are my other creative apps like Photoshop and Illustrator.

I’m still finalizing a few minor apps, and I need to re-do my Bootcamp partition for Windows 10. But overall the system is functional, and I can’t wait to really put it through its paces as my Mac accompanies me on my Masters of Architecture journey starting next month.

Platform Wars are a Waste of Time

Opinion, Technology

Mac vs PC. iOS vs Android. Automatic Transmission vs. Manual Transmission.

Since the dawn of technology, the platform wars have raged. The decision to use one system over another has somehow become suggestive of the character of a person. If you’re a Mac user, you’re suddenly labelled an “Apple sheep”. If you’re a diehard Windows person, then you’re associated with someone who does “real computing”, is “uncreative”, and a “numbers person.”

These labels serve no purpose other than to perpetuate a divide within technological circles, oft exploited by marketing teams to propagate one platform over another. They’ve been used to attack not just the flaws of a platform, but the people using these tools. Most frustratingly, they obscure the fact that no matter the characteristics of a particular platform, technology today has become so advanced that it is sometimes indeed indistinguishable from magic.

Here’s the thing: technological progress has been so dramatic over the past few years that it really doesn’t matter what platform you use. Especially in creative fields like design, cinema and photography: most applications are cross-platform, and the platforms themselves proffer enticing options no matter whether you’re macOS or Windows.

I grew up on Windows, and have programmed some significant (well, significant for me) projects. My prefered platform for the past 8 years has been macOS. I have very personal reasons – as many people do regarding their tools of choice to get the job done or to unwind with. These range from certain intricacies with macOS: the way applications are managed, the overall user interface, window management, the robust industrial design of Mac hardware, a trackpad that has yet to let me down and means I don’t have to always rely on an external mouse to get most design-related tasks done (and that even augments my mouse when designing on macOS). There’s also the comfort factor: I’ve grown very used to the Mac way of doing things. The list goes on, but it is indeed very specific to my own use case. The beauty is that I’ve been able to install the “best of both worlds” on my MacBook: I can experience the things I love about macOS like the Finder and the Alfred search extension, whilst simultaneously using Visual Studio on a Windows installation through VMWare to develop Windows desktop apps critical to the operation of SKKSA.

Look, we’re all entitled to our own opinions. And technology is as opinionated a field as you can get. Our lives are intricately entwined with the devices and platforms we use daily to live, to exist. So it makes sense that one becomes vehemently passionate about their platform of choice. But when that passion extends to bashing others for their choice of platform, especially without having a reasonable experience of said platform to base opinions upon, then it becomes a serious problem. In fact, it may say more about that person than their attacks and scorn of their target’s platform and by extension, the character attack associated with the choice of platform. If anything, it represents a juvenile, immature mindset; a rather closed, small-minded viewpoint of the vastness that is modern technology.

We should be excited and grateful that we have choice. More than one platform means that the developers of these tools are constantly competing to make their product better. This only benefits us, the end users.

Platform wars are a waste of time because they detract us from the beauty that is our modern, advanced systems. They detract us from actually focussing on collaborating, on creating and on using our incredible tools to help make the world a little bit better.

Architecture + Innovation

Architecture, Opinion

Following what I wrote recently about the “PC takeover” of architecture, as posited by renowned Zaha Hadid Architects partner Patrik Schumacher, I’ve been further intrigued by his sentiments when Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, recently announced a revolutionary new roof system.

This kind of technology is the innovation that is sorely lacking in the profession of architecture. Technical prowess has been dismantled from the profession as the architect begins to lose focus of the core aims of the profession – utilitas, firmitas, venustas (function, structure and beauty) – aims that are as old as Vitruvius himself. These are the pillars upon which our profession is built, yet we somehow seem to forget this as we begin to take on more abstract roles as politician, social justice warrior, philosopher, bureaucrat…

Our lofty goals of achieving social justice, of shaking the foundations of dogmatic political practices and ushering in an era of collectivism, of social coherence and aesthetic and cultural harmony through our designed environments appear as noble pursuits. And no doubt they are essential, for we are in a unique position as a practice that situates itself at the intersection of the humanities and the sciences. We can balance these precarious entities through our designed intervention and intellectual prowess powered by years of pouring over precedent, theory, political studies and the philosophies that empower us as architects.

However, the technological agency that lies at the heart of our profession – the technological agency that binds the trifecta of utilitas, firmitas, venustas, is the very thing becoming rapidly marginalised in contemporary practice. We are being sidetracked by more ambiguity rather than pouring our collective talents into actually innovating the architectural technology that ultimately transforms our abstract world into the physical manifestations that form our built environments.

Musk’s development of a unique solar roofing system is exactly the kind of architectural innovation that is being “outsourced” to those outside our field. Yes, I acknowledge that as architects, we are not trained in the minutiae of such technical systems; the kind of product that Musk announced is the culmination of a variety of fields (industrial design, electrical engineering, manufacturing…). However, we are trained in the field of ideas. We should be the ones embracing and advocating for such advances. The Tesla + SolarCity roof tile system is the kind of product that is inherently architectural. It ticks all of the great Vitruvius’s boxes: it is functional (it is highly efficient at collecting solar energy and storing that in the Tesla PowerWall), it is incredibly strong – far stronger, in fact, than traditional building materials like terracotta – and it is beautiful. This last one is particularly important: in order to gain mainstream traction, aesthetics are paramount.

The Tesla roofing system proposes, for the first time, a viable technology for taking buildings off the grid entirely. As architects, we are in the business of consumption – the very act of building requires consuming the earth in order to make space for our creations. The age of sustainable design is well and truly underway. The urgency for technical architectural innovation – the proposition, promotion and integration of imaginative technical ideas that further the environmentally-cenered design approach that will make or break this era – is sorely needed in a time when the role of architect as master of information is being challenged from within.