Any Mac users out there?

I'm going to begin writing a usability comparison article on Windows, Mac, and Linux. With any luck, I should be able to post it tonight.

 

You sure have a very extensive response pattern Nick! Thanks for the insights.


EDIT: More power to you Durb. Can't wait to read it!

 

I use a 15" 867Mhz G4 PowerBook. Absolutely love it (although I'd drop it in a heatbeat for a 17-incher ) I use it for video editing, programming, web design, you name it.

_Nik

 

Green - thanks for sharing! Out of curiosity, how much RAM do you have? I'm starting to get a feel for what other people around here use - it's kinda neat...

 

Right now, I'm sitting on a border-line-acceptible amount of 512MB. Someday I'll bump it up to 1GB. Then comes the dual-proc G5, dual 30" monitors, 8GB of RAM, a rack full of XServes for rendering. . . *glazed look*



Wow, it's been a while since I've been here

_Nik

 

Lol, I racked up an Apple order one time...wanted to build an editing studio (basically)...man I could spend $50,000+ in a flash there. It's fun to go customise the systems to see what's new.

Good times.

 

the whole os9 thing is over apple has put os9 devopment to bed. any app worth its weeight is osx now. infact to save a bit of space i just dumped os9 on my quicksilver.

and on to the infamous anti swith add ill break it down.
the porgram disapering -- old os9.1 but and a bit in 9.2

shutting down a locked up program only seams to happen in office and internet explorer who make those?
and it is apple force quite and it will shot that app.

click and drag off of a cd its a prefrence thing and osx defalts to the same thing as a pc now it copies.

auto play cds os9.1 again. and in itunes but you can have it not auto play.

the jack russel terier thing is a bit funny and true. but userful updates form mac keep you mac happy.


you can restore in osx the file is only gone if you secure delete it.

the dock can be set so that you can work better. alla move the dock.

 

True. The ad is a funny one though you have to admit. I downloaded it a while back and get a good laugh out of it now and then.

 

yes but the han solo switch is far funnier
oh for those of you that want to know what the mac blue screen of death looks like (this may include mac users, i have onle witnessed this online and in mac addict).
http://dotclue.org/I/osx-bomb.jpg

 

^ ^

LOL! This is true. The only way I've ever gotten that to pop up (twice maybe) in years of having a Mac is to do so much to the system that it decides to make you sit down and shut up for a minute.

Btw what was the Han Solo switch you spoke of?

 

lol, see Mac isnt perfect either

would a laptop be nice for video editing? cuz were thinkin bout getting one anyway, so why not make it a mac since we already have 2 Pc's

 

Haha no computer is perfect - they were designed by us humans!

Laptops can be great for editing - I'm typing on one right now and I use it for everything from e-mail to professional video projects. I posted the specs a ways back...it's not a supercomputer but it gets the job done and fairly fast too. (Need more RAM though.) If you're like me and always out and about a laptop may suit you better than a desktop. (Still planning to get a dual-G5 however.) It all depends on how much raw power vs. portability you need.

 

i dont have a laptop now but when i interning we used one if the shoot was more than an hour away and for a few days. we used a 15" powerbook to run dailies and then to rough cut the add or pice we were working on so when we hit the studio running avid at the time we would have our edl and a good start at the finished work.

 

Okay... Here goes. Rather than pasting this HUGE block of text here, I put it in a Word doc.
Download and enjoy

It came out to over 5 pages. I couldn't bring my self to try to paste that here. Too damn long...

What I'm hoping is to shed some light on all the accusations people make of each system, and the misconceptions therein.


Feel free to quote from it to discuss in this thread.

 

lord_biped - I've done the same thing with weddings and other video projects. It's nice to be able to work on the go!


Durbnpoisn - nice work. The only thing to me was most of the Mac downsides you listed I've never really had a problem with. I consider myself an experienced Mac user and I have no trouble keeping track of files or window sizes and such (there is a maximize lol). But I am running the latest version of OS X and Apple basically did a complete overhaul from OS 9 when they created the new version. A lot of people that haven't dug deep into OS X over a period of time have expressed similar faults in the operating system. Just a note.
One thing I will say is that I've read stories of veteran Unix users switching to Apple because of the similarities of the core working components, but taking advantage of the Mac interface. One major reason I love Macintosh is the pure power of a true 64-bit architecture that is easy to manipulate once you get used to it.

Excellent work comparing AND for stressing that it is ultimately up to the user. I've got the document in my "Documents" folder for future reference. Thanks for taking time to do that.

 

FYI- There is at least one Linux distro (Yellow Dog) that works on a PPC. Thats the Mac processor. SO if you have a Mac, you can download yellow dog, and use your cool hardware with a superior OS!

For Linux distro info check out http://distrowatch.com

 

I just started reading this thread because I usually get into a pretty heated argument, but I've been using a Mac for close to 3 years now.
My high school gave me a G3 powerbook to use to make a video/slideshow for my graduation.
Up until that point, I depised using Macs because I hated OS 9. That all changed when I got this bad boy. They had just installed 10 on it, and I immediately fell in love with it.
I used it for about 2 months at the end of my senior year, then promply explained to my parents why I needed an extra grand for the laptop I was going to buy for college.

2 months later, I purchased my 667 Mhz Powerbook. The disc drive crapped out on me once, but within a week, they had it working again. Other than that, I haven't had a single problem with it. I only have 512 megs of RAM, but this summer, I'll be getting another 512 to stick in there.

 

Hmmm, interesting Durb. On the Mac stuff, is most of it about OSX or 9? Because now for OSX, there IS a maximize, and the file locating/placement is now more similar to Windows. Oh, and what do you mean dialog boxes? or resource fork? I can't picture what you're thinking of. I do hope that perhaps Linux will become a bigger thing than it is now in the future, because there's just so much possibilty for it.

 

Dialog boxes: Little boxes with dialog in them. Usually used to convey information to the user, or to request some action. Like when you go to Help/About, you get a dialog box that has information in it.

Resource Fork: Time was that Macs used that as a method of file association. The Windows system uses file extensions and the registry to tell what to do with files of what type. The Mac split that in two; It basically served as a two-part descriptor for what the file actually is.
But, that information was completely hidden from the user. In fact, you couldn't tell what kind of file a document was unless the resource fork was intact.
If you copied a Mac file to a Windows machine, then brought it back, the resource fork was destroyed, and the file was rendere useless.
On top of that, if you had, say, a Quicktime movie, it needed to be produced with a Resource Fork in order for the Mac to understand it, and it needed to have the fork removed (or "flattened") before the file was usefull on a Windows machine.

It was completely ridiculous, and a terrible terrible concept. From what I gather, it's completely gone with OSX.
EDIT: I just found a great link that explains this much better


As far as Linux being a bigger thing. It's already bigger than you know. Case in point... Where I work just brought in a new system for encoding live video feeds and storing them. The entire system runs in Linux (Fedora, Reh Hat). And the machines use no GUI. The entire system is controlled via a web interface through any terminal on the network.
Our new phone voicemail system just got installed by Avaya. That runs completely Linux with a web based interface also.

 

And that $500 laptop that Wal-Mart carries now runs Linux, too.

 

Wal-Mart's on board. Niiiice.

 

Lol

 

First off- DVeditor, the Han Solo Switch Parody was done by me. You can check it out at my website:
Dreamland Digital

Durb, pretty cool document you put together there. 5 pages?!?! Dude, you need to get some fresh air more often.

Anyways, a few clarifications on your document:
quote: "I?ve turned on many a Mac only to see a little icon of a bomb in the middle of the screen. Or, a picture of a computer with a ? in the middle. I?m especially fond of when an application crashes and you get a dialog that says, ?An error of type 2 has occurred?. Yeah, thanks. That tells me a lot!!"

This went bye bye when OSX came in to being. Type 2 errors and their ilk no longer exist in OSX. In fact, this leads into another clarification....

quote: "Unlike Mac or Windows which routinely crash completely when one process dies."

This is definitely not the case now with OSX and XP. Programs run in protected memory and the system can usually recover just fine from a crazy app. Remember, OSX (and not XP as was suggested earlier, although you clarified the Windows Kernel issue) is based on FreeBSD so it really is just unix at its core.

quote: "The reason for this, though, is actually the Mac?s greatest downfall - all that proprietary hardware and software. You buy a Mac box, it runs Mac stuff, and that?s IT."

Although not being able to run Windows software is a drawback in some cases, the fact that Apple makes the hardware and the OS is actually a very good selling point. When Apple writes their OS code, they know EXACTLY what kind of hardware will be in it when it ships and they do a pretty bang up job of squashing bugs because of that integration. The fact that Apple also makes a majority of the software most people use on their Mac also ensures that their world class applications are tightly integrated. However, I would argue that Macs are much more in line with PC pricing now than ever before. I've read several articles actually doing some price comparisons with Macs and similarly configured PC and the price difference is minimal.

quote:"They (Apple) locked down the technology and refuse to let other manufactures make hardware clones."

Actually Apple did allow other companies to produce clones, and it almost killed Apple. Umax actually made Mac clones for a while in the 90's, but once Jobs came back he quickly killed that. Apple did miss the boat with clones back in the 80's though.

quote:"For all it?s simplicity the Mac interface just drives you into sloppiness. It?s very difficult to keep your stuff uncluttered and organized. It makes for a very inefficient way to work."

Hmm.... that may have been your personal experience, but I actually like OSX's Column views as well as customizable window toolbars. Plus there are plenty of good free utilities for creating docks and other folder and application shortcuts for efficient navigation. You might have just given up too early on the interface. It's also possible that you were using an early version of OSX which was slow and difficult to get around in. Things have changed quite a bit with 10.2 and later.

quote:"Which leads to the next point. Dialog consistency. One of the biggest problems with Macs is that there is no commonality in the dialog boxes. Every developer seems to have their own idea about how to set stuff up. It?s really a pain in the ass when you switch between programs and even the common ?open file? dialog box is completely different."

Again, quite odd. I don't recall seeing multiple versions of an open file dialog. Anyways, inconsistencies among developers is not a Mac only issue. All platforms have some goofiness. At least with OSX, I know I'm always going to get a File Menu and a Program menu at the top, where as some Windows programs move the File menu around willy nilly or just not have it at all. A good example of this is the interface for Windows media player. The simple fact that the main menu bar auto hides itself by default really chaps my chimmi-chon

 

Excellent. Very well said.

I think that this discussion proves a very important point: Sometimes an impression can be left on a person by using an older version of a system.

On both sides of this debate there are people that will make their stand based on crap that happened when working with something else.
I just spouted off for 5 pages about stuff that annoyed me, and that has since been fixed. Most of these particular debates are loaded with this same kind of one-sidedness.

So, I really don't mind being proven wrong in so many places. I knew when I said those things that there was a chance I was speaking too much from the past. But, I was on a roll, and I went with it. Besides, anyone who's used any of these systems can relate to my experiences with them.


btw: Thank you also for clarifying that OSX was the one based off of FreeBSD. That makes a helluvalot more sense.

 

OS 9 was abandoned over 3 years ago. When Apple decided to move to OS X it considered OS 9 extinct. So a lot of the complaints in that article aren't a factor anymore.

Anyone working in film knows for editing it comes down to Avid vs FCP. Avid has the track record & name recognition. However for less than the price of an Avid system you can build a workstation that will outperform it. You also get more versatility with FCP. FCP can handle film, video, DV, HD, quicktime files, etc... all in the same timeline. Have fun trying that with an Avid.

What FCP doesn't have is the years of experience that Avid does. Imagine you are an Avid editor working for years & you've spent 100s of thousands of bucks on your system. Will you want to learn a new system? Will you give up your work station? Most likely no. However people like Walter Murch, the Coen brothers, Steven Soderberg and others are using FCP which can save a lot of money on productions. For independents its a huge difference.