I post in a Flash forum and one of the threaders said this.
"Ah, so people are getting Mac information from where? From the Apple website. A great source for self-agrandising, I mean, unbiased information!
Really people, I was banging my head on the desk throughout this entire thread. Nearly everyone sounded like they were just making up facts! Here's the case for Macs: they are great at doing one thing, and doing it well. Macs run on a large single pipeline, so if you are using them to do just one thing, and I mean just one thing, they are perfect for that. If you are just rendering 3d (and not surfing the web or listening to music), that's perfect. Mac OS is, and has always been, a single focus operating system. I did just make up that term, but what I mean is, when you change focus to another window/program, the OS will divert nearly all processing power to whatever program has the focus, even if it doesn't need it. Every single other program that is running, say, 3d rendering, Flash movie playing, cd burning, must halt for the program you just clicked on. This might seem like a benefit, but in practice, it's a horrible idea for an OS. Real world example: Dustball plays the Flash movie when he's composing music for it. He records the music in Adobe Audition. How would this even work on a Mac? On Mac OS, you can allocate memory to programs ats they need them, but that has nothing to do with it, since Flash is highly CPU dependent. On a pc, Dustball can start playing the Flash movie, click on Audition, and start recording. No CPU time is diverted away from Flash. Try doing this on a Mac and Flash is instantly come crawling to a halt, thereby defeating the purpose of scoring music to the movie in real time.
I'd go on and list the many drawbacks of Macs vs PCs, but I think that would take pages. I'm not telling you to buy a Mac or a pc, but damnit, it's a big purchase! Do a lot of research first! Most importantly, USE the product before you buy it. If you plan to do 3d animation while listening to mp3s, having multiple browsers open, and running AIM and/or MSN, go do that on the machien you plan to buy. Don't just use one for 10 minutes and decide. Macs are not cheap. For the power you get from an equally oufitted Windows PC doing things from word processing to 3d gaming, to painting and building Flash media, a Windows PC is much much cheaper, even after all the upgrades.
A few quick points:
* Processor speed is only a partial measure of processing power, and even then, only among processors of the same type (e.g. an Athlon XP 2800+ cpu running at 2.133MHz is commonly faster than a Pentium 4 2.66MHz). It all has to do with processign power.
* Macs run on a single pipeline, PCs run on multiple piplines. Both have their ups adn downs, but if you multi-task, you will want a PC.
* Flash runs like crap on Macs. This isn't just my opinion or experience, but Flash experts will tell you that Macs perform horribly versus PCs when running Flash, and this is from many pro-Mac users. Again, it's the way the CPU handles the processing.
* The software for Macs is very different from the software for PCs. I do mean functionally (like Photoshop on Macs is nearly the same as PCs), but the range of choices. Bottom line: you can't use PC software on a Mac or vice versa. Not many games come out for Mac OS."
Go, do your research.
Well of course you can have 20 programs open at once, but that is still task switching. The point is trying to run 3 programs well at a high load, and that is where Macs fall flat. Try takling to a Mac and PC expert instead of talking to the Mac salesman, someone who is TRYING TO SELL YOU SOMETHING. I'm not trying to sell you anything.
It's like going to the Coke plant, asking them which you should buy, Coke or Pepsi? HMMM...
I don't care anymore. You can waste your hard earned money all you want (jsut ilke right when the Intuos3 came out you got all crazy, as if the Intuos2 is ANY worse). You still haven't proven me wrong. Running 20 programs at once and running 3 of them well is very different. Although you don't often do this, try running 2 Flash movies at the same time on the Mac and see what happens. Try 3. Try 5. ALl 5 movies run fine on my mid-range PC, eithout changing any special settings. So go ahead and try it. Have the Flash movies running. Cilck on one window, then click on another. Make sure you can see all the Flash windows at the same time and that both display some kind of animation. You'll see what I'm talking about. If you let the salesman convince you by his sales tactics, I pity you.
By the number of exclamation points in your last 3 posts, it shows you're making a decision based off initial impression, not actual research.
posted by gel at synj.net.
thread link
"Ah, so people are getting Mac information from where? From the Apple website. A great source for self-agrandising, I mean, unbiased information!
Really people, I was banging my head on the desk throughout this entire thread. Nearly everyone sounded like they were just making up facts! Here's the case for Macs: they are great at doing one thing, and doing it well. Macs run on a large single pipeline, so if you are using them to do just one thing, and I mean just one thing, they are perfect for that. If you are just rendering 3d (and not surfing the web or listening to music), that's perfect. Mac OS is, and has always been, a single focus operating system. I did just make up that term, but what I mean is, when you change focus to another window/program, the OS will divert nearly all processing power to whatever program has the focus, even if it doesn't need it. Every single other program that is running, say, 3d rendering, Flash movie playing, cd burning, must halt for the program you just clicked on. This might seem like a benefit, but in practice, it's a horrible idea for an OS. Real world example: Dustball plays the Flash movie when he's composing music for it. He records the music in Adobe Audition. How would this even work on a Mac? On Mac OS, you can allocate memory to programs ats they need them, but that has nothing to do with it, since Flash is highly CPU dependent. On a pc, Dustball can start playing the Flash movie, click on Audition, and start recording. No CPU time is diverted away from Flash. Try doing this on a Mac and Flash is instantly come crawling to a halt, thereby defeating the purpose of scoring music to the movie in real time.
I'd go on and list the many drawbacks of Macs vs PCs, but I think that would take pages. I'm not telling you to buy a Mac or a pc, but damnit, it's a big purchase! Do a lot of research first! Most importantly, USE the product before you buy it. If you plan to do 3d animation while listening to mp3s, having multiple browsers open, and running AIM and/or MSN, go do that on the machien you plan to buy. Don't just use one for 10 minutes and decide. Macs are not cheap. For the power you get from an equally oufitted Windows PC doing things from word processing to 3d gaming, to painting and building Flash media, a Windows PC is much much cheaper, even after all the upgrades.
A few quick points:
* Processor speed is only a partial measure of processing power, and even then, only among processors of the same type (e.g. an Athlon XP 2800+ cpu running at 2.133MHz is commonly faster than a Pentium 4 2.66MHz). It all has to do with processign power.
* Macs run on a single pipeline, PCs run on multiple piplines. Both have their ups adn downs, but if you multi-task, you will want a PC.
* Flash runs like crap on Macs. This isn't just my opinion or experience, but Flash experts will tell you that Macs perform horribly versus PCs when running Flash, and this is from many pro-Mac users. Again, it's the way the CPU handles the processing.
* The software for Macs is very different from the software for PCs. I do mean functionally (like Photoshop on Macs is nearly the same as PCs), but the range of choices. Bottom line: you can't use PC software on a Mac or vice versa. Not many games come out for Mac OS."
Go, do your research.
Well of course you can have 20 programs open at once, but that is still task switching. The point is trying to run 3 programs well at a high load, and that is where Macs fall flat. Try takling to a Mac and PC expert instead of talking to the Mac salesman, someone who is TRYING TO SELL YOU SOMETHING. I'm not trying to sell you anything.
It's like going to the Coke plant, asking them which you should buy, Coke or Pepsi? HMMM...
I don't care anymore. You can waste your hard earned money all you want (jsut ilke right when the Intuos3 came out you got all crazy, as if the Intuos2 is ANY worse). You still haven't proven me wrong. Running 20 programs at once and running 3 of them well is very different. Although you don't often do this, try running 2 Flash movies at the same time on the Mac and see what happens. Try 3. Try 5. ALl 5 movies run fine on my mid-range PC, eithout changing any special settings. So go ahead and try it. Have the Flash movies running. Cilck on one window, then click on another. Make sure you can see all the Flash windows at the same time and that both display some kind of animation. You'll see what I'm talking about. If you let the salesman convince you by his sales tactics, I pity you.
By the number of exclamation points in your last 3 posts, it shows you're making a decision based off initial impression, not actual research.
posted by gel at synj.net.
thread link
