Mac vs PC - Serious considerations...

aries2580 said:
you are forgiven :D *shakes hand*

You see i can see your point about using it for Aperture...

Ok here is a question. on your unibody. Would you notice a difference in photoshop tasks compared to pc's you have used in the past etc?
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I hate Adobe with a passion! Bunch of lazy so and so's! They haven't bothered to do a 64bit version of a Photoshop on mac yet which really annoys me!

I'd say if all you use is photoshop then a PC would be the way to go. Adobe put a load more effort into their windows software!

Aperture and Logic Studio 8 are great programs and are only on a Mac. I never used Photoshop extensively on a PC so i can't really compare against it, it really is the same program and at the moment windows has the upper hand with a proper 64bit version ala CS4.

When snow leopard comes around though the story will change, adobe will be forced to code 64bit and hopefully use OpenCL which will speed it up considerably!

EDIT - In the O.P you say you have an "Old" 2.5GHz 17". I have a 17" 2.33GHz and it is still a very capable laptop! I have still got it! I could still sell it for near enough a grand and that a 2 and a half year old laptop! Compare that to a PC laptop for example. I also have a PowerMac Dual G5 which i can sell for £500, that's nearly 6 years old!
 
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This will get messy
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linked :D

When snow leopard comes around though the story will change, adobe will be forced to code 64bit and hopefully use OpenCL which will speed it up considerably!
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Snow Leopard *drools* If Photoshop was significantly faster when released for snow leopard... Its something to think about. Correct me if im wrong, windows 7 and Snow leopard are gonna be released around the same time near the end of the year?
 
I use Logic religiously so it's a no brainer for me. Plus I just prefer OSX. I have Windows installed on it for whenever I need 4OD or Sky Player or gaming online though.
 
Logsi said:
EDIT - And yeah, the Mac Pro isn't overpriced at all. Price up a Dell equivalent and take a look for yourself. It may be expensive but it most definitely isn't over priced.
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I don't think so.

Dell specced me an i7 system with 6GB of RAM, a 640GB HDD and a 4850 512MB for £859. Apple specced me a Xeon Mac Pro system with 6GB of RAM, 640GB HDD and a 4870 512MB for £2179.

Fair enough, the mac pro probably has a better quality PSU, and I prefer the case, but to me, that definitely isn't worth £1300 more. Fact is, for similar performance, a PC is cheaper. You can get some major powerhouse Macs, dual Xeons with 24GB of RAM, that sort of thing, but the price premium is insane, especially when something better is round the corner, all of a sudden that £10k Mac Pro doesn't seem so tasty.

Also note that even Alienware can beat Apple for prices, and they're known to be overpriced. For a similarly priced system to the Mac Pro, I can get an overclocked and watercooled i7 processor with a GTX 295, 6GB of RAM, an SSD and a 1TB HDD.

And you can upgrade a PC quite easily, everything is pretty mainstream and universal. When it goes out of date, you buy a new CPU and plonk it in. You can't do that with a Mac. As far as I know, anyway, correct me if I'm wrong on that. I do know you can add HDD's and RAM, but that's it isn't it?

Don't get me wrong, I don't hate Macs, in fact, I'd rather use OSX and Mac applications than Windows, but it just isn't worth the extra cost to me. I'm not a fanboy of either, I'm just gonna take whatever gives me the best bang for buck, and right now, that's a PC.
 
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aries2580 said:
Snow Leopard *drools* If Photoshop was significantly faster when released for snow leopard... Its something to think about. Correct me if im wrong, windows 7 and Snow leopard are gonna be released around the same time near the end of the year?
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Yes, they will be released around the same time!

Windows 7 is looking really good, it's bootcamped on my 2.33GHz 17" and i am impressed with what i have seen. There hasn't been any public build of snow leopard yet so it's hard to tell, it's focusing hugely on speed though!

They may come out at the same time but they might not be in usable states when they are released...vista....
 
Logsi said:
EDIT - In the O.P you say you have an "Old" 2.5GHz 17". I have a 17" 2.33GHz and it is still a very capable laptop! I have still got it! I could still sell it for near enough a grand and that a 2 and a half year old laptop! Compare that to a PC laptop for example. I also have a PowerMac Dual G5 which i can sell for £500, that's nearly 6 years old!
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I'm not saying it isn't. :) Its a bloody awesome crazy piece of computing sex. I do a sexwee every-time i look at it.

But for video encoding and gaming... Its not quite there is it.
 
If you need bang for buck then you can't beat a PC - my quad core, 4Gb, blu ray, 4850 system cost what, £600 back in Oct?

I've also got a Macbook Pro and it's great - obviously not as powerful and indeed struggles with After Effects but it is 3 years old (1.83Ghz Core Duo, 2Gb, 5400rpm drive) - my girlfriend uses brand-new, 4/8core, 8Gb RAM Mac Pros on campus and they simply fly through her work. But I would bet that for £1k on a PC you could at least meet that.

Vista may get slated a lot but it's not so bad really, after a few months I quite like it and things are more than quick enough. I do find my mac more reliable though, and better to use as a power user. eg. *nix tools such as a decent command line, SSH, SCP etc.
 
Yes, they will be released around the same time!
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Well i think then taking into account everything. I will be best to wait and see what both companies have to offer. (It will also give me time to gather funds lol and hopefully apple will pull out their fingers and offer some sort of blueray support!)
 
Sounds to me you've made your decision up already.

It was a *very* tough choice to go Mac Pro for me, I mean 6 months of deciding before I did.

OS X *IS* worth the money to me, and when the i7 Mobile chips come out I will probably sell my current MBP.

Its not the hardware, its the software that sells it.

I had to click three boxes to allow me to file share, print share and screen share my MP.

I've yet still to manage to get it going in Windows 7, and that imo is the reason why I have macs :)
 
I'd say wait and see what benefits OpenCL has in OS X 10.6; then, even a MacBook or a Mac Mini will be rather damn good at rendering.

As for games, I only play a few, but if you're buying a Mac with a large proportion of your concentration on gaming, you're looking at the wrong products; as you said, you can get better for cheaper.

Anything other than gaming, OS X wins hands down. From a music perspective, my MacBook Pro has been invaluable (and I have the same one as you!) and I do live gigs off it occasionally, plus some production, as well as a little video rendering (it's good when you enable multi-core support ;))
 
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