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Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Jacks on the villa (Hurricane State of Citrus)
Posts: 92
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I think which you get depends on the level of knowledge you hold about the intricacies of managing the computer...
If you're extremely computer literate, and know how to get around any kind of problem, I would go with a PC. You need to know how to deal with and prevent viruses, spyware, adware, etc; and, you've got to periodically clean your registry, defragment, et cetera et cetera. And, of course, keep an eye on the task manager to know when there are background processes you don't need (and then clean them out). All those kinds of things. The only reason PCs have a reputation for slowness and crashing is because so many people fail to take proper care of them... Which is understandable; it requires a high degree of knowledge that doesn't present itself to be known. You just have to know it or find it without being prompted.
Additionally, it will be much, much cheaper than Macs in almost any case. If you assemble the parts yourself, even better. Buy a case, a motherboard, a video card, a processor, RAM, etc, and put it together yourself, and you'll have saved more money than you could ask for. I'm not even talking VS. Macs, this is in the PC market itself. Buying a pre-assembled computer will get you the same parts for hundreds of $$$ more.
If you're willing to pay the extra for a pretty interface and design, that's fine too. Macs are really only superior for the ease-of-use, in my opinion. And they are definitely very nice, especially considering the newer ones can run Windows anyway.
Though, actually, if my memory serves me right, you can also create a partition within a PC hard drive to run Mac OS as well. That's far from a user-friendly process, however.
As for my perspective... I own a Powerbook G4 laptop (Mac) and also have a desktop PC (though haven't used it in a year or two.)
Though I'm very computer oriented, and do software and hardware repair/management/installation for work, I'm actually a digital artist who does tons of illustration work. And, in fact, I really have no idea why Macs have a reputation of being artist-friendly, other than the fact that they're outwardly stylish.
I don't know of a single good, major art program used professionally that is exclusive to Macs. Adobe Suite and Corel Painter are available for both platforms, but the majority of good programs are either completely incompatible or very unstable on Macs. PaintTool SAI, openCanvas come to mind for the former. For the latter, well, I've never been able to well use an Oekaki program for an extended amount of time without it crashing or blanking out and sputtering... and completely losing work. Also, there is no tablet pen pressure compatibility driver for Oekaki work on Macs, and... Heck, drivers for just about anything are hard to find. And software, for that matter- even outside of art.
More importantly, only a very small amount of my illustrator and designer friends use Macs. Just about everyone uses a PC. In fact, even beyond my own network, I've rarely spotted Mac usage in the artists I look up to, either.
There does seem to be a bit more correlation between vector art and Macs, as opposed to raster, but I think that's more preferential than anything... But hey, I know very few vector artists.
I have one because my father loves Macs, and he gave me his old laptop when he bought himself a new one. I adore my Mac, even if I would prefer a PC. It's got it's problems, especially since it's got an ol' PowerPC processor instead of Intel... But Macs are very nice, if you don't intend to do anything eclectic. Chances are that if you ever want programs for something specialized, you'll have a tough time getting anything good for a Mac. On a general scale, most things you buy at the store which come with software to operate only have PC drivers or PC-compatible programs... You'll have to do digging to get a Mac solution.
Thinking of an example, I got a free... eh.. what's it called... I don't know, some Verizon/Samsung phone that's tiny and flips open and can play MP3s if you put them on. However, there's the catch- the software to communicate with the phone is PC-only.
To use my Mac with it, I had to dig around Google until I found you could do some partitioning and cleaning and manually communicate with its hard drive. No software, and required risky (as in, potentially wipe-out-the-phone-irreversibly-if-you-misstep) poking around in its hardware.
Case in point:
PCs are compatible with everything, cheaper, much more powerful and customizable, but need deeper geek-know-how to make use of full potential. Software library: limitless!
Macs are nice, pretty, sleek, and user-friendly for just about anyone. Geek-know-how can pry a bit of extra usage, but one can only go so far. Software library: big corporation made only, very tiny, keeps the little, independent, focused software makers out (which are often the best, contrary to what some think). However, so long as you're doing very standard kinds of tasks (word processing, etc) and don't need specialized software, there's nothing wrong with going for the Mac.
Also, Macs with Intel processors can run Windows. However, it will not run as efficiently (i.e. slower, some hardware compatibilities are indeed lost) on a Mac as it would on a PC. This is because it runs it non-natively; Windows can't communicate directly with the hardware, but has to have a "relaying" sort of program which hovers over the hardware and tells Windows "this resource is available, this port has this number, there's a USB port over there, the processor is X, there's X amount of RAM, X amount of memory," etc. Boot Camp is the mainly used one, I think. What this means is that with certain kinds of hardware, even with Boot Camp, you still won't have compatibility... I've read about it, but honestly, I don't (can't, PowerPC here) use it myself, so I've never actively looked into it.
So yeah.
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