What makes a Mac better for designers?

macman

Most professionals in the creative sector who use Macs will tell you that they are more productive because the OS is more intuitive.

[Deleted User]

macman wrote: »

Most professionals in the creative sector who use Macs will tell you that they are more productive because the OS is more intuitive.

Utter nonsense

There is zero window management features on OSX which does quite the opposite of making it an intuitive design machine.

joeypesci

Apples are over priced. I find designers are into fashion, they go with what is fashionable so end up with a Mac and get screwed by it due to the price. You can get a PC that will be more powerful and now with Windows 7 even more stable (my XP machine and now the Windows 7 machine rarely crash unless I'm making them do so my messing about. Being an IT engineer I like to mess about ).

I know an IT Network consultant and MS Trainer who now loves Apple kit. He just says it just works and a nice break from Windows based systems, however, even he admits they aren't perfect. He says you pay over the odds for the name and the build quality of all their kit is seriously questionable.

I also think it was a throw back from when PCs weren't as stable as they are now. Designers that get stuck into this mentality that Apple kit is better for graphic design, not only get screwed over by over priced Apple kit but also get screwed over by the over price graphic software like Photoshop . But Photoshop is over priced on whatever machine you get.

Apple kit now a days is no more stable than Windows based system so don't be fooled into thinking OSx is more stable.

HO87

parallax_20 wrote: »

Get the best of both worlds. Find a similar spec PC for a fraction of the cost of a Mac, and dual boot both OS's. Looking on Amazon, Snow Leopard is about £25 for a single user license. Unless you're drawn to the lifestyle design of a Mac! Otherwise its just throwing good money away.

Ah, a Hackintosh. Lovely idea - been working on my project for the last week - though its not quite as simple as you suggest. Eminently do-able - or so it seems so far - if you are reasonably familiar with the use of command line/terminal and are prepared to fiddle.

However, graphics cards seem to be a real issue especially if you went for Nvidia instead of Ati! :doh: And definitely not a cheap project if you want to run Snow Leopard.

CharlesCooper222

Apples use non-sequential programming - a throwback to the inventions of Steve Wozniak - the original apple Engineer and partner of Steve Jobs.

This non-sequential ability to store and retrieve data meant that the Apple could run smoother and faster than an equivalent PC that used sequential programming instead. In other words, the PC has to put everything down lets say from line 1 to line 100, whereas the Apple can store and retrieve data in any order it likes - much faster!

Additionally, instead of using clunky hardware to store data and count cycles, Wozniak used software and fewer chips to speed things up.

This ability to process data gave Apples a huge advantage when it came to mathematically intense operations such as graphic rendering and display. At a simple level, even today just moving the mouse across the screen seems to move just a bit more smoothly on the Apple than the PC. And this all stems from Wozniak 30 years ago.

Clever bloke. Steve Jobs was the visionary of the two who marketed this advantage into the Cool world of design - something he's still doing today!
That's why designers prefer Apples!

macman

[quote=[Deleted User];37605802]Utter nonsense

There is zero window management features on OSX which does quite the opposite of making it an intuitive design machine.[/QUOTE]

So why do most creatives still use Macs, when the same software is now available on PC's?

almillar

Zero window management features? When was the last time you used a Mac, heard of Expose for starters?!

culpepper

At the firm where my husband works,they use both but the macs are kept mainly because the machines they were connected to were only available as mac compatible. There are scanning machines worth thousands of pounds but they cant get windows software for them. Even such things as the older wacom tablets are incompatible with newer versions of windows but will work fine on a G4 mac.
You dont have to keep defragmenting a mac(we have 2) and jpegs are notorious for being heavy fragmenters.

Lil306

CharlesCooper222 wrote: »

Apples use non-sequential programming - a throwback to the inventions of Steve Wozniak - the original apple Engineer and partner of Steve Jobs.

This non-sequential ability to store and retrieve data meant that the Apple could run smoother and faster than an equivalent PC that used sequential programming instead. In other words, the PC has to put everything down lets say from line 1 to line 100, whereas the Apple can store and retrieve data in any order it likes - much faster!

Additionally, instead of using clunky hardware to store data and count cycles, Wozniak used software and fewer chips to speed things up.

This ability to process data gave Apples a huge advantage when it came to mathematically intense operations such as graphic rendering and display. At a simple level, even today just moving the mouse across the screen seems to move just a bit more smoothly on the Apple than the PC. And this all stems from Wozniak 30 years ago.

Clever bloke. Steve Jobs was the visionary of the two who marketed this advantage into the Cool world of design - something he's still doing today!
That's why designers prefer Apples!

TY Charles,

Sums it up perfectly :money:

[Deleted User]

almillar wrote: »

Zero window management features? When was the last time you used a Mac, heard of Expose for starters?!

Expose is a very long winded way of switching between windows and includes every open program. If i'm making a website I will have multiple screens open at various stages and in various applications. Expose wont do what I want it to, simple as.

macman wrote: »

So why do most creatives still use Macs, when the same software is now available on PC's?

They don't. It's perceived incorrect knowledge (general ignorance) in the tech sector. Most design companies use Windows PC's as they scale better and are a lot quicker than the OSX alternative at anything/everything.

Market share alone proves this.

You can also create a cheap cluster using Windows/*nix that OSX doesn't offer so I can render a complex drawing in a fraction of the time an OSX machine would take at a fraction of the cost.