Mac vs PC

[byork]

Hi All,

Since taking up photography a few years ago I have been a regular visitor to this website and most of what I've learned has been through these visits....both via Micheal's tutorials and bits and pieces from regular contributors to this forum. Many thanks to all those who have responded to questions posed by other members....hopefully down the track when I have more experience, I can make some useful contributions myself.

That said, the reason for my first post is that I am thinking of converting from PC to the new iMac 24" and wondered whether anyone could clear up a couple of questions for me. It seems to me that many, if not most photographers, prefer mac's over PC's and wondered why this is so. I've been told that most Adobe products run better on mac's...true or false???

The other thing is, there seems to be consensus out there that mac's are not as prone to the freezes and crashes PC's are notorious for....although I see from other posts on this forum that there are people who would refute that.

Any other comments relating to this topic not covered by the two questions posed above would be much appreciated.

Cheers
Brian

[Josh-H]

Hi All,

Since taking up photography a few years ago I have been a regular visitor to this website and most of what I've learned has been through these visits....both via Micheal's tutorials and bits and pieces from regular contributors to this forum. Many thanks to all those who have responded to questions posed by other members....hopefully down the track when I have more experience, I can make some useful contributions myself.

That said, the reason for my first post is that I am thinking of converting from PC to the new iMac 24" and wondered whether anyone could clear up a couple of questions for me. It seems to me that many, if not most photographers, prefer mac's over PC's and wondered why this is so. I've been told that most Adobe products run better on mac's...true or false???

The other thing is, there seems to be consensus out there that mac's are not as prone to the freezes and crashes PC's are notorious for....although I see from other posts on this forum that there are people who would refute that.

Any other comments relating to this topic not covered by the two questions posed above would be much appreciated.

Cheers
Brian

Hi Brian,

Well.. long story short you are going to get as many different answers to the question of mac vs. pc as there will be posts.

That said.. my own experience as a PC user all my life finally came to a head about 12 months ago when I got totally fed up with windows and bought a mac book pro. Two odd weeks later I bought a MAC Pro, then an iMac for my wife and have never looked back.

For me they run much faster, more smoothly, easier to use, more intuitive and the list goes on..

My only regret in going mac is I didnt do it years ago.

Hope this helps.

[John.Murray]

I currently run both, and find both O/S's to have strong and weak points - it's easy to nitpick a particular O/S depending on your point of view.

One advantage Macs have is complete control over the hardware the O/S runs on - even with this, there *are* problems . . .

In the PC world, I've found Vendors that load a lot of junk in the mistaken belief they are doing their customers a favor.  My favorite example involves  a particular HP laptop with a built in wireless network adapter.  The driver that HP ships (and HP update *still* suggests) has a memory leak and will sooner or later cause an exception.  An updated driver is on Intel's website and works perfectly.

I've had no real issues with Windows stability since NT4.0, other than bad device drivers / printer drivers.  Starting with XP, I've made it a point to *not* install anything that is not HQL certified - I've never had a hard lockup / crash (bluescreen).  I've run Vista since it went gold in November of 2006 with no issues, other than patiently waiting for software and hardware makers to develop applcations and drivers that conform.  I'm currently running Windows 7 on a 5 year old Dell Laptop (2GB RAM, 7200RPM HD) and am quite impressed.  So far Lightroom 2.3 and PS CS4 run perfectly . . .

I'm also running a Mac Pro with Bootcamp and find both OS X 10.5.6 and Windows 7 RC1 run beautifully, I'd actually give the performance nod to Win 7....

[Dustbak]

I run Mac for the last 3 years after having been a Windows user since 2.0. For me both can work where I currently prefer Mac because I tend to do more work with it instead of tweaking the OS.

At this moment, I am disappointed with the performance of PSCS4 on my new MacPro. CS4 can only use 1 core in most instances and is downright slow. On PC CS4 is 64bit at this moment and should outperform the Mac version pretty significantly. Hopefully this difference will be resolved with either 10.6 or PSCS5.

As for stability and overall performance. I believe both Windows as well as Mac can perform about the same. For Windows you need to know what components to put inside, the choice is larger so is the margin to make mistakes but in most cases I find XP/Vista rock solid. I also give Windows the upper hand by a narrow margin when it comes to performance.

The MacPro is only so much more silent and gracefully built, a true joy to work with.

[dalethorn]

The Windows PC's huge advantage (for automation) is Command Mode (DOS), but that's a world that very few users ever see.

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

Apple decided to not support the API that Photoshop CS uses ("Carbon") on 64 bits, so Adobe cannot support 64 bit code on Photoshop presently. Adobe has started conversion to the "Cocoa API" needed for 64-bit MacOS X applications on Intel but it's more than 10 Million lines of code so it will take some time.

MVH
Erik

I run Mac for the last 3 years after having been a Windows user since 2.0. For me both can work where I currently prefer Mac because I tend to do more work with it instead of tweaking the OS.

At this moment, I am disappointed with the performance of PSCS4 on my new MacPro. CS4 can only use 1 core in most instances and is downright slow. On PC CS4 is 64bit at this moment and should outperform the Mac version pretty significantly. Hopefully this difference will be resolved with either 10.6 or PSCS5.

As for stability and overall performance. I believe both Windows as well as Mac can perform about the same. For Windows you need to know what components to put inside, the choice is larger so is the margin to make mistakes but in most cases I find XP/Vista rock solid. I also give Windows the upper hand by a narrow margin when it comes to performance.

The MacPro is only so much more silent and gracefully built, a true joy to work with.

[Jack Flesher]

Hi Brian,

Well.. long story short you are going to get as many different answers to the question of mac vs. pc as there will be posts.

That said.. my own experience as a PC user all my life finally came to a head about 12 months ago when I got totally fed up with windows and bought a mac book pro. Two odd weeks later I bought a MAC Pro, then an iMac for my wife and have never looked back.

For me they run much faster, more smoothly, easier to use, more intuitive and the list goes on..

My only regret in going mac is I didnt do it years ago.

Hope this helps.

Ditto everything Josh said above. This was my experience exactly too, only I switched about 18 months ago to the MBP, then a few months later added the Mac Pro.  

I will add in response to Dale's post that you can tweak a whole lot of the Mac OS and software using command line (terminal) code on it too.

At the end of the day, I do not think there is a right or wrong answer;  both have their advantages and disadvantages, and it will be up to you to decide which particular set you prefer to live with.

One added point -- I used to have to reboot my PC daily or multiple times per day to clear issues.  This was with XP and I am sure (hope) things have improved with Vista, but on Mac/Leopard I reboot maybe once per week or once every 2 weeks on average --- and it takes less than 2 minutes to do.

[Ken Bennett]

We had a mixed marriage for a while -- I'd been on a Mac my whole career, my spouse on a PC. This is going back to around 1990. While I can speak a little PC, I'm not fluent, and my spouse's constant requests for tech support were driving me a little nuts. (No, dearest, I have no idea why your PC is doing that, or why following the very clear directions from Microsoft won't fix it.)

So last year we bought her a Macbook. Things were a little rough for a while -- the transition takes time going in either direction. But now I can help her when she has a question!

As for why I would pick one over the other, it's simple: my father, the electrical engineer, still raves about DOS and how great it is. Me, I'm not smart enough to use a PC. I'm just a photographer. So I use a Mac.

[dalethorn]

As for why I would pick one over the other, it's simple: my father, the electrical engineer, still raves about DOS and how great it is. Me, I'm not smart enough to use a PC. I'm just a photographer. So I use a Mac.

Not a plug for any system over another, but, it's not so important how easy a system is to use the first or second time, or even the 50th time.  It's much more important how easy it is to use, or more precisely, how efficient it is to use, the 500th and 5,000th time.

[charleski]

I've used both Macs and PCs for several years. OSX is very nice, Windows 7 (I'm currently running the release candidate as my primary system) is very nice as well. Both are excellent environments for photo-editing, though the fact that PS is currently only fully-64bit on the PC side might skew that (the fact is that I often load the 32bit version so that I can use plugins that haven't gone 64bit, so in practise it's less of a big deal).

iMacs have glossy screens - think *very* hard before buying one for photo use, and be sure that you will be positioning it so that you don't have distracting reflections on the screen. Whatever system you use, a matte screen will be better for accurate colour work, glossy screens add an artificial 'punch'.

In the end, it's not a big deal. Both systems are just fine for photo editing. I'll have to admit that I like Win7 a bit more than OSX, but I think that's largely subjective. The days of MacOS being 'the' OS for creative apps are ***long*** gone.

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

One advantage of the Mac is that it is usually a well integrated package. There is only one vendor of Macs, namely Apple. On a PC every maker cooks his own soup, so each peace of equipment is different. I used to build my own PCs which is enterely feasible. There are benefits to both approaches. With Apple there are very few different systems to choose from but they are uniformly and well supported from Apple.

A good example is the iMac. It is built on notebook components expect for the hard disk which is a 3.5" one, much better. The use of notebooks components keeps power consumption down and also noise. The down side is that iMacs are not very powerful and screen is built in so that's not much of a choice.

I you add an external screen it just works. Color management is simple and "automagic".

On a PC part of the system software comes from Microsoft and some from the maker of each card. So you may download updates for your Windows from Microsoft but for your graphics card from ATI or Nvidia. No problem if you are hardware/system management oriented but if you just want something that works out of the box Mac will be the easier platform to handle.

I had an issue with my iMac, so I thought it needed a repair so I was running Windows XP for a couple of weeks, definitively a bad experience:

- I had 32 bit version and it had only 720 MByte memory accessible by Lightroom (of the 2.25 GByte installed). There is a 3 GByte switch on Windows XP (in some 'ini' file) file that may help, that limitation rendered Lightroom unusable with my camera and printer.
- At that time (December 2008) very few portable computers were available with 64 bit Windows.
- Hopefully Windows 7 will be smooth, I have no experince with Windows Vista but heard little positive about it

A final issue with Windows is the amount of malware written for it. Although there is some malware for the Mac there are AFAIK no known viruses for the Mac "in the wild". The Antivirus programs for the Mac essentially protect against tens of thousands Windows viruses which don't effect the Mac.

Whether a Mac or PC, a normal user should never have administrative privileges, a practice which was default on Windows at least until XP and still is on the Mac. Security in Mac OS-X is based on well proven principles originating in UNIX and Linux and little changed since the introduction of Mac OS/X.  Running a system as an administrator is a very bad idea.

We have quite a few people at work who converted to Macs from PC and never looked back. One of my colleagues was at "Python" workshop recently and everyone was using Mac OS/X. My friend expected that most of the people taking part would use Linux on PCs, but not a single PC was seen.


Best regards
Erik

I've used both Macs and PCs for several years. OSX is very nice, Windows 7 (I'm currently running the release candidate as my primary system) is very nice as well. Both are excellent environments for photo-editing, though the fact that PS is currently only fully-64bit on the PC side might skew that (the fact is that I often load the 32bit version so that I can use plugins that haven't gone 64bit, so in practise it's less of a big deal).

iMacs have glossy screens - think *very* hard before buying one for photo use, and be sure that you will be positioning it so that you don't have distracting reflections on the screen. Whatever system you use, a matte screen will be better for accurate colour work, glossy screens add an artificial 'punch'.

In the end, it's not a big deal. Both systems are just fine for photo editing. I'll have to admit that I like Win7 a bit more than OSX, but I think that's largely subjective. The days of MacOS being 'the' OS for creative apps are ***long*** gone.

[Jeremy Roussak]

We had a mixed marriage for a while -- I'd been on a Mac my whole career, my spouse on a PC. This is going back to around 1990. While I can speak a little PC, I'm not fluent, and my spouse's constant requests for tech support were driving me a little nuts. (No, dearest, I have no idea why your PC is doing that, or why following the very clear directions from Microsoft won't fix it.)

So last year we bought her a Macbook. Things were a little rough for a while -- the transition takes time going in either direction. But now I can help her when she has a question!

As for why I would pick one over the other, it's simple: my father, the electrical engineer, still raves about DOS and how great it is. Me, I'm not smart enough to use a PC. I'm just a photographer. So I use a Mac.

My own experience almost exactly.

Jeremy

[byork]

Thanks everyone for your input....helps alot. Looks like I'm better off sticking with what I'm using for the time being, although I note the enthusiasm of those who have gone to mac from pc, and will probably still look at changing some time in the future. Thanks for the tip on iMac's glossy screen Charleski....what about macbooks? do they still have matte screens?

[byork]

Just checked the apple website and see the macbook also has glossy screen....how do you guys using these machines find working with this screen? Is it much of an issue for you?

[geotzo]

Just checked the apple website and see the macbook also has glossy screen....how do you guys using these machines find working with this screen? Is it much of an issue for you?

Well, if you go for the 17" Macbook pro, you have the option of matt screen, but not with the smaller ones (weird). That one I own and I m very happy with it. Color accurate work... its ok but you might want to get an extra monitor for that.
If there is any point stating another opinion on this debate, I must be one of the few who use both PCs and Macs and I should say I m happy with both. I currently use a Macbook pro, a real beast that costs big money IMO, an newish Mac Pro (Dual QdCore) and my main computer which is a PC, packed with the latest tech (2XQuads 8G Ram, 4XRaptor V. etc), running Vista 64 and MacOs too!. My honest and maybe subjective to a point, observes are these:
-You can't really find a match for MacBook pro, but they cost a small fortune
-MY PC is faster than MY Mac, when it Runs 64bit batch processes and about the same when it Runs the MacOs
-The PC cost half the price of the Mac, for the same or less Hardware including Raptor Hds. Them two run Qdcores but Apple charges twice as much for the same Intel technology...
-If you go for a PC, you have to have it built by someone who knows what he is up to. Macs are all designed by one team, who knows very well how to combine hardware, but with PCs its a chaos of drivers and incomptibility issues. It can be done though.
-I never had any serious issues with PCs in the past, but like I said, they were correctly made.
-Apple should reconsider their pricing, as it can get insane sometimes.
I agree you should wait and get something different than an iMac. It's not really up for the job and their screens are not good for photo editing. If I was you, I would get a decent PC or go for a used Mac Pro, there are plenty to find on ebay.
All the best
George

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

Of course you're asking the wrong question. It should be: Canon vs. Nikon (or is it Deardorf vs. Linhof??)



 

[PeterAit]

Hi All,

Since taking up photography a few years ago I have been a regular visitor to this website and most of what I've learned has been through these visits....both via Micheal's tutorials and bits and pieces from regular contributors to this forum. Many thanks to all those who have responded to questions posed by other members....hopefully down the track when I have more experience, I can make some useful contributions myself.

That said, the reason for my first post is that I am thinking of converting from PC to the new iMac 24" and wondered whether anyone could clear up a couple of questions for me. It seems to me that many, if not most photographers, prefer mac's over PC's and wondered why this is so. I've been told that most Adobe products run better on mac's...true or false???

The other thing is, there seems to be consensus out there that mac's are not as prone to the freezes and crashes PC's are notorious for....although I see from other posts on this forum that there are people who would refute that.

Any other comments relating to this topic not covered by the two questions posed above would be much appreciated.

Cheers
Brian

Converting from PC to Mac is a waste of time, money, and effort. They are both fine platforms that will do anything and everything you ask them to. Anyone telling you that Adobe products run better on Macs is an ignoramus. Criminy, the 2 computers use the same CPU! You may have been exposed to the Mac-evangelists, a small group of fervid people who don't realize that a computer is just a tool and treat their Macs as objects of religious devotion. I'd rather spend my time and energy taking photos.

Peter

[Jonathan Wienke]

I have a MacBook and a collection of PC/Windows hardware, and use both regularly. My VAIO laptop came with Vista installed and I can't remember the last time I had a BSOD. The VAIO is definitely faster than the MacBook, and contrary to what the Apple zealots would have you believe, OSX has its warts and quirks, too. My MacBook has built-in Bluetooth, but using a Bluetooth headset or earpiece with it is mostly an exercise in frustration--either it can't make the connection, drops the connection, the audio has bad skips and crackles, or else switching to a Bluetooth device routes all audio into a black hole from which there is no escape. The MacBook is the only machine I can currently use for tethered shooting (Canon hasn't bothered with Vista support for the 1Ds or 1D-MkII, but that's another lengthy rant entirely), but until a few weeks ago, I had to go through a complex procedure involving the Menu button to establish a connection between either of my cameras and the MacBook. And I've had far more problems with the MacBook refusing to wake up from sleep mode (computer SIDS?) than the VAIO running Vista.

Overall I plan to stay primarily with Windows, because PC hardware is cheaper per unit of performance, and the bugs and quirks aren't really all that different between Windows and OSX. OSX still doesn't have a function to maximize a window to fill the screen, and who the hell is the idiot who came up with the notion of ejecting a removable drive by dragging it to the trash??? Both systems are capable of doing anything one needs to do, and both have similar levels of security glitches and app crashes and driver problems and counterintuitive OS design stupidities. Both systems have hardware problem, too. My parents briefly tried switching to Apple, but gave up in disgust after having 2 iMacs die on them in less than a month on top of the frustration of trying to completely re-learn how to use their computer.

Apple charges a price premium for their pretty hardware. If the look of the box the CPU sits inside is more important to you than its price/performance ratio, and you don't mind taking the time to learn a vastly different OS, by all means switch. It's not that Apple makes bad hardware, far from it. But it's not so much better than PC/Windows to justify the price premium for the hardware and the hassle of learning OSX. That said, if your computer background is all Apple, the cost savings you'd realize from buying PC hardware instead of Apple may be offset by the hassle of learning Windows.

Anyone who claims one system is vastly superior to the other is a religious zealot.

[John Camp]

If you're not interested in computers, Macs are better. The learning curve is shallower in switching between various functions. I'm all Mac now, having switched from PC five or six years ago. I switched because I was *not* interested in computers, learning how they function, learning how to re-arrange the guts to get better performance, etc. I wanted a toaster.

I will say that the Macs, overall, have not compared favorably to my PCs when it comes to reliability. I've had hardware problems with three of the seven I've owned -- nothing sophisticated, they just stop working. I take them to the Apple store, come back in three or four days, and they've put in a new chip or whatever. Once I got a new board for free (before I realized that I better buy AppleCare for each and every product) when the store guy told me that I suffered from a "known issue." There was never a recall or any big online debate about it, just a quiet fix for people who developed the problem. If it had been a PC, people would have been screaming from the rooftops...

I run a Mac Pro (my second), a MacBook pro (my second) a Mac Air, and two iMacs. The biggest problem I have is that Apple has never really developed a sophisticated word processing program, but relies on Word (and Office for Mac) to fill that function. None of the Macs (all with Intel chips) reliably run the latest Word, even with the latest updates. I got so desperate that I bought the Mac word processor, which is supposedly compatible with Word (which is the publishing-world standard) but I hae' me doubts. We shall see.

Biggest benefit of the Macs is the huge screens, which so far have integrated faultlessly with the Mac Pro. Biggest problem is the Time Machine, which I have never gotten to work with the Mac Pro. It's sitting there now, its yellow LED blinking at me, as it has since about last fall. I've given up. (Guy at the Apple store, "hey, yo, it oughta work fine." Thanks for that.)

JC

Edit: by the way, when I bought my latest Mac pro, they didn't both to tell me that there was no built in wireless card -- that's an extra. You'd think it would be there, since they're common enough in $500 machines, and this one cost $3,000 -- but, I got it home, fired it up, and then had to drag it back to the store and wait a couple of days for installation. You should no longer have to ask if a computer has wireless: you should be told if id *doesn't.*

[budjames]

Having been a Mac user many years ago, a PC user for about 14 years and now for the last 2 years a Mac user again. My vote is for Mac.

I maintain 4 computers in my household connect via a LAN that includes B&W and Color laser printers and an Epson R2400 inkjet printer. Since going back to Macs, my technical issues have virtually disappeared.

If you have to run PC-only apps like I do for my financial planning practice, my MacBookPro runs Windows using VMWare Fusion better, faster and more reliably than the Dell laptop it replaced. For $69 and a legitimate copy of Windows XP Pro or Vista, you can have the best of both worlds. Personally, I run as much as I can on the Mac side and only the PC-specific apps in Windows.

Cheers.
Bud