Why is Adobe CC giving me an (ongoing) Error 86? - Update April 2017

Here we go again...

Trying to update Adobe CC Application Manager and it CRASHES.

Update after update I have the same problem on the same machine:
http://humanuser.blogspot.com/2016/09/adobe-creative-cloud-desktop-app-does.html

So, again I'm downloading the stand alone installer:

https://creative.adobe.com/products/download/creative-cloud

I have no Adobe app running, no Creative Cloud processes running. And again I will try to install and it will not go through.

There you go.

OK, so I'm running the Un-Installer, and then the Installer again, see if it works, else I will have to spend an hour with Adobe on the Chat to fix this crap.

--- And by the way why is the Installer must be downloaded each time I try to install? Can't this be downloaded once in the background, and then simply run on the machine? I don't get it.

Downloading again...

Finally! Success!

Well I'm glad I saved this workaround how-to, else I would have forgotten what to do.

Let's do some work now.

How to move files and folders around quickly with this Apple macOs Sierra Finder "spring open" tip

You probably are aware of macOs Finder capability to "spring open" a folder when dragging/moving a file. If you hover over a folder, it will pop-open to reveal its content. That's very dandy.

What's less dandy is when you go dig into some buried folder and want to move a file back to another folder you had open a moment ago, but now is in turn buried somewhere.

Of course the easy trick is to have two windows open at once, so now you can drag/move your file from one window/folder to another. But there is a BETTER and FASTER trick!

Assuming you had the destination folder opened right before the move - as it's often my case, since I always think a file is in a folder, but noooo, it's somewhere else... So I do a Search, and ah! Ah! Here is the bugger!... But now I need to put the file in another buried folder... grrr... Where the hell was this folder again???

Well, in this case I calmly drag the file over to the Finder Back Arrow. And boom! the Folder I had opened previously pops open! And I delicately drop my file in there.  Whoa
!... FYI the Forward Arrow works as well, as do the various Views Buttons.

Maybe you already knew about this trick? Ah! I just discovered this today! - And I'm a loooongtime Mac user ;)) ...

How to batch download your photos (and more) from Google

Photos on Google has changed from Picassa to Google Photos, but the features are quite lacking. In particular if you want to download a bunch of picts or all of them for the matter, there seem to be no solution.
Here comes Google Takeout to the rescue: https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout
With Takeout select whole albums, or the entire Google Photo content and download away!
From the menu, all your data is available to download. Neat.

What? Why is there no paper custom size in Apple Numbers? (With workaround)

I built a giant spreadsheet in Numbers and I want to export it as a single page PDF.

Not to worry, I just create a custom page that's like 5 normal length worth (8.5 x 55.)

Hold on... NOPE! Numbers does not allow you to create a custom paper size!! WHAT???

OK, fine, I'll just make one in Pages, and then I'll call it from Numbers...

?? NOPE!! Nothing there!!!  No Custom page sizes for Numbers. Really Apple???!!

Apple Pages: New custom paper size created and saved.

Apple Pages: New custom paper size available.

Apple Numbers: Only presets. Where is the custom page size???

WORKAROUND:

Are you ready for this? Alright, COPY your entire spreadsheet from Numbers, create a new document in Pages and use the custom paper size previously created (8.5 x 55in or whatever suits you), PASTE the entire table in this elongated document and reframe as needed. Save this Page document. Voilà! Now you can Print/Save as PDF in ONE SINGLE PAGE. Furthermore, I opened my one page elongated PDF in Preview, and from there Exported a JPEG. Works great.

Why do you force this convoluted workaround on us Apple?

How do you like your current Adobe Creative Cloud subscription?

I'm currently a CC subscriber. I started a few years ago with a $39.99 /mo discount, that automatically turned into $49.99 /mo after the first year.

I wasn't too happy about that, talked to Adobe and I got a second year at $39.99 as a "Black Friday Special". After these two years, the subscription turned into the current regular price of $49.99 /mo and I was out of option for a special discount.

Well, the thing is I'm not too happy about this situation... At $39.99 /mo it's $479.88 /year which I feel is a fair price for what I'm getting.

At $49.99 /mo that's now $599.88 /year which is a bit steep. I would be OK to pay $499.99 for the year, but not more. Currently I pay $99.88 more /year than I am confortable paying.

What to do though? I can't use any Special anymore, seems like Adobe are out of discounts for us current users. If you are a new user, you can occasionally get the $39.99 entry price, but after that, nada.

My primary NLE is FCPX, I probably use it 50% of the time. Then I use Premiere maybe 40% of the time, and MC 10% of the time (at best.)

In addition to Premiere, I use Media Encoder heavily. Then I often find myself firing-up After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator and Audition for specific tasks that I know how to do quickly and efficiently in these apps.

I have no use for any other Adobe CC app as it is. So I pay $49.99 for ALL APPS (25 of them) but I use only 6. That's only 1/4th of the apps count and I'm not counting the iOS apps. Actually, I'm also using Portfolio (out of laziness to just set up a proper website.)

Anyway, I certainly wonder why I need to pay for all the other stuff I'm not using. Now If I only pay for single apps, it's obviously more at 6 X $19.99 = $119.94 /mo. This does not fly at all. I wish Adobe would offer more plans in addition to the $9.99 Photoshop, $19.99 Single App, and $49.99 all apps.

How about $9.99 Single App, $19.99 four apps, $29.99 eight apps, $39.99 sixteen apps, $49.99 all apps? Even better, add the option to scale up or down at will during the 12 month period. Too confusing? Too complicated to implement?

Would you like that? I would!

Is macOS (Sierra) gaining some intelligence?

Whoa!  This is new to me. Pretty dandy.

Why does Final Cut Pro X 10.3.2 suck at handling a large number of files - Update: it's the cache!

As much as I like FCPX, its my to go NLE these days, it sucks when dealing with a large number of files.

Disclaimer: I'm on an old fashion mid 2012 Mac Pro, with a 3GB Radeon graphic card.

The core of FCPX is the database, well it's not a very efficient database when it starts to slow to a halt trying to deal with ~4000 files at once.

I am building my SFXs library so it's available and handy within FCPX, of course forget adding Aliases to the Library/Audio/Apple Loops/Apple/Final Cut Pro Sound Effects, it's terribly unresponsive and crashes the app with a large number of files.

Instead, create a SFX Library LIBRARY and import and organize your sounds within said Library. (Are you confused already?)

Anyway, alll this is fine, except that I have a 10,000 files in an Adobe sound library I want to import, and oh boy! is FCPX freaking out!  I actually have to make it into smaller batches, else it crashes. Under 1k files is much more digestible it seems.

Then after this pain, it's time to assign roles. I want to assign the same Adobe_CC2015_Library role to these 10k files...  Forget it. FCPX is totally crippled.  Again, I have to do it in smaller batches, 4k or so files. Which brings the beach ball of death and oooops! I'm not touching anything, holding my breath... Nope, can't hold my breath for this long... 1min. 2min. ... All right! Finally it happens! Hooray!

Man! Just trying to select ~4k-6k files brings the beach ball of death!  It finally does what it's told, but it's certainly is not responsive, got to have patience.

Switching from one Event (one SFX Library) to another takes some time... Like 4 or 5 sec. of the beach ball right there with the 10k files library. Hmmmm.

I actually have another audio library that's near 100k files... Well I might wait a little before I bring this one in.

What's your experience in dealing with a large number of files in FCPX?

---UPDATE
Best practice is to store FCPX cache on a separate drive, preferably a SSD. That will speed up things tremendously.