Tom_N
Forum Pro
He specifically said "the Mac Pro you" (the OP) "were trying out."
-
Welcome to the new forums! Please read this first. For known issues we are working to resolve, click here.
Thinking about leaving Windows world
- Thread starter bocaboca
- Start date
fringephoto
Leading Member
Yea i agree, i recently built a new i7 64-bit Win 7 system replace an older 6 year old system and quite amazed at the difference, its literally night and day. CS5 runs amazing on it, super fast, no problems at all.
Ian Eisenberg
Senior Member
I am not sure why people consider modern interfaces "dumbed down".
I have been using computers since the Altair. Modern OSs may not rely directly on things like keystrokes and exposing the root files but they are hardly dumb. As far as OSX there are plenty of ways to use and customize keystrokes as well as opening the terminal and typing straight UNIX commands. There is a reason these things are no longer sitting on top of the OS. There are easier ways to do it. The number of people who need them is a lot smaller so we power users have to do a bit of work to customize it... get over it we are the minority.
I am putting together a machine to use as a hackintosh. My current cost so far is $2800. For this I get an i7 processor versus a Xeon. There are a few more differences but the difference in costs is going to be less than $300.
In the past I have always purchased my Windows machines (built a few but don't have the time), and since I stick with workstation class machines my costs have been comparable to Apple's higher end Macs.
Ian Eisenberg
Senior Member
Apple store systems usually have stock RAM. So these machines would have 3 GB.
The only thing you got right in that paragraph is that OSX is UNIX. OSX is a fully Posix compliant UNIX implementation. However the need to run multi-user environments is no longer an issue since it refers to (in the case of UNIX) a large server type implementation where users log in via dumb terminals. This is not really an issue in the 21st century.
The Mac is no more a "closed" system than any PC. I never get my RAM or storage from Apple. It is the one area I think their prices are exorbitant. And lately even their RAM prices are close to what I can get from Crucial.
--
Ian Eisenberg
President/Owner
Digit Training
Offering classes in animation, game design, vfx, photography, videography, web
design and all things digital.
dmartin92
Senior Member
I kind of think the answer to this question is "no", but I might be quite mistaken ...
if a person decides they want to put a SSD in their Mac, install the OS on the SSD, and then use the existing disk drive for additional storage, inside of the machine, can they they do all that without having to send the machine to the Apple store ?
And assuming, of course, they they know enough so that they could do that for a PC.
Tom_N
Forum Pro
Depends on the machine. The laptops, the regular (non-server) Minis, and most iMacs have a single internal hard drive bay, rendering the "inside of the machine" part of the question moot.
As far as user-accessible drives go, drives are very accessible on the Mac Pro (this machine has four bays with slide-out cable-free trays), and accessible on laptops. Many people replace Mini drives (I don't know if this is officially supported).
The iMac's internal bays (one HD, one SSD, one optical) are inaccessible. So you would need to take/send the machine to someone like OWC to upgrade internal drives. Then again, iMacs have FireWire and USB for external expansion.
onlooker
Senior Member
While I sympathize with some of your sentiments regarding the disappearance of a meaningful command line, I strongly differ on the above. File indexing is a boon to productivity. I use it all the time. File finding anywhere on Win 7 64 is instantaneous. It's mind boggling. I had file indexing on Un*x enabled as well, but the transparency and speed of it in Win 7 is impressive.
Also, the current UIs are very customizable. My Win 7 behaves like it should - focus follows pointer (no need to click on windows) without raising of windows, I can type in a background window, single-click folder and file opening, etc. You can even run zsh for your command line, not to mention that vi is my default text editor. What's not to like?
Of course, if you show me a way to reliably run all my applications on Linux or FreeBSD, I will gladly change.
Ian Eisenberg
Senior Member
Wow, yes actually the answer is yes... quite easily in fact.
You could even use something like Carbon Copy Cloner (free) to make a duplicate of the existing drive to the SSD. It is incredibly easy to do on a Mac.
Ian Eisenberg
President/Owner
Digit Training
Offering classes in animation, game design, vfx, photography, videography, web
design and all things digital.
You could even use something like Carbon Copy Cloner (free) to make a duplicate of the existing drive to the SSD. It is incredibly easy to do on a Mac.
--
Ian Eisenberg
President/Owner
Digit Training
Offering classes in animation, game design, vfx, photography, videography, web
design and all things digital.
mamallama
Forum Pro
Sean Nelson
Forum Pro
Actually, Windows 7 still has a Command Prompt window, and even better it now includes PowerShell. PowerShell is a very rich and capable object-oriented command line shell that leverages all of the power of the .Net platform. IMHO it's as least as far ahead of something like bash as bash is ahead of DOS batch files.
If you're a Windows user who writes scripts you really, really owe it to yourself to check out PowerShell. Here's a place to start: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee177003.aspx
onlooker
Senior Member
Thanks, I will look at it. It's not so easy to make an old horse change direction from a UN*X shell, but it is certainly worth a look.
Sean Nelson
Forum Pro
Fire it up and type: ls
...you'll see a directory listing.
Next type: ls | sort length
...you'll see the same listing sorted by file size.
How does "sort" know where the "length" is in order to sort it? The answer is that what's coming out of the "ls" command isn't lines of text , it's actually a bunch of "file" objects , and "length" is one of their properties. That's the secret of PowerShell, and it makes all kinds of super-cool stuff possible.
(BTW, PowerShell doesn't really use Unix-style commands - " ls " is actually an alias for the PowerShell " Get-ChildItem " cmdlet).
Ian Eisenberg
Senior Member
Examples please?
--
Ian Eisenberg
President/Owner
Digit Training
Offering classes in animation, game design, vfx, photography, videography, web
design and all things digital.
chevysales
Senior Member
i should have added i didn't go mac pro before when i7's were released as apple didn't have them for few months and i wanted machine early in i7's release.
i am eligible for student discount and have apple store actually 2 wihtin a 30 minute drive. but we have 3 windows laptops here and i just weighed the cash... while i spent a ton having a puget system built it still after monitor and klipsch speakers was cheaper than apple tower only after OWC made the changes. and still is to this day.
so for me it appears the windows choice is my choice but apple's top of the line tower is mighty tempting in six core.
good luck in your choice.
--
D700 paired with 24-70 f2.8 and 70-200vr f2.8
i am eligible for student discount and have apple store actually 2 wihtin a 30 minute drive. but we have 3 windows laptops here and i just weighed the cash... while i spent a ton having a puget system built it still after monitor and klipsch speakers was cheaper than apple tower only after OWC made the changes. and still is to this day.
so for me it appears the windows choice is my choice but apple's top of the line tower is mighty tempting in six core.
good luck in your choice.
--
D700 paired with 24-70 f2.8 and 70-200vr f2.8
glasswave
Forum Pro
You can build/buy a Win or Linus system using no Microsoft or Linux brand parts. You cannot legally run osX without buying an Apple Brand computer. This makes their offerings more proprietary and closed.
With Mac you cannot build your own system, from off the shelf parts, choosing from 100's of vendors allowing 1000's of configuration options.
You cannot get several of the latest technologies USB 3, SataIII, I7's based on the x58 chipset, CUDA rendering acceleration ect, etc
In mid range systems, you cannot buy a high end monitor to use through several cpu/gpu/upgrades. The Tower systems start at $2500 which could net you a highly superior PC with a better processor, gpu,more RAM, sataIII ssd raid which would blow the doors off even the higher end macs.
There are many reasons to run osX, but an open/non proprietary system is not one of them. The computer can rest on it's true laurals, why do you to fabricate others.
There is simply too much beauty in the world to photograph it all, but I'm trying.
With Mac you cannot build your own system, from off the shelf parts, choosing from 100's of vendors allowing 1000's of configuration options.
You cannot get several of the latest technologies USB 3, SataIII, I7's based on the x58 chipset, CUDA rendering acceleration ect, etc
In mid range systems, you cannot buy a high end monitor to use through several cpu/gpu/upgrades. The Tower systems start at $2500 which could net you a highly superior PC with a better processor, gpu,more RAM, sataIII ssd raid which would blow the doors off even the higher end macs.
There are many reasons to run osX, but an open/non proprietary system is not one of them. The computer can rest on it's true laurals, why do you to fabricate others.
--
There is simply too much beauty in the world to photograph it all, but I'm trying.
mamallama
Forum Pro
Major MAC components are not ATX standard. Only an Apple-supplied MBO or PS will fit.
--mamallama
You are comparing a very powerful Intel system running MacOS with a much less powerful older Intel system running Windows.
It is not the OS. It is the more powerful hardware that you are experiencing. With that said, there might be some differences between the Windows and Mac version of PhotoShop.
I think you may have to buy another copy of PhotoShop when you switch to Mac.
--
Nelson Chen
http://pbase.com/nelsonc
http://NelsonChenPhotography.com/
100% RAW shooter with Capture One Pro
2008 Colorado Renaissance Festival photo gallery:
http://www.pbase.com/nelsonc/2008_colorado_renaissance_festival&page=all
It is not the OS. It is the more powerful hardware that you are experiencing. With that said, there might be some differences between the Windows and Mac version of PhotoShop.
I think you may have to buy another copy of PhotoShop when you switch to Mac.
--
Nelson Chen
http://pbase.com/nelsonc
http://NelsonChenPhotography.com/
100% RAW shooter with Capture One Pro
2008 Colorado Renaissance Festival photo gallery:
http://www.pbase.com/nelsonc/2008_colorado_renaissance_festival&page=all
Phil_L
Senior Member
bullet1 wrote:
snip
Adobe charge a nominal fee for changing the OS and delivering discs iirc.
I researched the idea of going MAC fairly extensively, but backed off.
Too much money for very little gain and a whole bunch of new problems and software.
May do a hackintosh on a future Win7 machine to run RPP??
--
Phil_L
snip
Don't think so.
Adobe charge a nominal fee for changing the OS and delivering discs iirc.
I researched the idea of going MAC fairly extensively, but backed off.
Too much money for very little gain and a whole bunch of new problems and software.
May do a hackintosh on a future Win7 machine to run RPP??
--
Phil_L
chevysales
Senior Member
i believe based on my readings and looking into purchasing a mac pro the answer is yes....but with the caveat apple support is out the window with that change one would have to put it back to as shipped for the geniuses to do their thing.
--
D700 paired with 24-70 f2.8 and 70-200vr f2.8
J
Jim Cockfield
Guest
You can end up spending twice as much for similar performance
For example, here's a config I just saved for $2422.
http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/saved/1CQN4W
I selected a Coolermaster HAF 912 case with plenty of drive bays, a nice Motherboard with SATA III and USB 3.0 support (not supported by Apple OS X), a 3.33Ghz Core i7 980X Extreme CPU (6 physical cores with 12MB of L3 Cache supporting 12 threads). If you want a CPU with those specs with the Apple, add $1200 to the base Mac Pro config, a nice Coolermaster Silent Pro 80+ Gold PSU, 12GB of 1600Mhz DDR3 (3 x 4GB, where you'd add $1275 to the base Mac Pro config to get 12GB), an HD 5770 video card (to match the Apple), with Win 7 Pro.
It comes in at $2422 delivered (just tweak as desired and you can save changes).
Basically, I just started out with their Megaspecial IV, and changed the Case, CPU, memory, etc. and saved changes so that it sent me a link.
If you go to the Apple Mac Pro configurators and choose the base $2499 box, then choose the 6 Core CPU and choose 12GB of DDR3, you'd be at $4974 (more than twice the cost of the custom system). IOW, you can get a dramatically better equipped machine (CPU type, Memory Installed, etc.) for less than a base model Mac Pro. ;-)
http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/mac_pro
--
JimC
------
http://www.pbase.com/jcockfield
For example, here's a config I just saved for $2422.
http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/saved/1CQN4W
I selected a Coolermaster HAF 912 case with plenty of drive bays, a nice Motherboard with SATA III and USB 3.0 support (not supported by Apple OS X), a 3.33Ghz Core i7 980X Extreme CPU (6 physical cores with 12MB of L3 Cache supporting 12 threads). If you want a CPU with those specs with the Apple, add $1200 to the base Mac Pro config, a nice Coolermaster Silent Pro 80+ Gold PSU, 12GB of 1600Mhz DDR3 (3 x 4GB, where you'd add $1275 to the base Mac Pro config to get 12GB), an HD 5770 video card (to match the Apple), with Win 7 Pro.
It comes in at $2422 delivered (just tweak as desired and you can save changes).
Basically, I just started out with their Megaspecial IV, and changed the Case, CPU, memory, etc. and saved changes so that it sent me a link.
If you go to the Apple Mac Pro configurators and choose the base $2499 box, then choose the 6 Core CPU and choose 12GB of DDR3, you'd be at $4974 (more than twice the cost of the custom system). IOW, you can get a dramatically better equipped machine (CPU type, Memory Installed, etc.) for less than a base model Mac Pro. ;-)
http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/mac_pro
--
JimC
------
http://www.pbase.com/jcockfield
Keyboard shortcuts
- f
- Forum