First of all, I learned Photoshop on a Mac way back in the early 90's, yet Windows was my platform of choice. I can't say that Windows 3.0 was anything to write home about, but it worked and the Windows machines from that era were definitely cheaper than Macs, and as you may recall, they both crashed on a regular basis. It was maddening to say the least.
With Mac's OS 9, the divide between reliability began to widen in Mac's favor, especially as the Internet became a common element for both platforms. Windows closed the gap with their XP OS. I think I can say that both are fairly crash proof if you take Internet problems out of the equation, but with Mac's holding the edge on overall reliablilty. Unix is the gold standard, and Mac was smart to embrace it with their overall architecture.
I still do Photoshop on both machines, because I teach digital imaging and need to be sharp on both, because many of my students have Windows macnines at home and I need to assist with any problems that may arise.
However, when it came to designing and building our own computer labs in our Art Department, there was no question as to the fact that we were going to install them with Macs. The irony here is that on paper, Windows machines look better. In real life, acutal performance has little to do with overblown specs, and things like megahertz speed are definitely not indicators of overall performance. We had to take things like performance and reliability into consideration when going with one platform over the other and Windows macnines definitely lag far behind when all of the Internet problems are figured into the equation, such as viruses, spyware and so on. We simply cannot afford to have our computers down or not performing as well as they should because like everyone else in academia, budgets are gettting tighter and tighter.
Our computer labs are up and running nearly 100% of the time, and I am sure it is because we use the Mac platform. Factor in heavy use from programs like Photoshop, Quark, Dreamweaver, etc., and you end up with computers that are run through their paces every day, and then some. I constantly hear from colleagues around the university that are driven crazy by their Windows machines that are constantly running dramatically slower that they should because of constant bugs, viruses and spyware. Their IT guys are in a constanat struggle to keep the machines going and there are always a few that are out of commission. No thanks.
If I could only have one computer, it would be a Mac, which is exactly what I advise our photography students, especially as their newer more economically priced machines arrive on the market that are blistering competitors for equally priced Windows machines.
I would take digidog's comments into heavy consideration because he appears to be someone more critically involved in the technical end of digital imaging than the average pro, and is used to quantifying all of the elements that go into the digital imaging equation.
Anyway, I am really more interested in the usability aspect from a
photographers point of view than the technical merits of the OS.
Photoshop is Photoshop on either OS. There are applications on one
OS, not on the other and vise versa. Personally I vastly prefer the
usability of the Mac but I realize others feel the opposite. OS X
is a very nice, modern, 21 century OS that's real stable.
--
Andrew Rodney
Author of Color Management for Photographers
The Digital Dog
http://www.digitaldog.net
--
LMcNeil
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