Question about mac's...

[Nosaj]

**NOTE** This is not a slam or a "mac vs. pc" thread. I just would like to know.

I would like to know why Mac's are considered the best machines for graphics and desktop publishing. The same software is available for the pc, but people always say that the macs are better. Please enlighten me.


BTW, I am a PC user, but I also have a biege G3 (that is rarely used).

 

[Spyro]

Originally posted by: Nosaj
**NOTE** This is not a slam or a "mac vs. pc" thread. I just would like to know.

I would like to know why Mac's are considered the best machines for graphics and desktop publishing. The same software is available for the pc, but people always say that the macs are better. Please enlighten me.


BTW, I am a PC user, but I also have a biege G3 (that is rarely used).

Because iMacs look cooler.............

 

[Nosaj]

So what you are saying is that if I mod my Powermac G3 with an acrylic case and some cathode ray lights, it will run Photoshop better than a pc?

 

[Spyro]

Originally posted by: Nosaj
So what you are saying is that if I mod my Powermac G3 with an acrylic case and some cathode ray lights, it will run Photoshop better than a pc?

Yup, but your productivity real really suffer because your eyes will be glued to the cube..........

 

[Nothinman]

Mostly because things like Photoshop and Premier are targetted more at MacOS, remember they were done first on MacOS then ported to Windows. I personally think OS X is just plain better than XP, the UI is easier for new people and the underlying unix core makes it for a bad ass OS, too bad the software isn't there.

 

[NogginBoink]

Historically, apps like Photoshop and PageMaker were only available on the Mac, then they were on the PC but superior on the Mac.

But I think that argument is mainly historical at this point. Macs do have a lot of infrastructure support in the publishing and printing industries, due to the history, but that's the only advantage I know of these days.

 

[GonzoDaGr8]

Historically, apps like Photoshop and PageMaker were only available on the Mac, then they were on the PC but superior on the Mac.

Dang, Noggin beat me to the punch there.. He is right though, Photoshop had allways run better on Mac's because it was a native program to the mac platform. Only later was it "Ported" to the PC side. Same with Quicktime. Programs will allways run better on thier native platform than their ported cousins.

 

[drag]

There just are some basic architectural differences that lead towards just plain better performance in favor of the MAC.

Plus you are dealing with artists.. There main goal is to deal with making art not dealing with IRQ conflicts or driver issues. OS X is easier to use and the stability of windows is still lagging behind especially when dealing with manipulating large files... IE running a photoshop glass blur on a 300 meg file for a high res poster. Also when it comes to manipulating text apple's text stuff is just a higher quality. This doesn't seem like much, but when designing text is one of the most important aspects of a composition and you want to be able to accuratly see what your doing on the screen. Also traditionally Mac monitors are a much higher quality than those aviable for the PC. Although some of these things are not as important as they once were, along with the software aspect, is the reason Apples gained dominance.

The money you make on increased productivity more than makes up the higher cost of hardware. Most the time by a factor of at least 10x probably more...

hopefully the G5's will be something snazzy, because the G4's just are not keeping up with the AMD/INTEL arms race...

 

[Nosaj]

Thanks to all for the input!

 

[Tret]

Hey thats bs photoshop runs faster on pc

 

[Tret]

http://www.digitalvideoediting.com/2002/11_nov/reviews/cw_macvspciii.htm

 

[Nothinman]

There main goal is to deal with making art not dealing with IRQ conflicts or driver issues

The hardware in a G4 is almost exactly the same as in a normal PC, the only difference is that OS X has such small device support. IRQ conflicts have as much a chance of happening on a G4 as they do on any box.

Also traditionally Mac monitors are a much higher quality than those aviable for the PC

If you really want you can put Mac monitors on a PC with a proper video card and adapter.

 

[DeadMilkman]

Actually none of you win the gold star...

The correct answer.

Macs have always done a better job of Color Matching... the historical reason was Postscript (you know print like it looks on the screen not in Corrier 12).

Answer Part 2: Design people do VERY stupid stuff... like forget to sync fonts accross every machine / platform.
It is typically been easier to handle fonts on Mac OS... if you DON'T do it you get great fun like the local paper had recently... an add full of little font boxes where characters should be

Answer Part 3: it is VERY expensive to change... (Software quite often now is the expensive part...NOT hardware)

Answer Part 4: Apple has been very good about inovating with the design field...the latest example is complete PDF support on the entire OS (Any app can save any print as a pdf)

Is apple the best choice...that's each places own call...everyone has their own needs and expectations. No one should be forced into any OS because of what some person may say.

 

[calpha]

It's also the architecture of the G4. Since it's a RISC Chip. (and no, I'm not getting into accurate CISC vs RISC chip analysis.....cuz I don't care) Recently, Maximum PC did a field test of the fastest G4 against the fastest P4, and the G4 got walloped.

But like most of the other people say, there's more reason then just the "speed" issue that people talk about. My wife is a designer, and her office is Cheap as hell, and they only have PCs. She used to moan a lot (but noth anymore) about not having Macs to do her work for all the reasons mentioned above. She still fights font problems every day almost on her PC.

Plus, like another person said too....sometimes her pagemaker, or Photoshop EPS files get HUUUUUUGE, and she's had a lot more then just one BSOD when working on very large Photoshop/Pagemaker files.

On top of that, another item is that a lot of good professionial printing shops still use Macs as well.

I've used photoshop on both platforms since version 4.0. I'm not an expert user by any means. But even on OS9, I can count the times on one hadn that photoshop died on me on my MAC, and usually it was something stupid that I did. On my PC, it's a lot more then 5, but I must admit that 7.01 is pretty dang stable.

 

[Nothinman]

Answer Part 4: Apple has been very good about inovating with the design field...the latest example is complete PDF support on the entire OS (Any app can save any print as a pdf)

I've been able to have any app print to PDF for quite a while before OS X came out, it's not even that hard to setup on Windows without buying Acrobat.

It's also the architecture of the G4. Since it's a RISC Chip. (and no, I'm not getting into accurate CISC vs RISC chip analysis.....cuz I don't care)

Current Athlons and P4s are RISC/CISC hybrids that translate CISC instructions into whatever the native chip uses.

 

[MrCookie]

It should be interesting to see what direction the Mac platform takes for it's future processors. Especially with Intel and AMD making the push towards 64 bit CPU's. MaximumPC was speculating that in the future Mac may look to IBM for it's upcoming processors to stay competetive with the upcoming 64 bit PC platforms.

 

[AtomicDude512]

Originally posted by: MrCookie
It should be interesting to see what direction the Mac platform takes for it's future processors. Especially with Intel and AMD making the push towards 64 bit CPU's. MaximumPC was speculating that in the future Mac may look to IBM for it's upcoming processors to stay competetive with the upcoming 64 bit PC platforms.

Stay competitive? Ahahahahahhah!