macs r better?

Osmer_Toby · Mar 26, 2004

well, i did a recent 180 degree turn- i was pricing laptops, exclusively pc's since that was what i knew and had always used. did not realize there was such an advantage to going mac- i had an inservice today on imovie- some pretty cool stuff. anyway, the instructor convinced me that pro image editors, including pro photogs, use mac almost exclusively.

any thoughts? anyone know macs well and can make recommendations? i have about 2k to spend....

Skyeg · Mar 26, 2004

i know macs pretty well. i use both G4's and G5's as well as some really nice pc's . i use the same version of photoshop on both. i have rarly seen much of a difference in performance. the macs i use are more expensive then the pc's. i personaly would never buy a mac. the difernece in performance in no way justifys the price differnece. the thing about using a pc for video and photo editing is just getting the right stuff. i put SCSI hard drives in mine. its much faster then EIDE. if you get a fast procesor, good hard drives, good ram (and a lot of it 512MB+, preferably 1GB+), a good graphics card and a good monitor then the difference will be minimal.

i would never recomend that anyone buy a mac unless they just like them more and have money to waste. get the best PC you can afford and it will be as good or better then a mac and there will be more software and peripherals you can use with it, also it will be more upgradable then any mac.

Osmer_Toby · Mar 26, 2004

ahhhh, thank you thank you thank you. i was hoping someone like you would come along and tell me that- i was dreading making the switch, just cause of the extra learning.

thanks for reply, dude- i appreciate it!

markc · Mar 26, 2004

I think a person's comfort level with an OS is far more important than what the OS is best at, unless a person is willing to put some real time and effort into retraining.

Skyeg · Mar 26, 2004

if the os is really the issue, you can make windos act almost identical to OS X and OS X act like win XP. the os, in my opinion doesnt matter at all(as long as its stable), its all about the hardware and in my opinion macs just dont cut it.

Digital Matt · Mar 26, 2004

People seem to complain most about pc's when it comes to Windows and it's stability, but here's what I think. If you are a professional, and you are spending alot of money on a pc, running windows, and you dedicate this machine to using photoshop and whatever programs you use, it will run fine. Most people get into trouble with Windows when they install Diablo 2 and Photoshop and 3d Studio Max, and have 30gigs of mp3s.

Allow yourself lots of extra hard drive space for paging files and scratch disks, don't install tons of programs/games who's drivers are all fighting each other, and Windows XP is as stable as OSX, imho.

If you wanna play games, get another pc, or partition your hard drive, and have two operating systems, one for games, one for work, then the drivers won't clash.

And don't forget to scandisk and defrag!

spicychicken · Mar 26, 2004

i hate how people say that macs never crash because they damn well do. matter of fact, i'd say that my pc is more reliable then the macs i've used at school.

then again the school macs have probably been beaten up by people downloading games and instant messanging software. but still..

Skyeg · Mar 26, 2004

the computer i use is a 3ghz pentium 4, a little over a gig of ddr memory, 2 80gig scsi hard drives(raid 0) ati radeon 9600, i use win xp pro and i have the folowing software installed on it: photoshop 7, internet explorer, mozila firefox, zone alarm, diablo 2, rise of nations, winDVD, windows mediaplayer, AIM, and my raw converter nothing else, and iv never had a problem...

if u wanna do seperate partitions you can... but if you can afford it, just get seperate hard drives. if you use scsi drives and put them on treys you can just switch them for different purposes, since scsi is independant of the system bios they dont even need to be the same size drives. i do this on a differnt machine to switch between windows and unix.

metroshane · Mar 26, 2004

I'll offer my opinion for what it's worth....

I was a PC user up until last year when I made the switch. To me it's like buying a ferrari (mac) or trying to build one out of a kit (PC). Sure you can probably get a PC to perform like a mac...but we all know what happens when we stick our grubby little fingers under the hood. So, what's the point? Price? OK, you got me. Macs are more expensive than pcs...but you don't see everyone driving around in Kias either. The thing I like most about macs is the ease of use between programs. Mac does an outstanding job of gettting their programs to interface with each other. I like the way I can drag a tune straight from a CD to my video project. One step is all it takes to convert that tune to MP3 and format it to work in iMovie.

Next, Mac IS the industry standard for all things imaging. There is a reason. If I were a business owner, I would rather spend the money buying fully operational right out of the box technology than have someone build a bunch of frankenstiens and the nightmare of administrating all of them.

However, as a person with limited funds...I can totally buy into the PC route. But if you want a mac you'll never be happy with a PC. IF you want a Ferrari you'll never be happy with a kit car.

Osmer_Toby · Mar 26, 2004

wow- excellent food for thought in all cases- thank you gentlemen.

here's how i see it at this point: given my 2k ceiling, i'm better off buying a pc laptop, especially since it will be dedicated almost exclusively to image editing. i don't play computer games, so at most i might be browsing the web or writing on it.

this logic sound sound?

Skyeg · Mar 26, 2004

i agree that macs are the industry standard...but i think thats only because of the kind of people in the industry. metro said its like buying a ferari or building one form a kit... i think of it like buying a ferari or buying a customized WRX that has had a new engine put in it (br pros) and is now just as fast as the farari , only different. feraris arnt even good cars..they are just popular and expensive, same with macs...if they were in microsoft's position and microsoft was in theirs i think there would be a differnt industry standard, windows.

and for $2000 you couldnt get a mac that would be worth buying, i think your making the right choice

metroshane · Mar 26, 2004

Yes, for 2k....don't bother with the mac. Especially if you already have the PC software.

Harpper · Mar 26, 2004

A similar discussion was post awhile back. Here is the link: http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4362&highlight=macs

Instead of repeating myself I'll let you read that link Osmer. I own a G4 Mac only because the Graphic Design industry uses mainly Macs so I was forced to use this system. I also have a PC running on XP and I can honestly tell you that I would have been happy staying with XP. I actually use both of them on a daily basis.

Unless you really want to spend the time and money learning a new system then I would stay stick with PCs. Just remember that you not only have to pay higher for the Mac computer but you also have to buy all new software since Macs can't really use your PC software. Well, there is a way but why buy a Mac then?

And yes, Macs crash. My Mac OS X crashed only 2 days after getting it. It is, however, pretty stable for the most part but then again so is my XP. All this PC vs Mac arguement is as silly as Nikon vs Canon....basically they are both great systems. If you are going to get a PC just buy it from a good company like Dell and others.

edited: Using the Nikon vs Canon example, if you already have have Nikon lenses then doesn't make sense to stick with Nikon? Same thing with PC vs Mac. Since you are already used to PCs then I stay stick with them. Unless you really hate Windows then you aren't missing out on much...

photobug · Mar 26, 2004

Either PC or Mac will do what you want them to do. I switched to a Mac 20 months ago after finally losing it when my PC (running Win98 SE) crashed for the 7th time in an hour, and I haven't looked back.

Win XP is stable. It oughta be- Microsoft has only taken 9 years (remember Win 95 was gonna end all our computing woes?) to get it that way. OS X is 3 years old and is just as stable as XP.

Maybe mine is the exception, but my iBook has never crashed. Not once. Neither has my PC at work running XP, but it only does email and Word, so it isn't exactly taxed very much.

For me, there are 2 really good reasons (and they're very personal and subjective) to run a Mac- 1) Bill Gates has nothing to do with it, and 2) nobody bothers writing virii and other nasties for Macs. Oh, did I mention Bill Gates has nothing to do with Macs? :lol: