In pro digital photography, megahertz matters

[wayne091189]

Hi

First I would just like to say that I am a mac man and have been all my professional career and love them

http://www.robgalbraith.com/diginews/2003-01/2003_01_07_macpc.html



This is just bad for Pro's Out there at the moment. What I mean is graphic designers which I am and Photo people and 3D designers.


COME ON APPLE GET THE 970 OUTSOON AS POSSIBLE


PLEASE

 

[Gus]

Before all the "fine then, switch to PC" bandwagon arrives, let me say that someone needs to seriously light a fire under Moto or IBM, or whoever the chip supplier is going to be. ANd before the "your computer is fast enough" group arrives, let me say this: my computer will NEVER be fast enough.

Regards,
Gus

 

[dricci]

It's also important to note, while the current G4s may not be getting any faster, they're also not getting any slower than they where when you bought it.

Apple is really at IBM's mercy right now. I think we'll be in a much better place soon, hopefully less than a year. Hang in there. Mac OS X is far superior than Windows in both features, interface and design, and standards support, and soon we'll have hardware that let's us compete speed-wise again.

 

[idkew]

mPIXELS is exponentially more important than mHERTZ.

and if someone spends $9,000 on an extremely great camera, a $2,000 cpu that DOES THE WORK means nothing.

my 667 mhz tibook can handle ANY digital camera out there, without a problem. guarenteed. 12 million pixels is not a huge amount. especially when cropping goes on, greyscale reduction....

digital cameras, no matter how nice, can not max out our hardware.

not to mention, these are prolly poorly ported apps. just like a poorly ported 3d game, it will always be slower than a correctly written app for the mac.

if you want to judge that way, i see no merit. it hass little to do with power, and a ton to do with politics of computing. so don't complain about a lack of raw cpu power.

 

[idkew]

Originally posted by dricci
]Hang in there. Mac OS X is far superior than Windows in both features, interface and design, and standards support, and soon we'll have hardware that let's us compete speed-wise again.

I used to have the fastest cpu out there- a 450 g3. times change. cpus change. if you switch b/c now a pc is faster. next year you will be screwed.

 

[springscansing]

How's this for a good MORE MHZ argument. I work with realtime audio. Hear me? REAL TIME. That means the less power I have, the more I am limited creatively. I CANNOT just wait longer... its not like a second matters. It REAL TIME.

So you all can stop this speed doesn't matter bull****, because for professions and creative users, it often does.

Okay.. it hasn't started yet.. but still..

 

[benixau]

i get realtime, hear me, REAL TIME video through FCP.

now i work with audio and video as an engineer for both and do all of the final work for several companies.

i have, admittedly a DP867. so all that means is i have to close my ms apps.

i still have finder, CPU monitor, DockTemp, World Clock, Mail, iCal, Address Book, Safari(used to be navigator), iTunes, Terminal and KeyCaps open as well as DVD Studio Pro and FCP. I can also import video across my firewire wqhilst this is going.

sometimes i close itunes and open Spark XL (soon to be ProTools ). BUT the only reason i close itunes is so that i get the best possible sound coming through as i have had problems before.

But, i can only dream of how much more i could do if i had a DP 1.25

 

[Choppaface]

I'm a D1x user and use bibble quite a bit, and where is the macbibble 3.0 beta you speak of? the pc version works as fast as lightning though he he... in comparison macbibble 1.99 is really deplorable
I wouldn't trust that guy's software for benchmarks though. he does seem to try to optimize each version of the app for each platform, but he's really been neglecting the mac version for a while, so I wouldn't think that he really puts as much effort into it.

the same goes for nikon capture. the guy who does bibble has already shown that his stuff is way ahead. this is pretty common in stuff like cameras, scanners, etc... the windows tools that came with my mom's new scanner are a LOT better than the OS9 tools, and there was essentially no OSX support. (epson perfection series..forget the model..)

another thing which is really disappointing is that the file browser in photoshop is not only really slow, but it keeps breaking (like other things) every time apple updates OSX. when will they ever fix that big black space that covers half the pictures in the file browser >_<

 

[benixau]

if you want good OS X 10.2 support, go HP.

all of there latest stuff has drivers on the CD. i have an HP printer and am looking at getting one of there scanners to replace my un-supported canon FB630u.

Epson has some beta drivers around on their US website. sheck there. i heard they work ok. :|

 

[springscansing]

Originally posted by Choppaface

another thing which is really disappointing is that the file browser in photoshop is not only really slow, but it keeps breaking (like other things) every time apple updates OSX. when will they ever fix that big black space that covers half the pictures in the file browser >_<

OS X Jaguar is, IMO, the first usable version of X. 10.1.5 was way too slow compared to 9. With all these major updates to the OS, much bigger than the standard 9.1 to 9.2, things are bound to explode. It's the price of progress I guess, hehe. Hopefully 10.3 will not break as much as 10.2 did. I do not think it will anyway.

 

[springscansing]

Originally posted by benixau

i still have finder, CPU monitor, DockTemp, World Clock, Mail, iCal, Address Book, Safari(used to be navigator), iTunes, Terminal and KeyCaps open as well as DVD Studio Pro and FCP. I can also import video across my firewire wqhilst this is going.

Hm.. I'm one of those people who always closes apps he isn't using. But then again, I still use 9 half the time (darn audio stuff), and 9 sucks with multiple apps open, so that's probably why, hehe. Habit.

I can't wait for Winter NAMM... Reaktor 4 here I come!

 

[bousozoku]

Particularly depressing were the FireWire transfer throughput rates. I could understand disk transfer rates being way behind with compromises in ATA/IDE levels in controllers and drives, but Apple's own technology? That's scary.

It's not surprising that Mac OS X is not the fastest in processing the majority of a digital photography workflow. Mac OS X still has a few throughput issues. Vendor software is still not ready, especially if it's a Carbon port rather than a Mac OS X-only Carbon application.

At least, they had a card reader that worked with the O.S. I wish mine worked.

Another year from now, I expect that things will change for the better on Mac OS X. Remember, things weren't exactly rosy is 1986 when Macintosh was still fairly new (or 1983 for PCs).

 

[keithw]

Come on Apple, get with the program

As a user of both Macs and PCs, I feel qualified to weigh in on "speed matters." If you read the Rob Galbraith review, you'll see the Mac has fallen woefully behind the current P IV 3+GHz machines. While I love OS X and the fact that I can have a "state of the art" UI on a rock-solid stable base OS, Apple just isn't keeping up speed wise. While the new laptops are neat, we need those new breakthrough CPUs that were promised a year ago.

 

[ELYXR]

Huh?

How's this for a good MORE MHZ argument. I work with realtime audio. Hear me? REAL TIME. That means the less power I have, the more I am limited creatively. I CANNOT just wait longer... its not like a second matters. It REAL TIME.

So you all can stop this speed doesn't matter bull****, because for professions and creative users, it often does.

Okay.. it hasn't started yet.. but still.

First of all, if you were working in a professional environment (i.e. a studio and not your bedroom) you'd almost certainly be working on a Pro Tools TDM or HD system. All Pro Digidesign rig's use DSP cards... or "Farm Cards". The CPU just runs the software... not any of the DSP for effects or processing.

There's a reason studios don't upgrade their Mac's everytime Apple comes out with a new tower.
There's also a reason every studio in the universe uses Mac's... They are the same reason. Processing power, in terms of the CPU, has very little to do with it... unless you are using Pro-sumer ****.

 

[Ziggyzee]

I don't get it.

So the pc is 5 or 10 or whatever seconds faster. Speed is not the reason I changed from 15 years of msft and windows use to the Mac.

So it takes me 5 minutes longer to complete my work. Not exactly. Lets see how long the project takes when your pc locks up, a fatal exception or error, or the countless steps to take to get back where you started.

So it takes me longer, but, in the short time I have used my iMac I know I and going to get there; without turning red or saying WTF? is this.

I switched for stability. So far so good.

p.s. I could not see myself using any form of os9. I booted into it and thought I was back in windows 3.1. This may be because I had never seen the Mac os before. Really, never. The first time I saw the os was when I booted my iMac up the first time.
X is awesome though. How did they make such a tremendous change like that.

 

[LethalWolfe]

Originally posted by benixau
i get realtime, hear me, REAL TIME video through FCP.

RT preview of a select number of FX (Ooohhh, iris wipes) and tools (some color correction and text). But you still have to do a final render before you dump it to tape. That is unless you have a 3rd party card that gives you s'more RT than what FCP 3 does by itself.

I'm still waiting for Macs to get fast enough for real RT in software, or for some pro-sumer level RT cards to come this way (Canopus, Matrox, Pinnacle, hello?)

And yes, I am busting yer chops.


Lethal

 

[Gus]

Originally posted by Ziggyzee
p.s. I could not see myself using any form of os9. I booted into it and thought I was back in windows 3.1. This may be because I had never seen the Mac os before. Really, never. The first time I saw the os was when I booted my iMac up the first time.
X is awesome though. How did they make such a tremendous change like that.

It didn't come overight, that's for darn sure. I was so used to the older interface (read: OS 6-9) that X was a little intimidating at first. I jumped right in though with the Public Beta, and man have things gotten better quickly! People complain that X is slow or isn't complete, blah, blah, blah, but the amount of progress made since March 2000 (First GM release of X) is fantastic. It was scary to know that I didn't know how to fix the system anymore after years of learning extension tricks in 8 and 9, now I had to learn Unix? Uh-uh. That's why I first came here.

Regards,
Gus

 

[Bear]

Use some brains folks....

Have any of you double checked the reported timings in the article?

Photoshop 7.01 with the NEF plug-in from NikonView 5.5 is much faster then he reports.

I am suspicious of all his timings.

I am using a TiBook 800DVI and get much better times then he is getting on the Dual 1.25.

Folks, check whatever timings you can and respond to him.

 

[Kid Red]

Well, I'm a graphic designer/web designer who deals mostly with photos and my dual gig is plenty fine by me. I'm not sure why this is even an arguement. So the pc may be a little faster as certain tasks by what a few seconds? oooooooo, yea, that makes me want to switch