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Mac vs. PC Digital Photography Comparison

Posted by michael on from the crunch-crunch-grind dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Rob Galbraith posted a comparison among two Macs and two PCs. Both a high-end Mac and PC are included with somewhat surprising results given the number of Mac zealots who will claim otherwise... optimized for PC, Mac support second, Photoshop is faster, yada, yada, yada."

10 of 513 comments (clear)

  1. "Surprising results"? by Toasty16 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Surprising? I think not. Every /. reader here knows that Apple has been dragging its ass in the sand in the processor race due to Motorola's lack of money/research/carbonated beverages, and this isn't going to change until IBM gets around to releasing the "G5" architecture, probably using multiple cores on chip. So this is all old hat until then, really.

    1. Re:"Surprising results"? by jsse · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Apple has been dragging its ass in the sand in the processor race due to Motorola's lack of money/research/carbonated beverages

      Too true. This is what Motorola got after the big layoffs, mobile business misinvestment and shutting down of research labs.

      Not only Apple, Palm also learnt their hard lesson and gradually move to non-Motorola processor like ARM as you find in Tungsten.

  2. So the PC's are faster by idiotnot · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There are countless articles on this subject. We know the PC's are faster. In some cases signficantly faster.

    But there are a variety of reasons for choosing a machine and platform, speed is not necessarily only the thing that comes into play.

    For example, I, for one, just how long the battery on that super 1337 Alienware notebook lasts. It's probably not anywhere close to the Powerbook.

    Oh well.

    But doesn't anyone else see that this is pointless? Use what you like to use......

    1. Re:So the PC's are faster by sweetooth · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Being that the Alienware laptop uses a desktop processor there is a good chance the batter life is not that great. I'd also like to see it compare to the powerbook in these test running on battery since the Intel will drastically reduce it's speed in many cases and the PowerBook should not.

      I would still not be surprised in the least if the Alien ware box won the tests simply because even though the G4 is a good processor, the speed increases have been very small compared to what Intel has done. Until Apple can get thier hands on new processors this isn't going to change and shouldn't surprise anyone any more.

    2. Re:So the PC's are faster by Toraz+Chryx · · Score: 5, Insightful

      the thing that worries me is that the processor in the Alienware laptop is a _DESKTOP_ part..

      the same desktop 3.06Ghz P4 that has a max energy dissipation of ~100w (typical dissipation is ~85w)

      I for one wouldn't want 100w of heat being poured directly into my lap >:(

    3. Re:So the PC's are faster by ciryon · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Totallly agree here. There have so many benchmarks comparing Mac vs PC during the last year and they all say "PC's are faster". Yes, we know that. The Motorola CPU's are just not as fast. But also, anyone who have used a Mac can also tell you that speed is not what really counts. The Mac OS X operating system and the software included is smart and allows you to work a lot faster.

      It doesn't matter if you have the fastest hardware in the world if you can't use it because of badly designed software.

      Ciryon

  3. I'd be more interested in... by ethank · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think this would be more interesting if the benchmark included a usabilty benchmark between teh two systems.

    Meaning, start to finish, how long it took to setup each computer to be a good digital photography workstation, including color matching, scanner setup, etc. Plus, an examination of workflow on each system. Plus an examination on how much the operating system acted as a hinderance to actually getting work done.

    Then I'd trust a benchmark. Processor speed and computational speed only extend so far. Windows vs. Mac is not a speed issue, but a usability and interface design issue. Regardless of speed, Mac OS X is more usable than Windows. It puts less obstacles to getting work done than Windows does.

    You can't examine "performance" without measuring the performer's productivity, as that has as much to do with how fast a given system is as the processor speed.

  4. Speed hasn't been the issue for some time by panurge · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I've assumed for years that Macs were slower than PCs. But for one business I'm involved with, everyone continues to use Macs. (and still on 9.2.2, sorry.) Why? Because they are completely non-technical. They find the Chooser so much easier to use than Windows networking, or having to navigate to the Windows printers via various alternative routes. They find the screen less cluttered and therefore easier to read. And all the boxes (iMacs) work exactly the same way. Admittedly all they run is Excel, Filemaker and MYOB, but that's what they need. (The fileserver, by the way, is Linux running netatalk, perfectly adequate and much cheaper than a Mac box dedicated to the same job.)
    The amount of support I have to give these people is minimal and is all application-related.

    The other area I encounter non-technical people is the PC world and, of course, the level of support required is much higher. Each successive edition of Windows is more cluttered as standard, and the learning curve is often a major irritation for busy professionals. Things often don't just work out of the box. Only last week I spent a frustrating hour just trying to get two W2k notebooks to communicate properly over ethernet, whereas I don't even have to think about adding Appletalk boxes. OK so I'm stupid, but how many other people are out there who are just as stupid as I am, and also need to work with computers?

    In short, I see no real change in the long term situation, which is:

    • Sure, Macs are slower than PCs.
    • The average small business or home user without lots of tech support finds Macs easier to use.
    • On the whole it's easier to network Macs than PCs
    • The technically competent user who does lots of things with computers gets more performance more cheaply out of PCs
    • The PC world dominates games
    • Powerbooks are in general better all round notebooks than Wintel notebooks, and don't actually cost any more
    • Macs integrate much better into a normal home environment - they are understated whereas PCs are either just plain ugly or overstated and inappropriate
    • For most people most of the time, anything over a 600MHz PIII is adequate
    • Even so, Apple badly needs either to sort out its desktop models or to concentrate heavily on notebooks and home appliances. As the mass of users gets used to more demanding applications, there is going to become a point where the lack of raw performance becomes a major issue for too many people.
    --
    Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
  5. OSX (Unix), ImageMagick, and shell scripts... by aquarian · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...beats the hell out of pointing and clicking around GUI apps for repetitive tasks like the file conversions used in this test. Try doing that on a PC...

  6. Re:I'm sure someone else will mention the Gimp... by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Not really.. as great as the GIMP is, it still has a ways to go before it can pry photoshop out of the cold dead hands of the people who use photoshop what it is intended for rather than just for general cropping and resizing.

    Indeed, a better comparison would be to Paint Shop Pro, which is in fact what I'd gues 90% of the Photoshop users actually should be using. I know so many people who just pirate Photoshop so they can feel "pro" and use "the best" that it's not even funny. Get over it!

    Not to mention the GIMP looks horrible on every OS

    Looks OK to me, running in GNOME on Linux (which is in fact its "native" OS) - note that screenshot is quite old now.

    Considering that the GIMP will run on basically anything, and Photoshop runs on Windows or Mac OS (unless you count Wine), I think the:

    I guess you get what you pay for though.

    line is extremely old. No, hard to believe though it is, there's this thing called charity and it means sometimes you get something great for absolutely nothing.