Macs are over rated for design work. The software to perform graphic design tasks are just as easily available on PC. I have both a Mac and PC in my office, and at home I use a PC. I have no problem with the portability of files and the like.
My Mac PowerPC G5 at work crashes about 3 times a week and has font issues. A project that I’m working on now keeps asking for Times, a font I’m not even using.
My PC has no font issues and pretty much works as advertised. It actually crashes less often than my Mac and I work at home 2-3 days per week so the workload on each is about the same.
When I turn my indd files into PDFs my Mac will create a PDFs that I can’t shrink for emailing to my editors. I actually have to take the PDFs that I create on my Mac to my PC and reduce the file size there!
My PC at home is just as fast as my Mac and costs almost half as much.
Why won’t my Mac let me eject my media when I’m done with it??? I HATE that!
Why does my Mac quit using it’s built in DVD drive (it stopped reading CDs and only reads DVDs) which caused us to replace it every few months? I had them buy a firewire DVD-RW +/- DL drive that, so far, works fine. Side Note: I actually took one of the “faulty” drives home and installed it in my PC… No problems! It works fine!
The biggest thing I noticed about Macs is that most of the processes happen behind a big curtain that most people never look behind. This puts them well outside of their comfort zone when the time comes to lift the hood and fix it.
The nature of a PC is to pretty much have everything happen right in front of you which gives you complete control. Essentially you are given as much rope as you need to either tie together a nice system or hang yourself.
I’m a cheap-skate at heart so I ask myself, “… Why pay twice as much for the same damn thing” Software is expensive enough. You hardware doesn’t need to be expensive also.
Macs don’t “Just Work”… Cast my vote for Macs being overrated.
This simply isn’t true. Mac CPUs are made by Intel. It’s HDs are made by Toshiba. They use ATI and NVidia graphics cards. All computers are a collection of components made by disparate companies.
What you mean to say is that Macs are assembled and packaged by one company and, most importantly, they are built in a very limited variety of configurations. It’s that fact that makes them tend to seem more stable and be more out-of-the-box ready. It limits their complexity and at the same time limits their scalability. The narrow set of configurations allows the company to realistically be able to QA and stress test their hardware-software pairings and achieve consistent and predictable results.
The fact that literally anyone can build and configure a PC in any assortment they choose by nature less consistent and reliable. This allows users to much more precise in their specifications and goes a long way towards keeping prices down.
Most of the issues that anti-PC people usually quote regarding frustrating driver issues and instability are not the fault of Windows or Microsoft but rather the fault of the company that assembled it (be it HP, Acer, Sony or the DIYer).
As always, the consumer must decide what suits them best. Do you want a reliable, one-size-fits-all machine with a single point of contact for support or do you want a scalable, customizable and tunable machine with all the pitfalls that tinkering and third-party computer assemblers can introduce?
Having used both Mac and PC for graphics design, I’d say you can’t go wrong with either. The differences between them are usually minor and won’t hang you up.
The difference lies in the saleability of your product. Graphics generally don’t matter if they’re for print or web. Some publishing companies will only use Macs, but Macs can open and create PC-compatible files. Apple was smart to implement that.
If graphics are going to be used to be used in video game engines, you’ll want to go with PC-based since they’re the market. But when you’re getting into feature film quality output, Macs are better built to handle that kind of production. That’s a niche market the PC doesn’t really concern itself with.
Adobe designs its graphics software for both platforms, and there’s no function that I know of that’s exclusive to one or the other. The issue won’t be Mac vs PC; it’ll be Adobe vs everything else.
They were a godsend back in my amateur cinematography/editing/post-production/directing/screenwriting days.
For music production, I think it’s a matter of personal preference. Macs are certainly easier to use for music production; you can quickly and easily set up a functional studio around a Mac without much technical knowledge (about computers, I mean). OTOH, my buddy DJ 1pt uses a PC for his music; he’s just enough of a PC geek that he’s built himself a damn fine system for it. He’s a relentless online gamer too, and you need a PC for new games, so he uses one.
Myself, I would love to have both, but I don’t have the money. C’est la vie.
Office–the actual Microsoft Office suite itself–has been available for Mac OS since around 2003 IIRC. Works exactly the same, the last time I tried it.
I would never let a relative chat on MSN Messenger. That’s one of the most singularly destructive applications I’ve ever seen, and provides little functionality that isn’t easily duplicated by the horde of AIM clients out there.
I’m using NeoOffice, a version of OpenOffice which has been Macified.
OpenOffice itself is also available, but it requires the Unixy X11 windowing system, and thus doesn’t use the Mac UI conventions. Similarly, The Gimp and Inkscape (raster and vector art respectively, like Photoshop and Illustrator) are also X11 programs.
Another thing, music related. Go to any indie show. Chances are, almost 99% of the time, if someone is using samples in their set, it will be a Mac. I’ve seen exactly one case of someone using a PC, a Dell, and it froze up halfway through the set and they had to restart.
I think this is the best answer so far. I’m an office professional who is an expert Word and Excel user, and I switched to a Mac for home use over a year ago. I love my Mac - I multitask the shit out of it, and it just grinds away and rarely freezes up (my old PC was freezing up approx. every five minutes, and it never worked right from day one). I surf the web and do all my email functions in my Mac OS (using Safari, which I almost never have a problem with).
I did have to buy Windows XP and Bootcamp to do my professional work in (I’m a landscape designer on the side), and the programme I want to design in isn’t available in a Mac version - this is probably the biggest problem with Macs - getting compatible programmes. The Windows XP/Bootcamp solution is somewhat awkward (I have to sign in and out of my OS every time I switch*), but it’s worth it to me to compartmentalize the virus-targetted Windows software and still be able to surf and email with few virus worries. I transfer files from my Windows OS to my Mac OS using a flash drive - it is not a problem at all.
I work on Word and Excel on the Mac versions in my Mac OS, but I don’t like them - I’d prefer to go back to the Windows versions of these. They seem to have basically the same functionality, but I’m used to word-processing a certain way - some of the menus and commands are moved around, and I don’t like it.
Bottom line - I recommend getting Macs to new users, but my ultimate solution would be two machines sitting on my desk; a Mac for anything connected to the outside virusy world, and a PC for my work stuff (landscape designing and word-
processing and spreadsheets). Which, thinking about it, is basically what I have now.
*The Mac/Windows OS switch really shows off a difference between the systems - my Mac OS takes about 30 seconds to come up from a dead stop, and my Windows OS takes a good minute, minute and a half. Bloated much?
featherlou, I’m curious about your having to switch OSes via BootCamp. Did you find that using Windows inside Parallels or VMWare Fusion didn’t work? Was it too slow? I’m thinking of doing that to run Windows and Windows programs without having to switch out of Mac OS.
My first guess, based on the post, is that the program needed can’t handle the graphics emulated in Parallels. (Not sure about VMWare.) Parallels has a lot of advantages but high-quality graphics still aren’t there. Similarly, it’s my experience that you can only really run Parallels using 1/4 of the available RAM for the virtual machine and not kill the rest of the computer. In other words, a 1 GB computer should allocate no more than about 256 MB to the VM, a 2 GB computer no more than 512 MB, and so on. If the program needs a true high-end graphics card and a ton of RAM, I’m not surprised that virtualization wouldn’t work.
See this and this (directly below it on the same page). If I don’t employ some trick to remove MSN Messenger completely (and it always requires a trick, which is another sure sign of an evil piece of software) the moment I install Windows, I end up paying for it down the line, either in memory management, overall stability, or security.
Fine machines once you get used to them. And get used to the fact that you just can’t always get the software you want. And sometimes someone will insist on a Windows app, like “doc must be on Word”. Macs are far less prone to Viruses and Spyware. If you are used to calling your geek buddies for free Tech-support, this may be an issue.
I’m personally sick of Windows, but it is comfortable as a “screw around” OS. I find myself, as an computer science student, doing much more on Linux distributions (or, just as often, Unix).
For the average user, I guess either works depending on your preferences. I think there is a bit of apples and oranges though when talking about the differences. You don’t buy a “Windows” machine for the most part. You buy a computer in which the people that made it just happened to install Windows as the OS. I don’t know anybody that has a Dell computer or something they bought that isn’t Apple, that has OSX on it. Apple is the entirety of the computer and the OS (customized to work properly with all the hardware since the hardware was mostly selected (or the software created around) the software. Windows is a catch all created to work on just about any system and isn’t a “hardware specific” OS.
I personally think OS is so popular with the artsy type because they want to mess with their art, not their computers. For those that can tweak our Windows systems to work equally well as any Apple computer, the distinction is moot and becomes one of only preference. So I personally feel for the average “computer dumb” (self-claimed) person, an Apple is better.
It’s my experience that there is more audio, video, and other editing software available as freeware for OS X. It’s harder to get software for OS X overall, especially commercial stuff, but a lot of stuff is available as freeware, either written for OS X or for Linux and runnable using X11
The programme I need to run in Windows simply wouldn’t load in Crossover or Parallels (you could be right about the other issues, asterion - it is a graphics-heavy programme). I didn’t try MVWare Fusion (I didn’t know about it at the time, and after trying two virtualization programmes that didn’t work, I was done with that avenue).
