Adobe put a page up (named ‘pcpreferred.html’) stating that the PC is preffered to run Adobe products. Adobe, along with Quark and Macromedia, are the long standing allies to Apple, offering the most important products that literally drive Mac sales in the Pro market. For historical reasons mostly, it is now of surprise to see Adobe openly verifying and backing up Digital Producer Magazine’s benchmarks and recommending PCs instead of Macs to their customers (even if PCs have indeed overtake Macs speed-wise the last 1-2 years). This is a blow for Apple, sales and marketing-wise and we will wait for a reaction from Apple towards Adobe.
Adobe ‘Prefers’ Customers to Use PCs Instead of Macs
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
These tests have got to be extremely biased. My 500 MHz Powerbook does video tasks live that my P2.66 Dell (with twice the RAM as my powerbook) takes 35 minutes to do!
There is no comparison. Perhaps Adobe is just ticked off about having to compete with iMovie, Final Cut Express, and Final Cut Pro 3 (v4 coming soon) on the Mac OS.
Honestly… my 500 MHz, 512MB RAM, 30 GB HDD Powerbook blows away my Dell 2.66 GHz, 1024MB Ram, 120 HDD Windows PC in virtually every video task I perform!
appleforever: Remember IE, slow piece of crud that MS had no incentive to improve
Ironically, it wasn’t slow before the OS X version. After OS X came along, all Carbon apps in general were slow. Porting something from Windows to Mac OS 9 to Cocoa isn’t all the easy, perhaps a rewrite is in place. But the slow speed of IE on OS X is probably mostly Apple fault is not optimizing Carbon.
appleforever: But if they start dragging their feet too much, apple will take matters into their own hands.
Quark has been dragging their feet for a long long time – I don’t see Apple buying off some other’s company product and making a replacement. Don’t give me the Illustrator/Freehand excuse – didn’t IE have altenatives too?
appleforever: By the way, it would be easier to replace photoshop because many of the picture formats are open anyways
*.psd isn’t too open. Heck, probably be easier reverse engineering Office formats.
appleforever: They could use pieces of the Gimp or other open source routines.
If you have actually seen Gimp code, you would realize the only altenative they have is buying some company off. But there I don’t know too many software companies making competent Photoshop altenatives for the Mac. Sure, they can port some PC software, but it wouldn’t be the same, no?
appleforever: Also, Cocoa is a rapid development environment
It is only for smaller applications like Safari and Sherlock. But Photoshop is extremely complex. In addition to that, it uses a lot of calculations for its features – would be hard for Apple to reverse engineer them while retaining its development speed. And in addition to that, Adobe have boatloads of patents that would be enough to keep Apple off – with or without Cocoa.
nor are they taking advantage of Quartz Extreme for compositing work
Quartz Extreme was made pretty much for the UI. It is Quartz using OpenGL for its effects. If they use Quartz, they already benefit from Quartz Extreme. But what that benefits greatly from QE is the UI, not composite work.
Lally: The compiler to use on the Mac is codewarrior. It’s maker, metrowerks, is now owned by motorola.
While Photoshop is compiled with CodeWarrior, Apple is pushing GCC for god-knows-what-reason.
solios: I could drag from IE right into a new photoshop file, or from Photoshop to Director- from any app that supported a graphic to any other app that did as well.
I could here too, from IE to Photoshop. Maybe not from IE to Director, but Windows does it fine. Unless you are living in the relic of NT 4.0
appleforever: Guess what, that means they can charge too much.
For consumers, it cost ony $100 for Photoshop Elements. For professionals, not one of them said it is overpriced. If they don’t use it, it is because they don’t have money, not because it is overpriced.
This is the same case as every other professional app, with or without competition – Autodesk, Macromedia, Corel, Alias|Wavefront, 3dsmx, Logic, companies like that.
It is a supply and demand situation. If a company feels that Photoshop isn’t really worth its money, they can change to something else (more so if they are on the PC)
appleforever: michael – quit the price penalty BS as far as laptops OK?
Apple laptops may be worth the money – but how many actually buy laptops in comparison with desktops? In addition to that, what about those who need Tablet PCs, subnotebooks, desktop replacements, etc. – they can’t go to Apple.
JBD: How bout purchasing Stalker software. (http://www. stalker.com/CommuniGatePro/default.html) I don’t claim to be an expert but this would seem to be a great alternative to exchange server and could be a big blow to MS.
And a even bigger blow to Apple. This happens to be one of Microsoft’s core market, and Apple have absolutely no experience in that area – and if there is any experience whatsoever, it is purely coincidental.
JBD: Who would want a tablet PC if you could speak to your computer as a primary input
People who don’t have American accents, people who work with their tablet PCs in enviroments that need to be quiet, people who don’t want to mind the inadequacies of voice recogniction technology today, amongst others.
Adel: But when it comes to considering Windows, I won’t forget the color printing fiasco with the Minolta printer, all the bugs, all the vulnerabilities, the inasnity of having a registry, the corruption thereof, the illogic of networking when there is no domain server, and the rinky-dink drivers for everything.
Yes, I can just see why video editors all around the world would agree with you… NOT. First off, they don’t use printers., and if they do, they don’t need expensive laser printers. And the corruption of registry only happens when you install and uninstall too many applications – which begs the question: how. And as for networking – I again see no wrong with Windows’ networking for video editors.
appleforever: That’s PCs – cheap, fast, more software. Everything else goes to the mac.
And the everything else is…? Please, spare me the ease of use and usability – we are talking about professional users. And hardware stability, from what I see, is a myth on the Mac.
Bascule: More or less two years. Before that Apple was always a performance leader.
*Always*? Only when G3 came out, buddy 😉
RoseMary: If I had iPhoto2 before buying Photoshop 7[…]
What you do on Photoshop must be pretty basic. Where is my “STUPID CUSTOMER” rubber stamp?
Thanks for your comments!!
rajan:” Ironically, it wasn’t slow before the OS X version. After OS X came along, all Carbon apps in general were slow. Porting something from Windows to Mac OS 9 to Cocoa isn’t all the easy, perhaps a rewrite is in place. But the slow speed of IE on OS X is probably mostly Apple fault is not optimizing Carbon. ”
What difference does it make why it was slow. My point was that it was slow, MS wasn’t fixing it and Apple took things into their own hands. Do want to dispute that? because that was my point.
rajan: “Quark has been dragging their feet for a long long time – I don’t see Apple buying off some other’s company product and making a replacement.”
Basically, you have to priortize. Apple can’t replace everything at once from these ISVs. One step at a time.
rajan: “*.psd isn’t too open. Heck, probably be easier reverse engineering Office formats.” yes, but you can use open formats. I keep everything in jpegs and refuse to use psd. you can batch convert from psd to jpeg. The problems are greater with office docs. conversions are glitchy
rajan: “I don’t know too many software companies making competent Photoshop altenatives for the Mac.” not complete alternatives. it’s a combination of buying and writing
rajan: “Photoshop is extremely complex. In addition to that, it uses a lot of calculations for its features – would be hard for Apple to reverse engineer them while retaining its development speed. And in addition to that, Adobe have boatloads of patents that would be enough to keep Apple off – with or without Cocoa. ” funny how a $35 shareware program, GraphicConverter, does 70 percent of what photoshop does. and the gimp project is doing stuff without violating patents
rajan: “For consumers, it cost ony $100 for Photoshop Elements. For professionals, not one of them said it is overpriced. If they don’t use it, it is because they don’t have money, not because it is overpriced. ”
I was talking about Elements. I was talking about $600+ photoshop.
rajan:” It is a supply and demand situation. If a company feels that Photoshop isn’t really worth its money, they can change to something else (more so if they are on the PC)” Except there’s no real competitive supply right now. an apple photoshop, well, that would be real competition and adobe would have to lower its price or improve its product. Competition tends to do that.
rajan: “Apple laptops may be worth the money – but how many actually buy laptops in comparison with desktops? In addition to that, what about those who need Tablet PCs, subnotebooks, desktop replacements, etc. – they can’t go to Apple. ”
right, but there’s no price penalty on the laptops. look, desktop hardware is cheaper on wintel. and there’s more types of hardware, more choice, including the choice to DIY. I have no problem admitting the facts on where the PC is better. the problem is getting some people to acknowledge where the mac is better
I notice you didn’t dispute that Apple is losing marketshare every day.
Care to comment why the market is so dramatically avoiding the Mac platform? Why is it that people are deserting Mac in droves all over the world?
Maybe because Apple only appeals to subculture people that have psychological problems? Only Apple continues to beat the drum that there is something wrong with the mainstream. Maybe the regular computer buyer just wants a regular computer, not an anti-mainstream political statement?
The one thing that bugs me most about Apple is their incessant lies. Apple’s corporate culture is rotten to the core when it comes to being open, forthright, and honest.
First of all, the only PC laptops that still run at only 1Ghz are either old or super low power subnotebooks or tablets. Since Apple makes neither a subnotebook or a tablet, there is no comparison there.
To do a spot check, I put together a good Dell laptop vs. the latest and greatest Powerbook.
With the Dell Inspiron 8500, you get a 2.4Ghz processor, 15.4″ 1920×1080 ultrasharp screen, 1GB RAM, 60GB disk, 64MB Nvidia Geforce 4 4200 AGP 4X graphics, 24X CDRW/DVD drive, 802.11b/g WLAN, Bluetooth, USB2, 3 yr warranty all for $3284.
With the Apple alBook 17″, you get a 1Ghz processor, 17″ 1440×900 screen, 1GB RAM, 60GB disk, Superdrive, 802.11g WLAN, Bluetooth, Firewire 400/800, 3 yr Applecare all for $3948.
COST: Dell is $664 less than the Apple.
CPU : Dell is dramatically faster with 1.4Ghz more power and a massive memory bus speed advantage.
RAM: Dell has a faster memory system.
GRAPHICS: The Dell has a much faster video system.
DISK: comparable
I/O: comparable, Apple has the new Firewire, Dell has USB2.
Screen: comparable. Dell has higher resolution, sharper screen, but Apple’s is larger.
CDRW/DVD: Apple has an advantage in terms of DVD-R functionality. However, the burner in the alBook is inferior to a desktop burner, very slow, and of questionable value in a laptop.
EXPANSION: Dell has the advantage here, being able to expand the RAM to 2GB, put in an extra battery or drive into the expansion bay, etc.
Overall, the Dell delivers more laptop for less money. There really is no comparison as the PC left the 1Ghz processor world a long time ago. You cannot buy for any price the same performance from Apple.
One can go up and down Apple’s laptop line and see that the PC laptop is a better price/performer than a Mac laptop.
Yes, Apple does have some gee whiz features like a glowing keyboard. Business value: zero. Apple hype value: priceless.
With the new flood of Centrino-based laptops hitting the streets soon, Apple is going to be left in the dust. PC laptops will have even better price/performance and battery life that Apple can only dream about.
There are many price points where it is nearly possible to purchase two PC laptops for the price of one ti/alBook.
Beyond price, the plethora of ingenious Intel-based Japanese laptops makes Apple industrial design look old and clunky.
As has been beaten into the ground here on OSNEWS, Apple even ships some of their high-end laptops with very poor quality screens.
It’s only Macheads and rich arties that buy Mac. The rest of the world is on a budget and pays for performance, not gee whiz glowing keyboards and other nonsense.
I can’t believe I spent 10 minutes of my time scrolling through this mish mash of stupidity, uninformed comments, misinformed comments, troll bait, and general idiocy. If you want a PC, buy it. If you want a Mac, buy it. If you don’t want to buy it, scavenge up some components, download linux and knock yourself out. If the platform you choose doesn’t do the job for you — maybe you didn’t do your research and instead bought into marketing hype.
Having said that, anybody who chooses a PC or Mac based on the cited article (or anything like it) for video applications is a fool. And if you’re not in the target market for Adobe’s advertisement, why do you care?
Premiere is a piece of crap. No serious professional editing is made (or can be made) in Premiere anymore. When Apple released FCP you could hear a loud “aaaaaahhh” of relief from all the small video houses that could not afford a full blown Avid and all dumped Premiere in the very next weeks. Over time FCP proved so fast, agile and its interface so close to higher end systems that many of the bigger, richer video editing houses have replaced plenty of their $20-$40k avid stations with FCP mac stations, keeping only a few high end avids for conformation and finishing. Today for about 12k you can build FCP stations with high end boards to edit uncompressed, 10 bit per channel HD footage.
The success of FCP and the demise of Premiere on Mac (to the point where Adobe has annouced it was discontinuing the mac port) has been a major blow for what was a solid relationship between Apple and Adobe.
As for After Effect, it is here to stay because it is the swiss army knife for many small shops, and the AE skill pool is abundant. (Also, AE is actually feature wise a very nice app for the price). Sadly, AE rendering performance on multiprocessor macs is quite pathetic when compared with newer (and more expensive) compositing apps, like Discreet Combustion and Shake. How pathetic ? Roughly twice slower. You can deduce Adobe programmers are really challenged with threading and SMP issues on Macs. At least they are decent with vector code.
Rendering / previewing is _slightly_ faster on high end PCs, but in my experience the stability of PCs under high load (NT and 2k) is slightly under acceptable. When your deadline is getting close and you deliver a $300k product, reliability wins over a few minutes of gained time.
As for the valid discussion about the price of macs, first remember TCO (Over the last two years our windows stations have needed plenty baby sitting, OS reinstalls, mobos changes, are regularily plagued by virii and overall suffer non insignificant downtimes, while our Macs keep running peacefully) and if you rent your machines and your skills at a decent price, frankly over a year it will not hurt your bottom line at all, quite the opposite. The price issue is only relevant for the likes of WETA, ILM who want to pack 300 linux boxes in a render farm and can afford the electric bill and the refrigerated data centers.
Personally I am getting a little bit excited about getting the PPC 970 in september. Apart from the 64 bit thing that will need some time to be used by most apps, the memory bandwith alone promises a huge performance gain.
Apple makes the best quality hardware and when it comes to color standards no one can touch it. Standards are easier to implement of Apple computers than on PC’s.
My take on all this is simple. Go with the masses to make the most cash. It?s very obvious. Seems to me that Adobe is not interested in weather content created is of quality, just quantity.
Who cares how fast you can create something if that something is crap.
Apple user?s should boycott Adobe from now on and use Macromedia software instead. I’m trashing my copy of Photoshop and Illustrator now.
Maybe Mac users should be happy that Adobe didn’t choose to use an SMP PC as well.
Get a clue, the 3.06 Ghz P4 is a hyperthreaded processor. That means that the programmer has less of the burden making thier apps “SMP aware”. With less effort on Adobe’s part, thier apps are running on essentially a dual 3Ghz PC. No wonder they are faster. SMP without the programming work.
In other news, I don’t know what you price people are talking about.
Dell Precision 350
Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor, 3.06GHz, 512K / 533 Front Side Bus
1.5GB PC1066 RDRAM
USB Keyboard
nVidia, Quadro4 900XGL, 128MB, 1-2 VGA/DVI (dual monitor capable) 900XGL
120GB ATA-100 IDE, 1 inch (7200 rpm)
Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional
USB Optical Mouse
V.92 PCI Data/Fax Controllerless Modem
4X DVD+RW
1394 Controller Card
$4,047.00
Summary
• Power Mac G4 Dual 1.42GHz w/2MB L3 per proc.
• 2.0GB DDR333 SDRAM (PC2700) – 4 DIMMs
• 120GB Ultra ATA drive
• Optical 1 – Apple SuperDrive
• NVIDIA GeForce4 Titanium w/128MB DDR
• 56K internal modem
• Bluetooth Module
• Apple Pro Keyboard
• Mac OS – U.S. English
$3,799.00
“In other news, I don’t know what you price people are talking about.”
Wow, you managed to find ONE PC configuration that was more expensive than your beloved Mac. So what. Be a little more creative. Like:
Go for the Precision 450 but with 2 2.66Ghz processors and see what you come up with (and you might consider changing the video card in your PC configuration to reflect the slower/cheaper one in the Mac configuration – just a thought
). Or better yet, try Alienware.
Dual AMD Athlon MP 2000+
2Gig PC2100 ECC Ram
120G Western Digital HD with 8M cache
Pioneer A-05 DVD burner
NVidia Quadro4 900 XGL 128M
Soundblaster Audigy
USR Modem
Intel PRO/100 NIC
Mouse and Keyboard (Microsoft)
Windows XP Pro
$3601
Or….. upgrade to MP 2400+’s for a grand total of:
$3777.
So, I think I will pass on that Mac. But thanks anyways.
Adam.
Did anyone else notice that the bars are just plain wrong? The genius who put them together thinks there are 100 seconds in a minute. Not from where I’m standing.
Check out the first graph — they have the PC at 54 seconds, and the Mac at 85 seconds, yet the bars show the PC being over twice as fast.
The first set of Intel 3.06ghz Pentium 4 processors were not HT enabled. It is only relatively recently that Intel enabled HT on this processor which also required BIOS updates and only works with certain chipsets. Note that Xeons have had working HT for quite a while longer than the P4.
Intel waited so that they could make sure more apps were compiled and tested for HT compatibility. Many tests have shown that enabling HT with the latest apps gives you up to a 35% speed boost.
As HT is a very small percentage of the processor die, it delivers a healthy speed boost for low cost. Most of Intel’s processors this year will ship with HT, many of them also with the 800mhz FSB.
For the Macheads trying to claim that a HT Intel processor = two processors… nice try. If you don’t understand the technology, the difference between a processor and a thread, stay at home and read Macworld. As they say, ignorance is bliss and Mac users claim to be quite happy.
Apple themselves seem to have forgotten about usability and UI standards. They still think keystroke+mouse button is more ergonomic than right-click. And you know, you just can’t have a rational discussion with people who are incapable of using more than one mouse button. It’s a scientfic fact, empirically proven by millions of Mac vs. PC arguments.
Adobe doesn’t need Apple. The world is a big, bad place and it is probably all over for Apple on the desktop anyway.
Adobe has a “Linux” option too. Adobe can produce its’ own BSD/Linux based distro optimised for Adobe apps. They can simply bundle the OS with the product. This may be an option if MS takes too long to support 64-bit processors.
Well, at least when the Mac is taking longer to do something, you’ve got something nice to look at…
The solution is very simple! Just port your OSX to x86!!!
I attended an Abobe user group meeting on the Adobe campus last week and Apple bought the pizza. Top Adobe and Apple people, e.g., OS X engineers, were exchanging info and views easily and very openly. The topic was OpenType fonts and the top people from both companies participated. The relationship at this meeting was as open and cordial as could be expected between two companies.
My two cents is that a video group within Adobe is reacting to Apple’s success in video with FCP compared to preview.
Corel has just put itself up for auction 😉
I am sick and tired of everyone comparing 0-60 numbers. What really matters is the whole combined performance. I want to know how easily and efficiently I can perform routine tasks in a 40-hour week. This includes time spent for admin, system work-a rounds, number of required admin people per user etc. Where I work we used to have Unix workstations for our 3D CAD, we had exactly ONE admin person for 30 users. We now are Windows and we have to have 2 admin people for the same number of users. Our down time is twice as much, and our software upgrades occur half as much!
Did anyone notice that this page is based on software that is not Altivec-enabled and very poorly multithreaded? Either of those would have a large impact on a dual processor Mac. Both together make the page rather suspect.
Besides, why should I take anyone who doesn’t know that there are 60 seconds per minute (see the first graph) seriously?
I forgot to mention in my earlier post. Final Cut Pro renders video in real time. Why is After Effects so slow? Why don’t they compare After Effects on the PC to Final Cut Pro on the Mac?
I think we all know the answer to that.
Or maybe they should try to make the Mac version of AE run as fast as FCP.
As to market share, I am sure you are familiar with most of the points (e.g., a company stays in business as long as it’s profitable).
But I am not saying I know that apple will survive. That is a harder question. There’s lots of marketing things, business realities that come into play. That’s a debateable and hard question.
What is NOT a hard question is the following. Apple computers — the whole package of hardware, OS, apps and online service with .mac all designed to work together — is just plain better. This is obvious it’s funny to watch people strenously denying the obvious.
It’s not hard, by the way, to be better than windows because windows is legacy-laden crap and there’s too much stuff conflicting because it’s made by 10 different companies rather than one.
If somebody makes a better computer I will buy it. I haven’t seen it. Cheaper yes. More apps yes. Better, no. Inferior. I buy the best and right now that’s the mac. Here’s to somebody topping apple. I’ll buy that then. It just don’t exist right now.
Aren’t you tired of your trolling attitude. You prefer apple, good for me, but nobody really cares : you can do the work you want to with it, that’s the whole point. There is no better product for everything, perticularly for computers, which *can* do so much things, and there is nothing obvious in the idea that apple is better for everything.
The performances are indeed not the only issue : what the point of changing your plateform if you can do what you want with ?
As others have mentioned, the only thing “preferred” about this “story” is the page name.
Otherwise, it’s just a benchmark page. The PC stomps the Mac in sheer performance, and that’s been no surprise for a while now.
But sheer performance is obviously not the only issue, else you’d see the Mac completely vanish. Now internally for Adobe, I’m sure they actually do prefer the PC, just because they probably don’t enjoy supporting their product on two platforms, when one of those platforms has just a sliver of the market share the other one has. They’d love PC only, it would save them money.
To me, the short message from this whole discussion is this – just make Macs faster! What in the world is keeping Apple from making machines that are as fast or faster than any PC out there in any software program? Rather than carp or debate about this or that PC and distorted tests, just make them faster. End of debate.
Well well well, looks like the old Mac vs. PC is still alive and well. Well I prefer the PC but I have nothing against Macs I use Macs with OS X 10.2 and YDL. Im going to throw in my 2 copper peices about the IBM 970, that everyone seems to rave about and seems to think Apple will use this chip in its next series of Machines. The 970 Chip is a PowerPC 64 bit chip, right now IBM is only using the Chip to run its own inhouse version of UNIX called AIX and they have not made it clear or made any statements that it will be sold to anybody outside. Now that does not matter because more than likely they will. The real problem starts with the Mac user base. There are too many people still using alot of 32 bit Apps and Apple will not leave those people in the dark, not to mention the ISVs are not going to maintain 2 code bases for one product for the same platform. And no one has been able to get 32 bit emulation on a 64 bit platform to work properly, so even though the machine will be 64 bit the Applications wont be and performance will lag. The other issue is price, if Apple uses the 970 the price of the Mac will skyrocket to two to three times what it is now. If Apple tries to keep the price the same it will subsidize its hardware and it wont make any money. I think you will see the 970 in the Xserve or a high end workstation but you wont see it in consumer macines.
There’s no doubt PC’s are much faster than Macs. Sometimes my mac is frustratingly slow, when compared to similarly configured PC’s I work with. But I still believe my Mac is better for the majority of tasks thrown at it. I’d like it to be faster, but I can sacrifice a little speed for now (with the hope that the gap in speed will be closed soon).
“Leave zealotry aside and think a bit.
Eugenia, you ask too much of us.
Competition… Business as usual…
Does that mean no consumer should ever have product loyalty? Is money the only thing that matters? Both rhetorical.”
These companies we are discussing are multi-million if not multi-billion dollar corparations.
They don’t love you, they just want you to buy their product so they can in turn make more money.
If Adobe can make more money on the x86 platform, they will do it. That’s good business sense.
Steve Jobs seems to have a lot of people fooled into believing that he and Apple actually love and care about you. They don’t!
They, like any good company are out to make the maximum amount of profit from the least amount of effort.
They neither want nor deserve your *loyality*.
We are living in a much different time then that of our parents when companies did actually care about people.
Ceaser Miranda: Apple makes the best quality hardware and when it comes to color standards no one can touch it. Standards are easier to implement of Apple computers than on PC’s.
Please don’t give me the quality crap. Macs break down just as much as the PC’s here at work and a quick look inside a Mac chassis tells you that is is THE SAME components that you put in PCs. And no, Apple have not opted for higher quality version of those components.
About standards: One rule, one platform. Go figure…
Who cares how fast you can create something if that something is crap.
An here I thought Apple touted the ease of using the iApps to create things and then an Apple user completely shreds those arguments to molecules
Apple user?s should boycott Adobe from now on and use Macromedia software instead. I’m trashing my copy of Photoshop and Illustrator now.
Err… Y? “Are you not with us then you are against us”? Grow up.
Brian: I am sick and tired of everyone comparing 0-60 numbers. What really matters is the whole combined performance. I want to know how easily and efficiently I can perform routine tasks in a 40-hour week. This includes time spent for admin, system work-a rounds, number of required admin people per user etc.
Err ooookeeeey?! Where I work we don’t spen all our days fiddling with things in the OS, we do proper work in applications. Applications that doesn’t accompany the computer such as Office, various scientific software etc.
Where I work we used to have Unix workstations for our 3D CAD, we had exactly ONE admin person for 30 users. We now are Windows and we have to have 2 admin people for the same number of users. Our down time is twice as much, and our software upgrades occur half as much!
We have 1 admin for the same amount of people and he’s only employed at 20% for admin work and that’s sufficent for our very mixed *nix, PC and Mac computer park.
Get better admins or sack one and give the other a proper course in computer administration.
Joe Ragosta: Did anyone notice that this page is based on software that is not Altivec-enabled and very poorly multithreaded? Either of those would have a large impact on a dual processor Mac. Both together make the page rather suspect.
Is the software SSE2 enabled? Not all apps are suitable for or get a biig performance boost by multithreading. Get over the fact that the Mac got whipped in that test. You still have the Apple Photoshop tests that show your Mac is fast…er. That sounds like a really objective test doesn’t it. I bet intels own tests can show you that the PC is at least 10x faster than a Mac. But then again that test would not be objective either, would it?
Why don’t they compare After Effects on the PC to Final Cut Pro on the Mac?
I think we all know the answer to that.
Yes we all know Y but apparently you don’t! FCP and AE is two completely different programs and it was not the speed of AE vs FCP that was tested, it was the speed of AE on a PC vs AE on a Mac that the test was about but you selectively chose to ignore that.
appleforever: What is NOT a hard question is the following. Apple computers — the whole package of hardware, OS, apps and online service with .mac all designed to work together — is just plain better. This is obvious it’s funny to watch people strenously denying the obvious
Well the Mac works for you and I’m glad for your sake but please don’t put assume that it is better for everyone just because of that. If I want to do the same things as on a Mac as I do on a PC I quickly run into trouble cos the iApp software don’t do the things some PC freeware do when it comes to MP3, JPEG etc.
It’s not hard, by the way, to be better than windows because windows is legacy-laden crap and there’s too much stuff conflicting because it’s made by 10 different companies rather than one
Made by 10 different companies. I guess the same doesn’t apply to Mac OS X then? Final Cut (Macromedia), BSD userland (FreeBSD developers), MACH kernel (NEXT) to name but a few.
…since more and more Adobe software is increasingly sold for PC, at the expense of their Mac. They probably want to kill off their mac lines ASAP. And they probably feel threatened about the fact that Apple has been buying up software companies and getting in their territory.
“I notice you didn’t dispute that Apple is losing marketshare every day.
Care to comment why the market is so dramatically avoiding the Mac platform? Why is it that people are deserting Mac in droves all over the world?
Maybe because Apple only appeals to subculture people that have psychological problems? Only Apple continues to beat the drum that there is something wrong with the mainstream. Maybe the regular computer buyer just wants a regular computer, not an anti-mainstream political statement? ”
Well, I am neither a windows nut nor Mac. I personally don’t really care what my OS is as long as it does what I need. Now, next year I have to get a laptop for college and well I have been comparing Dells, Sony, and Apple.
Anyway to make a long story short, what is keeping me from jumping in and just picking an Apple computer is the following:
The new PB screens are only 1.3megapixel, the Dells are 2.4, thus the Dell’s have better screens. That and the P4 does seem to be faster an *every* test I have seen that was not conducted by Apple. I *know* I am not a lone on this. Many people I know love Mac 10.2, but mac hardware is more expensive than its PC counterparts and seems to come with less for the dollar, not the design part. So until Apple fixes this, hopefully with the new IBM chip, people aren’t going to see Macs as a value over x86.
Note: Before AppleForever flames me: I do not run windows, I do not have an p4. And note, I would buy and use a Mac if Apple got its act together.
Did anyone notice that this page is based on software that is not Altivec-enabled and very poorly multithreaded? Either of those would have a large impact on a dual processor Mac. Both together make the page rather suspect.
Well, that’s mainly Apple’s problem and not the users. This is a common piece of software used extensively in the graphics industry, and apparently it is slow on top-of-the-line Apple hardware.
Saying that you cannot benchmark common programs just because they aren’t altivec-optimized is ridiculous. What that really means is that anybody who needs to use these programs should not buy a Mac.
All these Mac users want their Macs to be the fastest machines ever placed on the face of the planet. It gives them great pleasure to know they are different and that they support the little dog in the yard. Well guys Macintosh will never see the user base Windows enjoys, EVER. You may gain some marketshare but nothing significant, Linux is slowly becoming the Big Dog and will surpass Mac marketshare by 2004, so what the PC is faster, use what you want to use. No one is holding a gun to anybodies head and forcing them to switch to PC, so I fail to see what the problem is. Adobe prefers the PC and recommends the PC for using their products. Will someone, a level headed Mac user tell me exactly what the problem is and how this affects the Mac? Because it has been my experience that people will use what they prefer.
jeez can’t you do better than that? you compare a 15.2″ to a 17″. also the apple has a dvd burner and the dell don’t. that about does it without going any further
How did you dare renaming YC to Appleforever + renaming BeOS to OSX and shove them back into this forum..?!
Both really reserved their retirement long time ago. Don’t make them suffer like that again. Thank you everyone.
It’s just fun to read all the hysteria platform wars cause. This page so obviously a cross promotion for Dell and other products. I’m sure that there was a pretty nice bonus from someone to the author of that article too(free hardware/software). It seems that all the “inertia” that “popular products” have which helps them sell even if they are inferior goes for Dell and Apple too. It’s these articles that sell machines, not the real benchmarks or the quality. It’s all about publicity. Good or bad, it’s still publicity. And all these postings are just that, free advertising for whoever you seem to like or believe is better.
The problem? Ignoring and denying reality. The reality is: (1) PCs are cheaper (desktops) and (2) currently faster (significantly). Most importantly, (3) they are more “compatible” (there’s more software, no web sites don’t work, etc). The first is not relevant to an assessment of what’s better. The second is, well, these things tend to go back and forth. The third is a real plus.
Now we move to what makes a mac the overall better computer (for most but not all users that apple is targeting): it just works better because one company makes increasingly all of the pieces. Just less problems. Second, it’s easier to use because Apple really pays attention to that and makes things consistent and intuitive (no klutzy wizards and 9 layer deep dialog boxes), even though ease of use does not have a lot of marketing “points” (like gigahertz). Third, because apple makes the whole enchilada it’s easier for them to implement new and exciting stuff as compared to the disorganized cast of characters in the wintel world. Fourth, apple embraces open standards because it helps them immensely (MS opposes because it hurts them).
For these reasons, the mac is overall better, even though it costs more (desktops) and is less compatible. You PC guys just can’t accept this, or even acknowledge any of the above as a mac advantage. It’s just too hard and troubling for you to accept.
For some people, the PC still makes more sense. Yet it’s still inferior overall. Something can be inferior but be a better choice for someone.
For the Macheads trying to claim that a HT Intel processor = two processors… nice try. If you don’t understand the technology, the difference between a processor and a thread, stay at home and read Macworld. As they say, ignorance is bliss and Mac users claim to be quite happy.
Well, MacOS X schedules tasks over processors on a thread by thread basis. So I would probably have to say that if HT is attempting to allow mutliple threads to run simultaneously on a single processor, it would give quite the same effect.
Well, MacOS X schedules tasks over processors on a thread by thread basis. So I would probably have to say that if HT is attempting to allow mutliple threads to run simultaneously on a single processor, it would give quite the same effect.
Err… no. SMP (Symmetric Multi Processing) gives you 2 (or more on really fat machines) processors that each have their own set of execution units. SMT (Symmetric Multi Threading) is one (1!) processor pretending to the OS that is 2 CPUs. Now SMT gives you 2 virtual CPUs that SHARE execution units, registers etc and this is the important issue. SMT therefor only makes the use of alredy existing execution units more effective by schedualing a “second” thread onto execution units unused by the “first” thread. On and SMP machine each of the threads have a full set of execution units to themselves.
Now imagine this; you make a multithreaded Photoshop filter that heavily taxes the FPU execution units in multiple threads. Running this filter on an SMT P4 CPU taxes out the FPU units on the P4 in one thread and another thread will be “stalled” (very simplified but that’s the end result at least) and you will get no speedup compared to a singe non-SMT CPU. Running the same filter on an SMP machine will give each of the two threads their own set of FPU execution units and you’ll get an nice 80% (roughly, depending on how well written the threads was and upon how much the OS needs to execute as well) speedup in execution.
Now don’t try to argue again that SMT = SMP with regards to speed cos it simply aint. SMT can when running a mix of program that taxes INT and FPU units differently give a speedup of ~30% compared to running the same programs on a non-SMT CPU.
For these reasons, the mac is overall better, even though it costs more (desktops) and is less compatible. You PC guys just can’t accept this, or even acknowledge any of the above as a mac advantage. It’s just too hard and troubling for you to accept.
For some people, the PC still makes more sense. Yet it’s still inferior overall. Something can be inferior but be a better choice for someone.
I like your arguments but not your conclusion because you are missing an important point. How can a thing be inferior and yet better. Paradox!!!
The answer is very simple, it depends on your priority, so all your differents arguments : cost, compatibility, overall experience, number of clicks to perform an operation, processing power, the kind of software available, games … needs to have some weight in making your overall decision.
What Mac people and PC people don’t agree on is the ponderation of these differents points.
I guess this is why we have at least 2 differents conclusion.
NeuralProbe
it’s not moving to powerpc, or even itanium.
it’s not moving to x86.
it’s not even os x.
apple’s biggest speed boost would be to base
os x.3 on be inc. os.
enjoy 80-90% of the gains of adding additional cpus, as opposed to older oses
Threads are nice, and they are a neat programming trick.
But we’re talking about processors.
Each one has a pipeline. Each pipeline allows instructions X-wide to proceed down the pipeline.
I don’t care if you have 10 or 1000 threads running or a neat marketing name like “Hyperthreading” on the packaging.
You still have to proceed down the pipleline in the order you are received.
From Intel’s site:
“Traditional approaches to processor design have focused on higher clock speeds, instruction-level parallelism (ILP), and caches. Techniques to achieve higher clock speeds involve pipelining the microarchitecture to finer granularities, also called super-pipelining. Higher clock frequencies can greatly improve performance by increasing the number of instructions that can be executed each second. Because there will be far more instructions in-flight in a super-pipelined microarchitecture, handling of events that disrupt the pipeline, e.g., cache misses, interrupts and branch mispredictions, can be costly.
“ILP refers to techniques to increase the number of instructions executed each clock cycle. For example, a super-scalar processor has multiple parallel execution units that can process instructions simultaneously. With super-scalar execution, several instructions can be executed each clock cycle. However, with simple in-order execution, it is not enough to simply have multiple execution units. The challenge is to find enough instructions to execute. One technique is out-of-order execution where a large window of instructions is simultaneously evaluated and sent to execution units, based on instruction dependencies rather than program order.”
http://www.intel.com/technology/itj/2002/volume06issue01/art01_hype…
Basically, if you can’t fill the pipleline, then you’re wasting processor cycles.
Hyperthreading resolves some of the empty processor cycles, but it’s not what most people on this board think it is. In order to take advantage of hyperthreading you need a motherboard, CPU and RAM architecture that is specifically designed to take advantage of the technology. One cannot use hyperthreading by plopping a new CPU into a non-HT supporting motherboard. The same goes for the RAM. You pay a premium for the CPU, the motherboard and the RAM.
Remember, Hyperthreading is not a technical term, it’s a marketing term. It’s used to generate hype and money for Intel.
Here is an excellent article on hyperthreading for some of the ignorant PC users out there who are throwing the term around like a cheap whore!
http://arstechnica.com/paedia/h/hyperthreading/hyperthreading-1.htm…
but to sidetrack from the HW pissing contest…
i might just diverge back to the Apple Photoshop competitor theory…
as much as i love photoshop, it has become very bloated.. the interface is a total mess, and the layer stack is getting messy with the kind of work people do these days…
i suggest that apple make a still image editing app based on the foundations in Shake (the motion compsoiting app they now own)..
think now, could apple make an image editor that breaks the workflow set by photoshop and moves into propper procedural image editing…
Shake already has much better colour handaling than Photoshop..
it would be a dramatic jump, and people would need to learn new concepts….
but it might just work
as much as i love photoshop, it has become very bloated.. the interface is a total mess, and the layer stack is getting messy with the kind of work people do these days…
Funny how you seem to find it bloated and messy and yet the interface is one of Photoshops biggest strengths. “The kind of work people do” with Photoshop is very well done with Photoshop and not easily replace by another app. “People” in this case, are those that need the abilities of Photoshop and not the ordinary digi-camera-owner-who-thinks-effects-are-sooo-cool who’ll find other lighter Photoediting apps more and better suited to their needs.
i suggest that apple make a still image editing app based on the foundations in Shake (the motion compsoiting app they now own)..
That’s one frellin big step for Shake to take (rhyme not intended). Aint gonna happend!
it would be a dramatic jump, and people would need to learn new concepts….
Let me just say this once. Photoshop works the same on Wintel as on a Mac. Has the same interface. Now what would happend if Apple made a Photoshop competitor and Adobe because of this decided to more strongly promote thier userbase to use Wintel machines? The users would of course switch to a Wintel BECAUSE the application is the important issue when doing work! not the OS! If you do 80% of your computer work in app then getting used to a new system is easier and more painless than getting used to a new app. Go figure…
Apple will NEVER take the first step and try to alienate Adobe by creating a Photoshop competitor because the Adobe apps are crucial for the survival of the Mac. Now if Adobe took the first step and said they’ll not develop Photoshop for Mac in the future then Apple might do something but my guess is that then the Mac would be doomed unless it found a new niche (whateva that might be)