My personal system is a mac, used mostly for photography, but I have a house full of PCs running Windows and Linux for other less interesting purposes.
I've used a mac at work and a PC at home... Really, they're very similar IMO. I mean, ok, sometimes your PC gets a bug, but our macs at work did an awful lot of freezing up. It seems like macs are easier to network (or it could be that we had a Rose-Hulman grad who did the networking at work as opposed to us goofballs trying to figure it out at our house!) But the programs seem to work the same basic way, aside from where the X is to close a window :)
For engineering music a Mac is preferred and I always thought that was true for design work as well, but I met a bunch of design big-wigs last week who told me they only use PC's.
But a Mac is just soooo much sexier than a PC, I'd own one if for no other reason.
Hey, my daughter started this thread at school (get back to work Andrea!). ;-)
I think her comment is motivated by a few things: Her school is 75% PC, but like many schools, the PCs tend to be a few years old, and in general, not optimally maintained. Her school does have a Mac lab, but the Macs there are still OS9 based and not very satisfying to use either.
At home, we are a full Mac shop, three networked Panther-machines, fully loaded and a dream for photos, music, and video (plus all the other stuff). She's frustrated because she's never experienced a fully functional Windows machine and has probably picked up my pro-Mac bias over the years (unintentional, I assure you).
Susceptibility to virus and adware attacks. Even if you are careful they are hard to avoid right now.
So you're really talking about MacOS vs Windows?
Please don't lump Linux PC users in with that other lot ; )
Yes! I should have clarified that Windows on Intel (PC) based systems is where I have the virus adware frustrations. And it's not just inexperienced users that encounter these problems.
why would they frustrate you , give me one example
Networking, getting the sound card to work, anything involving changing any settings ...
Personally, I'm no big fan of Mac OS X either ... I mostly use Mac OS 9.2 and Windows 2000 Pro, but most of my work is in publishing/graphics and those are the most stable.
Personally, I'm no big fan of Mac OS X either ... I mostly use Mac OS 9.2 and Windows 2000 Pro, but most of my work is in publishing/graphics and those are the most stable.
We switched the whole office from OS 9 to OS X several months ago precisely because it's more stable. We haven't had a single crash since on 15 computers.
Personally, I'm no big fan of Mac OS X either ... I mostly use Mac OS 9.2 and Windows 2000 Pro, but most of my work is in publishing/graphics and those are the most stable.
We switched the whole office from OS 9 to OS X several months ago precisely because it's more stable. We haven't had a single crash since on 15 computers.
I'm concerned with the stability of the programs I use and the usefulness of the PostScript output I get. I get plenty of freeze-ups with OS X, such that I can't even Force-Quit like they promise, and my G4 was thoughtfully redesigned to remove the reset button and the keyboard power key so there's no way to do a "soft reboot" -- I have more than once been forced to just yank out the power cord.
Not at all saying my situation is typical, and for music/video I'd go with OS X. My first typesetting work was on actual UNIX via a dumb terminal, so I know it's stable ...
...my G4 was thoughtfully redesigned to remove the reset button and the keyboard power key so there's no way to do a "soft reboot" -- I have more than once been forced to just yank out the power cord.
Just hold the power button in to reset the computer. A soft reboot is command-control-eject (or just control-eject) on the keyboard. If you have a lot of freezing, that's a problem with your software configuration or hardware, not OS X itself.
...my G4 was thoughtfully redesigned to remove the reset button and the keyboard power key so there's no way to do a "soft reboot" -- I have more than once been forced to just yank out the power cord.
Just hold the power button in to reset the computer. A soft reboot is command-control-eject (or just control-eject) on the keyboard.
Before I pull the plug I hold in the power key until my thumb hurts too much : )
