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is mac computers close to becoming a total pieice of american history in the smithsonian .

Because of the proprietary nature of Macs, they are still popular as dedicated commercial & broadcast grade video editing stations. You can't mix and match OEM vendors when working with broadcast quality.

The video production company I used to work at used Macs for video editing, but they were Macs that were married to custom hardware.

Macs still have their nitch, and there will always be those who just prefer the Mac GUI, but it's getting more and more impractical to own one as a casual user unless you live in a big city, otherwise finding a repair tech is very difficult.

Where I live there is no one that does Mac repairs. You have to drive 45 miles to Orlando to find one.

...still popular among computer appliance users and schools. Although most of the programs it uses are ported from pc software. So who know's how long it will go on..but it looks more like an Amiga story as time goes on...............*&

Judging by what I see at my kids school they will be around for a little while. Their computer lab is all MAC and every class room as at least one as well. Only PC's in the school are ones that the teachers have brought in on their own....oh yeah and the ones the office staff use no MAC's there all PC in the office.

and an oldie:

Macs still have their nitch, and there will always be those who just prefer the Mac GUI, but it's getting more and more impractical to own one as a casual user unless you live in a big city, otherwise finding a repair tech is very difficult.

I fix high end color copiers and MORE AND MORE of the people that we are selling our boxes too PREFER to use MAC. Seems that just about anything that has to do with graphics is probably going to be on a mac.
Rob

Originally posted by robbie
I fix high end color copiers and MORE AND MORE of the people that we are selling our boxes too PREFER to use MAC. Seems that just about anything that has to do with graphics is probably going to be on a mac.
Rob

I think alot of that "macs are so great at doing video and graphics" talk is remnence of how it used to be 5-10 years ago. A PC can do it just as well, and my guess is a PC with a similar price tag can do it better.

What FP says makes sense about running broadcast video and such. Something proprietary is probably better. But who's to say a new dell or gateway computer isnt standardized? Maybe I'm not 100% on what you mean, FP.


And not to start a flame war but...whats with a 1 button mouse? Have they seen the light and moved to 2 buttons yet? sheesh....

Actually Apple is claiming that b/c of the success of the IPOD that there are 6% roughly of IPOD users who are switching to Mac... Apple is looking to build an iMAC that looks like the IPOD accourding to C-net.

and again I would like to say Mac sucks monkey turds.

I also read they may make a $499 imac to sell to the ipod crowd. If I could get a mac for that cheap I'd probably buy one, OSX is great and I'm sure I can find something for it to do.

Cat, here's what I mean. There's a company that makes broadcast quality real-time video editors. They build custom hardware. It's usually a seperate tower that contains a very large and very fast RAID array, and also contains very high quality video rendering hardware with the necessary signals for broadcast (you need more than just an S-Video connection for broadcast quality - there's usually 8 - 10 connections used in different ways, and the video has to gen-lock to the broadcast studio's equipment).

They design it to interface to a Mac. They usually sell you the software, an annual support license and the custom box for around $60-$200K depending on the configuration and features.

This ain't Adobe Premiere we're talking about, or a simple DVR. The system can store hundreds to thousands of hours of video (depending on the configuration) in broadcast quality (far superior to home quality) or even HDTV broadcast quality (seperate hardware, much more expensive) and render ALL effects and transistions in REAL TIME in full quality.

Yes, they could make a system that works with a PC instead of a Mac easily BUT then they have to worry about support nightmares. Every PC OEM manufacturer uses different quality components and may not even be consistent within their own brands. By customizing their hardware to a Mac they can be assured of compatibility and standardization. They don't have to worry about driver conflict or IRQ conflicts or anything like that.

Only one company makes Mac. Dozens of companies make PCs.

Macs are consistent in their hardware specifications across their product line. All Mac firewire and USB interfaces are consistent which can't always be said of PCs.

Just makes sense for a company selling an $80K box PLUS maybe charging $5K a year for tech support to stick to a hardware configuration that's easy to support for their particular hardware.

Plus the whole Mac OS and hardware architecture was designed from the ground up for this sort of thing. Yes PCs can do this, but PCs are ADAPTED to do this - it's not designed into them from the ground up. From a hardware/software designer's standpoint it's much easier to work with a Mac.

You ask the people who write software for this sort of hardware, they'll tell you that the Mac is MUCH easier to work with. The current Mac OS was designed to support multimedia in a fashion that makes it easy to write the code for. The Windows OS has had to have media features shoe-horned into it.

graphics designers feel that having a Mac is a must in order to be a good designer... LOL!
Well.. probably the only thing is better... but not essential is the interactivity and processing of colors that a Mac has with printers and monitors... that can be matched with a good monitor, video card and printer on any pc.

http://www.digitalproducer.com/articles ... p?id=14121

Dell has just introduced a new workstation featuring the latest Intel Pentium 4 3.06GHz processor with hyperthreading and faster PC1066 RDRAM. Accordingly, we decided it was time for another Mac vs. PC duel, created especially for digital video editors and compositors. So we got our hands on one of those new 3.06GHz Dell boxes and the fastest Mac on the market, fired up our trusty After Effects 5.5 and Photoshop 7.0 benchmarks on both of them, and man oh man, you won’t believe what happened this time. It was just downright startling.

We published an extensive and somewhat favorable review of our Mac dual 1.25 GHz G4 box in a recent DMN report, so if you haven't seen that article yet and would like deep background on the Mac side of this duel, click here for the full scoop. That said, here's the lowdown on the PC entry in this Mac vs. PC Duel III.

A few months ago, we reviewed a Dell system that packed the fastest PC processor available at the time, the Pentium 4 2.53GHz. Since then, the chipsters at Intel have topped themselves twice, and this time, the newest chip runs at an unprecedented 3.06 GHz. The big story, though, is the new hyperthreading technology included inside the processor that promises to speed up the festivities even more. Coupled with faster RAM, the new $2,964 Dell Precision Workstation 350 was startlingly fast.

All the things that were great about the last Dell Precision Workstation reviewed here are still present in this newest iteration, and a lot of the features have been enhanced. For example, this unit is even quieter than the last one tested, while its neatly arranged components inside and its sleek, easy-open black case all look the same as before. The computer still uses RDRAM, the same Intel 850e chipset and 533MHz frontside bus as its predecessor. But there’s more than meets the eye here, and it’s these certain modifications, along with a faster processor with its remarkable new hyperthreading feature, that are the reason for this newfound speed.

I have to mostly echo flyingPenguin's comments. A big part of the reason that the Mac platform is still big in the video/print/music industry is inertia. A lot of the folks working in these industries have been working on the Mac for ages, since back when the Mac really was the only game in town. It's the tool that they know best, and thus helps them be as productive as possible.

Plus the whole Mac OS and hardware architecture was designed from the ground up for this sort of thing.

well, that was more a side-effect of classic Mac OS's non-preemptive multitasking design. If your OS lets an app hog all of the CPU time, sure it's going to seem more responsive in CPU-intensive apps. With OS X this isn't so much the case, though Apple's bringing it in with the CoreImage/CoreVideo features coming in 10.4.

I think alot of that "macs are so great at doing video and graphics" talk is remnence of how it used to be 5-10 years ago. A PC can do it just as well, and my guess is a PC with a similar price tag can do it better.

This is true for the most part. The Pentium 4 and K8 are faster in most tasks than the PowerMac G5. But it still comes back to inertia. If you were to hire someone who has spent their whole career working on Macs, you'll get far more out of them by giving them the tools they are most productive with.

From a consumer standpoint, Macs are "better" since it's a lot harder to screw them up with spyware and viruses. I've recommended Macs to quite a few people who were too dumb to use Windows. Everytime I'd look at their PC I'd find at least a handful of viruses, adware, and other crapware.