On 13/1/03 2:14 am, "Nij" wrote: > Having been a 100% PC user for a long long time, I recently purchased an > iMac G400. Whilst I would stress that this machine was really just for me to > get some experience with Macs and 'open my eyes' to some things I knew I was > missing out on, I'm afraid I've not been that impressed. I will admit that I > am > a) totally untrained and inexperienced with the mac > and > b) it's not a majorly well specced machine compared to the G4's etc > BUT
Nij, and all (sorry for the long post) Your experience so far, seems no different from a person switching from good old OS9 on the mac, to the new OSX. OSX looks to the "old" user, unintuitive etc. etc. However I think if you were to take two complete novices and sit them in front of two machines, one windows, one mac OSX, then the OSX should have a much shorter initial learning curve. Please note I have no proof of this, and I never use Windows (apart from backing up my Motorola phone book, via Virtual PC, on Windows 98, yuk! and now have a copy of Windows XP installed at Xmas. Looks much prettier ;-) So I could be totally wrong. However taking my personal experience with the swap from 9 to X. After getting over not knowing where anything is, and things not working in the good old illogical OS9 way. Yes I knew where everything was in 9, but it sure wasn't in a very sensible place. OSX like any system takes a little time to learn, however now that I look back, it is far better laid out, as a system and things are in a far more logical place (for the most part) I now love OSX totally. It virtually never crashes (can't remember the last forced restart I did) occasionally a program will freeze, but you can just force quit it and restart just that program. As a Mac devotee, its very sad to see that in real world speed terms, the mac has lagged so far behind PC's. I have a dual 1.25 and wish it was one of the fastest machines out there, as I thought it was when I bought it. But in six months time, it won't be the fastest Mac, anyhow. So who really cares. It is certainly fast, and very much faster than the Dual 500 that I was using before. So I'm happy. Re: Photoshop and getting in for the Mac rather than the PC. Why bother? I've not worked on both versions, but I imagine that once you are in the program, they both look and work the same, so it makes not difference which platform you are using. This applies to everyone choosing platforms. However the big difference in the platforms is evident in the time spent out of PS. Even though people quote that they spend all of their time in PS, I wonder how many of us actually do? The reality is I use my computer for a lot of other tasks as well. This is where my choice of a Mac is very important to me. Take a simple program like iTunes, its a piece of art. Same goes for iMovie. Have you tried Apple's new Address Book, I find in phenomenal. Very simple, but its search facility is so fast. iCal, brilliant. And iSync, a dream. I have the same Calendars and Address books on all three of my computers, always in sync. It is the little tools and accessories that make the whole system so beautiful to work with, and the fact that they all follow the same rules (for the most part). Once you can work one mac program, you can generally figure out the rest of them. The user experience is just beautiful. So its not so fast, well as someone else pointed out, this is a bit like cars. If you want fast, you can buy a piece of plastic body with a motorbike engine inserted (as seen on BBC Top Gear) where there is no windscreen or protection from the elements. Its damn fast, but not very comfortable. Or you can buy something a little slower like a Porche (no I don't own one) not exactly a slouch, but much more refined and still fast enough for most needs. For the time being, I'm sticking with a Mac. I really hope they can sort out the speed thing. But the interface is just too beautiful to leave behind, and that simple feeling of "Thinking Different". At the end of the day, if you process a lot of RAW files. Buy a fast PC. Then transfer all of the processed files over to your lovely Mac and enjoy your day :-) Regards Paul -- Paul Tansley Fashion & Beauty Photography London +44 (0) 7973 669584 http://www.paultansley.com =============================================================== GO TO http://www.prodig.org for ~ GUIDELINES ~ un/SUBSCRIBING ~ ITEMS for SALE
