Odd question at work, performance.

Anim

Anim

Anim

Soldato
Joined
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Something that came up recently was a guy at work claiming macs were the worst end of computing performance wise. Now i personally dont own a mac but have always been under the impression that mac's were the industry choice for CAD applications and the likes, on the whole better raw performance than a same price pc.

Did i miss something, or get told a lie many years ago?
 
Nope your right

Macs are still the industry choice for 90% of design/graphic work, I don't understand why myself as I don't deal with any of that software

But yeah thats how it is
 
CAD applications are far more likely to use Windows or Linux, but for graphic design, Apple has most of the market. Performance is entirely dependant on the spec. Similarly specced Windows and Mac PCs will have similar performance - the preference mostly comes from the better OS experience and better memory management. I imagine the general Apple chic comes into play too, since those graphic designers are an arty bunch.
 
I use Macs at work and find them excellent for what they are. The OS is very good, stable, fast and easy to use, everything's there, works well and for the most part the software plays nicely together, I use mainly Adobe Creative Suite 2. They're not for the tweaker, but then that's the point...I come home and use the PC for that.
 
Arcane said:
I use Macs at work and find them excellent for what they are. The OS is very good, stable, fast and easy to use, everything's there, works well and for the most part the software plays nicely together, I use mainly Adobe Creative Suite 2. They're not for the tweaker, but then that's the point...I come home and use the PC for that.
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Absolutely! I have a PC to tweak and mess around with but the mac sits over on the other side of the room ready for when I need something to just work!

5 years old nearly, working like a absolute charm!
 
wush said:
Probably basing his statement on the older Macs plodding along on their G4 processors. The whole line is speedy after the switch to Intel :)
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At my old job, my 1.25ghz G4 with 2gig of RAM handled photoshop work and quark and so on wonderfully.

I've got a quad G5 with 2.5gig of RAM at the job I'm at now and the thing pretty much flies, even though it's really badly clagged up with crap and my Suitcase is a shameful mess. Once we get them sorted out a bit more they'll be properly fast.
 
I have this arguement with our design department every time they want new Mac equipment. I basically can't see the difference between using the mac or pc as virtually all the software they need will run on both OS's. I think its just down to the fact the design have traditionally used macs so thats what they want to use from now on.

Nevermind the fact that they're a nightmare to manage on a windows network...
 
TheKnat said:
I have this arguement with our design department every time they want new Mac equipment. I basically can't see the difference between using the mac or pc as virtually all the software they need will run on both OS's. I think its just down to the fact the design have traditionally used macs so thats what they want to use from now on.

Nevermind the fact that they're a nightmare to manage on a windows network...
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If you want to really **** up your art department by making them use a system that works completely different to what they've always used, and probably halve their productivity, go for it!

Everything they will have learnt will be mac based, so it'll proper do them over to switch. Everything down to keyboard shortcuts and so on, I find it horrible using Quark and Photoshop and so on on a Windows machine and I'm much, much slower.
 
TheKnat said:
I have this arguement with our design department every time they want new Mac equipment. I basically can't see the difference between using the mac or pc as virtually all the software they need will run on both OS's. I think its just down to the fact the design have traditionally used macs so thats what they want to use from now on.

Nevermind the fact that they're a nightmare to manage on a windows network...
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Just out of interest, what sort of problems have you been having with your network when sharing it with Macs? With a little care and attention there should be no problems caused by Macs especially now that Appletalk has been more or less retired.
 
M0KUJ1N said:
Just out of interest, what sort of problems have you been having with your network when sharing it with Macs? With a little care and attention there should be no problems caused by Macs especially now that Appletalk has been more or less retired.
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Exactly!

I find sharing on my mac far far far easier to setup than on the bloody PC!

Works one min doesn't the next on XP.

<3 mac os X
 
It was more to do with user accounts and AD and havinf constant problems with entourage. We was using 10.3 (i think) so appletalk was sill being used. Just meant we had to make a special case for the macs, rather than them conforming with what the windows pcs did.
 
I used to use Mac's when i was doing the design side of things and as mentioned above they are favourable, for there looks, the way they just work and the ease of use in app such as Quark and adobe suites etc. Also most designers that i now deal with do not have a clue about pc's they just know what colours look good and what the latest funky unprintable designs are about ! (wonders if any designers are about... :rolleyes: )

But hey, i use both, pc for messing about and macbook pro for work
 
Mohinder said:
Shaddap!

I'm not really a designer though, I'm an operator, we're the sensible ones who actually get stuff done, not arsing around trying to decide between reflex blue and 072 blue for three hours :D
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lol was there once too, now i'm at the printing end and advise them on how to get what they want on to paper. :p
 
macs are seen as more reliable and not prone to typical PC issues such as a virus.

macs are good for your soul
 
I use a mac every working day. A nice shiny Mac Pro with two Woodcrest Xeons, 4GB ram and a ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512mb and dual monitors. Shiny kit indeed, sharing floorspace with 5 other identical workstations, a Crossfield drum scanner, Twist5 JDFworkflow server, two Creo Brisque B1 CTPs and a SIPS server.

It was somewhat depressing to find you can run CS2 faster on a year old PC laptop, but there you go. The intel-native CS3 will hopefully improve matters, when we can convince boss to drop in from Barbados to sign those cheques and get the upgrades in.

My biggest annoyance with the Mac Pros atm is Force Quit - its used at least twice an hour. Then again, I'm hoping this is down to CS2 and a hefty chunk of the other stuff we use (Twist Monitor, Preps, Quark, Freehand etc) being holdovers from our G5s.
 
UncleBob said:
My biggest annoyance with the Mac Pros atm is Force Quit - its used at least twice an hour. Then again, I'm hoping this is down to CS2 and a hefty chunk of the other stuff we use (Twist Monitor, Preps, Quark, Freehand etc) being holdovers from our G5s.
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Quark 7.0 was awful for us, but 7.2 is dandy. I use it on a G5 and the other guy has it on his Mac Pro and it's quite rare that we have to force quit it, it works great :)
 
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