Thread: PC vs Mac

Originally Posted by stuee

I even went as far as googling why macs are better for graphic design, and the google consensus is that now days with current software and hardware platforms they're pretty much even, and a lot of the sentiment dates back to days when the graphical tools available on macs dominated those on windows and the hardware was better tuned for a graphical design environment.

So please enlighten me as to why any "good" graphic designer can produce more on a mac than a PC?

1) Built in colour management.

2) No faffing around with hardware. Buy box, plug it in, start work. Just the same as a plumber who doesn't want to have to spent 25 minutes under the bonnet of his work ute twice a week.

3) Hardware does not fall over. OS does not implode. Before you say I'm biased, I always have a PC in the studio.

4) The hardware is neat and quiet. See above comment.

5) I've use both platforms, and I consider the Mac file management system for handling jobs with lots of editions and linked files vastly superior. Dealing with a 200 page document with 12Gb worth of links means that little delays and annoyances handling files become major ones.

6) The operating system doesn't have to contend with thousands of different possible hardware configurations. Updates roll out smoothly. See comment #3. I prefer to be able to buy a piece of software (Adobe CS stuff) and know it will work on my machine with the OS in hand, rather than have to hope/pray it will work on an up-to-date PC with a decade old OS (XP) on it because the newer ones (Vista) are as useful as mammaries on a male bovine.

7) The machines start up way faster than any PC i have at the time. See comment #3.

8) Keyboard shortcuts for OS and design software are better ergonomically. Think it's petty? Spend a full working week using them and see which you prefer. See comment #3.

In short, I've been a Mac user for 15 years and reluctantly retain a PC, mainly for web proofing on Internet Exploder and undoing all the wonderful things people do with Microsoft Word before I import the text. I would go kicking and screaming back to PC land. As far as I am concerned, any premium paid on the equipment at purchase is well worth it for lack of disruption or additional cost with IT support. Not everyone wants to have to know how to fly the space shuttle in Unix or terminal your ISP up the ASP using the dongle and patch blah blah. I prefer to be able to do my work, not hold up my clients and then get on with my life.

Originally Posted by tony66_au

I also tell them that Ive rebuilt my laptop and friends PCs on 20 different occasions this year due to viral issues or issues caused by anti viral/Anti Spyware/anti malware/Registry cleaners etc etc and yet my old eMac running no Anti virus etc hasnt been touched since I upgraded to OS 10.4

Whoops, im frothing again :-)

For the life of me I have a hard time understanding what people do to have so many problems.

In the 25+ years I have used Windows / generic hardware I have had to 'rebuild' my gear because of these sorts of issues exactly '0' times. I have had personal experiences with exactly 2 virus and one of those was back in the days of DOS.

I work for myself, ie my own business. Among the strings to my bow - I write software, either for myself in the course of the consultancy work I do or directly for the client, so I am completely depended upon my computing equipment functioning reliably otherwise I don't make money. If I had even a tiny fraction of some the problems people claim to encounter in the PC vs Mac debate I would be switching to something else tomorrow. It is not like there is no alternative to either Windows or Mac.

Getting involved in the PC vs Mac debate is always futile because like religious debates you will never convince the other side of the supposed superiority of your brand or your god.

I saw this article some months back, I think it has some bearing on the argument.

the summary Mac vs PC People: Personality Traits & Aesthetic/Media Choices.

the full article Mac vs PC People: Personality Traits & Aesthetic/Media Choices


For who don't want to read the articles here are pictures which sum up the findings of the survey.


PC People are down-to-earth team players who enjoy sports, practical design, and mainstream media


Mac People trend towards retro design, bold colors, an appreciation for objects which express their individual identity, and "media with a message"

Originally Posted by Lightweight

Hi Mowog,

Good comparison, the Toshiba notebooks are solidly built so a fare comparo. What are the resale on those notebooks like? Is the 2nd hand market for PC based laptops any good? It never made much sense to me that the Apple laptops had such good resale... Actually it never made sense that any consumer electronic device has ANY resale...

Do yourself a favour and learn a few of the bash commands and unleash the true power of a *nix based system and you may never return to Windows.

Interesting thread, My wife has a Toshiba Satellite, had it for about 3 years.
It has crashed at least 7 times, had the mother board replaced 3 times, the screen replaced 2 times, the hard drive replaced 2 times and contents recovered.
Toshiba just wouldn't replace it.
She is so sick of it !
it crashed again last week so she went straight down to Robina Apple store and bought a 15 inch Mac Pro !
She loves it, wont go back to a PC based computer again.
She will divide the hard drive and have windows 7 on half and Mac OS on the other, need the windows for work and MYOB.
She is so looking forward to using it.
We have 2 Macbooks, one I use and the other our son uses for school etc, we have had them about 9 months, we love them, never had a problem.
I am left handed so i find the Mac so easy to use, as if it was made for me.

I switched from a Mac to a PC a few months ago. The PC was a lot better value and Win 7 isn't too bad at all, however if I was looking for a laptop I'd check out the Macs again.

Originally Posted by Ferret

For the life of me I have a hard time understanding what people do to have so many problems.

In the 25+ years I have used Windows / generic hardware I have had to 'rebuild' my gear because of these sorts of issues exactly '0' times. I have had personal experiences with exactly 2 virus and one of those was back in the days of DOS.

I can answer that query for you, Quite simply.

Kids, Kids who load crap, surf crap, bypass warnings, ignore common sense, Limewire, Bearshare, Torrents, USB sticks from school, pirated crap on CD, in email, MSN, Hotmail.

Then theres sites they just HAVE to visit and google searches that lead them astray.

But wait, theres more!

And the reason I went to Mac after fixing IBM clones or PCs for 20 something years in large corporations, Financial institutions and sadly Private schools, looking after server farms and running a total solutions company is because Mac works, OS 10 works, the old Power PC architecture worked and I don't know about the Intel stuff but id bet that it works too!

Simple as that, No fuss, no bother just a steep learning curve and on my part the swallowing of my pride and the balls to admit I've been wrong about Apple for all these years.

And yes its an emotive issue not unlike the whole farcical Holden Versus Ford chest thumping garbage which im immune to because I like Valiant's!

So now I sit, I push the little button on the side of my eMac and shortly there after I am rewarded with dependable function.

The other thing to bear in mind is this, IF you are just an average person looking to buy a computer for your kids, and you are not aware of the pitfalls of cheap motherboards, garbage cases and nasty components then Apple takes out the guess work.

From a commercial standpoint?

I had a site that had 600 or so users and 200 of them were Mac stations.
I ended up looking after all 600 on a contact maintenance basis and hired a Mac guy to hold up that end of the SLA and apart from when the time came to upgrade we barely put a hand on them apart from replacing Mice and keyboards.

On the PC side we had well specced units, intel chipset MBs and all the good fruit and yet we still had a few swap outs a week.

My next Mac will still be a PPC based machine, 2nd hand and probably a dual G4 or 5.

I also recently bought an Intel Atom notebook running Windows 7 and its a lovely bit of gear, I suspect Microsoft finally got it right but I still predominantly use my old Mac and im going to continue to use Macs for the foreseeable future.

Coz they work.

Tony (Frothing again)

Originally Posted by stuee

... those who want the perceived stability...

Nothing percieved about it!

It's a fact.

This is the point.

So, after 30 years using, etc. PCs I now use a Mac.

The best thing about it is that it works every time I turn it on and stays on until I turn it off.

Originally Posted by MacMan

1) Built in colour management.

5) I've use both platforms, and I consider the Mac file management system for handling jobs with lots of editions and linked files vastly superior. Dealing with a 200 page document with 12Gb worth of links means that little delays and annoyances handling files become major ones.

Originally Posted by MacMan

7) The machines start up way faster than any PC i have at the time. See comment #3.

8) Keyboard shortcuts for OS and design software are better ergonomically. Think it's petty? Spend a full working week using them and see which you prefer. See comment #3.

These would appear or reasonable arguments. I'm not sure how colour management differs from a windows environment and haven't worked with files in the format you describe so I'll take your word on that too.

Machines starting up faster, while it could be argued, is inevitable. Many software vendors install some sort of start-up software which periodically checks for updates or waits in the background till use. Many do it unnecessarily (why does itunes need a background service to check for updates??). You can control what's running at start-up but that obviously detracts from the usability.

Keyboard shortcuts are handled by the software. Its bizarre that a software vendor will use two sets of keyboard shortcuts for the same software on different platforms but if you say so.

Originally Posted by MacMan

2) No faffing around with hardware. Buy box, plug it in, start work. Just the same as a plumber who doesn't want to have to spent 25 minutes under the bonnet of his work ute twice a week.

3) Hardware does not fall over. OS does not implode. Before you say I'm biased, I always have a PC in the studio.

4) The hardware is neat and quiet. See above comment.

6) The operating system doesn't have to contend with thousands of different possible hardware configurations. Updates roll out smoothly. See comment #3. I prefer to be able to buy a piece of software (Adobe CS stuff) and know it will work on my machine with the OS in hand, rather than have to hope/pray it will work on an up-to-date PC with a decade old OS (XP) on it because the newer ones (Vista) are as useful as mammaries on a male bovine.

In short, I've been a Mac user for 15 years and reluctantly retain a PC, mainly for web proofing on Internet Exploder and undoing all the wonderful things people do with Microsoft Word before I import the text. I would go kicking and screaming back to PC land. As far as I am concerned, any premium paid on the equipment at purchase is well worth it for lack of disruption or additional cost with IT support. Not everyone wants to have to know how to fly the space shuttle in Unix or terminal your ISP up the ASP using the dongle and patch blah blah. I prefer to be able to do my work, not hold up my clients and then get on with my life.

You can buy a box from the likes of Dell that will fire up and run straight out of the box, and as mentioned before I don’t know what you’re doing to make the PC fall over and implode?? We run servers and workstations that get rebooted 4 times a year for patching and software updates, otherwise they stay on the whole time.

The OS having to contend with thousands of hardware types means the cost is kept low. Again buying from the likes of Dell means you have a system that’s been validated on the OS you want to run and with the volume associated with dell means it will be supported for a fair while.

XP is now a very stable platform if a little slow. That’s why we still use it on the workstations. No one’s going to argue that Vista wasn’t a complete dog but Windows 7 is a vast improvement and as mentioned goes a long way to address some of the flaws which allow it to be undone.

I’m sure if you had 15 years as a dedicated windows user your view would be different on a lot of points. In the process control industry we also pay a premium for hardware that’s been thoroughly tested prior to going to a plant. We want it to run too because a days downtime can cost up to $15 million in revenue if we have a catastrophic failure. Funnily enough there’s next to no Mac usage in this industry either, and reliability is a big thing.

While I disagree with some of what you say, you’ve got some valid points as to why you think Mac’s are better in graphic design, and if they’re enough reason to use Mac then fair enough. I'm not trying to say Macs are crap (excellent design and marketing amongst other things), just dispel some of the hysteria around PC's. Blanket statements along the lines of Macs are better than PC's full stop are just rubbish, especially when many of the arguments are now dated and irrelevant.

Originally Posted by discomuzz

Nothing percieved about it!

It's a fact.

This is the point.

So, after 30 years using, etc. PCs I now use a Mac.

The best thing about it is that it works every time I turn it on and stays on until I turn it off.

Apologies that point came out poorly. It was meant to be a comparison to the stability of Windows, being that Mac is perceived as being more stable than windows, not Mac is unstable in itself. I would argue that Windows PC is just as stable, but then I don't have kids playing with my PC and installing junk from the net or downloading things they shouldn't be.