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I completely agree. But know you Can have the best of both worlds with intel macs. bootcamp ;)

Well I guess I got my answer sooner than I expected. But yeah, as you said, mileage may vary and that’s just the way it is. My good friend was recently stating to me how the two don’t really differ too much in the grand scheme of things.

I wouldn’t be worried too much about the “technical vs design” posts in your blog. I thick it’s pretty interesting and all part of the same whole (well in this case anyways).

– Daniel

Horrah for Scott. Lets see some new (Mac made.. haha) designs come out. Ffor me and my totally bias opinion, i’m a simple man and i like the simple OSX experience, be it using Mail or searching for files, i just find it a whole lot easier.

Well, I have a quite different experience with both OS’s. I’m manly a PC user, running on XP and, believe me or not, It’s very rare to crash. Even with large multi-layer Photoshop files.

On the other hand, I saw also incredible crashes with Photoshop on Mac OS X. Even pressing the reset button didn’t seem to work. Go figure.

The OS that I am really happy with is Linux-based ones! Never crashed, no reboots on updates, fast as hell.

If Adobe made software for Linux, I wouldn’t think twice.

This is a nice post. It’s a good comparison of both systems without degrading to platform evangelism on either side. However, I do have to come to the defense of Vista, in a sense.

Calling it a stop-gap OS is true in many senses, but not all. I’ve been working on Vista for about 3 months and have had only minor annoyances with the OS (UAC is definitely one of them). The security model is very much improved over XP. Any problems (hangs, crashes, etc.) have stemmed from other software products or poor driver support. That’s not Microsoft’s fault. The new eye-candy is good, but they’ve definitely dropped the ball on the sly animations and UI feedback that OSX users enjoy.

I see Vista as less of a stop-gap and more of a jumping off point. I’m not ready to hang it out to dry just yet. If Windows 7 comes out and they haven’t learned anything from the follies surrounding Vista then there is a significant problem. But a good question is how far can/will Apple innovate in between now and then?

mg33, if you hold down the Option key while clicking the yellow minimize button all windows of the current application will be sent to the Dock. You can close all windows of an application using the Option key on the red close button as well.

I’m not a switcher, but I’m here to say how much I value OS X’s Expose (which may be a better solution for you in some scenarios, mg33) and am REALLY benefiting from Quicklook. Expose is really great in that, when showing all open windows, it leverages the entire screen real estate (which Windows Flip does not do), as it tiles instead of stacks windows like Flip 3D, Expose is “non-linear” whereas Flip 3D is a linear “Rolodex” analogy. Great eye-candy… but hardly efficient.

Also, you can also drag-and-drop text or any type of file using Expose (which you cannot do with any Flip mode). This, coupled with triggering Expose modes using a multi-button mouse, can REALLY increase your efficiency.

I always had the impression that OSX runs apps smoother when you are running lots of them. From your comparisons on the same hardware, what do you think of it?

Scott, your conclusion on this matter is fantastic. I appreciate reading your thoughts on the matter because you have a strong computer science background as well as a refined sense of style, two things that often don’t go together.

For me, unless I end up getting into a niche of design that requires super high-end processing power, my Mac will work for me. Reliability and ease of use wins over pure hardware power. But my preference will never lead me to scoff at a PC just because it’s not a MAC. Every tool has its purpose.

So over all, great write up! I think your MAC vs. PC debate has been some of the most interesting reading on your blog.

Scotty, you’re going to love Windows 7

I grew up totally believing that Windows was the ultimate OS. I was anti Mac for a very, very long time. Then one day… I was putzing with a 24″ iMac at the mac store… fell in love. Now I’ll never go back to PC. In fact, I have forgotten what it’s like to use a PC. The Mac is just so much more efficient and editing photos is so much easier. I love the expose feature. There hasn’t been any major problems with it as of yet and I’ve had it for a year. PS does some goofy things occasionally but it’s never crashed on me while working.

I’d love to have a mac book pro but on my salary… that’ll have to wait. :D

An awesome post like usual Scott. At the beginning of it I was hoping you’d come to the same conclusion I did, but unfortunately you didn’t. I was born sucking the keyboard of an Apple IIe, and switched to windows in the mid 90’s as Windows was what all the cool kids were using, and lets be honest the mac at that time was utter junk. So I progressed using Windows until this year when I gave in and got a MacBook Pro, thinking it’d be the most amazing OS ever. Was I already under the XP hypnosis? I doubt it…I didn’t like XP very much either, but was comfortable with it.

XP doesn’t crash for me like a lot of people; however, I’ve had my fair share of problems with it like most. Then when I tried OSX I was happy with it, but found the OS so limiting it was frustrating. SIMPLE things like say deleting an old file from an ‘open’ dialog in PS I found…oh I couldn’t do practically anything and had to use the Finder to manage my files. And on that note, since switching to Leopard I’ve had PS crash so many times I’m looking at a rebuild. I don’t know what Leopards problem is, but it’s buggy on my machine.

Anyway I’m not happy with XP or OSX, and quite frankly I’d love to see something new. Some fancy new way of using a computer. I’m tired of typing on a keyboard and pointing our cursors on a screen. I want B&O to design a computer or some futuristic Minority Report type of computer to finally come of age. I’m tired of clicky clicky computers.

Hi to all!

Scott have you tried the ableton live?
(regarding the music production issues you ‘re dealing with the switch)

Nice general post. Doing something new and different is hard and many people resist. Once you’ve been with the Mac for a while, going back seems awkward and you realize the genius of OSX.

For those people that claim their Macs crash all the time, there is something wrong with your OS install. Re-install it or have your hardware checked (esp. memory). OSX is based on Unix and rarely, if ever, crashes. This is NOT normal behavior. Learn the basic maintenance habits for OSX and you’ll be fine.

Damn Scott!!

Honestly, your not just a good artist & musician, your a good analyzer/writer as well. I hate to give you a big head but you hit things in the right spot. I’m not one to post comments, but I just curiously bought my girlfriend a Mac to see what its all about and as a nice gesture. I totally feel you on your comparison between the xp system and the mac. I however, will always have a love for windows/pc. IMO good for Microsoft having such a large array of hardware to support with there OS and doing it half way successful. It’s no wonder that Mac pimps there shit. Imagine if Microsoft only had to support Microsoft based hardware. The better half of the pc IMO is the that you get to put into it what you like. Unlike a mac where you dunno if the shit was made in China just branded in the US.

Nuff said… Mac yes, prettier, a couple less bugs for now. And def a much simpler/gotoanddo type interface as far as basic functionality. But if you want to get advanced then forget it. It’s more crippling. I’d still like to see Mac support the power users a little more than they do. :)

Enough drunk shit.

You’ll see me around btw.

-R

I use a PC at work to run Photoshop in a desktop publishing environment & XP Pro sucks for air. I’m not sure what performance advantages your are talking about. The interface is sluggish & gets slower as the day goes on. Every so often the task bar just disappears or the start menu turns black. The icons disappear off of the desktop & launching/quitting PS or Illy takes forever as I watch the interface fall apart in front of my eyes. Leaving artifacts behind of the previous window, that slowly disappear. A tie? I don’t think so. Multi-tasking on XP is lousy. Without the use of short cuts & copy & paste it would be unusable. The system takes a long time to boot & to shut down. Don’t get me started on color accuracy & management. To type a bullet in windows the the key command is 0149 only from the keypad, with numlock turned on. A bullet will show up on the screen when you press 01 but will look like the Japanese yen symbol when it goes to print. Great! On the Mac just press option 8. Works every time. Windows does not even know when a document has been closed in an application. Our work is downloaded from a server using a numbering system for folder & file names. The file downloads to a specific folder which is the inbox. If I work on a job & upload the file to the server & then realize that I have to tweak it it will need to be downloaded again. The problem is that when the file is uploaded it sometimes leaves the original folder & files behind. No biggy, just delete the appropriate folder in the inbox, right? Well windows will not let me, because it says that one of the files within that folder is in use. So, I have to quit every application that the offending file was open in, delete the folder & relaunch the applications. Which as I said earlier takes a long time. In open & save dialogue boxes XP can’t seem to keep the file system in any kind of alphabetical order when dealing with a mixture of files, folders & shortcuts.

Just a heads up with Photoshop CS4, the development team has said that we will see a 64 bit native Photoshop on Windows only, and not to expect native 64 bit on OSX until CS5, maybe.

Reason being is that Apple dropped 64 bit for Carbon framework and moved completely to Cocoa.

You can read about it on John Nack’s, Project Manager for Photoshop, blog: http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2008/04/photoshop_lr_64.html

Not sure if that’ll play into your decision to hold of jumping ship, but it’s food for thought.

Scott, coming from someone in experimental computer science, I think you’ll like where computers are in ten years. The whole interaction model is going to go through a sea change unlike anything since the Xerox PARC days.

I agree with you totally.

I use Vista, and I have to say I haven’t had a bad experience with it at all. Though I see it more of as an add on than a completely new OS.

Very objective and well-balanced assessment, which I found to be a good read. But my question is: “Where did you find that ‘Darth Vader-esque’ black Windows logo that sits beside the Tiger one at the beginning of this post?” I’d really be interested to know.

Don’t work your macbook so hard. I’ve never had a hard drive failure until I got a macbook. Mac “changed’ it for free but they wouldn’t give me back my old HD.. which i thought was kind of weird. i don’t trust  :) but i love it.

I also use it for the same thing, Music, chat, light aperture work.

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