Apple themselves and a fair number of Apple users tout how reliable and easy to use the thing is.
Funny thing... I never had any of the problems the Apple people claim I should have had. My Windows workstations just work. Of course, I've been into computers since about the time microprocessors were invented, so I never had any problem getting my head around the technology, and I tended to make good decisions about what hardware and software to get, and how to set it up so it just worked.
Frankly I find the MacBook I bought last December more problematic than my main PC workstation. The other night my son told me he couldn't print, and we had a DEVIL of a time straightening out that one. It seems the Mac thought it knew better than we did about what login information to use to connect to the machine running the printer.
Apple people would say I should buy an Apple printer.
Not so, and I did say originally that 64 bit OS IS necessary for actual usage of more than 3 gigs of ram, not a scratch disk only.
Really? If you read your response you actually stated,
Quote:
This has absolutely nothing to do with 64 bit OS and point in fact, Photoshop doesn't and can't access more than the 3 gigs of ram. The OS will not allow this functionality.
Quote:
Well I sure can't and I have 10 gigs of ram on my Leopard system.
I have 12 gigs of ram on my Mac Pro running Leopard and I know Photoshop CS3 is using ram above 3072 mb for filters and scratch data before writing to the hard drive.
0 Page outs
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
Last edited by Jerry Skrocki; 05-08-2008 at 01:06 AM.
Apple themselves and a fair number of Apple users tout how reliable and easy to use the thing is.
Funny thing... I never had any of the problems the Apple people claim I should have had. My Windows workstations just work. Of course, I've been into computers since about the time microprocessors were invented, so I never had any problem getting my head around the technology, and I tended to make good decisions about what hardware and software to get, and how to set it up so it just worked.
Frankly I find the MacBook I bought last December more problematic than my main PC workstation. The other night my son told me he couldn't print, and we had a DEVIL of a time straightening out that one. It seems the Mac thought it knew better than we did about what login information to use to connect to the machine running the printer.
Apple people would say I should buy an Apple printer.
-Noel
I would prefer to be completely platform agnostic if I had found that all available platforms were directly comparable. As I have said, elsewhere in this thread, Noel, it can across as an evangelical stance to a user of either platform, when supporting or recommending any particular computer to a friend or colleague.
My experiences with Windows machines saw my transition from computer illiterate to... computer illiterate and my frustration saw me trying to set up and administer a Linux box for a year. In the end... it was Apple who got my cash because I could dump my ever-present computer guru (one very smart cookie) and get on with my work. Since transferring my work to an Apple computer, I have not required the services of a computer expert.
"a fair number of Apple users tout how reliable and easy to use the thing is"
This partial sentence speaks volumes to me and I wonder what it is that causes people to speak well of the product they are using. I don't understand why a fair number of people would willingly become unpaid agents for an inanimate conglomerate of silicon & plastic. Where is the pay off? Why would one become an unpaid sales executive for a computer company that most buyers are unlikely to ever see?
If I am asked for my opinion about my cameras, I will tender one based on my use. Perhaps there are a larger percentage of Apple users who are satisfied with their computing experience.
edit: "Apple tech support ranks #1 yet again with Consumer Reports" is an article that you can find at Ars Technica here... (13th news clip down the page) Infinite Loop
As for your printer woes... I would probably have rung Apple's help line because the support staff are usually on the ball, as evidenced by the Ars Technica article this year, and previous years.
Jeff
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
I have to admit, with the blurring of the line between Mac and PC due to virtualization, more than once I have considered upgrading to a Mac Pro. Then I saw a friend's new Dell Precision 690 with dual quad processors really scream - even running Vista.
Now Vista scares me a bit... I've been a true early adopter - stopping short of running beta versions, but always the first to load up the newest Microsoft OS. I was even running XP x64 before it was cool. Yet this time - with the release of Vista - I've held back. I have Vista running in a virtual machine, and frankly it scares me. With every Microsoft OS so far, I've been able to tweak it - to turn off the fluff and enable the geek-level features - so as to make it ultimately usable to a computer guru. However this time it doesn't seem quite possible to do so... Case in point: I generally run Explorer as a two-pane window, with minimum toolbars/buttons/status, so as to leave room for the real stuff to show inside. Files, folders... That's what I need Explorer for, not fancy icons, big fat buttons, "fuzzy logic" searches, status areas to tell me what kind of file I'm looking at that can't be hidden.
What's up with all the BS in Vista about "cancel or allow" and "My God, you just tried to do something important - put your admin password in here". If I set my browser settings to a MORE secure combination, it tells me every time I start it that "Your security settings put your computer at risk" and if I disable the subsystem that watches for important changes (because I actually know what I'm doing), it stops prompting but now it constantly reminds me that "the security system is disabled, click here to re-enable it". Did they intend to make it more irritating? If so, they succeeded.
Assuming I didn't "get old" between XP and Vista, this says Microsoft has taken Vista in a direction squarely AWAY from intelligent computer users.
And Apple isn't innocent of this either (reference my earlier comment about not being able to find the real menu where printer connection information was set).
I'm not ready to jump to Linux, but I really wonder whether computer-savvy people have a good choice any more in either Mac or PC...
P.S., People sometimes tout Bootcamp as the way to turn a Mac into a PC, but will there really be good support for Mac hardware in Windows? I doubt seriously that the drivers for all the Mac hardware will be as available/mature as those for true PCs (e.g., Dell). For example, will the video display run as well? Will it offer all the options? Will there be the ability to plug non-mainstream peripherals (say, a video capture device) into the system?
Someone tell me where I'm wrong here... I have no personal experience with Bootcamp.
I obviously haven't hooked up the world of devices to a Mac running BootCamp but I have hooked up some pretty exotic stuff like Spectrophotometer's that only ran under Windows software, other USB devices and the like, no issues at all. Its an Intel Chip, the OS you expect to use, what else (other than the myriad of stuff that doesn't work on your typical garage built, non specified PC hardware) would or would not work like any other PC? That's the joy of the Mac, its the OS and hardware all built under one roof/idea. Nothing will make a Mac with an Intel chip and Bootcamp any more or less able to work with all the various devices out there that run or fail on any other windows box!
__________________ Andrew Rodney
Author "Color Management for Photographers" http://www.digitaldog.net
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
I have 12 gigs of ram on my Mac Pro running Leopard and I know Photoshop CS3 is using ram above 3072 mb for filters and scratch data before writing to the hard drive.
OK, lets sum this up:
32 bit application, can't use more than 3 gigs of ram! Additional Ram on system CAN be used as scratch disk (I already said that and posted from both Bryan and Adobe Tech Notes to that effect) and maybe for some plug-in's (certainly not all). That's NOT the same as a 64-bit application that does access and use more than 3 gigs of ram.
__________________ Andrew Rodney
Author "Color Management for Photographers" http://www.digitaldog.net
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
Linear Mode
