Windows V Mac

pikaia

Hi,

Which do you use. I am thinking of switching to Mac.

All the best
Brendan

Heebie

I bought a mac specifically to run Photoshop. I also made sure that my Mac was one of the ones that has a video card supported by Photoshop for acceleration.
Some of the video cards used in Macs will by used by Photoshop for doing actual operations, rather than just for displaying the image on the screen..which can speed it up immensely. The Windows version of Photoshop does not use the video hardware for acceleration. (or at least it didn't when I was considering getting a machine for photo processing.. I've heard other people say that it now does, but I've not seen any documentation from Adobe verifying this.)

I generally use Linux for most computing needs, but Linux and X do not have good support for color profiling, which is pretty necessary for getting accurate color, which is why I was considering Mac vs. Windows to begin with. Both have good color profile support.

5uspect

I use both and TBH there is very little difference between the two for Photoshop. Apple are far more popular with creative types and they also have excellent displays.

OS X is a very nice OS but Windows 7, it must be said, is also excellent. Also in general the initial cost is higher with a Mac. (the so called Apple Tax)

CS5 will use your GPU on Windows for OpenGL operations, but not all cards are supported.

I also would say that with the continuing spat between Apple and Adobe over Flash it appears that Adobe are cozying up to M$, in fact there even rumors of a takeover by M$ at one stage.

What else do you plan to do computing wise?

melekalikimaka

was windows til i die til recently when my laptop died and needed new one and also needed to use final cut pro alot, not supported on windows, took plunge and got macbook pro. never looked back, i find its alot faster on similar spec pc, especially after a few weeks where windows usually start to lag. no problems profiling the screen, trackpad is amazing, makes photoshop a breeze. Everything is just that little bit easier, you will not meet someone whos gone pc to mac and regret it, its a premium you pay, but the benefits are worth it imo

Borderfox

Given the chance I would get a mac but not possible at the moment

Hugh_C

I've been using Macs for a very long time and personally wouldn't use anything else. But that's just I don;t know how to work Windows and have no interest in doing so. Photoshop runs well on my iMac and MacBook Pro. I use FCP a lot too and that's Mac-only, I also use Avid a lot and find them the same on Mac and PC, the only thing is that when stuff starts to go wrong on Avid, I haven't a hope of fixing it on a PC.

Horses for courses, I wouldn't listen too much to advocates of either side, just get what suits you best.

jaybeeveedub

Mac in my experience is a bullet-proof option, no major headaches since 1994...

anything that has gone wrong has been user-fixable, and not buried in 500 layers of folders and applications like Windows....

I bought one toshiba laptop to run a particular piece of software and never had anything but problems with it...

also periperals are a breeze....

airport express + time machine + wireless printing/filesharing/streaming music and it all works... out of the box and all the time!!

pikaia

Thanks for all the feedback, I kind of had the feeling that most would say Mac. Also on the plus side I suppose they are cosmetically very good to look at, But I notice that alot of my Book & video tutorials for CS5 are done on Mac so thats what made me curious. The only thing that puts me off is their price,but i think when my current laptop decides to give me hassle I think I might switch or I get a bit of a windfall.

thanks for the reply's
Brendan

Paul_Hacket

I have a diffferent approach to the people who responded above Pikai. I've been a Mac User for over 20 years and have taught multimedia and photo editing for years, as well as doing a lot of video work. Until recent times Macs were really the only option for this kind of work in my opinion but over the past couple of years Apple has basically abandoned it's professional users and in now orientating its machines much more towards regular consumers who don't need to use them for pro work. The Macbook Pro and Mac Pro ilne are totally underpowered and come with ridiculously weak graphics cards which are totally pathetic and overpriced in comparison to the ones available on the pc side.

Also, Apple at this point doesn't ship any machines with Nvidia's cards which have a special engine that accelerates CS5. Basically at this point you can buy a pc with better specifications than a mac (USB 3, ESATA, powerful graphics, etc) for quite literally half the price.

It might still be worth investing in the Mac if Windows was still a lousy operating system but Windows 7 is great - it's rock solid and feels very snappy. Personally I'm in the process of changing all my hardware over to Windows and I don't regret it. The only software that isn't available on windows is Final Cut Pro - however Adobe Premiere is an excellent program and is hardware accelerated on windows if you have an nVidia card making it literally several times faster than FCP (Apple hasn't given FCP a siginificant upgrade in years).

I would give getting a good windows machine with a powerful Nvidia card serious consideration.

5uspect

Paul_Hacket wrote: »

I would give getting a good windows machine with a powerful Nvidia card serious consideration.

AMD cards can accelerate Adobe products. It isn't a CUDA only party.
nVidia has really dropped the ball in recent years. AMD/ATi cards have wiped the floor with the green team in terms of both performance and price not to mention the awful rubbish nVidia pulled over failing cards, crappy underfill and a delayed and crippled Fermi.

The spat between nVidia and Intel over chipsets is why the 13" MBP hasn't seen an upgrade to newer generation Intel CPUs.

AMD make the best cards at the moment. nVidia have finally started to recover with the 580 and 570 cards but they lost a whole generation and pissed off everyone.

Paul_Hacket

5uspect - sorry but your post is totally misleading. The Mercury Engine in CS5 is optimized to use CUDA. Using CUDA cards makes things literally FIVE TIMES faster in Adobe Premiere for instance. Yes AMD make great cards, but CS5 isn't customized for them and they don't have CUDA. And Mac isn't supporting Nvidia right now partly because the Nvidia cards work so well with CS5, while Apple wants people to use it's own pro apps such as Aperture (which is frankly terrible - I can say this as a professional photo editor) and Final Cut Pro (which was a great piece of software until about three years ago but hasn't had a major upgrade in years and is like a sloth when working with HD video).

As I said in the original post - I've been working in this field for 20 years and don't take the prospect of moving over to Windows lightly - it's a major move for me. But Apple is not remotely interested in supporting pro users at this point - you can't even use their display profile calibrator's to turn down their over brightened (for consumers) monitors anymore - I have to get a third party software app to do this.

Again, I'm not knocking AMD, but for pro users who work with CS5 Nvidia make the best cards right now and Apple has cynically decided not to support them in an effort to get users to stick with Apple branded apps. Same thing with Flash - it works better on the $200 laptop I have in my studio than it does on my $2,500 17" Macbook Pro.

Cork24

I have a MAC and not once looked back I don't like windows 7 or vista the only Windows they did get right was xp and win 2000 win me was a pi&& take every port and protocol was open for hackers what i like best about mac is theirs not much virus for them yes since they moved to intel and now bigger then ever crackers and.hackers will have their eyes on MAC users but since its a unix base OS it takes alot of skill to write a worm for that never mind the chip set on it. So for peace of mind its MAC.

melekalikimaka

Paul_Hacket wrote: »

you can't even use their display profile calibrator's to turn down their over brightened (for consumers) monitors anymore - I have to get a third party software app to do this.

exactly the same as any high end pc user no?

i agree bout fcp, but premiere is vastly different to use, and i'm sure once fcp gets its update, things will change. as for the gpu powered cs5, tbh my mac runs faster regardless than my similar specced pc with cuda card, windows just slows down after a week or two imo

5uspect

Paul_Hacket wrote: »

5uspect - sorry but your post is totally misleading. The Mercury Engine in CS5 is optimized to use CUDA. Using CUDA cards makes things literally FIVE TIMES faster in Adobe Premiere for instance. Yes AMD make great cards, but CS5 isn't customized for them and they don't have CUDA. And Mac isn't supporting Nvidia right now partly because the Nvidia cards work so well with CS5, while Apple wants people to use it's own pro apps such as Aperture (which is frankly terrible - I can say this as a professional photo editor) and Final Cut Pro (which was a great piece of software until about three years ago but hasn't had a major upgrade in years and is like a sloth when working with HD video).

Hey I'm a long term nVidia fanboy, but their recent behaviour is unjustifiable. Also we're primarily interested in Photoshop here so Mercury playback is of little interest. You will get hardware acceleration in Photoshop with either AMD or ATi.