Mac vs PC

thegreatdivide

VTech wrote:

FCP is an industry standard. Avid is almost certainly the best rendering design package available but it is t the I distort standard as only elite use it so my comment stands.
Also, does he use avid on a £300 desktop running windows 7 ?

Ok, so now things are calmed back down, there is no need to attack every comment wastin your valuable time trying to fight people. I for one am not just some guy on a forum with no idea. At work we use video editing to cinema quality doing press launches on an almost weekly basis during season so before posting I ha already asked the guys in the video department.

Loaded with contradictions and back tracking. Well done.

bompington

What's wrong with Windows Movie Maker anyway? ;-)

VTech

thegreatdivide wrote:

VTech wrote:

FCP is an industry standard. Avid is almost certainly the best rendering design package available but it is t the I distort standard as only elite use it so my comment stands.
Also, does he use avid on a £300 desktop running windows 7 ?

Ok, so now things are calmed back down, there is no need to attack every comment wastin your valuable time trying to fight people. I for one am not just some guy on a forum with no idea. At work we use video editing to cinema quality doing press launches on an almost weekly basis during season so before posting I ha already asked the guys in the video department.

Loaded with contradictions and back tracking. Well done.

Can you point one out so I can see ?

itboffin

So who won the Mac or the PC? :P

VTech

itboffin wrote:

So who won the Mac or the PC? :P

I think its a draw.

tiredofwhiners

Daz555 wrote:

I am genuinely surprised that Apple still can't shift Macs. Maybe it is simply a matter of price.

Forget the price - look at the margin. If Apple reduce the margin, they may sell more but will still be worse off. They make a lot of money per item compared with your average tin shifter Windows machine. They don't need more than 6% to be highly profitable and reducing the margin just to increase market share isn't sensible to them. Its why a small percentage growth in Mac sales is a huge deal for Apple, whereas a doubling of sales for Dell contributes very little to the bottom line.

On phones its even more startling - I read somewhere an analysts report which said that if you add up all the profit on all manufacturers mobile phone sales by every supplier, Apple get 75% of the total profit for the entire mobile phone sector. Samsung undoubtedly outsell in unit volumes, but make very very very little on the sales.

The job is about making a lot of profit to invest and repay shareholders - not just headline grabbing revenue numbers although its undoubtedly nice to have both !

VTech

tiredofwhiners wrote:

Daz555 wrote:

I am genuinely surprised that Apple still can't shift Macs. Maybe it is simply a matter of price.

Forget the price - look at the margin. If Apple reduce the margin, they may sell more but will still be worse off. They make a lot of money per item compared with your average tin shifter Windows machine. They don't need more than 6% to be highly profitable and reducing the margin just to increase market share isn't sensible to them. Its why a small percentage growth in Mac sales is a huge deal for Apple, whereas a doubling of sales for Dell contributes very little to the bottom line.

On phones its even more startling - I read somewhere an analysts report which said that if you add up all the profit on all manufacturers mobile phone sales by every supplier, Apple get 75% of the total profit for the entire mobile phone sector. Samsung undoubtedly outsell in unit volumes, but make very very very little on the sales.

The job is about making a lot of profit to invest and repay shareholders - not just headline grabbing revenue numbers although its undoubtedly nice to have both !

Very very true. Apple have only ever invented one item and for everything else they have simply settled for making them better. Having items that work every time has meant that the following (although the smaller majority) make it incredibly profitable as high markup = big cash funds.

FatTed

who cares, I prefer my MAC to my work PC. Although the difference is not as large as it used to be.
I prefer my steel bike to my mates Carbon Fibre bike
My car is a Diesel his is petrol
My amp is a valve amp his is solid state
I like Rapha, Groundeffect and Assos
I tend to buy what I like not what I need, don't have to justify my purchases to any one (except the wife )

VTech

FatTed wrote:

who cares, I prefer my MAC to my work PC. Although the difference is not as large as it used to be.
I prefer my steel bike to my mates Carbon Fibre bike
My car is a Diesel his is petrol
My amp is a valve amp his is solid state
I like Rapha, Groundeffect and Assos
I tend to buy what I like not what I need, don't have to justify my purchases to any one (except the wife )

Very good points, I do believe that in most cases it simply is down to choice and in the majority, almost certainly as a designer addition to someone's collection as reality would suggest that a PC would suit almost all computer owners.
My choice is mac due to superior power needed for my work. My wife wanted macs at home as they look nicer (nothing to do with quality or power) and I would guess that most buy mac for this reason.

PC's are available for £200 bracket from the likes of tesco so people's perception of value has dropped meaning makers are ever competing on a downward spiral and so at some point quality is dropped and you get what you pay for.
It's all relative.

Hoopdriver

thegreatdivide wrote:

I was just discussing this movie editing issue with my mate. When I asked him if most movies were now made on Final Cut Pro he pi$$ed himself laughing. In his words ‘Do they make films? No of course they don’t. They’re just tw4ts on an internet forum’. Sorry, he’s blunt like that ;-)

FWIW – he advises that for movies it’s probably 50/50 for editing purposes with Avid being the beast (e.g. ‘Avatar’ was made using it.) FCP has brought pro editing to the masses or in his word’s ‘every cnut who comes out of Art College is in a cafe thinking they’re the sh1t with it on their Powerbook’. But the truth is that most films ARE NOT made using FCP and Mac’s. AFAIA these huge rendering rooms they use to grind out the effects and the final ‘cut’ are all PC hardware based.

Here’s one of their first short films (and it’s bike related). It won awards – because it’s very good:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki2re9uILtc

Whatever else one can say about the PC crowd, they do seem to have troubles knowing when to use an apostrophe

Eskimo427

I’ve just read this thread from start to finish and have a few questions. Being a windows user I don’t have a lot of experience with Apple products, although I do have an ipad. Since buying my first PC back in 1992 I’ve built all my pc’s, found it cheaper. Generally I’d replace my pc every 3 years, this isn’t because there’s anything wrong with it, but I need to do this to play the latest games.
As Macs now use more or less the same hardware as a conventional windows pc, why do people think they are more reliable?
With regard to pc’s slowing down, I’ve never had to re-install windows. Once my machine is built that’s it until the next upgrade. Yes it’s slower at starting but that’s because over the years I’ve installed more software.

VTech

Eskimo427 wrote:

I’ve just read this thread from start to finish and have a few questions. Being a windows user I don’t have a lot of experience with Apple products, although I do have an ipad. Since buying my first PC back in 1992 I’ve built all my pc’s, found it cheaper. Generally I’d replace my pc every 3 years, this isn’t because there’s anything wrong with it, but I need to do this to play the latest games.
As Macs now use more or less the same hardware as a conventional windows pc, why do people think they are more reliable?
With regard to pc’s slowing down, I’ve never had to re-install windows. Once my machine is built that’s it until the next upgrade. Yes it’s slower at starting but that’s because over the years I’ve installed more software.

The pcs of the last few years have been using better components but rarely are they matched, you get this with top end dell etc but the price goes up to that equivalent or greater than a mac. With a mac you have hardware and software completely matched, they are made for each other and as such work faster.
I can almost guarantee that my macbook pro would outperform the majority of pcs out there simply because its a mac.
Like I said earlier, ive been PC since day 1 but the minute I used a mac I just couldnt turn back. Money is an issue, the macs are all expensive and you dont have a cheap entry level system like with a pc but you dont have a cheap pc which can perform in line with a mac.

If you think windows is fast on your pc, find someone you know with windows on their mac and have a play, it will shock you.

Eskimo427

VTech wrote:

Eskimo427 wrote:

I’ve just read this thread from start to finish and have a few questions. Being a windows user I don’t have a lot of experience with Apple products, although I do have an ipad. Since buying my first PC back in 1992 I’ve built all my pc’s, found it cheaper. Generally I’d replace my pc every 3 years, this isn’t because there’s anything wrong with it, but I need to do this to play the latest games.
As Macs now use more or less the same hardware as a conventional windows pc, why do people think they are more reliable?
With regard to pc’s slowing down, I’ve never had to re-install windows. Once my machine is built that’s it until the next upgrade. Yes it’s slower at starting but that’s because over the years I’ve installed more software.

The pcs of the last few years have been using better components but rarely are they matched, you get this with top end dell etc but the price goes up to that equivalent or greater than a mac. With a mac you have hardware and software completely matched, they are made for each other and as such work faster.
I can almost guarantee that my macbook pro would outperform the majority of pcs out there simply because its a mac.
Like I said earlier, ive been PC since day 1 but the minute I used a mac I just couldnt turn back. Money is an issue, the macs are all expensive and you dont have a cheap entry level system like with a pc but you dont have a cheap pc which can perform in line with a mac.

If you think windows is fast on your pc, find someone you know with windows on their mac and have a play, it will shock you.

The single biggest point of failure on a pc in my experience has always been the harddrive, now unless I'm mistaken Apple do not make hard drives. There is an argument that certain manufatures i.e. Dell having issues with some of their bespoke components like motherboards and PSU's but that is really it.

In my opinion, I think if the tables were turned and the dominant operating system was Mac and not Windows, most of the issues which plague windows users would be Mac OS issues. As only about 6% of all the worlds computers use Mac OS there's no incentive to write software for it. Same issue as windows phone and iphone available apps.

Also, what will the Mac do faster than my pc when running windows? start up, shut down or run Black Ops 2 at full detail in HD?

VTech

I get your point, as said, ive been windows through and through but since having to decode and crunch 4mb code I had no option as pcs were breaking down after 6 months and the mac keeps going like the energiser bunny.

Eskimo427

out of nothing more than interest what was happening to the windows pc's?

VTech

They got to a point where the processor would process quickly, on flop tests the cycle rate was low and the system generally felt bogged down.
Even when new though (and I must admit that I have never purchased a top of the line PC before) the coding was taking 8-12 minutes on average whereas on the mac it really is seconds.

tiredofwhiners

Eskimo427 wrote:

The single biggest point of failure on a pc in my experience has always been the harddrive, now unless I'm mistaken Apple do not make hard drives.

Correct, however Mac file structure and coding system result in significantly less access to the hard drive to run basic programme functionality. Windows spends its entire life accessing the hard drive, which is why is became a dog and killed hard drives. Secondly, Windows machines use just about every make and brand of HD, which means you can get the cheapest options available, which also means you get the cut corner, less reliable and low quality drives. Apple use only a few models of hard drive and stick to them, making sure they don't get into the box unless they are reliable.

Eskimo427 wrote:

I think if the tables were turned and the dominant operating system was Mac and not Windows, most of the issues which plague windows users would be Mac OS issues.

You need to go out and understand the different OS coding bases and why writing OSX software is completely different to Windows. Windows you can get away with any old cr*p and it'll work, whereas for the OSX base, there are a lot mroe rules to prevent bad code, and this is another reason why a virus will always be less effective than on a PC. Look up sandboxing and why it makes a big difference.

Eskimo427 wrote:

As only about 6% of all the worlds computers use Mac OS there's no incentive to write software for it

Er, No. Pretty much every decent piece of commercial software exists in Windows and OSX versions so its not that hard. What might be closer to the truth is that to write effective, accurate code, not full of bugs and able to pass the quality checks in an OSX compiler is much more difficult so the cr*p kiddies out there cannot do it

Eskimo427 wrote:

Also, what will the Mac do faster than my pc when running windows? start up, shut down or run Black Ops 2 at full detail in HD?

You probably need to have a go before commenting.

Eskimo427

tiredofwhiners wrote:

Eskimo427 wrote:

The single biggest point of failure on a pc in my experience has always been the harddrive, now unless I'm mistaken Apple do not make hard drives.

tiredofwhiners wrote:

Correct, however Mac file structure and coding system result in significantly less access to the hard drive to run basic programme functionality. Windows spends its entire life accessing the hard drive, which is why is became a dog and killed hard drives. Secondly, Windows machines use just about every make and brand of HD, which means you can get the cheapest options available, which also means you get the cut corner, less reliable and low quality drives. Apple use only a few models of hard drive and stick to them, making sure they don't get into the box unless they are reliable.

Don’t know anything about Mac file structure so I can’t comment and happy to take your word for that. On the hardware I would agree that is the case with cheap (Tesco’s) pc’s, however like Apple if you pay for more expensive machines they tend to come with better hard drives. That then takes us back to the ‘You pay more for Apple hardware’.

Eskimo427 wrote:

I think if the tables were turned and the dominant operating system was Mac and not Windows, most of the issues which plague windows users would be Mac OS issues.

tiredofwhiners wrote:

You need to go out and understand the different OS coding bases and why writing OSX software is completely different to Windows. Windows you can get away with any old cr*p and it'll work, whereas for the OSX base, there are a lot mroe rules to prevent bad code, and this is another reason why a virus will always be less effective than on a PC. Look up sandboxing and why it makes a big difference.

Again I agree mostly with what you say and being an Ubuntu user I appreciate the difference in getting software to run etc, however, I think if it was in someone’s interest to get around some of the security they would. In the good old days of 8bit machines, people were programming them to do things they couldn’t actually do. I think this is something we’ll have to agree to disagree because I am a believer in ‘where there’s a will there’s a way’

Eskimo427 wrote:

As only about 6% of all the worlds computers use Mac OS there's no incentive to write software for it

tiredofwhiners wrote:

Er, No. Pretty much every decent piece of commercial software exists in Windows and OSX versions so its not that hard. What might be closer to the truth is that to write effective, accurate code, not full of bugs and able to pass the quality checks in an OSX compiler is much more difficult so the cr*p kiddies out there cannot do it

I didn’t make my point very well, I was actually referring to criminal software. Which also refers to the last point.

Eskimo427 wrote:

Also, what will the Mac do faster than my pc when running windows? start up, shut down or run Black Ops 2 at full detail in HD?

tiredofwhiners wrote:

You probably need to have a go before commenting.

That was a genuine question not a statement; I have never seen windows running on Mac so I’m interested in what it does better. If a Mac will run windows better (define better) than my pc does which has to include all my games then you have just converted me to being a Mac user!
I’m not replying to this threat as I want a fight, I’m genuinely interested in what makes people think Apple is better. Your using the word sandbox to describe the OS is the reason why I actually like the limitations placed on users and wish Windows had the same. Family support would be so much easier.

VTech

@Eskimo427, I run several windows applications on my macs, I use Windows7 at the moment and the software coding I was referring too earlier is in fact a windows only package but when using even the better PC's we have a long wait for the decode and code yet with the mac running windows it really is a matter of seconds.
I dont feel happy to spend so much extra on a mac but the alternative for me is replacing pc's every 6 months or so which in turn works out more costly.

If you guys are having HD issues, try the moments xt series, very fast and cost effective.

Eskimo427

VTech wrote:

@Eskimo427, I run several windows applications on my macs, I use Windows7 at the moment and the software coding I was referring too earlier is in fact a windows only package but when using even the better PC's we have a long wait for the decode and code yet with the mac running windows it really is a matter of seconds.
I dont feel happy to spend so much extra on a mac but the alternative for me is replacing pc's every 6 months or so which in turn works out more costly.

If you guys are having HD issues, try the moments xt series, very fast and cost effective.

I think you are the first person I've come across who has a genuine reason for owning a Mac. (wait for it.......) I'm assuming the software is used for work.

VTech

Yes and Yes (almost).

I think in the real world you will find that in the majority only video editors, designers and coders really "need" the mac, for most its a fashion accessory.

Eskimo427

VTech wrote:

Yes and Yes (almost).

I think in the real world you will find that in the majority only video editors, designers and coders really "need" the mac, for most its a fashion accessory.

I think there's more truth in that than most people are willing to admit. I used to work with a guy who kept telling me how 'cool' Apple computers are. I don't need a 'cool' computer at my age. When I asked my colleague why my mother, who had just retired, should buy a macbook over a £300 Compaq when all she wanted it for was surfing the BBC and skyping, he didn't have an answer. Ironically the hard drive failed and had to be replaced.

VTech

Well, by common consensus it appears that unless your a prospective stephen spielburg, work at bletchley park or are highly fashionable your better off with a PC and then upgrade the HD to an SSD and away you go

Eskimo427

VTech wrote:

Well, by common consensus it appears that unless your a prospective stephen spielburg, work at bletchley park or are highly fashionable your better off with a PC and then upgrade the HD to an SSD and away you go

:):)

chrisaonabike

VTech wrote:

If you guys are having HD issues, try the moments xt series, very fast and cost effective.

Momentus, you mean, not moments.

Hybrid drives, yes, whatever. Not really news any more.

VTech

It was a typo by pc auto convert.
It may not be new news but its a huge jump from standard drive.

metronome

SSDs awesome, the difference is really noticeable. Shame about the hefty price tag but it if it speeds up workflow, it's a no brainer. Hopefully in the years to come it will reduce in price and become ubiquitous.

On a side note - this thread is like an online merry-go-round. Yaaaayyy.

VTech

You can get the 750gb hybrid drive for £75. That's a bargain in anyone's language.

chrisaonabike

VTech wrote:

It may not be new news but its a huge jump from standard drive.

Yes, I have one in my Samsung laptop. This notion that only Apple uses decent components, or that you can only get a box with decent components by spending more than an Apple costs is the biggest load of old tosh out.

As is most of this thread now.

VTech

ChrisAOnABike wrote:

VTech wrote:

It may not be new news but its a huge jump from standard drive.

Yes, I have one in my Samsung laptop. This notion that only Apple uses decent components, or that you can only get a box with decent components by spending more than an Apple costs is the biggest load of old tosh out.

As is most of this thread now.

I felt the same way until I used a mac.
You simply can not get a lower priced pc that competes in high end work like a mac.
It's not just hard drive, it's logic board, memory, build etc etc etc.