while raw megahertz is definitely hard to beat, and I love OSX's stability and unix base, what about service? It's not often, but when something major happens to the hardware, bad enough to bring your work to a halt, service counts. Dell in particular has saved my neck several times. Apple, on the other hand, is a way behind this front. the last time i had a major hardware issue, my mac (for quarkxpress!) went to a third party. this was great, they gave me a loaner machine, but it took a full work day to deal with. Dell on the other hand took two phone calls to get a part (new cd burner) and someone to switch it out the next day. While OSX is more stable than Win2K for me, this type of service means meeting or missing deadlines.
my $0.02
I understand what has been written here in this article and do not deny its "truth". My gripe with the original article on Adobe's web site is that it compares the systems in an unfair manner. The recent version of After Effects does not yet take advantage of Mac OS X's capabilities, and thus does not show a fair comparison. If the program had been updated the way it should have been, these tests may not have seemed so lopsided. Adobe has not done as good a job as they should have with their latest round of updates. I look forward to the release of trly OS-X native programs, not just prgrams that "run" on OS X. Of course, there is also the argument that Apple cost software developers a lot of money by making them rewrite programs to work with OS X. A legitimate gripe, but it was somehting that needed to happen. And now Adobe needs to make their end of it happen and pacify its legions of Mac user customers out there. Peace out.
Another factor to consider is the software itself. As David Nagel points out in his article on CreativeMac (www.creativemac.com) After Effects is effectively not multithreaded. That is, it can't take advantage of more than one processor at a time. The proof is that you can run two copies of the AE render engine at once and basically double your speed. So the test Adobe posted is a mixed bag - yes, high-end PCs are faster, processor-for-processor, than Macs. The current high-end Macs attempt to address this by adding more processors - and are foiled by software like AE that doesn't take advantage of the available power.
One key thing that was overlooked....
while raw megahertz is definitely hard to beat, and I love OSX's stability and unix base, what about service? It's not often, but when something major happens to the hardware, bad enough to bring your work to a halt, service counts. Dell in particular has saved my neck several times. Apple, on the other hand, is a way behind this front. the last time i had a major hardware issue, my mac (for quarkxpress!) went to a third party. this was great, they gave me a loaner machine, but it took a full work day to deal with. Dell on the other hand took two phone calls to get a part (new cd burner) and someone to switch it out the next day. While OSX is more stable than Win2K for me, this type of service means meeting or missing deadlines.
my $0.02
I believe the numbers but...
...how come DVD videos run like a dream on a battered old iMac but jitter like a Charlie Chaplin feature when played on a PC?
Why it wasn't an 'Apples-to-Apples' comparison
I understand what has been written here in this article and do not deny its "truth". My gripe with the original article on Adobe's web site is that it compares the systems in an unfair manner. The recent version of After Effects does not yet take advantage of Mac OS X's capabilities, and thus does not show a fair comparison. If the program had been updated the way it should have been, these tests may not have seemed so lopsided. Adobe has not done as good a job as they should have with their latest round of updates. I look forward to the release of trly OS-X native programs, not just prgrams that "run" on OS X. Of course, there is also the argument that Apple cost software developers a lot of money by making them rewrite programs to work with OS X. A legitimate gripe, but it was somehting that needed to happen. And now Adobe needs to make their end of it happen and pacify its legions of Mac user customers out there. Peace out.
the software factor
Another factor to consider is the software itself. As David Nagel points out in his article on CreativeMac (www.creativemac.com) After Effects is effectively not multithreaded. That is, it can't take advantage of more than one processor at a time. The proof is that you can run two copies of the AE render engine at once and basically double your speed. So the test Adobe posted is a mixed bag - yes, high-end PCs are faster, processor-for-processor, than Macs. The current high-end Macs attempt to address this by adding more processors - and are foiled by software like AE that doesn't take advantage of the available power.