Once you've got an idea of how much machine you need, what do you specifically buy? For us, the upgrades that made the most sense for designers were dual 1.8 Ghz G5 PowerMacs. Now, why would I go out and buy one of the dual setups, when I've just gotten done saying how they're not worth the money? Simple really, it was the cheapest option available at the time due to a massive shortage on G5 PowerMacs and they weren't producing a single processor G5 when we needed the machines. Even with choosing these machines, it was still a two month wait to get them after we had placed our order. The machines were pretty much stock, except that we had an extra gigabyte of ram put in to them. This is one point that I can't emphasize enough. Always and absolutely make sure that you have budgeted in at least a gig of ram for a design machine. OS X is a massive hog on resources and even the 512 megs that comes stock with these machines can barely power the operating system, let alone the heavy-duty applications your designers will be using. With the extra gig of ram, we bumped up the G5's to 1280 megs of ram. While we only have a short amount of testing on them at this point, we've yet to find that that was not enough ram.
Our eMac machines were also completely stock from the manufacturer, except for the fact we bumped them up to 512 megs of ram. As I said before, OS X is a resource hog and most users are extremely bad about having every application available to them open at the same time. Naturally, you tell them not to do it, but they always end up going down that same street and thus, the need for half a gig of ram is needed and probably more down the road.
You might be asking at this point why I haven't brought up using X Server machines? There are three big reasons for this:
1. Even if we hadn't switched sales over to Windows, we would always have an accounting department running Windows and thus the need for Windows machines. Instead of fighting this and trying to limit the Windows invasion of our offices, I figured we might as go with it because really, all we needed the servers for were file serving and running a couple of server-based applications (Font Reserve Server, QLA, and a backup system.) Mail and Web were already on Linux machines.
2. The cost of the X Server is ridiculous. You can get Windows-based server for a significant cost savings and in all honesty have a machine that does the same exact thing. While a Windows server isn't going to look as "neat" in a server rack, this really doesn't matter much when this thing spends most of its time in the dark room and just needs to do its job.
3. OS X Server is not a finished system. It will do most of the things it needs to do, but at the same time, I get the feeling that Apple really wanted to create something that was their own, which I don't understand, since taking what is great about Windows and Linux would have been a much more worthwhile endeavor. The net result is a system that's about 80% completed. A production environment is no place to reinvent the wheel on a daily basis and I'll choose a Windows machine, because despite all their faults they've worked out a lot of kinks in the 10+ years of creating server software.
The first step in all of this is to determine need. My company was having everyone in it use Macs for all of their work. This included not only all of Design and Editorial, but also Sales, Marketing, and anyone in Project Management. It became painfully obvious that approximately 40% of our company could be moved over to Windows-based systems for monetary savings, as well as an improvement to their overall ability to use more applications that were suited for the business world. For instance, as we started working on all of this, Palm announced that they would no longer be creating their software for the Mac, which was a definite minus against having people in the Sales department continue to use Macs. Also, ACT was not made for OS X at all and many sales people are rather fond of that program.
Naturally, Windows ain't for everyone and you still need Macs for the bulk of design work, but depending on your need, find Apple machines that make sense. From our tests, we have found little difference in how OS X.3 treats a dual processor machine than how it treats a single processor machine. While there are many tests out that claim massive amounts of speed from the dual machines, in reality, we simply have not seen it. This isn't to say that in future upgrades to the OS X software (such as X.4) that the benefits won't be seen, but it should also say that you can save yourself $500+ a machine by getting a single processor version if you're only looking for one to two years of expected lifespan.
The iMacs are a tempting choice, but honestly, the amount of money that you're paying for a flat LCD screen is not worth the extra $500+ that is required. We found that the eMac machines were actually quite reliable and good little performers. Taking into account how much less they were than the iMacs, it became an obvious choice to purchase these for people who did only Word processing and email, yet still required a Mac in order to proof materials from the designers that required font compatibility.
So, I recommend taking these things in to consideration. Keep in mind that you're most likely only going to get about three, maybe� four years of life from each of these machines, so spending top dollar on the absolute best machine makes little sense unless you have the money to burn and if you're in IT and do, then I have a digitally encrypted bridge I'd love to sell you.
I have been responsible for the upgrade to Apple OS X at several publishing companies, including Diablo Publications, DCP, San Francisco magazine, Stringletter, and Red Herring. The upgrades took place in the later half of 2004 through 2005.
This was definitely one of the more difficult upgrades to completely piece together, as Apple and many of the software makers still seemed to be learning their way around OS X and as a result many things required workarounds to get it all to play nice. While what I'm covering here is certainly not the de facto manner in which to go about this upgrade (after all, many people have many different companies and needs out there) I did want to share the information that I've learned throughout this upgrade as advice and warnings so as to make the process easier for other beleaguered Information Technology people out there.
The technology that I came in to was all based around an OS 9 system with a Quark 4.11 workflow and Font Reserve 2.6 managing everyone's fonts. The machines that people used ranged from first generation iMacs to decently new G4 PowerMacs with dual processors (although there were very few of these.)
All the users were upgraded to OS X machines which were either eMacs with 1.25 Ghz G4 processors for those in the company with less demanding computer use, to dual 1.8 Ghz G5 PowerMacs for those who were designers.
Workflow was transitioned over to Adobe products, including InDesign CS 1 and InCopy CS 1. Office software was upgraded to Microsoft Office X with Entourage as the sole email client. The backbone of the network was all Windows-based, starting with Windows NT 4 and a Windows Server 2000 machine that were shortly upgraded to Windows Server 2003 prior to making the OS X switch.
Let me just say before we go in to this any further that I'm not a Mac fan. I'm also not a Windows fan. I find both of these systems flawed, needing work and head-poundingly frustrating at various points. At the time of this writing I believe that Microsoft has a slight edge over the Mac (especially since Apple is now working kinks out of OS X.4) in reliability, but that's about as far as I want to commit to one platform or the other. I do happen to really like Linux and use it where I can (mail, web, DNS, etc.) but it simply can't be used in a production environment just yet. Mac and Windows are much prettier than Linux, but I happen to find a quiet, crushing elegance to the command line, thus my preferred masochism for Linux.
Once again, as with CS 1, installing the plugins fro InDesign to use the Bridge/LiveEdit workflow is not the most intuitive thing. Much like installing them for CS 1, you need to have an InCopy CS 2 installation disc to make it work. As I found out from direct experience, copying the plugins only makes things look somewhat right. The functionality will not be there and everything will go belly up in a very ugly way if you try to use a setup like this.
With InDesign installed (and closed) on the machine, run the InCopy installer and enter your InCopy serial number. You should then get a window that gives you the option of a Complete installation which will install InCopy as well as the plugins (probably not what you want) or the option to just install the InDesign plugins. It is the second choice you want to choose. Let everything run, finish, close the installer, and then fire up InDesign. You should see the option to enter a User under the File menu, which you want to do. As with CS 1, this is completely arbitrary and can be any name you want. If everything else worked out, you should see an InCopy submenu in about the middle of the Edit menu and if you right click or Command+click on a story, you should see an InCopy menu there as well. Happy LiveEditing!
ONE
Building upon my Sample Workflow for CS1, let's outline a basic setup for CS 2.
First, start with a fully complete InDesign document which will probably have empty textframes for the content or filler text. The designer then needs to use the Export function from the InCopy contextual menu (right click on a textframe for Windows, Control+click for Apple) to export the story out in to the .incx format. This much is the same as CS 1, but there is one further step where this story needs to be added to an Assignment file. You can create the Assignment at the same time you export the story file or if you already have the Assignments set up, you Export that story directly to that Assignment option in the same InCopy submenu. If you just Export the stories, then you'll have to add them in to a particular Assignment in your Assignments window in InDesign by dragging them there from the Unassigned area.
From this point forward, the designer will need to use the Check In/Out options to edit the text that has been exported. If you're working in a small environment, then you don't need to worry about much else, unless you want to take advantage of the ability to Export graphics in to the .incx format as well, in which I'd recommend putting them in their own Assignment file, separate from the text-based files. If you have a lot of stories, you might want to break down your Assignments in to separate files, but I have yet to see that be required.
TWO
Once you have everything set up from the InDesign side of things including: the primary .indd Indesign file, single or multiple .inca Assignment files, and single or multiple .incx InCopy files, you're ready to proceed in to working within InCopy.
It's pretty simple really, you just open up the Assignment file in InCopy and start going about your Check In/Check Out business. If the designer makes a change to the file while an InCopy user is working on it, once the file gets saved, InCopy will ask the user to update their file to see the changes. Just be sure to use Check In/Check Out for changes. Using the Save won't save the file in the way you want it to and it's something of a shame that this function is still in there as it is very confusing to most InCopy users.
If upon opening an Assignment file, you get a warning screen about there being no Stories or Assignments and you only have the layout view to work with, then something is wrong with how everything is set up. You will want to check and make sure that all the required elements are in place and if all else fails, try to recreate the Assignment file from InDesign.
One last little nifty feature for InCopy users is to be able to Export a file from InCopy. This is something of an answer to the lack of generational edits for InCopy users because they can save out a copy of a story once they're done with it in to RTF or PDF format and be able to open that later and copy the text back in to the story. It is also useful in case they get last minute changes from a writer or need to converse with them because RTF will be a lot more portable format than a .incx file.