IDriveX (Apple employee) was recently lucky enough to visit the set of “Star Trek: Enterprise” whilst filming was in progress. He met the cast, toured the set and found out some closely-guarded secrets – the ship is powered by Macintosh computers and a light switch. Read his report at TrekToday and check some pictures in his web site showing the Apple G4 Cubes powering the monitors in the Enterprise starship (the interactive futuristic UI of Enterprise is written in.. Macromedia Director running under MacOS).
Futuristic OS on ST:Enterprise Powered by G4 Cubes and Director
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
It’s been known for yeeeears that Mac’s were used at the ST studios and special fx and stuff.
Partly wrong the special FX. I believe Voyager was mostly Lightwave (used to be PC/Amiga only, maybe mac now too). The rest is/was electricimage for rendering/alias for modelling. Maybe LW is used on other flavors (Enterprise) too now.
BTW why do we care if these are macs? Director is mostly platform independent. They are not doing anything special with these Macs that you couldn’t do on any other platform.
Kon> Why do we care if these are Macs?
Why do we care that computers are used at all?
Kon> They are not doing anything special with these Macs that you couldn’t do on any other platform.
They could do it on other, possibly cheaper, platforms, yes. But they do not. That should give a hint that there are more criterias to choosing a computer than MHz/Buck ratio or price alone.
>They could do it on other, possibly cheaper, platforms, yes. But they do not.
The main reason they are using Macs, is because Mr Okuda, who is the guy who invented the LCARS system I think, and he is resposible for the UIs on starships on Star Trek series, is a big Mac fan. This is well known.
Am I the only person who clicks on the picture link and gets “Memory Pimp”?
Me too. Pimp dat phat ram, holmes! *rolls eyes*
The link was fine just an hour ago. Something happened to his server.
Me> They could do it on other, possibly cheaper, platforms, yes. But they do not.
Eugenia> The main reason they are using Macs, is because Mr Okuda […] is a big Mac fan.
Ok, so s/They/He/g, but that is actually irrelevant to the point.
Cubes have no fan, they are VERRRY quiet….no noise to interfere with production. I’ve seen PC’s that sound like a jet engine winding up when they are booting. Now imagine stuffing 10-20 of those around your movie set and trying to get good sound on the set. If the computer whiz is a mac fan, he could have used mac towers…..but they have fans….the cube was a good choice.
http://homepage.mac.com/idrivex/“ http://homepage.mac.com/idrivex/ says “We’re sorry, but we can’t find the HomePage you’ve requested.”
Somebody pulled the plug ?
Shmegglefurt, not to mention that no fan noise contributes heaps to increased productivity and less fatigue.