Mac vs Pc ( surprising results )

[FUBAR]

Hello All

Yes the old argument back again but I was just looking at a clip on youtube and I was a bit taken aback, simply because Macs are meant to be unbeatable in the visual / video / graphics department.

Just look at what that PC can run

Enjoy it.

YouTube - Core2 Duo Windows PC Vs. Xeon Quad Mac Pro

Anthony


PS The music in the clip is not bad at all !

[alyricalmind]

Originally Posted by FUBAR

Hello All

Yes the old argument back again but I was just looking at a clip on youtube and I was a bit taken aback, simply because Macs are meant to be unbeatable in the visual / video / graphics department.

Just look at what that PC can run

Enjoy it.

YouTube - Core2 Duo Windows PC Vs. Xeon Quad Mac Pro

Anthony


PS The music in the clip is not bad at all !

I've always been a PC fan... no matter how much people bash microsoft, it is a much more "American" company than Apple.... Microsoft isn't always trying to hide every single little thing about their OS as opposed to the Mac. The only issue I had with it was back in 98 when it used to constantly crash.... XP is an amazingly fast and stable OS.

[triez]

Originally Posted by alyricalmind

I've always been a PC fan... no matter how much people bash microsoft, it is a much more "American" company than Apple.... Microsoft isn't always trying to hide every single little thing about their OS as opposed to the Mac. The only issue I had with it was back in 98 when it used to constantly crash.... XP is an amazingly fast and stable OS.

For those of us who don't live in America, can you explain why we should be happy if something is more "American"?

[thx1138]

Originally Posted by alyricalmind

I've always been a PC fan... no matter how much people bash microsoft, it is a much more "American" company than Apple.... .

Is being more american a good thing? I always thought it was the opposite!?
One never stops learning!

[FUBAR]

Originally Posted by alyricalmind

I've always been a PC fan... no matter how much people bash microsoft, it is a much more "American" company than Apple.... Microsoft isn't always trying to hide every single little thing about their OS as opposed to the Mac. The only issue I had with it was back in 98 when it used to constantly crash.... XP is an amazingly fast and stable OS.

Hello Alyricalmind

The reality with windows particularly XP is to learn to tweak the bloody operating system and leave the cracks for the amateurs.

I built 2 PCs to my audio requirements both in sync and running SP2. I wont need to upgrade for the next 5 years and I have yet to experience a freeze. Many years ago I was a Mac user with a Mac user attitude.

Apple are just as bad as microsoft and today it is all just a matter of choice. They are both great operating systems but XP can be tweaked with out a masters degree, try tweaking OSX.

Anthony

[greg1975]

Originally Posted by triez

For those of us who don't live in America, can you explain why we should be happy if something is more "American"?

Some of us Americans may question this perspective as well.

[FUBAR]

Originally Posted by greg1975

Some of us Americans may question this perspective as well.

I think alyricalmind is a roots man

Respect

[ignatius]

the mac/pc debate is retarded but i use both. only because audiomulch is not yet osx friendly. it will be in version 2.0 though (goodbye windows)

so, my laptop PC tweaked w/the common tweaks and running only a few audio apps has rarely given me grief. no web browsing. nothing but audio. so, no complaints but i don't enjoy the OS though it's transparent enough when using the 1 or 2 audio things i use it for. also, i've never had to worry about a plug in not working w/a new windows OS update. you can pretty much open up any freeware plug in you downloaded 5 years ago and get it to work no probs. not so on a mac (unless you are using the old OS you initially had when you used that old plug in).

still i like mac OSX better. i like how it integrates w/other hardware (audio interfaces/midi controllers) and of course the big one.. i use logic (getting into DP) and can't live without it. so, windows is a no go..

i still have the belief that apples are easier. friendlier for multi-media consumer type stuff and i simply know it better.

so, yeah.. if i was some hardcore video/graphics/audio whatever post production visual FX person i wouldn't care so long as the renders or whatever were fast. but i've frequently had moments of "that's F*cking stupid" when using windows and less frequently had the same experience w/osx. i think osx is more transparent to use on a daily basis and more elegantly engineered as an OS. if OSX was a real pig i wouldn't use it.

[timbreman]

....Buy a quadcore PC for a fraction of the cost of a mac and have 20 times more audio applications and vst's to choose from.

[Shiny Turd]

Originally Posted by alyricalmind

I've always been a PC fan... no matter how much people bash microsoft, it is a much more "American" company than Apple....

Nice one

I'd like to know why it's a better thing too.

Besides, why should you tweak osx? tweaking is a matter of getting a better performance, and in osx everything worked great without any need of a tweak.
In my xp machine you needed to set all windows garbage off tho.

[alyricalmind]

Originally Posted by triez

For those of us who don't live in America, can you explain why we should be happy if something is more "American"?

Aww com'n, I didn't mean it that way. I just meant it as MS is more of a free spirit type of company than Mac in my opinion. That's why Mac still holds hardly any shares compared to Windows in the OS industry... they are too secretive about everything. It wasn't till just recently that they allowed Intel processors... still, everything is always on the low low and no developers can collaborate easily.

[Reptil]

Originally Posted by alyricalmind

..... Microsoft isn't always trying to hide every single little thing about their OS as opposed to the Mac. The only issue I had with it was back in 98 when it used to constantly crash.... XP is an amazingly fast and stable OS.

this is factually incorrect and exactly the reason why I chose to continue (when OS X arrived) to stay on the Apple platform. I invested in a platform that is based in open source system software. Before 2001 or so, your argument would have some reason behind it. Right now it doesn't. This is not to critique your choice btw. Or enter a "which is better" contest. Microsoft owns the source code to your OS.

[synthoid]

Originally Posted by alyricalmind

Microsoft isn't always trying to hide every single little thing about their OS as opposed to the Mac.

Um: this is bass ackwards.

Mac OS X is built on Unix, and in particular the BSD line of Unix, which is as well-documented an operating system as you'll find. The APIs that Apple has added are all completely transparent and well-documented. The entire development environment (Xcode) is FREE for download from Apple! You can download it and read the details of any interface or protocol that the OS supports.

I used to subscribe to the Microsoft development tools and documentation, and it wasn't even in the same league when it comes to openness and transparency of documentation.

Ask yourself this: which platform -- OS X or Windows -- has more available open-source software? (Answer: OS X, and it's not even close.) The reason for this is simple: OS X adheres to a ton of open and well-documented standards that are common to all Unix platforms, whereas Microsoft's OS shares very little except networking protocols with other platform.

-synthoid

[Reptil]

Originally Posted by FUBAR

....try tweaking OSX.

Anthony

very simple. just open "terminal.app" and start typing away.

[rachel]

MS is more of a free spirit type of company than Mac in my opinion."

This completely backwards. MS has one goal - to move units, ship product and
damn the consumer. Apple has been designing systems for specific purposes like music,
arts and creative production for years. Microsoft has ownership of the PC market
specifically for gaming, then business operations. At the Enterprise level it's a poor
player against UNIX but has gained a foothold in the Workgroup server area because
of lockins with Exchange and Office.

All of the above a monopoly of worst kind that means consumer have had to cope with a poor
product that needs constant tending and tweaking to keep working smoothly, a product
that is practically obsolete every 18 months.

As for hackability (in the sense of tweaking and propellor head stuff), I guess no one uses
UNIX anymore, except for us poor UNIX hackers.

Anyway, I won't rant too much. My Mac is nearly 8 years old and still runs a fairly recent OS.
And Logic, too - even at the same time!

I'd like to see the latest MS platform run on a computer the same age.


rachel

[blue monk]

The PC is a far better platform that`s a matter of fact.

Why?
With Windows I spend 6-8 hours per week doing backups.
These are the things that happen in this process:
Almost every time I connect my external backup drives I get errors sooner or later even if no write/read operations took place, yet.
Afterwards I can`t use the external drive any longer and have to reboot. Typically 5-10 times in each backup process.
This means I have to repeat copying and file compare processes several times and have to keep an eye on the PC (baby sitting).


Why is that a good thing?
It keeps me from making music in which case I might find out that my music isn`t as great as I dream.
So what looks like my PC being a pain in the ... it is *actually* just trying to keep me happy*.


I love my PC.



*by preventing me from destroying my illusions about my talent while attempting to make great music.

[Denny McNerney]

Originally Posted by blue monk

The PC is a far better platform that`s a matter of fact.

yeah, sure it is.

[greg1975]

Originally Posted by alyricalmind

I just meant it as MS is more of a free spirit type of company than Mac in my opinion. That's why Mac still holds hardly any shares compared to Windows in the OS industry...

Wow, I have never thought of MS as a "free spirit" type of company.

While we're at it, lets take a look at the performance of Apple stock vs Microsoft stock over the past five years. Perhaps that's an indicator of how well each company is doing.

Chart comparing Apple vs Microsoft stock performance

[imaketunes]

Originally Posted by greg1975

Wow, I have never thought of MS as a "free spirit" type of company.

While we're at it, lets take a look at the performance of Apple stock vs Microsoft stock over the past five years. Perhaps that's an indicator of how well each company is doing.

Chart comparing Apple vs Microsoft stock performance

But in terms of size.. Microsoft is still worth $120 billion more.

Apple where trading at $7 before the ipod came out.

I have used mac's only for the last 5 years. It's just much more... fun to use compared to the microsoft's from the school/work day's.

Oh and of course there is the Logic factor.

That chart does not indicate how well the companies are doing but how much they have grown by the way.

[pyvnd]

I've been PC forever but I bought a Macbook about 1.5 years ago and I like it very much. I think for laptops, Apple is better. For my desktop music PC though, I am going to stick with it until it dies. And when it does I will buy another PC desktop (Gateway to be precise).

I use my Macbook for school work and general lifestyle stuff. My wife uses a PC laptop and we have Sony Sonicstage running on that and we use Sony portable music players because they SOUND better than any ipod. We both have ipod shuffles that we use with the macbook for podcasts though. I love listening to that stuff at work.

So ultimately, I think I'm ok spending $1K for an Apple laptop and $1K for a desktop PC. I am not going to spend $3K for ANY computer because frankly they are not worth that much.

[pyvnd]

Originally Posted by alyricalmind

Aww com'n, I didn't mean it that way. I just meant it as MS is more of a free spirit type of company than Mac in my opinion. That's why Mac still holds hardly any shares compared to Windows in the OS industry... they are too secretive about everything. It wasn't till just recently that they allowed Intel processors... still, everything is always on the low low and no developers can collaborate easily.

I watched the sit-down interview that Jobs and Gates had about a year ago and Jobs admitted that their mistake had been not partnering with companies they way Microsoft has. Gates gave Jobs props for the design of their products. I don't know if you guys have seen that interview but it's pretty good.

[Fredrik]

That link is BS something is fishy with that test. Since apple switched to intel there is no point in doing speed tests IMHO. Basically whats tested is a core2duo against a xeon quad, conclusion, a core2duo is faster than a xeon quad.. Comon, thats rediculous.

[blue monk]

Originally Posted by Fredrik

That link is BS something is fishy with that test. Since apple switched to intel there is no point in doing speed tests IMHO. Basically whats tested is a core2duo against a xeon quad, conclusion, a core2duo is faster than a xeon quad.. Comon, thats rediculous.

It depends on the application.

Concerning audio production benchmarks it shows that soft synth A performs different than soft synth B, soft synths in general different than reverb plug-ins, EQ plug ins different than reverb plug ins etc.

Some types of plug ins get a boost out of bigger CPU cache others not so much. And each individual application performs different from apps/plugs that do similar things.

Number of Quicktime movies is pretty irrelevant.
If that test should have any implication I would like to see all videos on a huge display so I know all are playing simultaneously and fluently.

With a DAW project you can add a certain number of instances for various plug ins and hear if there are dropouts.



By the road: This thread is useless and off topic.

[Fredrik]

Yes I agree about the softsynths. But in this test I assume that graphics card would play a big role on how many clips that can be shown, nothing about this gets mentioned. Also in vista the video clips is not shown at the same time, perhaps there is some kind of allocation of resources to the clips in the front in vista? Also is it the same clips on both computers, same resolution and compression etc?

And I agree it´s irrelevant on this foum,

[blue monk]

Originally Posted by Fredrik

...I assume that graphics card would play a big role...

The interesting thing about high end graphics cards on a PC is that you may have one with 1GB RAM and the side effect is that you can only use 2.5GB of your 4GB installed physical RAM.

Apple has moved beyond that, since I think a year now.
The latest chipsets offer a workaround for the limited 32Bit address space and Apple uses it but there is no way to do it with a current Windows-PC.

[jimmydeluxe]

Originally Posted by blue monk

The PC is a far better platform that`s a matter of fact.

Why?
With Windows I spend 6-8 hours per week doing backups.
These are the things that happen in this process:
Almost every time I connect my external backup drives I get errors sooner or later even if no write/read operations took place, yet.
Afterwards I can`t use the external drive any longer and have to reboot. Typically 5-10 times in each backup process.
This means I have to repeat copying and file compare processes several times and have to keep an eye on the PC (baby sitting).


Why is that a good thing?
It keeps me from making music in which case I might find out that my music isn`t as great as I dream.
So what looks like my PC being a pain in the ... it is *actually* just trying to keep me happy*.


I love my PC.



*by preventing me from destroying my illusions about my talent while attempting to make great music.

Brilliant!

[ddp]

I love all the stuff about good things being "American". I think for something to be a great american thing did it not need to be made in the 1950s (heehee)

Anyway back to the debate at hand. I used apple long before microsoft (early nerd) but have been using PCs for music for about 15 years. I can never really rationalize spending 2-4 times as much money to get the same computer power.
That being said my friends with Macs crash and my PCs crash.
One big difference is that all Macs are made by apple. With PCs you need to have someone who knows how to put one together to make it. Products like dells etc can be very bad.

I have a great computer builder/repairer and his machines will cook a mac for breakfast dollar per dollar.

Just remember XP pro sp3 = good
Vista = bad