Vice Posted October 16, 2009 Share Posted October 16, 2009 I prefer the way that Macs handle certain things. For example Fontbook is an included application on OS X to handle fonts it lets you preview a font in its application at different sizes and allow you to deactivate fonts or just parts of a font which is great if you have thousands of fonts and don't want your apps to take 20 years to load up. You also have Preview on the Mac which is really really fast at opening and can preview documents like pdfs and photoshop psd files. Live-preview in icons if Quicktime has the codec is really useful for video sampling and you can hit the space bar whilst highlighting any video to get an instant large player to view that content. It's all about speed. And then you have Expose which if your working on a large project you need lots and lots of different windows open across different applications and Expose is by far the best window manager you hit a key and all your windows spread out and you can instantly identify and select the window you want. By contrast in windows you have to either read the text on your tabs, remember where your windows are on the taskbar or hover your mouse over every thumbnail one at a time (Win 7) which is not only slower but a bit tedious. The fact that many video suites on the Mac plug in to Quicktime also gives you a benefit as it means you can export content between applications that are not aware of each-others existence much more easily without needing to worry about 'Does it have this codec for that thing?'. You can get the same results on Windows and OS X and even on Linux but its about how fast you can accomplish those same goals I personally find the OS X workflow to be faster and I use Windows every single day my workflow on Windows is as good as it can get and I even use mods to get me an expose-like experience but it just doesn't match up to the Mac when it comes to the speed in which I can create something and move it around to where it needs to be, to preview it and finalise it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
migo Posted October 16, 2009 Share Posted October 16, 2009 So it seems to stem from tradition rather than reality...I think it's a trend these days. People think it's cool to have a Mac so that's why they get one. I don't think it's that so much as a lot of people these days, particularly in university got an iMac. The iMac was great in a number of ways, you could barely get a new PC for that cheap without a monitor, let alone one included, and you also got a bunch of included software (like iLife is included now), so the bang for buck was incredible, along with details like not having the rats nest of wires, being easy to carry (for a desktop) and being very quiet. Anyone who either got an iMac as their first computer or switching from Windows (or even upgrading from an earlier Mac), but mostly first computer for the age group we're talking about would have been very pleased with their experience. Anyone who didn't would have seen their peers getting an iMac and being very happy with it, and likely looked at getting one (either G3 or G4) 3-4 years later. The upgrade path on the iMac is also pretty nice, with a RAM upgrade you could get a solid version of OS X (10.2 or later). You'd either have people getting an iMac, and then buying a new computer 3-4 years later (also a Mac), and then again around now, or buying it, upgrading the RAM and going up to 10.3 or 10.4, which still performs reasonably well today, and at some point buying a new one. The reports I've read suggest something like a doubling of Mac market share with the release of the iMac, so you've got some well established loyalty there for about half of Mac users. University education discounts on iBooks and MacBooks also helped a lot. You're going to see Macs be very popular with a certain segment, and that'll carry through, a little better than when they were in all the schools. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aludanyi Posted October 16, 2009 Share Posted October 16, 2009 Not the Mac just the Mac Pro... and the answer is 2 x 4 core Xeon CPU... put that in a PC Workstation and you'll get an even better solution for media production. The only problem is you won't be so "cool" in the artist community :) because you won't have an Apple logo on your desk. :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greenwizard88 Posted October 16, 2009 Share Posted October 16, 2009 Photoshop was originally written for OS X, and then ported over to Windows. OS X had wayyy better memory management than Windows. Ever click a window in Windows 98 and have a white screen for a while? That never happens in OS X (you just don't have the window open for a little ;) ). Now a days, there's no difference. Heck, Apple even switched gamut so that OS X uses the same one that Windows does. Windows memory management is way more advanced now. Actually, I would argue that Windows should be the platform of choice, as it's much cheeper to deploy a higher-spec'd windows based machine over an OS X one. Sadly, there's a LOT of computer illiterate photoshoppers who can't run windows without downloading all the crapware that messes up their system - they swear by OS X because no one's written crapware for it yet. Then there's the fact that FCE is $200, and better/cheeper than anything Adobe has... and since Final Cut is the de facto program, you gotta use a mac. So yeah, it's leftovers from bygone eras. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
migo Posted October 16, 2009 Share Posted October 16, 2009 I prefer the way that Macs handle certain things. For example Fontbook is an included application on OS X to handle fonts it lets you preview a font in its application at different sizes and allow you to deactivate fonts or just parts of a font which is great if you have thousands of fonts and don't want your apps to take 20 years to load up. Strangely, I tried installing Calibri through Fontbook and it wouldn't stick, but I never had any problems installing it on XP. I wonder what the use of such a program is if you can't even do a straightforward font installation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
giga Veteran Posted October 16, 2009 Veteran Share Posted October 16, 2009 Windows Media Encoder can do the same thing as Quicktime as far as conversion. You sure? If so, that's pretty impressive and they've come a long way. These are all the formats possible to natively export to when saved as a Quicktime Movie/MP4 file. (with Quicktime Pro) Video Compression Types: Audio Formats: Channels (this is PCM): Full list that includes the other formats that Quicktime natively exports. Audio Apple Lossless Audio Interchange (AIFF) Digital Audio: Audio CD ? 16-bit (CDDA), 24-bit, 32-bit integer & floating point, and 64-bit floating point MIDI MPEG-1 Layer 3 Audio (.mp3) MPEG-4 AAC Audio (.m4a, .m4b, .m4p) DRM-protected audio from the iTunes store QDesign Music Qualcomm PureVoice (QCELP) Sun AU Audio ULAW and ALAW Audio Waveform Audio (WAV) Video 3GPP & 3GPP2 file formats AVI file format Bitmap (BMP) codec and file format DV file (DV NTSC/PAL and DVC Pro NTSC/PAL codecs) Flash & FlashPix files GIF and Animated GIF files H.261, H.263, and H.264 codecs JPEG, Photo JPEG, and JPEG-2000 codecs and file formats MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and MPEG-4 Video file formats and associated codecs (such as AVC) Quartz Composer Composition (.qtz, Mac OS X only) QuickTime Movie (.mov) and QTVR movies Sorenson Video 2 and 3 codecs Other video codecs: Apple Video, Cinepak, Component Video, Graphics, and Planar RGB Other still image formats: PNG, TIFF, and TGA Cached information from streams: QTCH This is paltry compared to FCP and Premier though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aludanyi Posted October 16, 2009 Share Posted October 16, 2009 Photoshop was originally written for OS X, and then ported over to Windows.OS X had wayyy better memory management than Windows. Photoshop was originally written for Mac OS on a Macintosh Plus (not OS X). And that OS had vary bad memory management... anyway that is history, modern Photoshop is perfectly optimized for both Mac OS X and Windows. And OS X has no better memory management than Windows (newer versions have a better memory management that XP, but Windows 7 memory management is a little better and more sophisticated than OS X's memory management). Anyway the difference is very small so non of the OS's have "wayyy better memory management" they have different memory management, and Windows 7 has a better caching mechanism that is all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vice Posted October 16, 2009 Share Posted October 16, 2009 Strangely, I tried installing Calibri through Fontbook and it wouldn't stick, but I never had any problems installing it on XP. I wonder what the use of such a program is if you can't even do a straightforward font installation. Perhaps your font wasn't compatible. I've never had a single issue with Fontbook and I have thousands of Fonts in it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
powerade01 Posted October 16, 2009 Share Posted October 16, 2009 Channels (this is PCM): 8.0 doesnt exist. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vice Posted October 16, 2009 Share Posted October 16, 2009 8.0 doesnt exist. And yet there it is in the drop down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sn00pie Posted October 16, 2009 Share Posted October 16, 2009 No random crashes is probably most important for media editing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tablet_user Posted October 16, 2009 Share Posted October 16, 2009 Macs now have the same hardware as PCs, so it can't be the hardware.I think it's just the software, they bundle pretty much commercial quality photo editing software for free with their consumer product line (in iLife), while the free options on Windows are considerably weaker. It's sort of a situation where Photoshop gets compared to GIMP and of course comes out ahead, but it really costs a fair bit, except half the users who get it would be getting it for free. You can get stuff that is just as good (and better) for Windows, but it costs you quite a bit. So it's less that they're better and more that they're more accessible. iLife isn't free though so i could buy something on windows to do the same job. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobbba Posted October 16, 2009 Share Posted October 16, 2009 There are advantages to Macs over PCs for media work because of the software only. OS X provides a really good platform for it and includes acceleration from OS features that use gpu processing power. There's also the high quality pro apps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
justmike Posted October 16, 2009 Share Posted October 16, 2009 I like Paint.net, it's easy for me. I think Windows 7 Media Center is using H.264? I dont know for sure, but it looks and runs well! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aludanyi Posted October 16, 2009 Share Posted October 16, 2009 There are advantages to Macs over PCs for media work because of the software only. OS X provides a really good platform for it and includes acceleration from OS features that use gpu processing power. There's also the high quality pro apps. This is also equally true for Windows. The whole thing is nothing more than "industry bias" in the beginning the DTP and Graphic design industry started on the Mac, (PC was terrible back in those time for such purpose), also universities was more Mac strongholds then PC (which was a business oriented computer), visual communications was done on Mac and SGI and NeXT... only after Windows NT 4.0 there was a significant move on the graphic and media market toward the PC (Maya, Softimage etc. get ported), Mac was then in a little bad position, but then they bring back Steven Jobs and he bring the NeXT which ultimately become the Mac OSX... and picked up many old Mac designers (that was natural). Today the two platform are equally good for media production, PC is still king in business and retained the engineering tasks earned from the UNIX workstations (CAD/CAM), and maybe a little better for software development (not in all areas). Mac OSX is great for casual average day-to-day use by non professionals (maybe a little better than Windows) so every platform has some strong and some not so strong point, but the truth is that both are practically the same, except for business and engineering, there Windows has significant advantage because of the wide software base, not because of technical stuff, simply because there is more software for it especially in those areas of application. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fhpuqrgrpgvirzhpujbj Posted October 16, 2009 Share Posted October 16, 2009 Macs is the only OS with built in support for typography settings. Macs let you change the typography and styles for any font on the system and save as custom fonts. These can be used in any program. You will never be able to do this on Windows. Wouldn't be too hard for someone to make an app to do this, actually. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Preppy Veteran Posted October 16, 2009 Veteran Share Posted October 16, 2009 No random crashes is probably most important for media editing.What exact random crashes?Putting bad software on your box does lead to crashes, but that's probably not a surprise on any platform. Most of the Windows multimedia editing crashes I see are due to old broken 3rd party codecs that don't have a good vendor behind them (via Winqual and WER). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MR_Candyman Posted October 16, 2009 Share Posted October 16, 2009 People in this thread seem to forget one HUGE market for macs and one they still have a strong lead in because of their OS. That is the audio industry. Why? Because Windows induces latency in it's audio transfers. This can be a huge burden in studio recording. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BGM Posted October 16, 2009 Share Posted October 16, 2009 They can run logic? It's Mac only, and very very good.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic_Pro also, and although I don't have a mac to test, there are reports of similar software on the PC being plagued by lags etc, but I can't find a source. I would seriously consider a mac if i was an music producer of ANY level.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
notuptome2004 Posted October 16, 2009 Share Posted October 16, 2009 the Reason Macs have always had success in the Media department is the UI is alot more consistent in applications that have windows versions as well. good example is Adobe Photoshop or Premiere now while on both Mac and Pc they will perform the same actions what makes the difference is the efficiency of the interface and the layout and certain Optimizations around well now days OSX back end stuff such as color calibration and fond management and management of resources . now you know we have windows 7 witch brings alot to the windows side for UI and management of handling different resources at 1 time and this will help the windows side of applications fare better then in previous versions of windows Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kl33per Posted October 17, 2009 Share Posted October 17, 2009 People in this thread seem to forget one HUGE market for macs and one they still have a strong lead in because of their OS. That is the audio industry. Why? Because Windows induces latency in it's audio transfers. This can be a huge burden in studio recording. This is simply not true on modern versions of Windows (with WASAPI or via Kernel Streaming in older applications). ProTools runs just as well on Windows as it does on Mac. Logic did as well until Apple went and bought it. This is no different them image editing, video editing, or publication creation. All of these tasks can be completed equally efficiently, professionally, and easily on either Mac OS X or Windows. Professional grade software exists for both platforms. I'll state as others have that this perception is a hold over from the 80's and early 90's and is simply no longer true. Anyone who says otherwise doesn't know what they are talking about and clearly has not had to work with both platforms. People may prefer to work on one platform or another due to familiarity with the system or some other reason, but this does not mean the same task could not be just as easily completed on the opposing platform. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brandon Posted October 17, 2009 Share Posted October 17, 2009 I will say, multitasking in OSX is a lot better than windows with the whole floating design. I can switch from quarkxpress to photoshop and back by just clicking on the document in the background instead of having to deal with the taskbar. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bob21 Posted October 17, 2009 Share Posted October 17, 2009 Absolutely nothing,I think you've been given the wrong impression , The best editing (Video Audio Office and Imaging) are all either PC only or availible to both . And Pro-Coder is windows only. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toadeater Posted October 17, 2009 Share Posted October 17, 2009 They can run logic?It's Mac only, and very very good.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic_Pro also, and although I don't have a mac to test, there are reports of similar software on the PC being plagued by lags etc, but I can't find a source. I would seriously consider a mac if i was an music producer of ANY level.. XP is not bad for audio, especially when you use a pro DSP-based sound card(s) and ASIO. I hope whoever slammed the PC wasn't comparing a Mac with a pro soundcard to a PC with a Soundblaster! Vista, however, did have some major problems with latency, but Windows 7 fixed them, according to what I read. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Solixis Posted October 17, 2009 Share Posted October 17, 2009 Could it possibly be Expose? At least for graphic design, the ability to see previews between windows must be amazing Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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