Is PS on a Mac better than PS on a PC?

neil_g said:
mainly due to people like the manager in the opening post :p
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LOL - but in his defence, back in the 'good ol' days' the graphics industry used mac and it was nigh on impossible to read a mac-created file on a PC. You could always read a PC created file on a Mac, but not the other way round. So those working in the industry kept to Macs. I well remember not being able to transfer a mac-created word document to my PC on a floppy disk.

Now, of course, that argument has pretty well vanished, but the residual preferences still remain. ;)
 
I was teaching a few classes in a local 'Technology College', basically a school with money (lots of) for computers. They had rooms full of iMacs, and they looked lovely. :love: And they had Photoshop too, :) but they were for PC :eek: and run in dual boot with XP on the Macs. :thinking:

I don't know if they were running any Mac specific software, but I would have thought that Photoshop would be one of those programs which the Macs were bought for. :shrug:

I didn't see the point of all the expense of iMacs, when I imagine only a few students would end up actually working with them, and anyone who would leave school and go into an industry to work with them would learn to use them. :shrug:

I would rather have the fastest computers with the best screens rather than some which looked nice and were compromised in other areas. be they Mac or PC. Obviously a Mac that can dual boot covers all eventualities in theory, as long as you have all the programs you want to use on the same OS. Ot is extra expense though. :bonk:
 
Jack

I think you've hit the nail on the head

and i only think its partly about the OS, for me i wake up and see my nice shiny mac sitting there and i feel a bit warm inside, and when over people see it there impressed by it.
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It isn't all about the tech spec when it comes to Macs and logic isn't the only argument. Don't worry I'll not knock you for being a fanboy - I'll save that for the Apple Fanboys in the office :)
 
arad85 said:
Ahh got you. That'll be using PAE support (as linked to in the previous post). Thought you were saying that you could access more than 4G from a single process.... You can't which is why the 2.1G limit from Adobe makes sense ;)
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Cheers, I guess we are boring everyone else but hey no complaints yet :D I still don't get the 2.1Gb limit, unless they wrote crap software like with flash, as the 4Gb limit is per process. Photoshop runs in a different process compared to the OS so there is no need to share that part of the memory. FCP was a good example of software that took advantage of this model and just launched more processes and thus easily could take say 32Gb (y)

On the topic, it is interesting how anyone keeps focussed on purchase price, TCO is the key factor. Heck we don't even know how the purchase is funded.
 
E17phil said:
This thread has got me thinking about the computer we used to have at school.

One Research Machines PC running MS Basic. How things have changed :)
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When I started computing at school, we had to write programs on squared sheets, send them 12 miles away to have them typed in and return 2 days later with the inevitable

ERR line 10

We did get an RM 380Z (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_Machines_380Z) in the second term though...

How old I am.... :(
 
arad85 said:
We did get an RM 380Z (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_Machines_380Z) in the second term though...
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Yikes... a quote from that page:

The 380Z used a Z80 microprocessor (hence the name) with up to 56 KB of user RAM.

...

The 380Z was sold mainly to schools in the UK, with some also sold to industry. In 1979 a dual 8-inch disk system with 56 KB of memory cost £3266, and a 16 KB cassette-based system cost £965 (excluding VAT).
 
Am resurrecting this thread as the argument has surfaced again. Budget cuts meant I have had to limp along for another year with my rapidly fading macs. I have been promised they will be replaced, as will the PCs in my editing suite.

Given that the Assistant Head's main argument is purely aesthetic - he wants a Mac suite in the school to impress visitors - in my mind it makes sense to put macs in the editing suite (film) and run AVID and replace the macs in photography with PCs, as per my original suggestion.

Any thoughts on this?

Spooks
 
Spooky said:
Given that the Assistant Head's main argument is purely aesthetic - he wants a Mac suite in the school to impress visitors
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Keeping out of date computers because they look nice! :eek: Madness. :bonk: Shiny computers will only impress those that don't know what they are looking at, anyone who does will think 'why are they using computers that are so old?'

While Macs are beautifully designed, and look very nice, they are designed, and so easily aged when the design changes. PC's are just boxes, for the most part, and could have any combination of components in them. The PCs in work are very old, but were transformed by putting more RAM in them, not something potentially easily and cheaply done with Macs.

A computer room should have the best cost effective equipment available, if they come in plain beige boxes, so be it. :shrug: Technology, especially computers, changes so quickly, and while Macs seem to hold their performance longer, it has to be balanced with cost. Those that have to make those decisions would hopefully make the right decision between type of computer, (influenced by choice of software) cost and longevity. :shrug:


You can always get PC's which also look nice, if that is important.
 
Capital purchase is negligible compared to the total cost of ownership, I'd keep the Macs everywhere and look at the true total cost of ownership.
 
You can't just blankety-blank state that without a specific comparison to another equivalent system used in the same educational area. That is why a full TCO should be performed to objectively determine those matters, then again if the assistant head is going to overrule and the board of governors agree then why bother, just get the macs ;)
 
Oh dear. Oh deary dear. Heart ruling the head. Not good in these situations....
 
There is no difference in mechanical terms. The difference is in the operating systems. If you just had two machines running only photoshop, you'd be hard-pressed to find a real difference. However, on OSX, anything media related just appears to be a lot more enjoyable.

I think it's down to which interface you use. I used came to Windows from Linux, and used PS for 8 years before switching to OSX two years ago. I'd never, ever, EVER go back to windows.
 
dejongj said:
You can't just blankety-blank state that without a specific comparison to another equivalent system used in the same educational area. That is why a full TCO should be performed to objectively determine those matters, then again if the assistant head is going to overrule and the board of governors agree then why bother, just get the macs ;)
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true.. too much politics involved.

ive said many many times to my boss that we could easily swap out the macs for equivilent spec PC, we'd save costs (just spec'd up 2 mac laptops and screens and we wont have change from £5k), integrations will be better with other core packages, the user experience in the adobe suites are identical.. etc.

but, the backlash would be massive. macs are seen as a "cool, must have" for designers/media persons. plus it spills over into other users/depts that definately do not need £1000+ laptops etc just because the rest of the dept have one. its a rediculous situation that wastes money and company time.
 
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London Headshots said:
I think it's down to which interface you use. I used came to Windows from Linux, and used PS for 8 years before switching to OSX two years ago. I'd never, ever, EVER go back to windows.
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Just shows how preferences come into it. Every time I try a mac I want to bury an axe across it's screen within minutes - I find it that frustrating....
 
I own both and the pc is better for me, also pc repairs are cheap and macs you technically pay for a very well marketed Pc (you can run windows on a mac after all)
 
I stuck to pc bit buy a wide gamut monitor I have a dell 27 inch u2711 at 2500 resolution even better reviews than apple but these days all the major software program's have windows versions where they didn't always so no in my opinion pcs are better and macs have that horrible glare
 
Thanks for the continued comments all. Upshot of the meeting is that our editing suite will be upgraded with macs. Photo suite with PCs, 22 inch monitors and CS5!

Can't wait to get my hands on the new toys!
 
What spec are the machines?
 
PS. you do realise that if you use Photoshop Premiere Pro for video editing it has an accelerated Mercury Playback Engine which uses the GFX card to accelerate some rendering tasks. It is a significant performance boost too.

The problem being that it only works on Nvidia graphics cards. Macs use ATI.... :shrug:
 
We will be using AVID on the Macs for our video editing but thanks for the heads up.

Spooks
 
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