Let’s not forget Office Space, in which the main character is saving his work in a desperate attempt to get out of the building before Lumberg asks him to come in on Saturday, and it clearly shows that he’s using a Mac OS. The windows, the icons, everything looks like Mac OS.
Then he shuts the computer down, and just before he turns it off, we see a shot of the black screen with C:> on it.
Most interesting Mac I’ve ever seen. 
Macs tend to be good eye candy/look nice visually
They’re used a lot in the industry
Product placement deals
Mactivism: many Mac users are also Mac fans, and are keen to get their products as much exposure as possible.
In filming certain news stories, (1) and (4) have both encouraged me to include my Powerbook, rather than my Vaio, in certain shots.
Hehe…Office Space. I thought that was a weird Mac, too. And, Doc Nickel, I’m pretty sure it’s not that I’m just looking for Macs, because it’s quite the opposite. I look for PCs when I’m watching movies, but all these Macs just keep popping up. I guess you just watch more movies with PCs. 
Right – it would have been quicker, just as effective, and more realistic to get the aliens to just install MS Windows.
Not that I’m trying to defent the logical consitencency or realism of the movie (which was wrong in so many other ways, such as depicting the British forces as WW1/Biggles characters “Pip Pip! Tally ho chaps! What what!”), but it was made pretty clear that Goldblum’s character had reverse-engineered the alien communication/operating system.
That is some mangling of consistency.
I reckon you need coffee desperately.
Not to get TOO far into a Cafe Society hijack, but…
Wouldn’t it be more like the aliens reverse-engineered our technology? Y’know, to interface with our satellite system? That would’ve meant that their communication system would have been compatible with our own.
The good guys in the first Mission Impossible movie used Apple Powerbooks, IIRC. The bad guys used IBM ThinkPad 701 laptops, the model with the expanding keyboard. I happen to know that because I had the same ThinkPad at the time.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,2542763a1896,00.html
As for movie editing, the industry standard is a PC running AVID. Final Cut Pro is being used more these days in music videos…etc.
I think they use macs becaus e they look cool, and they’re not too common. Whan 95% of the viewers are used to the windows interface it makes sense to show something different just to make it look cooler. And OSX does look damn cool.
A lot of this stuff is paid for. I remember a computer I helped design (a Melard telecommunications portable) was going to be used in the movie Swordfish, but Dell paid a little bit of dough and lo and behold, Hugh Jackman and his buddies were all Dell dudes.
My son worked in the graphics side of the movie industry, and yes, filmmakers use Macs because of their superior graphics capabilities. Because of that, directors and their ilk are most familar with Apple products. They, like most humans, are most comfortable with what is familar.
picunurse - what type of graphics in the movie industry are you talking about? I’m an industrial designerand I have a lot of friends in the industry - one interned at ILM, one was an assistant director on the LOTR trilogy (first unit, no less). What exactly are you claiming they use macs for? The music industry and graphic design are where macs shine and are used more than PCs (although it’s not exclusive).
Video editing is typically done on a PC running AVID, although, like I mentioned earlier, Final Cut Pro is finding a lot of supporters.
3d modeling, animation, and rendering are all done on either PCs or Unix boxes.
As was posted earlier, it’s usually paid product placement:
http://www.apple.com/hotnews/features/starringapple.html
Of course, regardless of the model of computer, it must make clicking or beeping noises as the character types.
I guess the first time I saw a recognizable Mac in a film was Star Trek IV, when Scotty picked up the mouse and tried to talk into it. “Computerrr…” Of course, its presence in the office of a metallurgist didn’t make a lot of sense, anyway.
keithnmick, you’re absolutely right about the high-end CGI tools running on UNIX and Intel. But from personal experience, I believe you’re wrong on this statement:
I’ve been in WAY more editing suites with Mac-based Avid systems than PCs. I suppose it’s possible I’ve been in a skewered sample of rooms, but I’ve been in quite a number of editing suites for many different types of projects, and can count the number of PC-based Avid systems I’ve seen on, well, one finger. I remember thinking it was strange to see, even though I knew they existed. I hate to request a cite, but do you have anything to back that up?
istara nailed the four reasons I was going to give to the OP.
Why do people insist that Macs are superior graphics machines? As keithnmick has pointed out, the majority of computers used for high-end production needs are not Macs. Macs simply can not compete in this arena because they are underpowered and overpriced (although the new G5 might make Apple a bit more competitive).
Apple’s dominance is in the print design industry - magazines, newspapers, packaging, etc. Not because Macs are better for graphics, but because of the early adoption of the Mac OS (along with partnerships with Quark) by the printers and designers in an era when Microsoft was still using MS-DOS.
[quote=keithnmick]
Um, I have no idea, what you’re smokin’ keithnmick, but Mac has plenty of 3D applications - Lightwave, Electric Image, and most notably, Renderman.
Renderman, as you may be aware, was created by Pixar for them to use internally, and now they licescense the technology to other people. This is the software that Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Finding Nemo, etc was created with. Yes, the movies themselves were created on Sun systems (they have recently switched to intel-based linux systems for the upcoming Incredibles movie), but please don’t say that “Comparable CGI software is not available for macs”, because that’s just not true.
And if you don’t think that the Mac version of Renderman is just as good as any other version, then you don’t remember who owns Pixar…
Also, please remember that two of the giants in the professional-level graphics industry - Adobe and Macromedia, started out as exclusively Mac-only.
I must include a disclaimer that I am an IBM-compatible user, not a Mac user, but I hate blanket statements like that which are patently false…
critter42
As I understand it, Renderman is NOT available for the Mac OS - the introduction of the G5 has prompted Pixar to reconsider.
From Pixar’s website:
http://www.pixar.com/renderman/artist_tools/techspecs/index.html
And I quote:
The RenderMan® Artist Tools™ and RenderMan Toolkit™ are available on three popular platforms - IRIX, Linux, and Windows.
SUPPORTED HARDWARE
The RenderMan Toolkit 10 is supported on the following hardware and operating systems:
Intel, RedHat Linux 5.0 & up
Silicon Graphics Iris, IRIX 6.5 & up (mips3)
Windows NT, XP, and 2000 (Service pack 4)
The RenderMan Artist Tools 5.0 is supported on the following hardware and operating systems:
Intel, RedHat Linux 5.0 & up
Silicon Graphics Iris, IRIX 6.2 & up (mips3)
Windows XP and 2000 (Service pack 4)
Note - I know that “renderman” is more of a spec, I just assumed above you were talking about Pixar’s RenderMan.
Sorry for the hijack folks. For the record, I use both PCs and Macs every day, I’m looking at both on my desk as we speak.
Before this devolves into yet another pointless debate, may I refer you to the previous thread Platform hijacks-the last resort of the pathetic loser.
The discussion is interesting. The evangelism is not.
Ditto. The editors at my last place HOWLED with misery when a purse-string admin fuck up gave them PC Avid suites instead of Mac. The difference between Avid - and I’m talking the lower end versions here, like Newscutter - not the hi-end stuff - on PC and Mac is just incredible. The most amateur, untechie person would only have to click a couple of keys to wince at the unresponsiveness of PC Avid by comparison.
Now Mac’s core is UNIX, I don’t know how that will affect the higher-end market. Dual G5s… flying away
I could well be mistaken on the PC Avid workstation being the standard for film editing - my assertion is based on beery discussions with professionals, not my own video experience. I know that way back when macs were the standard, but since then I thought that the scalability and performance of PC workstations had switched everything. I’m more than happy to be corrected though. Fighting ignorance and all that.
I still think product placement and the very cool and non typical industrial and interface design of Macs is why they get chosen, not because the movie industry is dominated by Macs.