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US University Dumps Windows to go All Mac
MacKeyser passed us a link to a MacWorld article about a University doing things a little differently. Instead of sticking with their inefficient mix of Apple and PC systems, the college is doing a 'total technology refresh', and adopting an all-Mac policy on the campus. Previously, a class at Wilkes University would be outfitted with something like 20 Macs and 20 PCs, to allow for individual preferences in software and OS use. With Boot Camp students at the Pennsylvania liberal arts college will be able to switch between Windows and OSX, choosing which applications and OS to use at any given time. "[Scott Byers, vice president for finance and the head of campus IT said] 'We think it will save $150,000 directly, in buying fewer units - even though the Macs cost more per unit than PCs.' The school, which enrolls about 4,000 undergraduate and graduate students, will reduce its inventory from nearly 1,700 computers to around 1,450 after the change over. Other costs savings, however, will be harder to measure. 'By standardizing, the IT department should be more productive,' Byers said."
They're an arts college, so this should be a perfect demonstration of Apple's OS dominance in the field of digital arts.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Wake me up when a major US university does the switch...
> By standardizing, the IT department should be more productive
Translation : Having much less computers to fix, they'll be able to spend more time posting on Slashdot about how great Apple products are.
If they migrate to Mac OSX, does that make it less likely that at some point in the future they would switch to Linux? If people are having a hard time convincing people to move from Windows to Linux, isn't the job going to be harder getting them to move from Mac to Linux? It isn't really Windows that is the challenge to Linux, it is Mac OSX. Is it really a great thing for Free/Open Source software that people that many who are migrating from Windows are choosing Mac OSX?
... diversity good.
Even it it's a 'non-evil' monoculture.
Dumps Windows because the new Macs can all run Windows?
That title is very misleading, it is only the hardware that is switching to mac, no the OS. It says they plan to use boot camp to dual boot OSX and windows. Hardly what you'd call a mac campus. They're just making it so that hardware wise they only have to buy macs rather than macs and pcs.
The university is not dumping windows at all.
They're dumping generic PCs in favour of mac PCs. They'll still purchase windows licenses & allow dual booting.
It's a hardware story, not a software story.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
fta:
"Although the $1.4 million three-year switch - which started last year with the purchase of approximately 500 Macs"
$965 per apple? including the installation, planning etc? Over three years, in which time period the current macs would be outdated and require hardware upgrades in order to use the mac OS that will be in circulation by then?
Methinks their budget may fall a tad short..
Would "US University Dumps Macs to go All Windows" make Slashdot news?
When you go Mac, you don't go back.
"over specialize and you breed in weakness"
they say it is often more relevant then the comment above, all we know is its called the Sig!
but it would have been better if they shoved the old PCs up Ballmer's butt. Then his ass would be like all beep beep beep and stuff.
It has actually happened. On August 12, 2005, user "get_me_high"*(25102) in fact took a shit in a cardboard box and wrote "Linux" on it. He was modded +5 Interesting.
The amazing thing was that the cardboard box actually ran Linux, although there was some trouble getting a wireless connection. It still runs today.
You are welcome on my lawn.
One is that they may have determined they have enough Macs anyhow that it would benefit going for a sole source situation. There's something to be said for having one point of contact for all ordering, support, billing and so on. The university I work at sole sources various things. Thus if you feel that enough of the computers you order anyhow are Macs, you simply make them all Macs.
The other, and the one that is more likely, is that there's one or more Mac zealots in the position to make these decisions and they pushed it and people bought in to their justification. Unfortunately, this kind of thing does happen. People push their personal preferences on others and often try to cage it as being "easier" or "saving money" when in fact that's not the case, it is just what they want.
I say this is more likely since while Macs can run Windows, they are hardly an ideal solution. Boot camp is a beta and isn't supported as well as a PC natively made to run Windows. It would seem to make more sense to sole source another vendor for Windows PCs. That's what we do where I work. Gateway is our sole source (barring justification) for Windows PCs. However if I want a Solaris machine, I am free to buy Sun. Sure, you can theoretically get Solaris x86 running on a Gateway, but it is a much better idea to get it from Sun. Same for supported Linux solutions (don't get me started on Fedora problems on the Gateway blades).
To me it sounds like a Maccie wanting to push their platform. The hope is that everyone will use MacOS, I'm sure, but they said "Oh well this is easier since they run Windows too!" It isn't a seriously good idea because, as Apple notes:
"Warning: Boot Camp Beta is preview software licensed for use on a trial basis for a limited time. Do not use Boot Camp Beta in a commercial operating environment or with important data."
At my university, we have half Windows and half Linux. And in one lab, we have 1 Mac. I have never saw anybody to use it more than 10 minutes.
I've said it before, I've said it again; I bought my first Mac(book) recently, and the thing that pushed me over the edge to do so was the fact I knew I could fall back to Windows when I needed to, or completely stay in Windows if the OS X experience wasn't a good one. But like most people who try it, that "security blanket" of Boot Camp is more of an insurance policy, or peace of mind (or gaming option), rather than something they end up using in real life. I have my MS Office and OpenOffice, Opera/Firefox/Safari, and even IE under Crossover Office or Parallels. (I tend to use Parallels for IE testing purposes of my websites).
:)
The only reason I reboot to windows now, is for the odd game; and even that's rare with me. Windows seems so much peppier, too, when I do go to it; since I only go there occasionally, the system doesn't get bogged down with addons, startup items, spyware, etc.. (The old reinstall-windows-every-six-months can be extended greatly, if you only use Windows occasionally.)
I think for a multimedia course that needs to teach students both Mac and PC skills, it makes all the more sense; both OS's on one machine: of course it's an overall savings, and somewhat of a no-brainer.
Yes, Mac hardware is single-vendor (unless you do the hackbook thing, not viable for a commercial enterprise); but in my experience, it's well designed, solid, stable, fast hardware. My only lament is that I'm a big fan of sub-nootbooks, like Librettos, and Apple has no such option currently. But I can live without that, for all the other benefits that OS X brings.
Yes, I'm a recent fan, and I am a boy, so fling away with your "fanboy" insults. Meanwhile, I'm productive and enjoying the experience immensely
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
often longer. every fw imac, cube, power mac and ibook we ever owned is running tiger and doing better than previous OS versons - every non-fw g3+ is running 10.3.9 and doing very well.
installation? ard.
planning? has to be done anyway.
etc? macs have less etc.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
However that is still a bad idea. I am not going to commit to something as a solution before I've tested it. If I was going to use bootcamp for something I'd need to see it in its final form before I'd recommend it, if I was trying to give an objective analysis. Also there's the issue of release times. Sure, Apple says it'll be final with Leopard and they say it'll be out spring of this year. Fine, but what happens if that's not the case? There's no reason to believe it won't be, but that happens. Companies miss release dates all the time, or release with less features than expected.
All in all the just speaks of a biased decision not made on good facts. Unfortunately I see it all too often at universities. They are very political entities and as such, don't operate as logically as we might hope.
*** We think it will save $150,000 directly, in buying fewer units - even though the Macs cost more per unit than PCs ***
Is this guy a retard? If you need 40 computers in a classroom, you need 40 computers. Doesn't matter if they are Windows, Linux, Mac, whatever. So, if you are replacing units, you actually spend more, since you're paying more per machine. Plus the XP license that you have to have to run Boot Camp on each machine...
So, like, they are actually paying quite a bit more than they currently do, in Apple-crappy-hardware alone, plus the license for XP...
I personally don't give a rat's ass if they switch to all Macs, but to say they are saving money like that is insane.
That's really what it comes down to. I've heard lots of creative justifications, but they are BS when you get down to it. It is just legacy. Back in the day, Mac was it for graphics work. Windows couldn't do it and didn't have the apps in any case. So it was Mac or nothing. Likewise with things like digital audio. When it first started, it was ProTools or nothing, computers weren't powerful enough to do it on their own.
Well, many people don't like change, thus they stick with Macs because that's what they've always used. The other justifications usually come from the fact that they either just tend to listen to the marketing hype, or because they feel a need to try and justify the more expensive purchase.
Even in the summary, it states they are intending to use Bootcamp: "With Boot Camp students at the Pennsylvania liberal arts college will be able to switch between Windows and OSX, choosing which applications and OS to use at any given time."
So they arent dumping windows, they are just going to a more manageable single-source hardware vendor, whch just happens to be Apple.
Sure, its a good thing as more students will get a taste of OSX, but please be a bit more accurate here of what is going on. Geesh.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I meant to say not dumping *windows*.. Geesh. sorry people.
Would be nice if you could go back and edit your posts for when you make stupid mistakes you dont catch until after you hit submit.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
So somebody with a pet love of Apple computers got into a policy setting and purchasing position, indulging in bias and personal preference then masquerade as a conclusion formed with proper technical and strategic analysis of requirements. The students will have to get by by doing their real work on their own pc's.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
I began my undergraduate days in 1986 and the entire university was a mix of Macs and UNIX workstations. I do recall a few stray IBM (and yes they were IBM) machines in the computer center, but those were more of an oddity than anything else.
My first response to sitting down in front of an MS environment was, "What the hell is this and why would someone use something so clumsy?"
Hopefully we're heading back to those days, albeit slowly.
Really people, how does using a Mac makes you more 'artistic'?
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
They do have technical programs such as Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science, etc.
See more here
http://wilkes.edu/pages/143.asp
"If you need 40 computers in a classroom, you need 40 computers. "
What he probably means is that if you have 30 student in a room, and you know a certain percentage will use Macs, and a certain percentage will use PC's, you need to have more than 30 computers total to satisfy the total student population.
Or to put it another way, you can probably break the students down into 3 groups:
Group 1 only knows how to use Macs
Group 2 only knows how to use PCs
Group 3 can use either.
Since the percentage of each group will be random in any one group, you have to put more total computers in the room to satisfy every student, unless you can have computers that can boot to either Windows or Mac, then you can more closely match the total computers to the total number of students.
They probably got significant discounts from Apple as well to go to an all-Apple solution.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Beloit in Wisconsin has been doing the same thing since at least 1995.
OK, I just purchased a Toshiba laptop, yes, it only has 0.5Gig RAM and is not equipped with the fastest processor, but it came pre-installed with Vista Home Basic. Comments: The machine itself is light and relatively well made. And for the price, does a lot. DVD Burner, WiFi, PC Card slot etc. Only design negative is no caps lock light. Now for Vista. I am a Mac user, but have used XP.
a) It takes forever to wake up or start up.
b) The graphical user interface (GUI) is appallingly sluggish.
c) The GUI breaks countless human factors rules, such as security dialogs that contain text in a box that looks like a hotspot when it isn't, and hotspots that one doesn't know are hotspots. It gets worse.
d) Said secrurity dialogs and upgrade reminders keep popping up all the time making it impossible to get anything done - and we only just purchased the machine!
e) It often slows down to a crawl and the windows don't redraw properly
f) The screen darkens for no reason or when an error is displayed, but you cannot see the error right away.
g) Adjusting the screen brightness and other Function key options is a nightmare. You have to hold down [Fn] and wait a few seconds for a (visually attractive) icon bar to appear at the top of the screen, and then, fiddle with the keys to make adjustments. (On the Mac, you just press a key!)
h) The whole Vista experience is confusing and way way behind OSX from all angles - and not a touch on XP. XP was/is actually pleasing to use, in particular the file manager which is IMHO better than Apple's appalling effort.
Not wanting to bash Toshiba as it's not their fault, but I think we're going to return this machine and for the extra £200 get a refurb Macbook or even an iBook that will run about 4 times faster and offer a pleasing trouble free experience! (Yes, a machine that is 1 or 2 years older than a Vista machine at not much more money. I guess if you choose Apple, you're sort of travelling through time to a better future! Those using MS stuff are living in the past. Hmm, interesting.
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
When I was at the University of Maryland, they used Macs in their computer labs.
In fact, I was amazed because I had never used a Mac before and didn't have my own computer. So when I had to use the computer lab to type up my research papers, and found a room full of these cool little computers I had to ask instructions on how to use them.
In fact, if you take a look at the Maryland school system, they use Macs solely.
I'm sure the reason boils down to the promotional programs Apple has with the school system ('Apples for Schools'), but in the end it was the right choice -- so yay!
I am open source, and Linux baby!
Shouldn't it be "University standardizes on Apple hardware to run OS X and Windows?" That's what they did here. So that way, when it takes an extra few months for a package like SPSS to run (or be certified) on a new version of OS X, your academic program can still use the software under Windows.
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The sticker for real art studios is color correction. Windows is a mess in this regard. Apple's OS is two degrees better than a mess.
Now they may have a pretty sweet deal with microsoft or other software vendors but licensing for 1400 mac osx licences and 1400 xp licences and their respective softwares in no way will cost less than the additional 300 machines. In essence with boot camp your paying for double the machines you actually have. And in addition to that patching will become a real pain as that I am aware of there is no way to force bootcamp to boot to one OS or the other remotely. Seems to me this will end up costion them alot more not less.
Until you get shipped something like 400 Dell boxes (all GX280's) and about 50 of them pop a capacitors within two weeks. And most of those fancy new boxes (compared to what they were running at the time) went to higher-ups who all wanted a new PC and it to be fixed yesterday.
That was not a fun two weeks.
The educational institute where I work, has about 800 computers, about half of them macs (serverside same %-age). They require about 10% of the maintenance the pc's require. Their users are happier/lessgrumpy. Somethings things_just_work! Portable OS, the dream of a lot of sysadmins! (also the nightmare, securitywise). Netboot! NetRestore! Any teacher that can hold down an n-key can restore a machine, no need to rename or domainplace it, second partition will be untouched, so data preserved.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
Both of my parents went to Wilkes (long time ago- my mom met my dad in a slide rule class!), and they are impressed that Wilkes is going forward (for right or wrong). I think my mom was surprised that Wilkes even had computers. Like I said, long time ago! :)
As to good or bad- let it shake out and see what happens. I'm tired of all the fanboy/advocacy about what's better, cheaper, etc. Let's give some real world craziness a shot.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
So they replace an OS lock-in with an OS AND hardware lock-in. Brilliant move in the direction of freedom.
Only with one set of hardware now. Yes, one set of hardware makes it slightly easier on IT staff, but they're still mixed OSes, and now the IT staff has to maintain two OSes on EACH box.
Hrm, will a Mac NetBoot a Windows disk image?
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
AutoCAD.
Or is that two words? Anyhow for a lot of engineer/architect/designer folks, Linux would be their first choice too if only it would run AutoCAD.
"The Mac offers nothing special or unique in the field of digital arts today."
/has/ crashed on the Mac, does not crash as often.
I disagree. I currently work as a video editor in a building that adopted Windows based Avid Media Composers for one department, and Mac based Avid MC's for another department. I jumped from the former to the latter almost a year ago, and let me tell you, by comparison, that the unique aspect of the Mac machines is that they don't crash every second day. Even Avid, which
You get what you pay for, and on a personal note, I also switched over to Mac at home for a similar reason. It's much more pleasant to use, and I have experienced far fewer problems with it than I did my old Windows machine.
Omitted to mention that my main issue here is why on earth are Microsoft and the hardware manufacturers even bothering to ship machines that are incapable of running Vista at a speed that makes it usable? I have never purchased a Mac that didn't run it's (authorised) software at a usable speed, except for some clunkers in the 1990s.
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
This includes the following categories os users:
Now I have seen a blog or two of people who disliked the OSX experience. And a couple of vocal anti-mac types and purists in places like slashdot. I doubt they're in any way representative of the norm. There are very good reasons to use a pc over a mac. There are fewer reasons to use a *nix/bsd over a mac except in the "server on a shoestring" market. It just so happens that unless your a gamer or need a specific, niche software that isn't available on mac...almost all of the reasons above have nothing to do with the end user.
Linux is UNIX.
OS X is UNIX.
It's the same damn operating system. Runs the same software.
I swear, if Linux was in the majority we'd be seeing the same posts except they'd be going on about how the real challenge to their version of Linux was Red Hat and Suse.
I use FreeBSD and Mac, and I'm still glad to see Linux in use, because it doesn't matter WHICH version of UNIX someone's using... Solaris, AIX, Linux, FreeBSD, OSX, even HPUX, it's still an open system, still part of the software ecosystem that can't be controlled by one company... not Microsoft, not Apple, not Novell, not Sun...
So, let's get this straight.
The university is forced to buy (more expensive) Mac hardware, because Apple is preventing their OS from running on regular PC's, and somehow this is being reported as Apple/Mac saving the university money. If Apple could back off a little on their whole control/lock-in thing then the university could really save money by buying commodity hardware. (Can someone tell me what the average margin is on a Mac?)
If MS did what Apple is doing people would go nuts.
Ideally, they would be able to buy any PC that they wanted and then triple boot it with Windows, Mac, and Linux.
1. Every object in the system is a file in the same filesystem namespace.
2. Every object in the system can be interacted with via the same small set of system calls.
3. All communication is through ports that look like open files.
4. Every program runs in its own address space, communicating with other programs through already opened files.
Thirty years ago this was a revolution. Most operating systems have adopted some of these principles to some extent, but there are too many exceptions outside UNIX sytsems for you to be able to really take advantage of them. For example, in Windows, you can't create network services by running scripts under a network superserver because open network sockets cant be accessed through read() or write().
You can use OS X through the Aqua shell only, and pretend the UNIX part isn't there, but the same is true of a Linux system wrapped up in a KDE or Gnome shell. In both cases you're missing a lot of the possibilities inherent in the system, and in both cases you're not learning anything about UNIX.
And that's a genuine problem. There's a lot of Linux users I know who have no idea what UNIX is. They think a system without X-Windows and Perl and their choice of KDE or Gnome *isn't UNIX*. I'm not talking about new users here, or even run-of-the-mill developers, I'm talking about core developers in major free software projects.
I'd love to put a few of them down in front of a PDP-11 running Version 7 and wait for their heads to explode.
VISTA : the legacy of NT
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'By standardizing, the IT department should be more productive'
If they still support XP and windows apps via bootcamp, I don't think they've standardized much. Same hardware and same warranty but the complexity of the desktop environment probably increased slightly.
Not only that, but physically deploying an iMac is a breeze. Everything comes in one box, you've got a computer that's easy to handle and takes 3 chords: Ether, keyboard and power. Stick a FW powered drive into it, and you've got a configured Mac in 20 minutes, which includes unpacking it. With Parallels installed, you've now just deployed 2 computers in half the time it takes to install one Dell. And like others said, this machine will outlast the 3 years easily by another 3 years.
I myself am running a 1.4G G4 and see no need to upgrade.
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
Why oh why do I never have those mod points when I need them?...
This is the first time I've seen the buzzword "standardization" used to defeat a set
of windows machines instead of the other way around.
Non sequitur: Your facts are uncoordinated.
I'm sure their project will work as successfully as Munich's attempts to ditch MS. Because, as we know, both Government and Universities have TOP NOTCH IT staff... bwahahahaha!!!
I'm sure the consulting companies proposing this are exploding in their pants, thinking about all the billable hours this train wreck is going to create for them.
Windows = operating system tailored to the needs of businesses and IT
everything else = operating systems tailored to the needs of... umm.... errr... it's not Microsoft, so it's got to be bettar!!!!
These Macs will run Windows! HAHAHA
'By standardizing, the IT department should be more productive,' Yes since there about 100 IT people that support the MAC and 100,000,000 That support a PC that will 'save them a bunch. And since much of /. hates M$ it's not surprising this article is really only being noted here!
takes 3 chords: Ether, keyboard and power. Stick a FW powered drive into it,
So this FW powered drive is cordless, or does it have some sort of a 'docking connector' so it just nestles up against the Mac to plug it in?
Or are there now four 'chords' (spelling incorrect)?
The fifth cord is for the scanner, right? And if I want a web-cam, in comes the sixth. I won't even get into the dude who comes up to me carrying essential data on a floppy disk...
Starting to sound like an octopus, not a desktop computer.
Macs are better for media manipulation and transformation; in addition to the better memory management, stability, security, SMP, builtin PDF writer, simplified troubleshooting, etc., they have the FreeBSD command line and with Fink, hundreds of existing *nix programs.
Graphics and multimedia workers can be far more productive scripting imagemagick, mencoder, transcode, etc., on a Mac than on a PC. Windows still doesn't offer drag and drop filepaths into CLI boxes, an incredibly useful feature offered on Mac for 5 years already.
The worst I can think of in such a situation is you'd get calluses from cutting open so many new boxes from Dell.
Or doesn't you organization do a good job of ghosting out new OS images easily?
Why is the head of IT also the CFO? Saving a few grand on hardware doesn't seem worth it if you're going to cripple graduating students' chances of a job. The money would be better spent teaching students how to deal with the assorted stupidities of IT that we all have to face eventually.
a PC needs the scanner, web cam, and floppy as well (floppy drives are now optional on major PCs)
the mac runs out of the box on three wires. two if you have wireless.
the FW drive is just for custom / common setup, and as I mentioned ARD takes care of that over the network.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
What if they need to right-click?!?
Idiot.
I'm in their master program for school admin. I can report that their technology in education courses stress interoperativity and are not OS specific. Students are encouraged to submit projects in open formats which promote open standards. I don't have a handle on their engineering or math departments but there are numerous penguins posted conspicuously on some professors' doors. re-v
No, actually he's a senior employee. He needed the data off that floppy NOW for a presentation. It was your job to make sure there was the infrastructure in place to meet any eventuality.
You're fired.
No one knows where this college is without looking it up. When a major college does this, make news out of it. I'm relatively sure Berklee College has been a mac campus for years, but then again it's an arts college (mostly music) so it's logical. And at least Berklee is in Boston, not Wilkes-Barre PA... which is a lovely area if you like boredom. And yes, I've been there. ::yawn::
MEF
On such a large volume purchase of Macs, does Apple give them a University Discount?
I always enjoyed the significant student discount Apple gives to University students and school age students.
Unfortunately, even OS X is a proprietary operating system, and can never hope to succeed against the unlimited evolutionary power that is Linux.
Unbuntu, SUSE, and Red Hat are rapidly replacing Windows throughout the world.
The only way Apple OS X will survive is to become GNU Open Source - otherwise Apple's famous software is bound to die a slow painful death like Windows Vista.
No, actually he's a senior employee. He needed the data off that floppy NOW for a presentation. It was your job to make sure there was the infrastructure in place to meet any eventuality.
Any eventuality? That's a loaded statement, son. What happens when said senior employee comes in with data stored on a cassette tape? A punch card?
If anyone—managmement included—came up to me with a floppy disk whining that they need to access data on it, I would have no problem telling them "tough shit."
Clear out your desk. You're fired.
This doesn't really mean much anyway since academic organizations are the largest contiguous bodies of people to use Macs.
Take this one out of the "shiny white stuff for miles" category and put it in the (rolling eyes) "making a mountain out of a molehill... again"
Yes, sir. Good luck with that floppy thing.
NT: [8] - The Hourglass has been much improved in Windows Vista!
Vista: [...please wait...]
Boy, I'm glad they spent all that time and money for such a revolutionary improvement!
Tried Vista hands on in Best Buy - slow, kept telling me to [...please wait...] and it was running on a brand new Core 2 Duo machine. Zzzzz.
I worked at a student assistant at a computer lab at my university. The lab I worked in was a little-known science-library lab that was full of NCD X-terms and Macs, I worked there through my four years of college and we usually had between 5 and 7 macs and about 15 of the X terms. There were many other labs on campus, few of which had apples. There were two other mac labs but you had to be in the art or architecture program to use them. Every single one of the macs at the lab I worked at was almost always occupied, and not just by art/design students. There were lots of scientists, and math people using them as well as journalism majors and lots of other students who just needed to write a paper. They were quite popular.
-JoeBoy
Is this a fact or an assumption?
.eps and .psd docs in illustrator and EPS, observe their appearance within my layout in the inDesign program, make changes to my layout in indesign, and re-adjust in photoshop and illustrator until I have it right. I am working on one document, using three different programs and it is much easier to do this with an os that it designed to show you many documents at once.
... as with photoshop on windows. Any print designer will tell you what a horrific pain in the ass this is when you are working with multiple documents in photoshop that are going to be embedded in an indesign or illustrator document. This is, and has always been one of the reasons that (graphic) designers and art directors prefer Mac OS X (and Mac OS) over windows.
Are you an art director?
A graphic designer?
A typeography expert?
I really doubt it.
The claim that the mac offers nothing special or unique in the field of digital arts today is very simply not true. I am a programmer now, but I was an art director for many years and I still work with art directors and designers every day. I can assure you that there are excellent reasons for the preference of Mac OS X in this field. Not the least of these is the fact that the Mac OS UI and windowing system is better designed for interoperability between different programs that must be used to cooperatively edit/create a single document. Mac OS X assumes that you want to see more than one thing at once, and work cooperatively between several documents concurrently to complete a single task. It is designed around showing you multiple documents simultaneously, in different applications. Windows is designed around the assumption that you will want to limit your concentration to one program at a time, and one document at a time (minimize/maximize), and although you can work with several documents at once in different applications, windows is not designed for that work style and makes it somewhat of a pain. here is an example.
Suppose I am working on some marketing collateral, I am going to be using inDesign (or Quark, if I live in the dark ages) for my paste up program. Lets say there is some EPS artwork in my indesign document, that must be edited with Illustrator, and lets say that this EPS artwork also uses some bitmaps that must be edited in Photoshop. Suppose that the collateral piece also contains a few bitmaps that have not been embedded in other EPS artwork. I will need to use inDesign to edit the layout, illustrator to edit the EPSs and photoshop to edit bitmaps in the EPSs as well as the bitmaps directly in the indesign document. I will change my
Mac OS X puts a priority on document access, even though documents are being edited in a parent application, this is not the case in windows.
The point is: design work forces you to use multiple applications to work on one document, and the Mac OS windowing system is far superior for this type of work situation than windows. Why? Because windows has always been designed to show one document at a time time. You can run your programs in small windows that are next to each other but if you have more than one document open in a program, those documents are often restricted to occupying only the space of a parent "program" window
Some service bureaus use windows machines to cut costs on running certain operations, but the designers and art directors that I work with, all prefer macs with very few exceptions. A very few *web* designers prefer windows because they want to work in the same environment that most people surf in, and because (some) web designers (often) just use photoshop to comp up sites (which makes the windowing thing less of an issue).
Another reason that macs have always been the leader in the creative industries is it's superior type handling: windows type rendering flat out sucks. Windows has improved its colour handling, but it is still far inferior to what the mac come
-JoeBoy
...that Wilkes University doesn't have a school of engineering.
Anyone except NASA in 2000.
http://hpc.sourceforge.net/NASA_G4_Study.pdf
Or the High Performance Computing gang..
http://hpc.sourceforge.net/index2.php
[UID-HeinzIntel]