> From: Craig Ringer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > On Thu, 2005-05-26 at 17:34 +0800, Christian Kotz wrote: >> I've been told that Mac's traditionally do better in the roles of >> creativity anyway in comparison to PC's. A lot of PC users understand >> this but is it a myth? > > It used to be true, back in the MacOS 7 vs win311 days when there was > just no comparison. I don't think it's really all that significant > anymore.
I would disagree with you Craig on this count - Research firm TrendWatch has noted that Apple's share in the creative market remains overwhelming and strong. Macintoshes are used by 83 percent of graphic designers, 77 percent of corporate design departments, and 65 percent of ad agencies. I'd find it a major stretch to just put that down to market inertia from the OS 7 days. > You can get all the important apps for both, It could be argued that Adobe Photoshop, InDesign or After Affects for example are pretty much of a muchness on PC or Mac (certainly benchmarks can go either way depending on who is doing them!), but the difference is most obvious where the Mac-only software hits the road that the Mac's native strengths really come into play. As Rob Davies' earlier post mentions the video/film/postproduction side of the creative industry in particular is significantly weighted towards the Mac. Apple's Final Cut Pro, DVD Studio Pro, Soundtrack Pro, Logic, Shake, Motion etc at the high end, and iMovie, iDVD, Garageband, iPhoto at the low end are a formidable force in the industry that is acknowledged by most commentators to be unmatched on the PC platform. Just see how much of a Mac-town Hollywood is. > and the colour > management on both platforms is broken in various ways so you'll end up > using the apps' built in colour management no matter what platform you > use. Although I'm not involved in DTP and pre-press these days, everything I have read has highlighted the colour management architecture and typography, native PDF etc as still being big strengths of the Mac platform. It sounds like you've had bad experiences on the Mac as well as PC in the colour-matching area? I'd be interested in others experiences in this area. > On the other hand, in the mid-range you get a lot more grunt for the > buck with a PC IMO. Depending on the work you do, that may matter a lot. I think I'd possibly agree with you here regarding mid-range desktops - whereas Apple is quite competitive at the low end - the cost of kitting up a PC with Firewire, video and DVD editing tools etc compared to a Mac Mini or an iBook (with it all built-in) definitely evens out the equation. At the higher end, the hardware costs tend to also even out, particularly when you start including Xserve RAID Arrays and SANs etc where Apple has an amazingly competbhitive story to show. No doubt, it also depends how much you value your time on top of the cost of the bare hardware and software and whether as well as whether you want to run the best of breed video and DVD software. -Mart ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Martin Hill, Digital Media Specialist Information Management Services, Curtin University of Technology mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED], web: http://is.curtin.edu.au/ims.cfm Mb: 0401-103-194 wk: (08)9266-3101
