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/mobilehexdflex.asp?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 :devil:, 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.

 

[Bruce Ingram]

All good points Jeff.

You want to save money over a Mac by building a PC yourself?

I've never grasped, on the high-end, this thinking. You are correct that even building a DYI PC to the same or similar specs as an Apple tower would be very close in cost, or even higher in some cases. For me, I saved money by building my own PC by purchasing what would get me started with the flexibility to upgrade as I could and as needs dictated. This worked for me, may not be right for anyone else, so grain of salt and all that. I can support my own system for the most part, so this makes even more sense to me. Others cannot so a OEM system can be a much better option.

Video card / GPU selection. This is Apple's Achilles Heel at the moment, IMO.

Very good point. This was a huge reason I first started reconsidering the PC. As a colorist, the PC side offers far more options in relation to prices vs. performance. So, considering my build strategy, having this flexibility was very attractive.

There was no way to update it.

This is one part that I slightly disagree with. For me, the limited PCI expansion is what was killing me about the towers. I can, and did, walk into Frys and purchase a very nice board with almost twice the bays and, if I had wanted, even more with other boards. For me, this was critical, for others it may not be so much.

It does all boil down so much to what you are using the system for. My iMac is awesome at offlining, but even the Macbooks are pretty good for that.

 

[Carter Cammack]

My 2c.
A computer that does it's job is awesome. One that won't or can't is a pain in the ass. One that tries to do mine (Vista?) is an even bigger pain in the ass.
We all owe a lot to the Mac. Largely because of it, we have much more stable and user-friendly PCs.

 

[Stephen Townsend]

I was expecting a very in-depth and informed post from you Jeff so I'm glad you didn't disappoint. You mentioned you prefer OSX to Windows, both the UI and underlying OS. I wonder if you'd mind explaining a little what it is about the UI and OS you prefer?

 

[Terry VerHaar]

What Jeff said... I particularly agree with his comment "...most of the commonly cited issues with either platform are simply not true."

I like and prefer Macs because I have used them almost exclusively since 1984 and have found no reason to switch. I appreciate elegant design and I feel that Apple has consistently incorporated that in both their hardware and software. Like a lot of people, the "dark years" when Steve Jobs was gone from Apple had me wondering if they had a future. During that period, I did have a Windows PC on my desk next to my Mac but even then didn't find anything that made me want to switch. In the last 10 or so years, I have enjoyed the convergence of my data and my user experience onto multiple devices like my iPhone and my iPad. IMO, technology should disappear and let you get the work done; I think the Mac GUI does this for me. I currently own a 6-core 3.33GHz Mac Pro (2010) and a 2008 MacBook Pro (soon to be replaced) and for my needs, there is no lack of performance so I don't imagine a need for an over clocked supercharged machine of any type. I am also a big fan of FCP and, obviously, need to run this on a Mac. Finally, I always figure if I need to run a Windows program, I can run it on on of the emulators.

People complain about the cost but I think that is really only true for the people who are really aggressive about building their own computers. I add my own RAM and my own drives to my Mac and by the time I do that, I don't see much of a cost difference between mine and a similarly equipped PC. Of course, if you're building your own machine, all bets are off.

Soon, I believe, computers will be very modular. I think Thunderbolt is leading the way to that. I hope to have a small box that houses my main CPU, boards, chips and RAM (expandable, of course), connected to an expansion chassis for fast GPUs, Rockets, RAID controllers, whatever - and to the video monitor of the moment - whether its a 4K REDRay, a grading monitor, a dual display set-up, etc., along with whatever storage I need/want. Whichever platform leads the way to that will have a leg up on getting new customers.

 

[Brian Merlen]

I also don't see why someone would choose just one, so I chose mac because I can run both OS'S on it while getting support! Hackentosh is fine if I could get support, but so far I don't know anyone doing that, (heard someone mention it in a thread, but Apple will kill whoever does that). So if you want to run both without getting 2 workstations, buy a mac pro and get bootcamp on it. makes perfect sense, then you can do jobs for clients on either OS from the same darn box. Its a great option I think, support, warranties, and legal, all on a mac pro

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I've never grasped, on the high-end, this thinking. You are correct that even building a DYI PC to the same or similar specs as an Apple tower would be very close in cost, or even higher in some cases. For me, I saved money by building my own PC by purchasing what would get me started with the flexibility to upgrade as I could and as needs dictated. This worked for me, may not be right for anyone else, so grain of salt and all that. I can support my own system for the most part, so this makes even more sense to me. Others cannot so a OEM system can be a much better option.

Exactly. That's where I said the PC gives the opportunity to save some money. There is the flexibility there to do what you did and to build and upgrade over time. There's the ability to the put together just about any system to fit just about any budget.

This is one part that I slightly disagree with. For me, the limited PCI expansion is what was killing me about the towers. I can, and did, walk into Frys and purchase a very nice board with almost twice the bays and, if I had wanted, even more with other boards. For me, this was critical, for others it may not be so much.

From the standpoint of offering an updated model between the last iteration of Xeon processors to this one, I don't think there was anything to upgrade or update to. Sure, all of us would have liked more PCIe slots and there are ways to provide that. With the i5520 chipset, there are 40 lanes available and Apple gave us all 40, split amongst two X16 slots and two X4 slots. A reasonable offering. IMO, especial due to the lack of multiple-GPU support from apps on the Mac at the time, I think Apple would have done better to have given us one more slot by making the second X16 into two at X8. Some PC motherboards went a bit further and would run dual i5520 chipsets in a cascade arrangement. They could expand to 64 PCIe lanes by doing this. Unfortunately doing so also came with some other compromises. For many the extra expansion outweighed the costs, for others it did not.

If Apple does offer a new Mac Pro system, it's difficult to say what they will give us for expansion. I think it unlikely that they'll release another Mac Pro tower in the same form factor we've all seen now since the G5 days starting 10 years ago. With the new Xeon platform incorporating the PCIe host into the CPUs, there is a lot more room to add PCIe slots than before. I'm hoping they capitalize on it.

I was expecting a very in-depth and informed post from you Jeff so I'm glad you didn't disappoint. You mentioned you prefer OSX to Windows, both the UI and underlying OS. I wonder if you'd mind explaining a little what it is about the UI and OS you prefer?

I find the UI on the Mac to be cleaner and less obstructive. Windows feels as if they have tried to make things overly friendly and beautify it in a lipstick on a pig sort of way. Windows, really starting with XP to some extent, but more so with Vista and Win7, has that artificially friendly feeling. I don't know how else to explain it. In the application world a great analogy would be Quicken or PeachTree accounting softwares. They suck... They have gone so overboard trying to dummy-proof their systems that they have become cumbersome to use and necessitate tons of extraneous steps to accomplish tasks that should be easily do-able by other more intuitive means. That's how Windows feels to me from a UI perspective.

Don't get me wrong though, there's plenty of little issues with the Mac's Finder UI that irk me too... Overall I just find it to be a more cleanly presented and consistent interface.

Underlying OS... That's more a philosophical point of view. One, I'm still a unix guy and that model just makes more sense to me. The Windows system drives me nuts with their massive registry approach and opens itself up for a lot more issues in terms of reliability and vulnerability. Microsoft has done a great job over the past couple years keeping Windows secure, but they wouldn't have had to try so hard if not for its inherent design flaws that make it a more vulnerable architecture to begin with.

 

[Jeff Whitehurst]

The key point for me: Apple designs both the hardware platform and OS to work together from the ground up. Generally speaking, they keep the OS clean and uncluttered. True, there are way fewer opportunities for tinkering with a Mac box, but generally speaking, the components built in or available will work. In contrast, Microsoft makes the OS and then some other company designs the hardware platform to (hopefully) perform well with it. There's so many options, so many pitfalls, it can be more difficult to track down the cause of problems. IMHO, Windows OS also tends to be more cluttered with profit motivated add-ons. Some users love to push the envelope, some just want dependability. I prefer the Mac platform, for me there's an obvious performance vs. cost vs. overhead advantage.

Seems like whenever a new data intensive graphics or video workflow comes along, the forums light up with people crowing about how one platform outperforms the other. The truth is you could configure either to do just about anything you want, but the stability of your workstation is more important than anything else. I feel the entrenched attitude people get about their platform comes from the stance that "the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, so just don't look over the fence". My neighbor literally cuts his grass with a pair of scissors and seems very happy to do so. Me, I cut my lawn with a mower and go to the beach. Neither one of us gets letters from the HOA

 

[Paul Toth]

I have used both extensively and to me they are both the same. They do the same things with much the same, if not the same, software. The issue I have with either platform is the person operating the computer and either ignorance (or deliberate) methods of using the software. For example, I recently received a QuickTime video file from another production house in another city, for a shared client. They are Mac based, I am PC based (I have MacDrive as I quite often need to access Mac drives + I have the Apple Windows QuickTime ProRes which 'sort of' works). But I cannot open this file on my PC... however, when I take it to a Mac it can be opened easily. Of course I complained and the response I received from them was "Good Luck" since they are on a Mac and see it no problem. So I advised OUR client of the 'Good Luck' statement and likely the other company will not receive much business from our shared client in the future as this really pissed them off. My issue was due to a Mac-centric QuickTime format (it was some flavor that I couldn't see). I never send a file out that only a select few can see or work with. But these guys assumed that everyone is on a Mac and it was no longer their problem. OUR client doesn't have any Mac's in their facilities so they couldn't view the footage either.

So long story short: both platforms do the same thing, however there are some PC-only/Mac-only hurdles to remember and overcome. My skill set is not defined by what platform I'm on and I can easily edit on a Mac or PC.

 

[Jon MIchael Puntervold]

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.

Just bought a Mac Pro, without doing proper research. I was 5 minutes away from selling the machine, but found that nVidia made drivers for GTX 580, just ordered one... Should it not work fine?

 

[Justin O'Neill]

I use both daily actually. My primary computer is a Macbook Air and I built a PC for crunching through the heavy data. I definitely prefer OS X for things like its multi-touch interface and multiple desktop system. Windows has these things too but it's just the way they work together on OS X…it is so freaking smooth it just becomes a background operation in your brain. Little things like "Versions" are huge time savers too.

I love PCs because they are like Legos…you can build them up anyway you want. You can always build with the latest and fastest hardware and usually for pretty cheap. Building PCs in college is kind of what led me to the RED camera actually.