Camera Labs

[EDIT - I've made this thread sticky as a general Mac vs PC thread - thanks! Gordon]


Hi Everybody,

Today just before my lunch I was discussing with my manager about work related issue and somehow at the end it turned out be PC vs MAC war....

He was pushing me that only MAC has the fantastic abilities to work with photography and movie making... PCs are used only to work with office related works and they don't have a better graphics quality. He also challenged that all the movies in Hollywood are only through MAC and none are from PC.

Is that really so? Is PC really a product of downtrodden? I have always been a PC person since my school days ( Not too long )

CL Users here, have you guys opted for MACs just because they have better handling capacity in graphics area?

I'm really looking forward to your replies.

Mods, kindly change this discussion to the appropriate topic if it is not.

_________________
With Cheers and smiles...!!!!
Swami
----------------------------------
- Panasonic FZ28

Oh dear, when will people stop arguing about camera manufacteurs and OS .
Right, i use both Windows and Macs, and prefer Windows usuability for day to day tasks, also i love the fact that Windows will run on MUCH better hardware for the price, in comparison to Mac's which are generally underpowered compared to their equivelent Windows machines for the same price!
Although i do love Mac's design, also i prefer the interface (some parts) in OS X. I do think that Mac's have the edge for VIDEO editing, because they are able to run Final Cut Pro. Although i personally say that for the average PHOTO editor, PC's appeal more to them, because they can get a faster and better spec'd machine for the same price, which in turn runs things like LR 2 and CS4 quicker, meaning less downtime, when money is at stake due to deadlines....etc.
So all in all, everyone has different opinions on each OS, based on THEIR opinions, so share your opinion, but PLEASE don't start a Mac Vs PC war

_________________
Ed


Canon 40D + Grip | Sigma 10-20 EX | 17-85 | Sigma 70-200 f/2.8 EX II | 50 F/1.8 | 430 EX II + Other Stuff
Flickr
Portfolio - Not recently updated!
Saving for: -

@podgeorge,

Thanks for the informative reply.

No..... I would never be the reason for a war...

I was saying him that MAC and PC is two sides of coin. But he was saying to me as if Mac is the only world and all the professional guys uses MACs. I really hate such kind of advertisements not only for this but for any kind of product.

So came here to what is the reality.

_________________
With Cheers and smiles...!!!!
Swami
----------------------------------
- Panasonic FZ28

Good thinking, 'Great minds think alike', exactly what i do

Back on topic, unfortunately you get people like you described, who are stuck in their own little world, and just follow what they thinks best, just like sheep following a farmer with food. Just ignore these people if you can, but if your anything like me, you find it really annoying, when people just argue, and can't see the other side of the fence because they're scared of jumping over it.

So in Summary, 'Just don't argue with 'em, if they ain't gonna be proved wrong'. Waste of time and breath.

_________________
Ed


Canon 40D + Grip | Sigma 10-20 EX | 17-85 | Sigma 70-200 f/2.8 EX II | 50 F/1.8 | 430 EX II + Other Stuff
Flickr
Portfolio - Not recently updated!
Saving for: -

My thoughts are that big companies only use Macs because they are renowned for their uptime, in that they dont crash as often as a PC does.

With that in mind, as said above PC's run far better 'bang for buck' than a Mac will.

The printing company I worked for last summer, and work for as a freelance designer had a mac as their main design pc until I arrived. I managed to convince them to ditch the dated mac and go for a dual core, 4gb ram, 1tb hard drive system. That's been running for nearly a year now with no glitches and runs like new. Also makes networking the pcs together a doddle. There's also an image setting machine which works better from a PC sending data than the Mac sending data to the spool.

It's down to the task at hand really - but windows wins hands down on "I can use this thing straight out of the box"

Then there's linux...

_________________
Phil Diggle - Freelance Graphics Designer, Full Time University Student and Novice Photographer!

Camera Kit - Sony A200K 18-70 DT | Minolta 70-210 AF 'Beercan' | Sony 50mm f/1.8 | Jessops Flash Gun

http://www.phildiggle.co.uk | Flickr Photo Portfolio - Working Progress

@podgeorge,

Good.... Me too second that "Great minds think alike....."

Coming towards our topic....
I got tensed when he said check in hollywood all movies are only from Mac.... I argued PCs are like open source where you can play with and Mac are not confined to their own world where they are the boss of their world and we cannot make much changes....


@PhilDiggle,

Thank you for the reply. I appreciate it.
Me too feel that PC gives more (high end configs) than the MAC comparitively.... I think I will be buying a Dell XPS studio 16, with 4 GB RAM into it. I'm also thinking to spend some 1000$ on the laptop. Let me know if you would like to suggest any.

I dont mind if they say PC is for poor people. Let them be happy with what they say. As you said its down to personal choice. I'm really not interested to migrate to MAC now.

_________________
With Cheers and smiles...!!!!
Swami
----------------------------------
- Panasonic FZ28

I'm an System Developer and have been working with PCs and Macs for quite a while.
From an Systems perspective, the Mac OS X is an better, more robust OS than Windows. That's because it's UNIX based so it inherits all the security from that. The animations and cool graphics can have that "wow!" factor, but are not productive and setting up a Mac ban be tricky for new users, not used to the Unix commands and the sometimes very dependable on the Shell, what most of users hate.

Windows on the other hand has an history of "being the worst OS ever", but can we think why for just a moment?
Using Windows is like using your camera on the green rectangle. It won't do anything spectacular, but will get the job done without troubling you much.
Almost any setup you need to do for it to work is automatically done. Its drivers list is HUGE (WAY bigger than a Mac) and you can get some Windows 95 software and put it to run on Windows 7 and it will probably work. Try running an Mac OS 9 software on Leopard and see....

Macs are, in therms of hardware, much stronger "out of the box" than the PCs. You won't find any DELL "out of the box" PC beating up a Mac.. but on the other hand, PCs have more flexibility on that too: you won't find fingerprint readers, card readers and other things we users just love in a Mac.
Macs are known for their "top technology" hardware, like DDR3 and LED screen.. but you can get that on a PC too for less...

I myself have an PC today and just ordered an Macbook. Not because I think Mac is better but because I'm going to need one to develop for the iPhone...
But baseline here is:

- Both can show same performance, if you put equivalent hardware
- Mac OS is more robust and beautiful to use
- PCs are more productive and easier to setup.
- Photoshop and other softwares will run practically the same on similar configurations

Just my 0.02

_________________
Canon 40D and lots of lenses.
my Flickr

Hey Alex_Venom,

I was looking for such a reply. You did it....

I'll take your words that they both provide equal performance. Since I work in computer related industry, I wont be using the laptop too often.

I was looking at some high end glossy wide screens (ofcourse in laptop) so that I could find the flaws in my photos easily... May be the photoshop might look and work well on it.... I'm not sure whether I'm true here.

I like the term "productive" used to highlight the positives of PC.
Thank You Alex.

_________________
With Cheers and smiles...!!!!
Swami
----------------------------------
- Panasonic FZ28

You gotta remember this is true only when comparing PCs and Macs with similar configurations.
Most of the misunderstanding about this has to do with people comparing Core 2.5Ghz Core 2 Duo Macs with 4 Gb DDR3 memory against 2.5 Ghz Core 2 Duo PCs with 4 Gb DDR or DDR2 memory. Totally unfair.

Things you should consider between both:

- Processor (cache size, type, speed and version)
- Memory (amount and speed)
- Front side bus (speed)

Then, things like the hard disk (speed and RPM), graphics card (operations per second).
And last but not least: SOFTWARE.

Many people will say "Oh.. my Windows was slow and now I have a Mac and is lightning fast!"... then you get the Widows machine and see there were services and programs running on the background the user not even knew they were there. Spooling systems, anti-virus, memory paging configurations, indexing and other stuff will consume most of the resources. Without a fine tuning, you can't really improve the performance (let's say.. this is going from the green square to the Manual mode in your camera )

People say you can't spend a year without formatting an PC. Totally untrue. This one from where I'm typing now has Windows XP installed in 2004. It's my main machine and goes strong up to nowadays. Never got a virus.. never has been formatted. I run Visual Studio 2005 and 2008, SQL Server and LOTS of other heavy stuff... and still runs faster than many brand new PCs my friends got lately

_________________
Canon 40D and lots of lenses.
my Flickr

Consumers are at the mercy of the marketing people.

Essentially the two operating systems do the same things. They are using slightly different GUIs to do it, but it's the same tasks.

From a usability perspective, the quality known in the "usability world" as "learnability" is perhaps a little higher on the MAC OS. I.e. some would argue that if you are a beginner, it's easier to pick up and use MAC OS than Windows.

However, the difference is not so great that there are people in existence that can learn it on MAC OS and not on Windows.

Of course the manufacturers will have us believe that there are enormous differences and they employ very expensive marketing firms to persuade us that it is so. But if you take a long cold hard look at the marketing, they don't in fact show us these differences so that we may decide for ourselves.

From a photographer's standpoint, the OS means very little - it's the actual photography-related software that we use. Photoshop is..well..Photoshop..on a MAC or PC..makes no substantial difference.

Having been an IT professional my entire career, I see more similarities than differences. The look and feel is becoming more and more similar too, when you see beyond the color-schemes and the little animations that make up their "brand". Vista/MAC OS..I personally can't get too excited about the differences.

None of them are hard t pick up if you have basic OS knowledge. The basic functionality of the OS is not fundamentally different than it was back in the DOS days. For a common user profile - not a developer or network admin - there really is not reason to feel strongly for one over the other.

Of course what happens is that human nature takes over. If you are used to one of them, you prefer to use that one over the other.

Anyone here old enough to remember when Microsoft Word began to take over from Word Perfect? If you were a practiced user of Word Perfect, it as a pain in the neck to move to Word. All the incessant mouse-clicking and moving the mouse around to do basic tasks that you knew the keyboard shortcuts for, seemed incredibly slow. Now we are all used to Word and when that happens, you realize that Word is just fine. Same with MAC OS and Windows. There really aren't that many dramatically different ways to do the same thing on a computer.

Cheers

@Alex_Venom,

Yes I totally understand what you say. I could surely comment on PCs but not on macs. I've been using PC for the past 11 years .... But for the past 5-6 years very fiercely (that's because of my job).
As you said, there are lot of things that will account to the speed of a computer, a correct mixture of the hardware is required to keep maintaining the speed. Too much of any one is not gotta help.

@LahLahSr,

Yes well said. Apple projects as if they are on top of world and the same with MS.... We are often "made" to believe what is marketed.
mmmm, we would be working on Photoshop either it is MAC or PC. It all depends on the personal choice.
I think I will stick with PC as it offers more hardware specs for the money I spend and it is also more like open source as of now where in I can put any software I want, may be in future MS might also make it like MACs..... Also I'm not rich enough to buy all licensed softwares....

BTW, I have not worked on Word Perfect...

All your comments are appreciated.

_________________
With Cheers and smiles...!!!!
Swami
----------------------------------
- Panasonic FZ28

No difference at all if you use any, or both. I takes just a little practice to be familiar.

this is just true, (Companies always says they are the best, but people is the one saying they got the best) That’s only the human nature.

_________________
Good Aperture Everyone! Good reply is always Making me very very happy thanks...
Sony A700; sony 18-70mm, 18-250.
My flickr!! http://www.flickr.com/photos/loymercs/
My Blog!! http://loymercsclick.blogspot.com/

I very much agree with this post. I've also been in IT for over 10 years.

I prefer PCs mainly because I like to build my own machines with the components I like. There is also the experience factor involved being that I spent 95% of my time working with a PC...and know exactly how to do what I want to make happen.

Neither format is infallible IMO, and I've seen my fair share of problems with Macs as well as PCs. Remember, PCs still hold roughly 90% of the market, so of course you'll hear about issues more often.

Everything else is subjective and personal but I've found that on indentical hardware, OSX runs faster.

_________________
Graham
Flickr

Did you use an benchmark tool or this conclusion is based on your perception when using both?

I ask because many users get the perception one system is faster than the other based on things that actually shouldn't count, like the boot time from the pressing the Power button to the full load of the OS, or the time an certain program takes to load. I've even got users saying "Mac is faster because I can download files faster from the internet with a Mac than with an PC"

Those are not real parameters for "computer speed" since each OS use a different approach to load data, and the speed can vary based from the number of DLL files it will load for an certain job, all to the actual physical position the called program is using in the Hard Drive. Programs on the very extreme out of the HD runs faster than the ones in the center. Put all that together and you can get a significant improvement.

Windows by default will load up a LOT of system files in order to be "ready for whatever the user may want", so it takes more time to start up if not fine tuned.

That's why the only way to show actual performance is running an benchmark tool. That will show the number of operations the system is capable of and the actual speed of memory, bus and everything else

_________________
Canon 40D and lots of lenses.
my Flickr