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Under the Desktop: Platform Playoffs
As with an intense football conference rivalry, Mac and PC fans will leap onto the silicon gridiron to defend their chosen platform. But today, beating the point spread isn't a sure thing for either platform, says odds-maker David Morgenstern.
Written by David Morgenstern on December 19, 2001
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Forget the Hatfields and the McCoys, or other famous blood feuds. Or the weekly rumble in the ring. The most bitter grudge match in the computing arena is still to be found between Mac and PC fanatics who advocate their platform over all others.
Long ago, I participated in this pastime. But my status has shifted to that of a referee over the past decade. I use both computing platforms and recognize their strengths and weaknesses. Or put up with the same. This self-proclaimed neutrality has meant that I've had to dodge my share of bottles hurled onto the field.
So you can imagine my trepidation when I found the following message from Jane Scroggins in my inbox: "I am a freelance designer and need to replace my computer in the near future. Could you address the pros and cons of Windows machines vs. Macs? I know the subject is an old one but what is the current view?"
Here we go again! Yes, it is a perennial question, and still a good one.
A glib response to Jane's question -- albeit one that is perhaps closest to the truth -- is: It all depends. But that's no answer, especially when the decision can affect your workflow, productivity, and even creativity.
Root for the Home Team
The platform question remains a hot potato, because the fans from either camp regard as heresy any answer short of recommendation for their chosen computer. A reasonable observation on the relative merits of Macs and Windows is usually quickly drowned out by yelling or by the waving of spec sheets.
Windows proponents will point to the platform's wide range of vendors and price points. After all, about 90 percent of the world's computing is done on the PC platform and almost all of it with some flavor of the operating system. Its adherents also point to the recently released Windows XP, which is more stable, and they swear, really user friendly.
Mac partisans will offer a set of familiar counter-arguments: Although having a smaller market share, the Mac provides its users with greater quality and finer integration of machine and human interface. Even better, the Mac now has two superior operating systems in Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X, as well as a longer history in the professional content creation market, especially for 2D-image editing and page layout.
Half-Time Reports
Content creators would do well to consider the National Football League when considering the performance of comparable Mac and Windows machines. According to sports writers, football divisions have reached a state of parity. On any given Sunday (so the saying goes) any team can beat another in an individual game regardless of their places in the standings.
Just so with the dueling computers. Although each platform may triumph in an individual test, their overall performance is roughly the same. Reviews published this year show that while Intel's Pentium 4 (aka Xeon) architecture provides faster clock rates (measured in megahertz) than Advanced Micro Devices' Athlon and Motorola's PowerPC G4, the systems mostly match up when faced with real world content-creation tests such as rendering a 3D scene or generating a video effect.
Of course, no machine can win all the tests and benchmarks, unless it's unfairly matched up against vastly weaker products. But even if we pick an appropriate group of models to compare, market forces will do their best to confound us. You have to decide what to buy and then when to buy it.
Send in the Substitutes
Continuing the sports analogy, a team can have a better chance of beating another on a particular week depending on how many players are injured or if key members of the offensive line are in jail. Likewise, the performance advantage of processors used in the different platforms will shift back and forth throughout the year as new models are released into the market.
System vendors incorporate faster processors as they become available and also at strategic times in the year. For example, everyone expects Apple to shortly announce new, faster Macs at January's Macworld Expo San Francisco. These models will supplant the previous top-of-the-line Power Macintosh G4/800 DP introduced last July.
If you tracked the results of Photoshop filter tests as performed on Macs and on Windows machines over a period of years, the graph might well look like a set of waves, with top position determined only by the moment of selection. Over time, the performance differences even out.
Buying Season Tickets
But what about price? After all, this has been the proverbial argument that Windows partisans have long used against the Mac. Everybody knows that PCs are less expensive, right?
That may be true for mass-market machines targeted to the consumer market (although that's changing, too), but it's less applicable to the kinds of high-end machines content creators typically use. In addition to performance parity, the prices of high-performance desktop machines are also very close. A quality machine will cost between $3,500 and $5,000, whether from Apple or a PC vendor. These systems come with one or more fast processor, and support 1.5 GB of RAM or more. Monitor sold separately.
Of course, each platform and model will offer its own mix of performance and value. For example, a Windows model will likely come standard with a speedy Ultra SCSI 160 bus, which is best for Photoshop scratch disks. Macs feature integrated FireWire, which is very useful for digital video and easy backup. No doubt you will end up adding memory, additional video display cards, and other host adapter cards to meet your exact needs. Certainly, there are more options for graphics cards on the Windows side, due to its larger user base as well as overlap from the workstation market.
(Note: For a bare-bones, entry-level single-processor machine, there are more choices in the Windows camp. Nevertheless, if you want a machine that can also handle occasional image or video editing, then you need to look towards a more powerful, mid-range machine such as those with a 1GHz Pentium III or a souped up iMac. Still, none of these entry-level or midrange machines have the horsepower, memory support and expansion capabilities required for everyday professional content creation.)
In the End Zone?
Declaring performance and cost parity galls platform partisans. These cheerleaders want a winner declared so that they can wave the towels and hoot and holler.
On the other hand, this situation is excellent news for computer users. Whichever platform you prefer will give you fine performance. If you are familiar with Macs, there's no reason to switch to a PC machine. And the same holds true for Windows.
While, performance is important, there are other considerations that content creators should keep in mind when purchasing a machine. As the rabbinical maxim states: "The person who answers speedily errs speedily."
In my next column, I will examine these additional factors: support for technologies specifically aimed at content creation; your ability to collaborate with other creators; and the effect that your choice of computing platform may have on your clients.
Read more by David Morgenstern.
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Incomplete and Uninformative (part 2)
WEB TECHNOLOGY is a split decision. There is probably a place for both platforms in most web development settings. Macs are great for the design aspects of web projects. PCs have some advantages in terms of back-end development tools (although Mac OS X may level the playing field a little). If you are a designer on a web development team, a Mac will be a great choice. For a one-person web development business with no or little back-end development needs, then a Mac is still a good choice - although you will need Virtual PC for cross-platform beta testing. For a one-person operation, with significant back-end development aspirations with Coldfusion or ASP (for example), then a PC would be a better choice. And, if you are mostly focusing on back-end development, then stick with a PC.
On top of all these sector specific thoughts, you should also keep in mind that:
i. the PC platform is afflicted by many more viruses than the Mac. Our firm is about 75% Mac, and I know that we haven't had a single Mac virus in 24 months. On our PCs and those of businesses we deal with, the virus incidence has resulted in a significant loss of productivity.
ii. historically, the Mac's in our offices have been productive tools for a longer lifecycle than our PCs.
To end on an philosophical note, our buying decisions (whether intended or not) reward the company in question for their corporate modus operandi. I continue to support Apple, even at a point in time when their functionality/productivity advantages have diminished because I BELIEVE IN REWARDING CREATIVITY and I BELIEVE IN CHOICE. The "90% of the world uses Windows, why don't you" rubs me the wrong way for these reasons. For our firm, and most others that we deal with in the new media sector, buying Macs will remain the default decision, unless a PC is clearly a better tool for the job. Fortunately, the sectors in the new media industry for which this is the case remain in the minority.
Just my subjective beliefs, based upon personal experience.
Cheers!
I use both and like aspects of both, but...
I absolutley agree with the message of this aricle. There are so many factors involved in deciding which platform to purchase.
Honestly I like certain aspects of both platforms. I own a Mac for home use and work on a PC as a web site designer. If I where to interchange my situation I think I would still be happy.
But one thing sets the platforms apart for me.
The Mac just feels better. That's it! No technical jargon or spec sheets necessary. I just love working on my Mac where as I just work on my PC.
The author responds
Wow. Simon thanks for such a long response, even though you landed a double Strongly-Disagree punch on my article.
I understand your critiques -- and agree with many of your points. You'd prefer a segment-by-segment approach to the purchase decision. For example: If a reader is a 2D designer, then they should pick this or that model. That's a logical approach to the question.
However, a problem with that methodology is the presumption that most creative pros just produce one type of content. Many people are doing web and print work, layout and image editing, as well as looking at adding a variety of streaming content to their repertoires.
Performance parity lets someone pick a Mac and feel good about the decision -- despite the "common wisdom" and market share numbers. Or they can buy a Windows machine. After all, that's what choice is all about. Performance is only one factor and I will offer some additional considerations in the second installment.
Your comments seem to assume that I'm somehow against users having a choice of platform. That we should reward Apple for offering an alternative to Windows, I admit never crossed my mind. Here's a radical proposal to improve choice across the industry: the government should create minimum quotas for alternate hardware and OS platforms -- Linux and Macs -- when purchasing equipment. This platform-level redundancy would ensure that computing services would continue even if there was an overwhelming virus attack or if some processor bug was uncovered.
Meanwhile, I was glad to see your point about viruses. I made viruses my story of the year, before reading your comment. Mac users are naive about viruses, which could be a problem when they move to OS X.
Thanks for reading!!!
daviD M.
Aesthetics count.
Dear Mr. Morgenstern,
Many people choose the Macintosh for aesthetic reasons, not because of physical performance. The Mac OS, both 9 and 10 are more attractive and their use is far more transparent than anything from Redmond. I started out using PCs during the old Windows 3.1 days. When first exposed to an OLD Mac II CSI I was transfixed. Finally a computer that demonstrated that its makers had some sense of proportion, of aesthetics, some taste. As an ophthalmic photographer, (my day job) I have to suffer the hegemony of Windows in my field. Every day, in fact at least ten times a day I am forcibly reminded of just why I use a Macintosh for my own work. Windows is ugly, poorly designed from any perspective you care to name, and just harder to use. File management is abysmal. Navigation is senseless, especially compared to OS X. Some of us use a Mac because we can get substantially more work done in a given amount of time with a given amount of effort and have a pleasant time while doing it. Enuff said!
David
Designer, Photographer, Hollywood, California
The real issue is server platforms
As your article correctly points out, this part of the debate is all over by now. So why bother writing an article about it? The real issue is not which platform you use personally, but which you choose to serve on. Microsoft continues to develop a proprietary system for web serving. Whether we buy into this or not is a really important question, yet it is one which you do not even admit exists!
Right On!
I've been using Macs for about 14 years, and PCs for about 10. 5 or 10 years ago, the story was one thing, with Macs ruling big-time, but now it's another, not so clear. All you Mac-heads need to get a life, I can make a great video or web site on either machine.
Incomplete and Uninformative
I haven't seen the rest of the posts in response to this article, but I will be surprised if many of them don't end up being similar to the vein of my contribution.
Firstly, I fell that there is little merit in writing a column that neither:
a. makes a decent stab at covering the subject in more detail than this one.
b. makes a professional (if only subjective) recommendation.
I think this contributor is making an unfortunate foray into the realm of "news journalism" rather than "editorial journalism". The news journalist often goes out of their way to find a dissenting opinion - even if this opinion only represents the views of 10% of "professionals" on that topic. This sort of misguided attempt at impartiality only serves to confuse the reader. Informed editorial journalism can treat an issue with respect for both sides of an argument, but make an informed professional recommendation at the end. I believe that this approach tends to be much more helpful to readers such as the designer that sent the email that triggered this article. I don't learn much from reviews that pronounce that the products/services being considered are each better in some ways, but don't really provide any specific details as to WHICH ways.
As for my professional views, as a new media professional that manages projects that span the graphic design, video and web technology marketplace, I can make several subjective contributions to the Mac vs PC debate.
For PRINT DESIGN, a Mac is still an obvious choice, for numerous reasons. Not only are the hardware and software offerings as good or better than for PC, but the majority of your colleagues and service bureaus use Mac. I even know of some successful high-end print shops that refuse to take PC files altogether!
VIDEO is a more ambiguous sector. Apple has made a strong push recently both at the entry level with iMovie and at the mid-range level with Final Cut Pro. An interesting anecdote regarding the popularity of Final Cut Pro; on the week before the Windows XP launch, the top selling title at Book Express (one of the largest distributors of computer books on the Canadian West Coast ) was... the Final Cut Pro Visual Quickstart Guide from Peachpit Press. Four of the remaining top ten were Windows XP related. Remarkable. The desktop video industry is evolving quite a bit right now, and the platform decision for the video professional is not limited to only Macs and PCs. Numerous factors will come into play on this one - including the platform preference of other project members and the nature of gear and software already owned. But, if you are just getting into entry to mid-end video production, I can't speak highly enough of the Mac platform. Such simplicity, with great mid-range abilities.