Mac vs PC

[Stephen Townsend]

This debate has been going for a long time, I know too well, and often results in firey discussions but I believe RED forums have a more mature and informed community so I'm interested to hear what experienced experts really think these days?

A typical PC user will swear by PC and often dislikes Apple - claiming they overcharge and 'trap' you in to their ways whilst an Apple 'fan' will claim Macs just run better, don't get virus's etc etc - same old debate.

What I'd like to hear is some genuine analytical responses as to why PC's might be better over Macs and why Macs might be better over PC's - preferably from people who have experience with both.

I grew up as a PC user even building them and having pretty strong knowledge of their ins and outs. As I developed in to a designer I inevitably moved over to Mac since my industry is dominated by them and now, as a motion graphics designer, I am working from a Mac Pro in a creative company.

So one question is: Why has Mac found found a dominance in the design industry - does it really have advantages over PC these days? If so, what? Is this the same in the video/film production world or do PC's dominate more and if so, why?

One of our 'friend' companies is a full motion graphics company and are PC based despite being a creative company. Why might they have gone for PC over Mac?

I repeat, lets not make this in to a flame war but an open minded analytical comparison and this might hopefully inform others which is the best choice for them.

[Tim Morten]

Discussion is sure to degenerate, but I'll say the following:

I work in the videogame industry, which involves 2D visual design, 3D visual design, audio design, and engineering. We used 100% PC on the projects I am involved in.

Why?

1. PC is faster - The newest nVidia cards are available on PC long before Mac, and the drivers for these cards are consistently faster on PC than on Mac even when they finally become available. The newest CPU's are available on PC before Mac. The highest configurations (most cores, most memory) are available on PC before Mac, and now that Apple has failed to refresh Mac Pro for so long, may simply never become available on Mac.

2. PC is cheaper - The "Apple tax" is not a joke. You actually pay a substantial mark-up for the exact same hardware to use an Apple.

3. PC has more software - There is a tremendous amount of software that is very important to what we do that is simply not available on Apple's OS.

4. PC is more flexible - We can configure any build-out and any peripherals we want to. Not so for Mac.

5. Our customer base OVERWHELMINGLY uses PC - Despite figures that suggest a total market penetration of roughly 5% for Apple, and monthly hardware sales that are approaching 10%, the actual audience for core games on the Mac is something like 2% of the overall market (probably for all the other reasons I listed above).

Is Apple's interface better? Subjective, but some vocal percentage seem to think so. Does Apple's interface offer any measurable benefit to productivity? My subjective opinion is: quite simply no. As far as I know, there has never been an objective study. Windows 7 is a perfectly usable environment.

Is Apple hardware easier to maintain? Based on my experience, there might be some slight benefit to Apple here (closely guarding their ecosystem as they do), but Macs are by no means trouble-free. If there is some benefit here, it is more than offset by all the flexibility lost in going with Apple.

Bottom line: Apple inspires near religious fervor in its users. Running a business, we need to make decisions based on true merit rather than 'hipness' and brand loyalty. Apple has great industrial design, and an admirable focus on user experience. Meanwhile Apple is also aggressively focused on profitabiity, prioritizes mainstream consumers over niche professional markets, and is proudly isolationist when it comes to their hardware and software environments. None of these are good things in my opinion.

PC for the win.

[Paul J Steinberg]

Somewhere a long the line discussion about computer brands developed the same reason as discussing religions.

Greater nerds than I can talk with greater authority than I but I believe the design industry started with Mac as they (Mac) had the first GUI which made them easier to use and you could see your layouts on the screen while you were working with them.

I'm equipment agnostic. I don't care about brand, I just want the tools to work. I've have been working with PC's just because they're significantly cheaper whenever I've priced out Mac equivalent, they're completely flexible in the configuration, Win7/64 is very stable and all the software I want to use runs well on them. I just picked up a portable workstation that is the size of a lawyers briefcase but replaces the huge DMT carts that you usually see on set (http://www.1beyond.com/products/mobi...search=mobiles) Self contained, internal SSD RAID, RedMag/SxS/CF reader running ScratchLAB/CS6/Resolve/RedCine-X Pro. Solutions like that you just can't find in Mac.

Just my 2¢.

[Jarek Zabczynski]

I was PC for a while, then my first real job landed me in a place that was 100% Mac. I never used one and was up and running on Illustrator and Photoshop by the end of the day. My biggest issue was only having one mouse button...am I dating myself here? LOL! After working there for a few months I decided to go for a Powermac G4. I got the baddest thing out, Dual 500mhz processors maxed RAM and TWO hard drives! Got me some Final Cut v1 and I was a happy camper.

It was the overall experience that made me love Macs. Using a Mac made using a computer intuitive and fun, it just worked. Now I've always kept a PC at home and still do to this day so I've kept up to date on Windows, and honestly, it hasn't changed much on that side, it still "feels" like Windows. Why does a PC seem to ALWAYS be doing something? Seems like the drive is always active and doing stuff even when I'm not in front of it. It's like the primary function of a PC is running background processes. My MacPro just sits silently and waits for me. I feel like I'm interrupting my PC whenever I need to do something.

I feel better on a Mac and much less stressed out. I think that's most important above anything else. I just don't trust PCs.

[Stephen Townsend]

Cheers Jarek. I was trying to find a way of putting something similar myself but you've summed it up there. I think designers love Macs because they like things well designed, which Mac is. They expect things to work because (the good ones) design things that work - if they didn't they wouldn't be good designers.

My own experience is that devoted PC users are generally people who prefer more flexibility, like customizing things their own way and don't want to be ripped off whilst a Mac user is prepared to sacrifice those things to just get on with what they want to do with less hassle and worry about the thing that's powering them to do that. This relates back to the designer preference. The best designers produce work that you don't actually notice but still influences you or does what it needs to do. I think it's the same for Mac. You don't really notice it because it just does what it needs to whilst on a PC you always feel like it's there ready to trip you up and make you want to fiddle with it (which some people like/prefer of course).

I totally appreciate Tim and Paul's comments though and it's their reasons for preferring PC that would make me switch back and this becomes particularly relevant if Mac don't release a new line of Mac Pro's. I'm still keen to see the pro's and con's of each for different people but other than the stereotyped 'Mac Fan Boys' and stubborn 'PC geeks' (in quotes as its an untargeted generic phrase) I think it's very a much a case of 'Horses for Courses' in that different things suit different people. I'm just keen to see which platform suits which people and for what reasons. It's just a shame that too many people on both sides of the pond can't respect other peoples preferences in the same way many people can't appreciate why some people just have different taste in Music. It's not good or bad (apart from some cases perhaps), it's just different.

[Maz Mawlawi]

I honestly I think that today there is very little differences between a Mac and a PC... They should notice virtually no differences when working with either. Having said that....here is my take on it. I feel more secure working on a Mac as far as viruses goes...but I get much better performance on a PC due to the wide availability of high end hardware and the ease of upgrading. we used to be mainly a Mac workshop and now the tables have turned and we are mainly a PC studio....this may change in the future again...who knows. The point is never limit yourself by a brand or tools. I think it's pretty ridiculous that some people swear only by Mac or PC...use the best tools available to you no matter what the OS or brand it is. :)

[Bruce Ingram]

Honestly, the debate over PC vs. Mac is moronic (not the debaters, just the debate). If you are truly pushing your hardware, the perceived differences between Macs and PCs mostly disappear. They both can utterly fail and both can perform beautifully. In context to this forum, I have posted heavily in both the Mac world and PC world and found little difference in reliability and overall performance. I have had both systems cause me late hours and hair pulling just as equally. And, having been an administrator for both systems at a some what larger scale (5+ systems), both were of comparable pleasure and pain.

Much of this debate is ego-driven, "My shit is better than yours".

But, always happy to geek out, and never passing up a pointless argument , here's my two cents. A lot of the preferences out there come, in my opinion, from two things; what you started on and how savvy technically you are.

I'll be blunt, the less tech savvy you are, the easier Macs are to run. Mac users, generally, are less inclined to maintain and self-diagnose their own systems. Usually, they are more likely to use a service to fix whatever they or bad-luck has brought down there machine. They are less likely to expand their systems (until the next new version is released) and less likely to really have reason to. Now, this is generally not true of Mac power users, but more of the general Mac user. However, in saying that, even the Mac power users are often not interested (or capable) of properly maintaining their systems to avoid problems. They may push their machines to the razor edge, but are just as lost when it sputters as the general user.

PC users, in general are about as tech savvy as Mac users, and in the world of Windows that can get you in trouble (almost more so in the world of Linux). That is were much of the bad reputation for the PC world comes from (although Vista didn't help much either). I do, honestly, recommend to family and friends that I know can barely set up their TVs to consider Macs right now because I know I'll get less phone calls. But, as a power user, I generally recommend to others at my same level to still consider PCs due to better upgrade options, better hardware and software flexibility, and an easier upgrade cycle to deal with.

I love and hate them both. As an former illustrator, I miss the days of pencil and papar, they were so much easier to maintain. But, that's not an option for us. For myself, I've had enough of the obscuration of their product cycle and future plans. I simply can't run my business hoping they do what I need, I need to be able to look six months out and have a confident plan on what I can expect hardware-wise and Apple just doesn't fit into that. I'll still have my Macbook and probably venture back to the iPhone one day. But for the machine that pays my rent and buys my food, Macs are likely to never be what I put my trust in again.

[Stephen Townsend]

Bruce - It's the pointless the debates you talk about that I wanted to keep this thread away from. Debates of most kinds end up ego-driven rants which is why I wanted this to more about peoples personal experience with each and why they made their choices making it far more informative than pointless.

Nice point about the maintenance of PC/Mac though. I imagine this is one of the reasons why Mac has appealed to mass market over PC's recently since they see them as less hassle, especially with their excellent support that comes as part of the deal.

[Bruce Ingram]

Stephen - Heh, yeah, it's really not a pointless debate when both sides actually look at it without a personal bias (but that rarely happens). For a geek like me it's a very valid debate, actually, with enough variables and challenges that it is always interesting for me. I can quickly bore non-geeks if they make the mistake of bringing it up.

True on the support end for Macs unless, I'll argue, on the pro end. The Apple store and Apple's support in general has gone so much the iPhone-way that it's no longer much value for me on mission critical stuff. The 2 and 3 year plans are great if you have time to suffer the delays and hoops that they throw up in front of you. That's why, if it's an option, I tend to recommend to users that need fast support to purchase their Mac though a 3rd party vendor that can offer that type of support themselves. This holds true of PCs, too. Most vendors aren't much better. Although I hear decent stuff through the grapevine about HP's high-end system support, but have little experience with it myself.

The thing that makes me comfortable with PCs (not so much Windows but the hardware), is that if one component fails, I can usually replace it myself. Same holds true for upgrades. I can do major system upgrades without ordering an entire new box. Heck, I can even change the box by itself if I go all crazy. Macs, not so much. For me, flexibility is a huge part of how I work and what I offer, so PCs just work well with that.

In this business, though, as a colorist and finisher I will still likely always have the need for a fairly good Mac so I can deal with offline and conform issues from my Mac-based clients. Right now, the iMac does that very well.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I must first act as moderator here and state that all religious and/ or political discussions are usually shut down immediately here, often deleted.

If one wants to be truly analytical about the topic, then that's a bit different. Both platforms have their strengths and weaknesses and most of the commonly cited issues with either platform are simply not true. Many of the purported strengths of each platform usually aren't as one-sided or unique as proponents of either will claim. The Mac and the Windows PC have their respective market shares and places of establishment due mostly to historical upbringings. I'll spare everyone the history lesson on that one, wikipedia does a good job of that, although seems to leave out some key info as to the shortcomings of both platforms and much of the turbulent history of the Mac through the '90s before moving to the unix-based OSX. And how the old MacOS was a severely virus-ridden OS with little to offer moving forward. The primary reasons the old MacOS was discontinued.

I'm platform agnostic myself, use both Mac and PCs and like them both for their differences. IMNSHO, as soon as anyone claims one platform to be truly better than the other, they have lost this debate. It really comes down to individual preferences and needs, available software, etc.. With the current state of the industry and related tech, both the Windows and OSX platforms are very stable and reliable systems. The PC does offer the opportunity to provide more computing power at a lower cost, however most comparisons like this are biased and not comparing Apples to apples, so to speak. When you compare an Apple system feature for feature to similarly classed systems from other mainstream PC vendors, HP, Dell, etc.., that perceived PC pricing advantage erodes away quickly. You want to save money over a Mac by building a PC yourself? Sure, no problem, that's great, you can and you should do it. But one can make the same argument (and people often do within PC-only circles) about saving roughly the same amount of money by building their own PC compared to buying that shiny new HP workstation. For powerful computers, the mid-range dual Xeon box is as big as it gets with Apple. In PC land we can build 4-way and 8-way systems with off the shelf components. And with various interconnect options, we can effectively cluster and scale beyond that. Apple's system designs are very personal in focus, the PC is more scalable.

Video card / GPU selection. This is Apple's Achilles Heel at the moment, IMO. And it's not even completely their fault. Apple has opened up the GDI and graphics driver foundation. As of 4 years ago (YES, 4 YEARS AGO!), anyone can release a video card for the Mac Pro and supply drivers for it. As of about 2 years ago, Apple removed the certification requirement. So, now what's the hold-up? Well, Apple and the video card makers like to point fingers at one another. What it really comes down to is market potential for Apple-supported video cards. The only system that can take them is the Mac Pro. It's a niche system so to speak. It performs very well in terms of sales when compared to like PC systems -- dual Xeon workstations and servers. Feature wise, the Mac Pro is very much in-line with the HP Z600 workstation and pricing is similar between the two. Anyway, with that being the only real Apple system to accept add-in graphics cards and most people who buy the system probably have their GPU needs met just fine with Apple's standard options, there's little incentive to provide more products. This may be changing though if Apple continues to release new Mac Pro systems. PNY discovered with their Quadro 4000 Mac edition that there is indeed a market. nVidia is up to something as well as their current drivers support all the current Quadro cards as well as the GeForce 200 thru 500 series in OSX. It's just the cards themselves (with the exception of the discontinued GTX285 and the Quadro 4000 Mac editions) don't include the proper EFI support for the Mac. So some of the base functionality is not there for tasks outside the OS. But something is happening... Lots of rumors flying and PCs have pretty much adopted EFI in favor of the old BIOS system.

People like to bash Apple for not updating the Mac Pro for a long time. That's an unfair complaint. There was no way to update it. There was no new CPUs or chipsets or other hardware to add in there. The only thing new since the last revision of the Mac Pro 2 years ago was Thunderbolt. There was no technical advantage to releasing a modified system with a Tunderbolt port... Especially when it meant they would have to eliminate one of the PCIe slots from inside. A precious commodity as it is. Even now, HP is the only mainstream vendor shipping systems based on the latest Xeon CPUs. Dell has announced, but have yet to open up pre-orders (unless they did so in the last 48 hours, I haven't looked). But they are nearly 2 weeks late on the pre-order window. HP was 20 days late shipping my new Z820 system. Chipsets are scarce, CPUs are in short supply, proper RAM is hard to come by. The current crop of E5-2600 series CPUs are going to be short-lived and are already due to be replaced in less than a year with 22nm Ivy Bridge versions that will consume a lot less power while offering another 15-20% boost in speed. I know it sucks for people hoping for a new Mac Pro, but if I were Apple, I'd wait.

When it all comes down to it, I really don't see how people can solidify themselves on a single platform these days. Both platforms have a lot to offer. I wouldn't want to give up either one.... My first computer was the Apple IIe that my dad bought the family in '82, from there I went to the PC. My interests were programming and CAD and building PC systems. Dabbled a little bit with the Commodore Amiga platform and almost bought a Mac II at one point. Ended up working on SGI and Sun systems a lot through the years and found that I preferred Unix, especially the SGI Irix flavor. After being thoroughly underwhelmed with the Apple IIgs and subsequent Mac systems over the years, I finally found a system that convinced me to buy Apple again -- the G5 Quad. Bought 2 of them and started using Final Cut. Loved it and at the time it was the best and only real solution for properly working with footage from the HVX200. I've been a fan of Apple systems again since then. And I think it's my Unix history, but I do prefer OSX to Windows. Both the UI and the underlying OS. That said, I still spend the majority of my time on Windows systems still. I'm a computer geek at the core and I'll happily use any computer I can put to work, as long as it's at least close to being capable of the job at hand.