September 2 2009
A couple of users have written to tell me that Normality throws an error on their PowerPC Mac: After Effects error: Couldn’t find main entry point for normality.plugin (48::72).
I’d just like to take a moment to make it official:
Normality does not support PowerPC architectures.
Here’s why: To make Normality run as fast as it does I have gone through the effort of hand-optimizing the C++ code for Intel’s SSE2 architecture. That’s great for the vast majority of Mac and Windows users because it means that Normality makes the most of their powerful CPU.
For users of other architectures unfortunately it means that compiling the plug-in is a lot more complicated than the simple push of a button. It also means that I cannot port to PowerPC, simply because I don’t own such a machine to test on.
Sorry, PowerPC users!
December 25 2006
So I finally gave in and switched to Mac. After about 15 years on Windows (and the occasional encounter with the Penguins), I got myself an iMac, mainly because it’s nice, portable and supposedly artist friendly. Also, I’m not happy with the direction Microsoft is heading with Windows Vista. Don’t even get me started on all the Windows annoyances and “security”.
But I do question whether I made the right choice.
Now don’t get me wrong: I love this machine. It’s probably the most solid computer I’ve ever used. As they say, “it just works”. The only problem is: I don’t.
The utter lack of graphics software such as Photoshop, After Effects (and various plug-ins) and Maya in versions that actually run at half-decent speeds on this Intel machine is absolutely ridiculous. And that on a system that supposedly caters to artist’s needs? Pah!
Needless to say, installing Boot Camp was the first thing I did after realizing the dearth of graphics software on OS X Intel, since switching applications doesn’t make any sense for the sole benefit of running them in the oh so pretty Mac OS.
My solution for now: OS X has reduced itself to a fancy system for web-browsing and neat drop shadows. It’s gray Windows for everything else…
Just sad.
