Mac or Windows?
Duckys54
Registered Users Posts: 273 Major grins
What are the pros and cons of each?
I am Trevor and I have upgraded:
Canon 40D
Canon EF-S 17-85 IS
http://www.flickr.com/trevaftw
Canon 40D
Canon EF-S 17-85 IS
http://www.flickr.com/trevaftw
0
Comments
Other than my Amega's...i started using windows in late '99 & sat there like a stick in the mud refusing to believe anything could do a better job. I bought a mac 6 weeks ago & things have never been better. Honestly i dont know why it took me so long to see what i now see.
There is just too much to explain why i now like a mac but one way would be to just write a list of all the things that annoyed me about PC's ...then with a mac.. i just throw that list in the bin. Thats how much i personally believe mac has it over a PC.
I love my Mac !!
Yes, if you're really interested in knowing anything of value about either, then ask specific questions. An open-ended question like that is not only useless, but makes you look like a troll.
We're here to help. But that's just too vague a question to be of any value.
Dgrin FAQ | Me | Workshops
Anyway, the only advantage that I see in building a PC--and a diminishing one--is the availability of 3rd party hardware when trying to build a super high-end gaming, video, or any other ultra-graphics-intensive system. But if you're not trying to derivate the trajectory of Mars through the galaxy while playing counterstrike in full graphics and coding a 3D animation in the background while having your computer make your breakfast and run the bath for you at the same time while having a conversation with you and doing your honors thesis for you, then don't worry about it (excuse the grammar); 98% of people dont need those capabilities or are not willing to maintain such a system (it's a pain to keep it running).
the hardware that apple uses is for apple only, so all the drivers come from apple and all the warranties come from them too. you are getting a rock-solid, maintenance-free operating system that will never (yes, NEVER) crash on you, whose hardware is covered by only 1 manufacturer (you don't have to deal with different ones say, if you were building your own computer).
The best, I would say, would be to run OSX on a PC.
anyway, sorry to get off topic: OSX beats Windows hands down for speed, reliability, and simplicity.
Seriously, run a search on any photo forum & you should have several days' worth of reading of discussions (rare), debates, or out-and-out flame wars (common).
http://www.chrislaudermilkphoto.com/
If some one asked me why i chose a particular GM over a particular Ford i dont immediately ask ..'are you refering to a hill climb..shopping with the kids or a 24 hour le mans race'
Both are good choices, yet i'd get the mac
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Ouch =[
Actually I don't really know a lot about anything in particular. I do know a good general amount about a lot of things though. The main reason I asked this I guess was because since this is a photography board I assumed it would be understand I was referring to the use of for digital darkroom stuff.
For example when I went and toured the Minneapolis Art Institute they use Apple's only and whenever I go on other forum's artsy people always say to use a Mac but PC elitists say there is no difference.
Long story short - Why a Mac over a PC for photo/art/design/video/etc. over a PC or is there no real reason just preference?
Canon 40D
Canon EF-S 17-85 IS
http://www.flickr.com/trevaftw
You can have fast on a PC, but try and run without the Anti Virus stuff and you are in big trouble.... No major updating required, no definitions, nothing, just a working computer that doesn't require you to restart every day....
I REALLY love my Mac, I am buying another for myself, and one for my Mom-in-law, because they just work.
That is worth the premium if you ask me...
Perfect Pix
Im just glad there wasnt a noose about the place mate. The lynch mob would have seen you up a tree in 2 mins flat !!
Have a read here...it may shine the light in your direction.
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The difference is, of course, that Mac elitists have a reason for their elitism. The PC folks are just stubborn and actually HAVE no reason that their platform is better
Problem is, there is no absolute.
Cost to performance ratio. It's not even funny how much a PC outweighs a Mac. On the other hand, Macs are PC's superiors in regards to quality and reliability.
So why buy a mac?
Lower end users that just want to plug things in and work.
Keeping a consistent work flow from home to work. I sit in front of a Mac & PC and it takes a few minutes to shift gears and a bit longer to really be up to speed. If I worked in an office, it would be a hassle for me to get into the PC mind at night and Mac by day. (This one is crucial to to ppl like graphic designers that work in an Mac environment. Not really ppl that just use Macs to work on as part of their job)
Life cycle expectancy is much longer.
Why buy a PC?
Cost to performance ratio is fantastic.
Software developers flock in droves to open source and MS platforms.
Multiple hardware and software options keep the market competitive so the consumer wins.
In todays consumer market of "everything expendable" and everyone wanting the latest and greatest. I see apple being more of a designer label than true out performer. I have an old G4 quicksilver that is sitting in my closet and still kicking. Do I use it? No. Sell it? No. I'd only get about 250 out of it and I feel good knowing I have two backup machines in case stuff happens.
So why would I pay for extended life of a machine made up of superior parts? Just doesn't make sense to me. Apple has done a fantastic job creating a culture that consumers feel like they invest in when they buy apple products. They have also done a fantastic job capitalizing on MS's mistakes (and there are plenty to choose from).
Even apple is shifting over to Intel processors. Why? Because they are cheaper and can keep overhead down. Apple knows to stay competitive in this market, they need to lower prices.
I can give an honest objective opinion about this since I work cross platform. And I don't understand why you wouldn't buy a PC unless you didn't understand how to keep your machine out of the crud. If that's the case, Mac is a great choice.
BTW if your talking about performance. Look up at my PC speed in the photoshop benchmark thread. It buries practically every mac on there and I spent a tiny bit less than 1500. To get the Mac equivalent of my machine, you'd need to spend almost 15,000. (I know, I went to the Apple store and built one that could keep up).
Cheers,
-Jon
SYR, you are way off base on your pricing.
Ducky, aside from my natural bias towards Macintosh, when it comes down to your "photo/art/design/video/etc." question, the one area that there is no doubt that Mac kicks PC's ass is video, IMO. Final Cut Studio 2 is unmatched in the PC world. Final Cut Express is equally unmatched, and at $200 is an amazing value. The cost of video systems crashed when FCP entered the market. I know, I worked on Avid for years (professionally), and the systems I was working on were $80-120k for years. FCP came out, and suddenly you could cut on an off-the-shelf computer and a software package that cost about $1k. Avid had to follow suit, and offer cheaper products, and it took a bit for FCP to mature, but now that it has it kicks Avid's butt all over the map, IMO. And, at the free end, iMovie is pretty darn good.
Aside from that, the photo/art/design part of the question, you can do equally well on both, assuming you're OK with the OS you choose and its strengths and weaknesses. There are a handful of photo apps that are available for Windows and not Mac, but if any of those are an issue, then you can just run Vista on your Mac. Oh, and Vista runs faster on a Macbook Pro than any other laptop on the market.
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Gotta love the irony..
Even cut my teeth on the PC versions of Adobe Elements LE, Photoshop 6 (up to CS2), Premier...
...and bought a MacBook Pro 15" back in June. No, I don't buy into the Mac's don't get viruses deal; the iPhone has some serious deficencies; I'll wait another 6 months (or 2 sets of bug fixes) to upgrade to Leopard; and I don't think Bill Gates is Satan incarnate.
But the Mac and OSX works. Microsoft missed a great opportunity with Vista and rewriting the kernel, WinFS, and so much more. Now I hear they are going to do all that in the NeXT release. Too late.
Even my corporate end users are now too sophisticated to buy what MS is selling. They yell at ME because of ActiveX Controls and web sites requiring IE 6 or 7, and therefore they can't use Firefox or Safari. Safari? Yep, I have salespeople who use their company issued laptops as who knows what. Because they bought their own MacBooks to use.
OK, it's late, I'm done :soapbox and I still haven't shot my LPS #17 entry.
-Fleetwood Mac
An 8 core is $4k. You go compare that to a Dell, HP, whatever instead of your home built machine, and then we can talk turkey.
Dgrin FAQ | Me | Workshops
Not trying to talk turkey David. I already know comparing my homegrown isn't fair. I just like keeping the playing fields a bit more even when mac fanatics start proclaiming Macs to be the holy grail of computers.
It would be a poor decision to buy something like a top end Dell XPS when trying to create a banshee. If your gonna spend the money. You can go to a local geek store and they can build the machine for you at around 2500 that can whoop some serious donkey! No tech knowledge required. It's still not a Mac, I'm just providing an alrternative opinion to the majority's.
I'm a fan of Mac, I just can't afford them at this point of my life.
I went to the Dell & Mac stores to build a "dream machine" *In regards to speed. All extra peripherals were not added.
Mac ((6944.00))
8 core 3.0 GHz quad core x2
4GB RAM 1x4
Nvidia Quadro FX 4500 512MB RAM
20" display
Dele XPS 720 ((5589.00))
Intel Core2 QX6800 3.20GHz x2
4GB RAM 1x4
Dual 768MB Nvidia GeForce 8800 Ultra
20" Widescreen display (I picked widescreen to keep it the same approximate price as a Apple display)
I'm not debating the fact that Mac's are fantastic machines.
The person that started this thread was pretty young and it's not likely that he has deep pockets. So bang for the buck (at least from the appearance of it). PC's still have Macs beat out. Of course all those numbers above don't mean anything until you step up to the plate and run some benchmark tests. I've seen some machines that I thought would destroy the test get beat up and vice versa.
-Jon
No. You're comparing 8 cores in the Mac with 4 in the Dell. The Apple that is comparable to the Dell is actually $5646. Buy the RAM from crucial.com, and you'd be at the same exact price point. The video cards are different, and I don't know enough about those to know who's favor that would work in, but the difference at this point is negligible.
EDIT: Benchmarks are fun, but there is a point where they begin to mean less and less and the overall responsiveness of the machine is more important. And you're right, he probably doesn't have the deep pockets for either of these machines....
Dgrin FAQ | Me | Workshops
I'm not sure I follow you though. Benchmarks to me lend much more weight to how a machine truly performs.
And I'm not sure what you mean in regards to response time.
If it's not too much of a hijack, care to elaborate? I'll post anther thread if it is.
I don't want to refer to my machine since it's an obvious exception.
Which means that having to run antivirus in the background is essentially a "Windows tax" on the CPU GHz rating.
By the way, Mac people, don't claim that Macs "never crash" or "never get malware." It is possible and it will happen, it's just that the chances are generally much lower on a Mac, and in the case of a virus, much much much lower. I have been a Mac fan for many years and I see my Macs crash. Not often though, and I usually know why. It's usually hardware-related. Apple is not immune to the occasionally bad Samsung OEM RAM stick, a flaky Seagate OEM hard drive resulting in catastrophic data loss, or a buggy USB device driver.
But those crashes are usually not due to the OS itself. If you run solid hardware and drivers, OS X is capable of very long uptimes, and I'm talking not shutting the machine down for weeks at a time. My 7-year-old home entertainment server Mac is on 60 days uptime currently, although I don't ask it to do very much other than iTunes and Safari.
I don't know about Vista, but XP runs pretty solid for me too. The "that other OS crashes" argument is very outdated for both OS X and XP. Better to argue about another point.
It's a pretty low tax, though. I just checked stats on my XP machine, which runs AVG antivirus. In the past 16 hours AVG has consumed all of 11 CPU seconds. People who have problems with anti-virus products usually have screwed up the settings or the installation.
When i say cost...this mac im on was $3k & the equiv PC is maybe $2k with the new monitor. For a family with several billy lids & a mortgage , that $1k is a lot.
If the average home dummy user in 0z (like me) could just sit & try a mac then im sure many more would jump to one though. Everything is just so much smoother & less complicated. I will be getting my mum one when she needs a new one thus saving me the hassles i get every time i visit with updating the virus checkers etc etc etc etc.
I can certainly see why RS .. nik & the likes would stick with PC though as the everyday problems that i faced on a PC would be nothing for them to sort out.
Sure. What I'm saying is that benchmarks kinda lose meaning on the faster machines, at least to me. If it takes 7 seconds or 8 or 9 or even 13 seconds to do one of those tests, it's all pretty much the same to me. They're all fast. The other side of what I'm referring to is that what I've always understood to be true is that Apple tunes the OS for overall responsiveness, not in a way that might boost any particular test like our FM test. It's a more balanced approach. I have NO IDEA if there's any truth to that, in regards to Apple, but the logic of it appeals to me. I want my overall system performance to be responsive, not any particular benchmark.
But more importantly, you were not comparing two similar machines. And there is no stripped down Mac Pro, at least not in the same sense as a PC can be stripped down, with a hobbled version of the OS, or inferior parts to the non-stripped down version. Sure, you can add RAM, drives, etc. and I would never add them through the Apple store, I'd get the RAM through Crucial and the drives from Other World Computing, and make an even more inexpensive machine. One that compares well with the Dell, if not beating it, price-wise, and one that is better designed and runs on a better OS. So to say that Apple machines cost 10x what a PC does is just grossly misleading. Sure, you were able to build your own. A corner PC shop could also build a cheaper machine, but Apple is not a corner store, and the exquisite design of the Mac Pro cannot be had in the PC world for any amount of money.
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S'all good. I understand where your comming from. Some people know cars, other know computers, etc. So after reading you guys I have a few things to say/ask:
1) I will be getting a laptop from my parents for college. My limit is more than likely ~$1K, maybe more if I can use some of my own money. I will be going to school for photojournalism.
1B)This means I'd more than likely have to get a premade computer.
2) I like the OS of an Apple because of how smooth and easy it is, plus a lot of the keyboard shortcuts there are.
3) I've had really bad experience with Dell.
4) I'd like something with a lot of RAM, I think. I'm a big multitasker and lots of RAM is good for this reason, correct?
What would you guys recommend to get?
Canon 40D
Canon EF-S 17-85 IS
http://www.flickr.com/trevaftw