Most people using Photoshop professionally have a large amount of time invested in learning and mastering the program. These people aren't going to casually switch to another image editor because of price or a handful of cool features. There have been some very good commercial competitors to Photoshop over the years including the highly regarded LivePicture, but none of them has threatened Photoshop's dominance. Adobe now markets heavily to the consumer end of this market with Photoshop Elements which still contains most of the Photoshop features a casual user might need and this ultimately reinforces Photoshop's market-leading position.
What I like about XP is I know how it works, and on what hardware. I can buy an old PC and know it will be slow - but it will work - and with everything plugged in. After experimenting with OS X i've found that there is a bunch of stuff you have to play the upgrade game on and you have to be smart about which "old" hardware is supported.
Serial printers and scsi devices are the only things I know of that fit into this category for OS X (on supported machines i.e. G3 or better). A scsi device won't work on that old PC if you don't have a card for it.
I'm also burnt out on... the costly updates and dodgy performance unless your willing to fork out big $$$
Not sure what you're referring to on the costly updates. OS X - 10.3 is $129 at the Apple store. If you're referring to upgrading old software to be OS X native, you don't have to if you really don't want to. Virtually all older classic applications will run fine in Classic mode.
As to dodgy performance without topline hardware, I'm using a 450MHz blue & white G3 at home (that's mid-1999 hardware) and have no "dodgy performance issues." Similar hardware can be found today for $200 - $300.
Your first sentence probably says more about why you like XP than any comparison between the two platforms.
The overall responsiveness of the system was decent, but go back to using a top-of-the-line PC in Windows for a few minutes, and you definitely feel a bit sluggish on the G5.
It's OS X's quartz rendering. There's going to be a performance hit for all that eye candy no matter what kind of hardware it's running on. If you ran it on x86 hardware it wouldn't be as snappy as Windows. But Windows feels awful clunky after using OS X.
pov models and renders objects based on the mathematical description of the surface. maya/max on the other hand models objects based on triangulating the surface.
This allows you to do things with POVRay that are very prohibitive memory-wise in commercial apps because you don't have all those triangles taking up memory. In my experience, CGI works much better and much more efficiently in POVRay than any commercial modeler I've used (granted, I have no experience with the real high-end programs like Maya).
I get a warm feeling inside knowing the Bush administration is busy protecting our freedom from the likes of Al Qaida and the ACLU. Freedom of speech is highly overrated. Just ask Kim Jong Il or Fidel Castro or Saddam or even those brave and forward thinking U.S. legislators who passed the DMCA.
10.2 or 10.3 with XPostFaco requires a G3 or G4 processor so the old machines must have an upgrade card in addition to a software fix. There are people using thoses old machines for real work in OS X though.
Here's where you can offset the upfront cost of getting a Mac! There is tons of freeware available for OS X. As well as projects like Gnu-Darwin and Fink which are porting Unix programs to X.
You're right that scientists are going to be as prone to political bias as anyone, whether knowingly or not. The reason I would tend to trust their judgement on this issue, however, is the fact that this administration has demonstrated itself to be extremely ideological and to let that ideology dictate their actions and policies to the virtual exclusion of any moderating facts or influences. As an example, you could argue that the reason this administration read the pre-Iraq war intelligence so badly was due to their ideology tainting their ability to examine the data objectively.
While you don't need color profiles to do cmyk, there's alot more to cmyk than one simple look-up table. You should have options as to what kind of black generation you need, probably a GCR scheme, a UCR option as well as options on how to handle out-of-gamut color. Additionally, you should have dot-gain choice for all 4 colors with, ideally, your monitor displaying your image with the appropriate dot-gain. This is the reason that generally, only high-end commercial programs do cmyk.
I find it interesting that even as so many governments are making moves away from Microsoft, the US Department of Homeland Security designated Microsoft as its preferred supplier of desktops and servers.
When the original iPods came out, people complained that the price was too high and no one would buy one. The iPod's success shows there are a lot of people with more disposable income than the critics thought. Still, $300 - $400 is more money than many people could afford/justify for an mp3 player. A $100 price point would make it much more attractive to middle-income people. I think I can probably rationalize the purchase of a $100 mp3 player to myself;-) (especially an iPod).
Being antiwar doesn't equate with being liberal. There are plenty of conservatives and libertarians that don't agree with the Bush administration's foreign "policy".
While a lot of slashdot readers probably don't use IE as a main browser, your average Joe Blow isn't going to download and install an alternative. He probably doesn't even know what a web browser is. IE is his "internet". Take a look at Google's latest zeitgeist and you can see that IE 6 is way ahead of other browsers for Google hits.
Actually, it's almost a no-brainer to use 2 monitors if you work with applications that have a lot of frequently accessed palettes ala Photoshop. Palettes on secondary monitor, working document on main monitor. The amount of time you save not having to move things around constantly to see what you're working on is significant. I've been using two monitors for years and swear by it.
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Most people using Photoshop professionally have a large amount of time invested in learning and mastering the program. These people aren't going to casually switch to another image editor because of price or a handful of cool features. There have been some very good commercial competitors to Photoshop over the years including the highly regarded LivePicture, but none of them has threatened Photoshop's dominance. Adobe now markets heavily to the consumer end of this market with Photoshop Elements which still contains most of the Photoshop features a casual user might need and this ultimately reinforces Photoshop's market-leading position.
Serial printers and scsi devices are the only things I know of that fit into this category for OS X (on supported machines i.e. G3 or better). A scsi device won't work on that old PC if you don't have a card for it.
I'm also burnt out on... the costly updates and dodgy performance unless your willing to fork out big $$$
Not sure what you're referring to on the costly updates. OS X - 10.3 is $129 at the Apple store. If you're referring to upgrading old software to be OS X native, you don't have to if you really don't want to. Virtually all older classic applications will run fine in Classic mode.
As to dodgy performance without topline hardware, I'm using a 450MHz blue & white G3 at home (that's mid-1999 hardware) and have no "dodgy performance issues." Similar hardware can be found today for $200 - $300.
Your first sentence probably says more about why you like XP than any comparison between the two platforms.
The overall responsiveness of the system was decent, but go back to using a top-of-the-line PC in Windows for a few minutes, and you definitely feel a bit sluggish on the G5.
It's OS X's quartz rendering. There's going to be a performance hit for all that eye candy no matter what kind of hardware it's running on. If you ran it on x86 hardware it wouldn't be as snappy as Windows. But Windows feels awful clunky after using OS X.
pov models and renders objects based on the mathematical description of the surface. maya/max on the other hand models objects based on triangulating the surface.
This allows you to do things with POVRay that are very prohibitive memory-wise in commercial apps because you don't have all those triangles taking up memory. In my experience, CGI works much better and much more efficiently in POVRay than any commercial modeler I've used (granted, I have no experience with the real high-end programs like Maya).
I get a warm feeling inside knowing the Bush administration is busy protecting our freedom from the likes of Al Qaida and the ACLU. Freedom of speech is highly overrated. Just ask Kim Jong Il or Fidel Castro or Saddam or even those brave and forward thinking U.S. legislators who passed the DMCA.
This topic is tailor-made to elicit only "Funny" replies!
Timothy is killing websites right and left today!
Long thread on this at Macintouch here back in 2000.
10.2 or 10.3 with XPostFaco requires a G3 or G4 processor so the old machines must have an upgrade card in addition to a software fix. There are people using thoses old machines for real work in OS X though.
System Requirements:
* Windows (98, NT, 2000, XP) - Pentium-compatible PC, 64 MB RAM, 130 MB HD; or
* Linux (x86, PowerPC) - 64 MB RAM and 170 MB HD
* Solaris (x66, SPARC) - 64 MB RAM and 240 MB HD; or
* MacOSX (beta); or
* FreeBSD
And this:
Pricing:
* No cost to download. http://www.openoffice.org
I didn't see where they mentioned MS Office's system requirements or $$cost. ;-)
Here's where you can offset the upfront cost of getting a Mac! There is tons of freeware available for OS X. As well as projects like Gnu-Darwin and Fink which are porting Unix programs to X.
You're right that scientists are going to be as prone to political bias as anyone, whether knowingly or not. The reason I would tend to trust their judgement on this issue, however, is the fact that this administration has demonstrated itself to be extremely ideological and to let that ideology dictate their actions and policies to the virtual exclusion of any moderating facts or influences. As an example, you could argue that the reason this administration read the pre-Iraq war intelligence so badly was due to their ideology tainting their ability to examine the data objectively.
Have you been reading Darl McBride's screeds?
While you don't need color profiles to do cmyk, there's alot more to cmyk than one simple look-up table. You should have options as to what kind of black generation you need, probably a GCR scheme, a UCR option as well as options on how to handle out-of-gamut color. Additionally, you should have dot-gain choice for all 4 colors with, ideally, your monitor displaying your image with the appropriate dot-gain. This is the reason that generally, only high-end commercial programs do cmyk.
I find it interesting that even as so many governments are making moves away from Microsoft, the US Department of Homeland Security designated Microsoft as its preferred supplier of desktops and servers.
Dammit, I just submitted this story!
When the original iPods came out, people complained that the price was too high and no one would buy one. The iPod's success shows there are a lot of people with more disposable income than the critics thought. Still, $300 - $400 is more money than many people could afford/justify for an mp3 player. A $100 price point would make it much more attractive to middle-income people. I think I can probably rationalize the purchase of a $100 mp3 player to myself ;-) (especially an iPod).
To all the skeptics, this is further proof that the courts made the right decision in allowing Microsoft to continue to innovate!!
Being antiwar doesn't equate with being liberal. There are plenty of conservatives and libertarians that don't agree with the Bush administration's foreign "policy".
While a lot of slashdot readers probably don't use IE as a main browser, your average Joe Blow isn't going to download and install an alternative. He probably doesn't even know what a web browser is. IE is his "internet". Take a look at Google's latest zeitgeist and you can see that IE 6 is way ahead of other browsers for Google hits.
Actually, it's almost a no-brainer to use 2 monitors if you work with applications that have a lot of frequently accessed palettes ala Photoshop. Palettes on secondary monitor, working document on main monitor. The amount of time you save not having to move things around constantly to see what you're working on is significant. I've been using two monitors for years and swear by it.
I have a 450MHz Blue&White and I'm really happy with the way Jag runs on it!