Studio Checkup: Duct Tape and Baling Wire?

The new laptop running MacOS Ventura has a battery status icon. As expected, it provides the percentage of power available (sitting neatly at 100% even after working for a few minutes). More interestingly, there’s a message that “No apps are using significant energy”…which seems like pretty helpful info to have, and I know my old computer didn’t do that. I found myself wondering when Apple added that to the MacOS?

That got me thinking about the level of continual refinement of the MacOS ecosystem over the past years. There are certainly moments of face-palming, like when Apple decided that the MagSafe charger wasn’t important (though they’ve now brought it back ). Overall, the steady level of improvement has been gratifying. We’ve migrated to a 64 bit processing format, segued into an entirely new chip architecture, and seen ridiculous gains of efficiency and speed. Even if you hadn’t been nursing a machine more than a dozen years old (as I’ve been), anything current is a solid jump forward.

Running a voiceover business certainly means real budget constraints. It’s tough parting with the funds needed to invest in new hardware, so that often gets put off. Staying “up to date” remains a tricky balance of cash-on-hand against an increase in efficiency. Many of us choose to remain a few steps back from the edge.

As voice actors with a home recording setup, we are really running a production facility. Our recording setup needs to work when we walk into our booth. That’s the reason I encourage people not to be early adopters for new software versions and operating systems. It’s why I recommend other MacOS users to keep automatic updates turned off and generally resist the nagging reminder windows which pop up from time to time. The wrong update at a bad time can have noticeable consequences.

What about hanging on to hardware on the “trailing edge” of technology? That’s problematic as well. The longer you wait, the more likely you’ll encounter more upgrade steps and greater changes when you finally jump forward.

Over the years, I’ve had to recycle decent monitors and a couple of reliable storage drives because the connections were no longer supported by new computer hardware. Mini-DVI connectors and Firewire ports have gone the way of all things. As ubiquitous as the rectangular USB 2.0 connectors seem, newer computers don’t support them – opting for the more useful USB-C port. While most interfaces don’t care, that may not always be the case.

Software has probably an even shorter shelf life, and I’ve had a number of clients recently who found their old Izotope RX application wouldn’t function on the newest current operating systems. Figuring out how to migrate old presets and workflows can make for a lot of work. I can’t even imagine someone trying to come current from something like Adobe Audition 3.0.

This suggests that there’s a sweet spot of sorts – neither out on the forefront, where you arguably become a beta-tester for the newest version, nor so far behind that replacing one thing means that you have to change everything. Planning on a five year computer lifespan is decent target (and that can often be stretched for a few more years). Past that point, you may find that additional resources must be spent just to bring everything current. 

Also, keeping an eye out for a refurbished computer that is a few years old, or putting the word out to friends who seem to always have the latest-greatest hardware, can often provide highly usable gear that doesn’t force excessive tinkering to keep running. As I’ve mentioned before, we don’t really need the newest/fastest model to support what we do in voiceover. 

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