Cynematik • Cyndi Greening

The folks at Mac Media sponsored seminar on Apple Leopard Server today. I wasn’t all that interested in going because I’m more into the whole creative production side of Apple. I’ve never enjoyed the thought of becoming (or, worse, actually being) a networking geek. But, the biggest little networking geek I know actually left school early so he could go and invited me to go along.

As is always true, some parts of the event were grindingly boring sales pitches BUT it turned out to be five hours well-spent because I remembered why I love Apple so much. They demonstrated the installation of Leopard Server from beginning to end on an empty laptop. The entire installation took less than fifteen minutes (after a two-hour explanation) and it was phenomenally easy. The new Leopard Server rectifies the challenges with Active Directory versus Open Directory structures. Didn’t that sound smart? I had to learn the difference between Active and Open Directory (Microsoft versus Open Source; closed, restrictive versus more open directory structures) and knowing the Leopard handles that problem so I don’t have to was quite exciting. And for the folks I have watched install Windows servers with VLAN (or some such acronym), I was stunned at how quickly and easily the Mac handled it.

Bottom Line: I am actually planning on buying Leopard Server. I’m small, only about ten computers that we use for film production and blogging, but I now have the ability to easily share enormous media files between all of these machines. And, by having network administration capabilities, I can easily limit who has access to what data. I had been planning on Fedexing data DVDs to NY so Alec could do some FX scenes because there was no easy way to get it to him. With my own server, I simply give him the IP address, he logs in and, BAM!, he’s got the files. Seamless integration.

There were three other things I was REALLY excited about:

• Podcast Producer: Built in ability to record video and audio, compress in multiple file formats and distribute to multitude of locations. Automated VOD (even high-def video on demand) and podcast publishing. It even automates the intro/extro process. Holy cow.
• Wiki Server: Filmmaking requires a lot of data collection and sharing with members of the cast and crew. In the past, I always set up blogs for people to share info but it was tedious to work through the entries to find what one wanted. Now, one can easily make Wikis for each project that are tremendously easy to use.
• Calendaring: Group calendaring with automatic notification, invitation and RSVPing. During production, seems like it would be useful but the jury is out on this yet.
• Hosting my own blogs: I’m actually considering hosting my own blogs and media. Since I don’t want to be a networking geek, I’m having a hard time reconciling this in my noodle.

Cost: In my opinion, cheap. $499 for ten client (ten servers NOT ten endusers), $999 for unlimited clients.

After teaching for 18 years, I’m always shocked at how many geeky computer things I’ve learned over the years. Often times, I’ve had to laugh that things I spent a lot of time learning (like HTML) became nearly superfluous with the advent of new applications like, say, Dreamweaver. I had often thought, “If I had just waited a little longer, I wouldn’t have needed to learn that.” Well, the time has come where I’m thinking, heck, networking so easy, even I can do this.