In his new book “Illustrator CS for Dummies,” Ted Alspach, Adobe’s Group Product Manager for Illustration Products, advises new computer buyers to get a PC: “As of 2003, Windows systems have taken a decisive lead over Macs when it comes to performance. The difference is most apparent with graphics applications such as Photoshop and Illustrator, but you”ll notice it with other applications as well. If you?’re thinking of purchasing a new system, and speed and responsiveness is important (or at least more important than the feel of the OS, I suggest getting a zippy PC over a (comparably) sluggish Mac“. This is not the first time Adobe (Apple’s #1 third party software house) pushes its customers towards the PC. The previous time it ended with Apple’s PR firing back at Adobe through the media.
Adobe: Use PCs instead of Macs, Round II
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Can’t stand the heat? Get out of the kitchen, rajan r. Macs are on on par with your precious PCs and you don’t like it! Cry me a freakin’ river!
No need to for Intel and AMD to file bankruptcy just yet, but I’m certain they had a wake-up call with the release of the Apple/IBM G5.
BTW, Adobe (a software company) and others could learn a few things about developing decent software from Apple (a hardware company).
You are so wrong on so many levels.
Ghz is like rpm.
And IPC: instructions per clock, give an indication of the underlying architecture of the chip to do work.
Which translates into the G4, G5, Pentium M, and the Athlon have more cylinders in their engines, v8 or v12’s, compared to Intels P4 4cylinder.
These processors have more “Execution Units” with allow them to schedule more instructions to execute in parallel.
Also, what these instructions do per cycle is more than what the P4 instructions do per cycle.
But, really you can prove this yourself. Just write your own benchmark and run it on different PC architectures.
Intel can fool you with GHZ. But, they can’t fool you with your own handwritten benchmark.
I’m not trying to convince you G4/G5 is better.
I’m just asking you to use your brain.
I’ll reply to this person, however, I find that the person who read my comment took it completely out of context. If this young lad had been around for longer than 5minutes he would know that I run an eMac, MacOS 10.2.8, programme in Java using Eclipse and run Corel Graphics Suite, Office X, Painter 8.1 and Macromedia Studio MX 2004. Oh well, here I go.
“Or one could purchase an IBM Think Centre desktop PC which is alot easier to manage and restore (from and end user perspective), also, amazingly enough you actually get a customer support representative who can speak English without a fake/real American twang. ”
Where do you get this from? Experience? I don’t think so. The Mac has ALWAYS been easier to configure, run and maintain than any PC, from the older system architecture to todays OSs. Ask people who use both… Oh, I was just talking to my friend from Argentina, guess who he has a job for? MICROSOFT tech support. True, his English is excellent, but he has an accent, prefers Linux to MS… it’s all his job.
The comment was regarding Dell. As a former Dell “victim”, I know the “quality” or there lack of. What I stated was pointing out that if one were to purchase a PC, buying from IBM would be alot better value in terms of product and service quality.
Regarding the accent, I was given a free version of Windows XP when it was launched as I was an OEM vendor in New Zealand, I installed the operating system when I arrived home, everything was activated quite nicely. After a few months of punishment I decided to upgrade the hard disk and re-install. I then re-installed and went through the process of installing then activating.
When activating the activation software complained and advised to ring up to talk to a Microsoft representative. I then ring up through the activation “hotline” and followed the telephone prompts of typing in the serial number using the keypad, at the end there was a “please wait”, and I was promptly put through to a “representative”, this “representative” asks for the serial number, I proceed to give it to her. After the first four numbers I am queried whether it was a nine or a six I said. This constantly inability to understand a typical New Zealand accent would piss anyone off, especially at 23:00.
That is my experience with Microsoft. Dell was even worse, I wanted to find out the monitor refresh rate settings, I had to then explain to the person on the phone what I wanted. It was like speaking to an 8 year old.
“Users need to be told that in the computer industry that “you get what you pay for” is more true than any other. You buy an el-cheapo computer, there is a downside, either poorer quality or less expandibility. ”
Have you spoken to AppleCare or the local user support groups? A friend of mine actually prefers her iBook… as a user. She worked for IBM and was in the marker to purchase a laptop to do DV while on a trip to France and Slovania. She came over to my place before she went, I told her a few tips, and away she went. No problems for over a year in Europe. Oh, that was Jaguar…
Oh, and I own an eMac, MacOS 10.2.8, programme in Java using Eclipse and run Corel Graphics Suite, Office X, Painter 8.1 and Macromedia Studio MX 2004, so what is your point?
“As for eMac/iMac and PowerMac, 90% of users can be easily served with that is available, heck, even a PIII 1Ghz is suitable for 90% of peoples daily work. The only thing that has been rising is memory requirements, CPU requirements have remained static whilst Intel and AMD have been hyping up the clock speed with end users thinking that for magical reason, if they upgrade their CPU, their crappy graphics, slow hard drive and lack of memory are suddenly fixed.”
I use a 1G PIII w/512 MB Ram and I still prefer to use my Powerbook G3/333 w/320M Ram. (Yeah, it’s slower but it doesn’t crash as much. Hiccup as much…) Inconsistant behavior has led me to remove my Handspring sync from the PC (WinXP). The USB bus is so inconsistant (I always had to go to Device Manager et al to configure when the device becomes unrecognizable etc..) My friend with a Clio (spellink) couldn’t get his to sync w/XP Home (Oh, should he be using Pro? or Media Edition?).
Read, read and read again. I was talking in relation to the constant whining that occurs by some people who think that because an eMac is only 1Ghz, obviously it is unbelievably slow and unusualable. I was simply pointing out the fact that no one needs to have a multi-gigahertz PC or Mac and that this “speed” myth is nothing more than hype created by the CPU and computer industry to suck more consumers into upgrading at a higher rate.
Imagine if consumers kept their computers for 4 years, what would happen then? Dell virtually go belly up as there would no longer be that huge turn over base to sustain it.
“Window 2000 can run on a PIII with 512MB VERY nicely, same goes for MacOS X running on an eMac 1Ghz with 512MB. Memory increase is a normal thing but people who think CPU speed increase = over all computer speed increase really need to get their brain examined by a professional.”
I guess if you only use one app at a time. OS 8.6 is a speed demon and almost never crashes… I use it on my old Mac clone (w/G3 upgrade). In fact it’s now my music studio computer.
Please get experience with the platforms you are commenting on… No platform is perfect. Remember the old adage… Never ASSUME…
Microsoft’s PR should read NOT Where do you want to go toady but Where WE (MS) want to take you today.
I am using an eMac right now (for the unteenth time) and I run atleast 3-4 applications in the background at anyone time. 512MB is perfect for a person like me who uses his computer for work and does not need “mind blowing” 3d graphics and “mind boggling” speed.
Now, maybe in a few months I’ll upgrade to 1GIG of memory, however, even then I struggle trying to use all the memory.
Sorry if I misread you. It was 6am here in . And, yes… I have been around for more than 5-minutes. I am NOT a programmer, I am a Graphic Designer who Owned Macs and PCs from the early eighties. Apple IIe was my first ‘owned’ computer which I used to test speaker enclosures (FFT analysis). I got the computer used. I learned a lot with my first (cough) workhorse 386 in which I used to Fax myself stuff so that I can edit it in a app called ProDraw (which was well ahead of it’s time in functionality, and only on PC). WAY ahead, I think Adobe bought ’em out (or Corel?). Of course I couldn’t afford the Apples at that time. I learned a lot from my PCs… lots of opertunities for trouble shooting.
I still have 2 MacIIvis and a PowerComputing 150 (w/G3 card), a PII/400 (Win98)… A Dual 867 MDD and a recently purchased Lombard Powerbook (eBay).
What convinced me to move FULL time back to Mac was working on a PIII/1GHz w/XP… using that at my day job (engineering) convinced me.
Again, I be sorry… I woke up this morning and acted way too prudently
Jb
did adobe say that or did a current or former product manager say that in an independent book? there is a big difference.
i must say if i were a developer, i’d be threatened by things like final cut and emagic logic audio. I am told that the first is one of the best products for what it does. i can say that logic audio is at the top of its class.
Thats alright 😉 its 2:20am here in Australia, these things happen.
As for me, I’m an ex-BBC Micro, ex-Amiga user turned Mac-user, and IMHO, the great thing about Mac is unlike the PC world, Apple bring a holistic experience to the user. The hardware and software are all made by the one company thus ensuring that when one does run a Mac, they don’t experience strange behaviour caused by slight incompatibilities between hardware and software.
Although the PC has moved forward, there is still that lack of integration between the hardware and software. It aways appears that the operating system producer is located on Pluton and the hardware vendor is located on earth. The two should work together in tandem to bring a holistic experience to the user.
Does anyone know how long it takes for a book to be written and published? This was probably written before the same guy went up on stage and professed the G5 to be the best; to clarify his previous view that the pc was better – pre G5. When you post news that comes from a published book you are looking at news months, if not a year, old; even if it’s been recently published.
If this where /. I would say mod root parent down for this post. No news here but old news.
As a systems administrator I’m growing weary of the failure rate and
quality of Dell products. This is what I advise people when they
buy a Dell.
1. Their prices are pretty good (not always the lowest)
2. Their quality of their components, chassis and body is crap
I’ve replaced many Dell components and whole computers.
They’re product defect rate is much higher than other manufacturers.
3. Their customer support is good. (SGI and Apples are better)
The new G5 workstation is a solid machine, well made and you
can just tell its a workstation class product. Reminds me of
the of engineering I’d see in a Octane or O2 workstation.
If you have a Dell and it works good for you. I’ve just being
frustrated that they don’t test products like their soundcards
that have caused repeated blue screens on their Precision Xeon
line of workstation on our Win 2000. Finally, I uninstalled the
driver that Dell supplied with the machine for it to stop crashing
on me all the time. A few days ago a professor got two refurbed
Dells. One kept shutting down on me and had to be sent back.
I’ve grown to expect that from their machines. Its hit or miss.
I own a 17″ flat screen imac, and I somethimes work with PC’s. I must say that the most modest PC is much more speedy than the mac! Altough the mac is much more easy, and fun to use (osx panther).
Basing your computer choice on one application seems a bit silly. How many people only use their computer to run Adobe products. A lot more goes into the choice of platforms, computers, software, etc. Having used Unix systems, windows systems and apple systems, and running using adobe products for years, I prefer Apples for ease of use. Maybe some tasks are faster on a Windows machine, but I hate the constant aggravation, even with XP.
I think the title of the book says it all. If you don’t know how to use Illustrator by now. you’re probably using a PC anyway.
Maybe it’s time for Apple to release their own version of Photoshop for both the mac and the PC. Hit Adobe where it hurts.
Under Jag 550 was a bit sluggish.
Now, it’s quite responsive.
Startup times have dropped from 2 min. to 23 sec.
Shutdown times from 3 min. to 15 sec or less.
Panther is a worthy upgrade.
As a looongtime Mac user/graphic designer, I didn’t pay attention to the speed claims of PC users. But then I started motion graphics work with Adobe After Effects, and my complex animations took *hours* to render — so I investigated the PC alternatives.
I then built a cheap PC ($1500) and my render times were LESS THAN HALF what they were on the then-current top of the line ($3500) G4.
I did side-by-side tests, and have never looked back since. Of course everything I’ve read ( Barefeats.com , etc.) says that the G5’s are roughly equal to my 3.06 P4HT in speed — but at twice the price, why bother?
I still use Macs for web design, print & programming (for other reasons that are obvious to mac users), but when I need a truly fast box, it’s the PC every time.
anonymous said ” No one in their right mind would purchase a G5 for use with Premiere”
Certainly not. Especially since Premier is no longer made for Macs. That’s because FCP is leaving it in the dust.
You forget all too easily that when Avid tried to take all its stuff to NT a scant number of years ago, the users rebelled. Why?
In the words of one editor, “when a PC goes down, I’m down for at least a day or more. When the Mac goes down, I’m back up in a hour or so.” At the prices non-linear editing is going for, that represents a saving of the income stream.
And nothing has fundamentally changed about Windows to make it easier to trouble shoot. It’s a layerd mess with things in illogical places. And we haven’t even touched the security land mines that seem to pop up weekly.
I’m amazed that Ted’s comment made it in the final release of the book. IMO it should have been edited out, true or not, for the simple reason that it’s not objective, it has no place in a commercial tuts book. It is unprofessional. It could even be considered trolling. Got that Ted?
To the person that said:
“Personally, I would love to see Apple come out with a full-featured professional photo editing application. I’m sure it would kick the living daylights out of the overrated, overpriced, and (in my experience) crash-prone Photoshop.”
If you had any experience with 2d image manipulation applications you would realize that there’s nothing out there today that can touch PS. Unfortunately, that is a cold hard fact. Apple, or anyone else, cannot produce something that equals or betters it, without investing millions of dollars and lots of time (like Adobe did).
I went to a Panther release party at a local Mac reseller. An Adobe rep was there, hawking his Adobe CS wares. He claimed that before the G5, PCs were really making the Macs look bad. However, he now says that the G5 keeps even with the fastest PCs, and in some things (especially Illustrator), it crushes it. There is no longer a speed gap, according to him.
Matthew
My P4 is NOT faster than my G4 running Photoshop. This is really a troll at best – and speed is useless if the OS/platform isn’t reliable. I mean what a silly comment – “if speed is more important than OS feel” like the OS has nothing to do with day to day productivity.<p>Fact is most of the time your processor is IDLE – the speed ups made by the OS in easy to use human interface design are MORE likely to cause a double performance gain than strictly MHZ. After all, are you mulling about in Photoshop, thinking… planning… creating in your mind or are you just running a single gaussian blur and timing it down to the millisecond to see which is better? Feel and ease of use are paramount to performance and the statements made clearly show the man’s ignornace. <p>Mhz alone only matters on a machine that has no human interaction.
“Windows XP pro running on a quality system (think DELL for instance) built by somebody that knows what they’re doing barely ever crashes. I am still to see a blue screen or a fatal crash caused by the OS (not some crappy application) in the past 7-8 months.”
I have a state-of-the-art Dell laptop. So far, under warranty, they have replaced: the motherboard, the screen (twice), the keyboard, a battery cover. I have never had a hardware problem with any of the 10 macs I have owned (including powerbooks).
As a professional photographer, I would never consider using a windows machine with Photoshop for any kind of serious work.
My brother was previously employed by Adobe as a software engineer in the Photoshop group in the mid-late 90’s. Although he has since moved on to another company, he was quite amazed at the islands of anti-Apple sentiment that existed within Adobe at the time. Many of the employees, however, were very dedicated to the Macintosh platform.
I agree that lead managers should not publicize their individual platform preferences. Speed and cost are certainly important, but the whole package deal / user experience still makes Macintosh a better choice for me.
Those complaining that Apple is stepping on the toes of its developers have to realize that Apple and MS are completely different animals.
Tell me the last time a developer abandoned Windows (besides those bought by Apple). With >90% Windows market share it makes no sense. Yet Avid announced it was leaving the Mac platform, AutoCad left, Lotus left, Authorware left, and the major Mac developers (Adobe, Quark, Macromedia, et al) have much more “threat” leverage with Apple than they do with the MS mothership.
So what’s a “niche platform” maker to do?
Well frankly, if Apple did for photo editing, illustrating, CAD, CBT and page layout, what they did for video editing with FCPro, I’d dump Adobe, Quark and company in a heartbeat. Same goes for office apps and anything else.
It’s simple. If you design for a living, you want to work with the best designed products. I use both platforms day in and day out and nothing holds a candle to Apple design. I wouldn’t want the world to be 100% Apple, for sure, but there’s no threat of that happening. And 100% Microsoft? Shudder…
I also count Apple design to apply the pressure on MS that manifests itself in Windows “innovations” 1-2 years down the road.
For anyone at Adobe to be advocating an inferior (yes the PC platform is inferior in a myriad ways, chief among them being it’s users inability to see or admit what a piece of cr$p they just wasted their money on) has made me lose a great deal of respect for Adobe. I used to think they were dedicated to providing the best programs possible, regardless of platform. I expect Adobe will change thier tune once sales figures for the new Macintosh CS versions of thier software comes in; and also the reports of how much easier and productive graphic professionals are using Macintosh systems to run them.
The diversity of thought is simply amazing… truely, this is a democratic community, but some seem to lack a certain level of respect for those with differing views.
I own and use a PC. I have watched Apple over the years and have been impressed with where they are going and the quality of their product. As much as I would like to own a Mac, I will stick with my PC. Not because PCs are better or even that they are less expensive, but simply because that is what I have grown up using and am most familiar with.
A Mac will not make me any more productive than a PC – my level of productivty is more in my own control than anything else. I use windows. I have used Apple’s and Linux Red Hat. I grew up using DOS, so command line arguments are not alien to me. Yet, all the tools I use and am familiar with are currently on the Windows PC platform. My music performs equally well on a 2.4 P4 as it does on a 1.5 P4-M. Clock cycles do not a more efficient computer make.
If clock cycles were the ticket, then I am sure Mainframes and Supercomputers would not measure the number of instructions processed per second or the number of functions processed per second but the speed of the clock. Sure, I can make my alarm clock run slower or faster, but that does not leave me with more or less sleep or alter the quality of that sleep. You can argue your Ghz into oblivion and yet still miss the point: does it get the job the user wants done the way they want it done? Does it come closer than others?
For some, Macs are the answer. For some, Windows-PCs are the answer. For some, Linux or BSD PCs are the answer. For some Sun is the answer. Whatever. If it floats the boat then it floats the boat, otherwise, it is only hot air. AMD and Intel love to toute clock speed – yet, each performs certain functions better than the other regardless of the clock speed. Intel does a better job handling music production apps better than AMD, AMD does a better job handling graphics apps. Apple seems to do a better job than both and at less speed. So what? If you are happy with what you have, be happy and stop being neurotic over which platform/os/whatever is better. If you think it is then maybe you are right or wrong. But either way, you can be civil and argue actual arguements instead of debating opinions (that is where the Special Olympics for forums come in). Opinions are NOT debateable. Learn to tell the difference between a fact and an opinion. Learn to debate what is important.
OK Guys. Like most people, I think everyone is missing the point. Who cares if a G4/G5 is slower or faster than an X86 cpu that is twice the clock speed? The point being, the systems are all so close that all that is left to make personal preference decisions is which OS you prefer. If you want to deal with crappy Windows software, worms, security, forced $ upgrades, awful licensing policies, then go with Windows. That is your choice. Don’t argue to others that your product is better in some way. It is better only to YOU and your needs. Same on the Mac side. Although the software and OS are much better from the ground up, and the security is probably the best shipping in the world right now, it is a choice and preference. I really don’t see Volkswagon people arguing with BMW people about why their cars are better or not. Silly. Just buy/use what you feel comfy with.
To me Low end is the sub 100$ field, mid-end field is 100-400$, 400-1000$ is high end, 1000+$ is Studio Level.
Avid makes products that cost well into the $10,000 range. I say it’s a high end as opposed to “Studio Level” because it is the definitive video editing standard, for everything from the major networks all the way down to your local television station (probably)
I’m using “high end” to indicate the upper 1/3 of everyone doing nonlinear DV editing on a computer. You have the low end people, who will be using Premiere on PCs or Final Cut Express, the midlevel who will be using programs like Final Cut Pro and Avid Xpress, and in the high end you’ll see a whole assortment of programs, namely Avid Xpress DV/Pro, and others like Avid Film Composer.
“Actually this would lead to Apple getting slapped with an easy to convict anti-trust lawsuit.”
The difference between Apple and Microsoft here, is that Apple is not forcing you to use their applications. If you don’t want to use it don’t download it, don’t buy it, or throw it in the trash. Now try doing that with Internet Explorer on the PC… hmmm… different story, eh? That is why Microsoft was in trouble. Heck, Mac OS X still installs Internet Explorer so if you want it to be your default, then just launch it, and when it prompts you, say yes.
After reading this article today
http://www.architosh.com/news/2003-11/2003c-1107-ed-g5.phtml
I’m puzzled by the theme here. Steve
I have used Photoshop on a Mac since 1992 (version 2.0 on a Mac IIci), came bundled with a scanner. I have bought just about every model Apple came out with since then. Now I use Photoshop 7.01 on a 2x2GHz/9800pro OSX10.3. To me Apple has a reputation for making good products, why would I switch from that? Do I care if a windows box is at 5GHz? I only care that my mortgage gets paid, I eat well, my daughter goes to the best school and plan every 3 yrs on which new car to get. It puzzles me why you people worry too much about computer speed, think about the ease, reliability and comfort of using one for a change.
BTW, as a hobby, I assemble my own PC. I have 2 running XP and one Windows 2000. I do play AAO on the fastest pc, some games are just not optimized on a mac, lol.
This, children, is why they call them Personal Computers! Buy the PC that makes you happy and go on. What is with this need to justify your beliefs by tearing down the beliefs of others.
Benchmarks lie… PR departments lie… CEOs lies…. market and sale folks lie… and online magazines lie. Everyone has an agenda in this debate: Adobe, MS, Apple, IBM, Intel, OSNews, even AMD.
I use a PC at work everyday (HP Kayak Dual P4 w/ Dual monitors). They are good for what I use them for. They perform well. I use a Mac at home and wouldn’t even consider buying a PC for my personal use. Do I feel a need to trash those who would? No. Do I feel a need to justify my choices about where I spend my money. No.
Please, grow up and leave this fan-boy crap to traffic-trolling sites like this and stories like these. I don’t care what this site or this author — who always seems to right Mac-fan baiting stories — says about my platform of choice.
Wow…
Lock: “Not everyone believes as you do, Morpheus.”
Morpheus: “My beliefs do not require them to.”
Hmmm… So, the G5 PowerMac is slower than a PC when running obsolete 3 year old Adobe software (Premiere) that does not recognize the G5, does not use dual processors, does not use the AltiVec register, does not run natively under Mac OS X and is no longer being made for the Mac. But… the same Adobe software does run natively under Windows XP, does recognize multiple Xeon processors on a PC, does use the current variation of SIMD on a PC and is a current product for PC…
For the uninformed Winreller…
Apple makes FCP which has made Premiere essentially irrelevant in the professional sphere. Adobe doesn’t like that, so a little revenge is in order, ain’t it?
I took a look at the claims of Apple faking the benchmarks and discovered that the claims were as valid as a Chinese made three dollar bill printed on used toilet paper.
The GCC compiler was used instead of Intel’s rigged “reference” compiler. that was to provide as evenb a playing field as possible with no specialized rigging.
(Note: the GCC compiler is not well optimized for thye G5. It does not recognize the pipeline speculation controls the G5 uses.)
Hyperthreading on the PC was turned off… for the same reason Dell turns it off on their own behcmarks… because it slows down a PC drastically. It’s just another Wintel technology that doesn’t work.
The malloc flags were correctly set for both systems, despite the false claims to the contrary. The claimants never read the VeriTest report. I did.
Apple used a configuration that matches the real world characteristics of the G5 instead of the older G4. To run the Mac configured for the wrong processor is somehow the only “fair” way Wintel Weenies want the Mac set up.
Not rigging the test in favor of the PC is considered unfair by Wintel Weenies… so, what else is new?
This is a Wintel Weenie’s idea of “fair”?!
Now Kiddies… explain away the Virginia Tech “Big Mac” supercompter that now ranks at #3 (10.3 teraflops). No PC based supercomputing cluster is in the top five, and they cost up to 8 times as much to make. The number one used custom made processors made by Fujitsu and the number two used 8,160 Alpha processors.
If the G5 is not as fast as Apple says… howcum?
I am sure that the weenies will find some phony-ass excuse to explain it all away. Most people who are delusional are very good at that.
In an independent benchmarking suite, developed here at Pustid Sonipar (.Com), taking advantage of the latest compilers and tools, we have found the Athlon64 to be orders of magnitude faster for all real world tasks. Apple’s so-called ‘PowerPC’ G5 just can’t compare with offerings from AMD.
In fact, the G5 didn’t even complete a single one of our tests. This is not, as it might seem at first glance, due to the fact that we used Intel’s compiler exclusively, but is in fact a fundamental flaw in the G5 design, relating to how it handles odd bits.
The difference between Apple and Microsoft here, is that Apple is not forcing you to use their applications. If you don’t want to use it don’t download it, don’t buy it, or throw it in the trash. Now try doing that with Internet Explorer on the PC… hmmm… different story, eh? That is why Microsoft was in trouble. Heck, Mac OS X still installs Internet Explorer so if you want it to be your default, then just launch it, and when it prompts you, say yes.
You should try reading rather than skimming.
If Apple drives out the heavy duty software vendors(Adobe, Corel, Macromedia, Microsoft, Quark) by developing their own software and then there is no competition on the Apple Platform, they would be guilty of Anti-Trust since they would account for the vast majority of software plus all other factors. They are well on their way in the Audio-Video software segement as we speak and its a just a matter of time before Apple goes after Office.
This derives from what I wrote in post #94 in this thread.
As for the fanboys out there I am neither pro/con Mac, Linux or Windows. If you don’t like that, Tough S**t.
“If Apple drives out the heavy duty software vendors(Adobe, Corel, Macromedia, Microsoft, Quark) by developing their own software and then there is no competition on the Apple Platform, they would be guilty of Anti-Trust since they would account for the vast majority of software plus all other factors. They are well on their way in the Audio-Video software segement as we speak and its a just a matter of time before Apple goes after Office.”
Considering those are expensive applications, it would only be considered an anittrust issue if the were bundled with the OS. Apple offering software seperately is not wrong at all. If more people buy it over a competing application, it’s because it’s better. You don’t buy $1000 software on a whem, and it doesn’t come bundled with the OS.
As a side note, I hope they do go after Office and totally destroy the MS suite.
Wade, everyone knows the Intel Compiler doesn’t run on the G5.
Oh, maybe that was supposed to be a joke.
Wade, at our work site we’ve found that the Intel compiler breaks on “real world” applications. Microsoft’s C++ compiler is slower, but if you turn off all optimizations, then your code does at least run.
We’ve used it for 3 major projects, apps with more then 100 classes, and we couldn’t ship anything but the debug builds. Funny, none of the Windows genius wanted to find the problem. They said just ship the debug build. And so it was done.
1) If the Intel CPU was superior and considering that GCC is considerably more optimised for the x86 ISA, wouldn’t it hold true that the Intel equiped machine should have beaten the G5?
2) The companies who produce software for Windows don’t use Intels compilers, they either use Borland C++ or Microsofts C++/C compiler.
3) GCC was used to harmonise the differences between the different platforms. Sure, I would actually compared a Microsoft compiled test against gcc, however, that would have been me 😉
4) Why do people think that the only thing worth considering is the speed of the machine? do these people realise that there are people out there who use their computers for real work and not running benchmarks and boasting on slashdot about how they hooked up an endothermic reactor which enabled them to squeeze and extra 0.000001fps out of their computer.
I support both macs and pcs that use adobe products. The architecture is different between how macs and pcs process software instructions. I will definitely choose a well equipped pc (1.6ghz + with 512mg ram) over any mac for adobe use. This is my experience others may feel opposite. What I do like is the ease of upgrading pc hardware to enhance the capabilities of quality software like adobe products. Most users in graphics use macs with one or two graphical software programs running. NEWSFLASH that mac won’t crash and a fallacy exist that macs do not break(they do(rare) and try fixing one, very proprietary, very expensive). SO next I go see engineers MULTITASKING using upwards of ten applications at a time. With new faster bus speed pcs, the performance is good and the windows operating systems don’t blue screen like in the past. The mac with this scenario runs horribly slow but yields awesome graphics. Bottom line its what you use in your job or hobbies to choose between the mac and pc. I will watch a dvd on a mac but I will not work with office apps or web based clients on a mac. Just my experience so far. One day hopefully technologies like grid computing will make this ongoing argument null.
To anyone who thinks that Opterons and Itaniums are faster than the G5, you could be right … but Srinidhi Varadarajan disagrees with you. In case you just got back from a really long lunch and haven’t heard, he’s the guy who just built the world’s 3rd most powerful supercommuter out Mac G5s, and did it for less than half the price of any of the nearest competitors. Some quotes from recent Wired and Computerworld articles:
– A lot of people get the math wrong when calculating the performance of the machines. Each G5 processor has two double-precision, floating-point units. Each is capable of a fused, multiply-add operation per cycle, so you get 2 flops per cycle. This means that 2GHz corresponds to 8 GFlops, so each dual G5 can deliver a peak of 16 GFlops of double-precision performance. That is double what a two Opterons can do and in fact more than a modern Cray node.
– Varadarajan said before the G5 cluster, he’d never touched a Mac. “They (Apple) were in a bit of a shock,” he said. “They assumed I was some kind of Mac fan, but I’d never used a Mac before.”
– Varadarajan revealed that in addition to the G5, he’d also considered using Advanced Micro Devices’ Opteron and Intel’s Itanium II processors. But the Opteron was too expensive and the Itanium too slow, he said.
– “Ironically, they lost the gigahertz game,” he said of Intel. “(The G5) is extremely faster than the Itanium II, hands down.”
http://www.computing.vt.edu/research_computing/terascale/
While the introduction of G5 is a just swell turn of events, and while Windows XP is a just swell little OS far better than any MS OS that came before, Mac and OS X users are Mac and OS X users because Macs are far more stable, more secure, last longer (why Macs account for two percent of current sales but retain roughly ten percent of the computer user installed base — Mac users upgrade far less often), and they possess an elegance mostly lost to Windows folks, at least until that elegance shows up in XP several years later.
Speed is relative. In the past the race was between speed and elegance. In the future, maybe just elegance.
The specs are completely out of date. Why do you think VT chose the G5 over other 64-bit processors for its supercomputer? Speed and price!
The G5 together with IBM compilers change everything. I do compute intensive statistical calculations using R (and IBM compilers) and it can’t be beat even by spending much more (as VT discovered).
As the G5 compilers become optimized, there will be no contest. Also, the G5 will scale quickly (including more than 2 processor units) and the G6 is not far off.
The specs are completely out of date. Why do you think VT chose the G5 over other 64-bit processors for its supercomputer? Speed and price!
The G5 together with IBM compilers change everything. I do compute intensive statistical calculations using R (and IBM compilers) and it can’t be beat even by spending much more (as VT discovered).
As the G5 compilers become optimized, there will be no contest. Also, the G5 will scale quickly (including more than 2 processor units) and the G6 is not far off.
The issue is the Adobe needs to increase PC usership because right now, 90% of the top 10 percentile of 2D Designers are on a Mac. These are the people that actually pay for their software. This would be fine if Apple wasn’t knocking off their products one by one (Premiere…After Effects is in danger of being squeezed by Shake and FCP4, X11 opens a wider market to GIMP).
Is the PC faster? Maybe…but designers at top end care far more about the creature comforts of the Mac than the raw speed. Their work is fast because they are really good. An extra .2 seconds on their Guassian Blur is just noise. Apple has always benefitted from this equation.
A PC is like a really fast Stock Car. A Mac is more like a BMW…it’s not as fast…but alot of people would prefer it for day to day commuting.
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If Apple were to make Mac OS X for x86, they could put a big dent into M$
DO IT DO IT!
–The loon
Quickly – Apple will NEVER go to x86, the processor is just to antiquated to be feasable, plus you’d would have the HORRIBLE hardware to deal with. By using OPEN STANDARDS but controling the design, Apple get’s to use ALL PC components but the USER doesn’t have the hassle of dealing with conflicts. Macs are the GOLD standard when it comes to quality, users know that, if you only use PC’s you don’t understand.
Panther makes all Macs MUCH faster, the slower they were the FASTER they are with panther, a 800Mhz iMac is now 71% quicker in the UI. Wow! It’s clear the Adobe guy wrote this before Panther was released! Plus the G5 will be worked down the line in short order. MacWorld is coming up!!! Jan 5-10th or so! EVERYONE in the COMPUTER WOLRD NEEDS to TUNE IN FOR THIS… a G5 iMac? Very Possible! Which will change the tables even further towards the Mac.
Macs aren’t any more expensive than PCs, okay, MAYBE a $100 up front, but you get all of that back in the first week or so, but the payback is LESS Hardware and Software Conflicts! It’s true, Macs are the Winners, if you have an extra $100… A basic NEW mac goes for $799, if you ask a PC user, they will always say $2000 for a Mac… WRONG! Macs haven’t been expensive for the last 4-5 years, Go to http://www.apple.com/store if you don’t believe me.
Graphics, Graphics, Graphics… Apple is the KING of Graphics and for good reason, they had the first COLOR Displays, First Bit Mapped Displays, and now the First PDF Displays… If you want Crystal CLEAR Photos, Webpages, Documents, you get a Mac! If you want to stare at a 1950’s Television, get a PC… PC’s aren’t Built for GRAPICS, only TEXT… so that’s why everything is grainy, out of alignment.
Go to an Apple Store… 80% of the US Population is within 30 minutes of an Apple Store… http://www.apple.com/retail
Check out the Mac, if you haven’t ever used one, then DON’T Complain. It’s not like Apple can lower standards, and then all of a sudden, make PC users Happy! PC Users MUST Raise THEIR Standards before they can understand why the Mac is so popular with people that understand computing. PC Vendors just don’t have THIS level of quality:
http://www.apple.com/hardware
Thank you for your time!
First of all this is 1 Adobe employee voicing his personal opinion. Secondly – as it has been pointed out – this comment is obsolete because it was written before the release of the G5. Third, Adobe was originally a Mac only developer, who later added Win versions of its apps, like many developers (ask Microsoft where they got Word or VPC).
Apple and Adobe now compete with each other in a couple of sofware categories. Adobe has an interest in promoting Wintel computers because it cannot compete with Apple with some of it’s software offerings.
Apple’s FinalCut Pro is much better and faster than Premiere on the Mac, so Adobe discontinued it. iPhoto is better and cheaper than Adobe Album in the consumer market, so Adobe only makes a Windows version. Adobe doesn’t even want to put Encore DVD against DVD Studio Pro on the Mac. Apple also pissed off Adobe with OSX because instead of licensing PostScript for a display architecture they figured a way of using PDF for free. Apple doesn’t make Pro graphics software so in that market Mac versions of Adobe software rule the industry. Where Adobe owns the industry, their software runs better on G5s than any Wintendo machine even if it has higher Quake frame rates. Since we’re discussing Adobe let’s stick to the the relevant subjects not compiler speed or game performance.
The new Creative Suite from Adobe is more optimized for G5s, although it still is not 64bit (nothing is yet). I have seen CS apps demoed on G5s against top-of-the-line Alienware, processing real production tasks and without fail the G5 beat the PC. An even more dramatic example is comparing Premiere and FinalCut Pro.
For running my business, Adobe on PCs would not save me money up front and would slow me down in the long run – and that is just the cost of using the technology. In my personal experience, professional graphics and video production takes about 30% more time to complete on a Windows based computer. That is an immensly important difference when you are paying by the hour. The preformance seconds gained on a Mac add up but the usability time gains multiply!
I can hardly wait until I can run 64bit Photoshop on a MacOS updated to take advantage of the full 64bit architecture. For now, I work on a G5 and play on a Xbox 🙂