MAC vs. PC for Digital Photo Processing

Hi Folks,

For an interesting read, check out Rob's article:

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_pag...cid=7-6451-6410

He tested the newest dual processor MAC vs PC and the newest single processor MAC vs PC.

A quote from the article:

"Ultimately, the Mac tied or led the PC in 19 of the 77 tests that comprise this report. Put another way, the PC was faster in 58 of 77 benchmarks. "

Cheers

James

... (not from the article just from me)

...And the MAC was only 2.5 times more expensive and non upgradable...

I do like macs lately since they started to use osX but I am still a firm believer in the PCs.

Vlad

Hardcore Mac people don't use them because they are faster. It's something less tangible. I used to love my Mac. But I'm so much faster on a PC that I finally switched back. I hate waiting.

The older report is much more depressing for Mac users. In that test, a PC notebook kicked the Mac dual G4's ass.

I have a friend who's a hardcore Mac user. He says when a PC crashes it isn't a problem - it's a "feature".

BTW, I love my G4 Powerbook. I'm not even going to read these reports.

John

and then there's Linux ... more robust than the Mac, more powerful than Windows, and cheaper and more open than either. Ya just gotta be a geek.

(Dual processor 3.06GHz w/ 2GB RAM and 450 GB ATA-RAID for numerical modeling at work -- wonder what this machine would do with PhotoShop?).

Yeah, but does the GIMP have a raw converter for Fuji files? Didn't think so...heh.

Cheers

James

and then there's Linux ... more robust than the Mac, more powerful than Windows, and cheaper and more open than either. Ya just gotta be a geek.

(Dual processor 3.06GHz w/ 2GB RAM and 450 GB ATA-RAID for numerical modeling at work -- wonder what this machine would do with PhotoShop?).

Good idea! I'll go try it:

jailshell-2.05a$ photoshop

jailshell: photoshop: command not found

jailshell-2.05a$ photoshop.exe

jailshell: photoshop.exe: command not found

jailshell-2.05a$ adobe photoshop

jailshell: adobe: command not found

jailshell-2.05a$ logout

dammit! why is it not working?

and then there's Linux ... more robust than the Mac, more powerful than Windows, and cheaper and more open than either. Ya just gotta be a geek.

(Dual processor 3.06GHz w/ 2GB RAM and 450 GB ATA-RAID for numerical modeling at work -- wonder what this machine would do with PhotoShop?).

The answer to the PS question on your DP is "run slowly" of course. Any PS user knows that! No matter how much processor you have, PS takes a minute to load.

I've been curious about Linux for photo work for some time. I'm aware of Gimp but haven't tried it out. My real concerns with Linux are monitor calibration, color spaces, etc. Just how active is the gimp community in supporting the needs of photographers? Like all other OSS communities, it's whatever they feel like doing.

Many image processing software authors have lifted their RAW support code from some open source software available on Linux. I don't remember the name off-hand. The answer to the RAW question with Linux is therefore "yes, but you may not like it". That's the case for a lot of Linux solutions.

I've gotten close to using Windows just for content creation and Linux for everything else. Too bad so many sites still require IE for me. All my recent webpage work has been on linux.

Yeah, okay, I do have a dual boot machine, I confess. No RAW converter (though shared code is available in C for some cameras) and Gimp rather than PS.

That said, I hope to play around coding up some converters myself (my day job math in geostatistics is similar to image processing) -- maybe when/if I get tenure.

Anyone know of a good source to get info on RAW file structures?

The linux raw converter I've heard of is dcraw. I would imagine there is quite a bit to learn there.

I think RAW conversions would make interesting study.

I admit it. I'm the owner of slow-coach MACs! And I love them - I never felt that way about my ol' PCs!

OK, so they may be more expensive and slower! But I don't mind the waiting cause "I'll be too busy looking gooood!"

Can't believe I am contributing to a sad MAC v PC debate! It will be Canon vs Nikon next!

There's really no debate here. Any properly configured machine is fine to use. They all work, right?

After switching to PCs, I lost love for my computer. But now, machines are interchangeable for me. I have no feelings for my computer. It's FANTASTIC, and I get things done quickly.

I might switch back if more cool utilities were available for the Mac. I use lots o' little shareware apps that automate things for me. It's just easier to find them on the PC. But yeah. PCs: not sexy, no matter how riced out your lan party rig is.

Forever nerding,

Eric

no matter how riced out your lan party rig is

Wow, too early in the morning to be reading stuff like that...

Had'em both as well as a number of flavors of Unix along the way. As I get older (at the ripe old age of 31) I find I tend towards the path of least resistance with computers, which for better or worse means PCs. For me it's simply availability of software and hardware, and like Eric said, it's just easier to find it for the PC.

Alex, I like the way you think.

It's more important to look good than to feel good...

As a hardcore computer lover (still use an 84-key AT keyboard), I've always wanted to try a mac. The problem was not enough under the sheets. I have needs... The most exciting thing with the G5 is the truly modern architecture. State of the art memory, buses, and a processor actually designed to go fast. Now we really can compare the merits of MacOS vs. Linux vs. Windows since mac has horses to back up its superior industrial design.

I've been tempted once again to try one out, but the trouble is that, like Eric, I just don't love hardware like I used to. Any old box will do so long as it's got a great head and a keyboard with function keys properly arranged down the left! My most exciting computer purchase recently has been the dedicated photo monitor. I'm stuck using it under Windows; I don't think there's support for it anywhere else.

Hello,

Uhhh, geek talk always makes me hot ... :-)

Craig, even from the beginning the 8086 and the M6800 the features of the Motorolla chip are SOOOOOO much better than the Intel chip that there is no compare.

The architecture of the Motorola chip is modern (even now) and many microcontrollers are based on that architecture. It is awesome to write assembler for the Motorola chip and it is elegant and fun ... Intel on the other side with their stupid dedicates accumulator register and math operations with results only in the accumulator ... it is another srory.

With those being said I could never figure out why Mac isn't the PC now and then I got older as somebody said (I am 33) and I realized, features don't always count ... price counts even more and probably my theory is that promotions count even more.

Ibm/MIcro$oft had many many many grants, free gifts, "take this truck full of computers and make it your own" things in the beginning toward schools and universities so then when you get out of school and you go to work ... will you ask for a Mac? Nah, you don't know the Mac.

Of course C is (almost) C on any CPU/microcontroller/platform you write but there is always that feel that you are not at home when you get on a new system.

Linux ...

One of you said is for the geek oriented...

Well, yes and no.

Have you installed RedHat 9 lately? Wow!!!

You can make it as geeke as you want from not touch the command line (a la Mac and windows) to manualy recompile the kernell and optimize it as a router or dns server.

I installed gimp on the windows (yes, there is a port and if you guys want I can find the link) and it is pretty cool. It is slower than molases (reef :-)) but it works.

I never used graphics on my linux box because I use it mostly as my web/ftp/samba server. I don't even have a monitor on it and I use it remotely a lot.

One of you was saying that he would need a raw converter for Fuji and he doesn't know if it exist or how much support can he get. ...

The people in the linux comunity are amazing! You have NEVER seen tech support like that in your life. Everybody will help you until you will get it right.

.... And if something doesn't exist, just go in a linux newsgroup and say "I heard that a Micro$oft programmer can write this filter in 4 days, I am wondering how long it will take for the linux comunity to write it". You will have 3 versions next day!

Yeah, I like linux and I am a geek.

Vlad

Vlad, I think you misinterpret my meaning when I say modern. Much is argued about instruction sets yet relatively few people actually program in assembly. In any event, instruction sets aren't what they used to be. Mac has moved on to PPC, then Altivec. PC's have SSE, SSE2, MMX, etc. and now we have IA64. IA64's register set is far larger and more general purpose than IA32. Internally, current Intel/AMD processors are quite sophisticated and thoroughly modern.

What I meant by modern is that the G5 system has state of the art hypertransport bus, high speed memory systems and an entirely new processor architecture. Contrast that with G3's and G4's which have at their core a design that dates back to the original 603/604 first generation designs and (largely) SDR memory. PowerPC processors prior to the 970 were not made for maximum performance. Moto sold far more into embedded that they did to Apple.

A little story from my previous lifetime. When IBM decided to do PPC, it's idea was to produce a processor line performance-competitive with x86 but with far fewer transistors. The idea was not to make a faster computer but a cheaper one. All other RISC processor architectures wanted to run twice as fast at the same size and cost. For the most part, all designs lost to Intel since no approach was sufficiently compelling. The advantage of being the entrenched leader is great.

With the 970, IBM set out to produce a high performance part, a much different strategy than previous PPC processors. This is reflected not only raw performance of the new macs but also in the power and heat where it is much more like PC's than macs ever were before. IBM was not targetting Cisco switches with this part.

Internally, macs and PC's are much more alike than different. They use roughly the same memory, same I/O bus, same video, same peripherals, same drives and now macs even use AMD's interconnect developed for the Opteron. Now that they have a processor designed with the same goals as PC's have they may as well be the same. The differentiator now is OSX.

If you go back to the article and read the comments on notebook performance you'll see that PC notebooks (Dell 8500 in this case) still completely trounce Powerbooks in performance. Until we see a G5 notebook that will continue. The Pentium-M is an awesome processor and I can say from experience that the 8500 is a great notebook. It offers a 1920x1200 screen, a nearly 80% higher pixel count than the Powerbook 17" at 1440x900. I know which screen I'd rather edit photos on.

As for my personal qualifications, I've been a professional x86 assembly programmer for years and was once the lead architect for one of the earliest embedded PPC 603 designs. We chose the 603 for it's combination of decent performance, high integration and very low power consumption. All the characteristics that make it a good embedded processor for switches and storage boxes but not particularly for general purpose computing.

I'm in no way a mac basher but a realist. Apple lost the processor power crown to Intel back with the 386 in 1987 and have never regained it. Now, with the G5, Apple has switched horses from an embedded processor to a blade server processor and is once again in the game. Hopefully G5's can appear in notebooks soon so that the G3/G4's can go away. I'd like to have a mac to gain experience with. I don't think I'll ultimately like OSX that much but I'd like to try. I'd love to gain some experience with FCP.

Sorry to change the direction this thread is going, but I can't resist. You have to check out this deal. With prices like this, you Mac people MIGHT AS WELL just buy a PC to play with.

Jan 8, 2004 HW Extreme:

DellSB - PowerEdge 400SC Server with i875P Chipset, 2.0 Ghz, 256MB DDR, 40GB HD, 48x CD-ROM, AGP Slot, AND Free PDA or Digital Camera for ONLY $249 after Rebate! (with free shipping)

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By the way, another downside for Macs for me is that my main machine is currently a notebook (Dell 8600). The Powerbooks are just way too slow. But like Craig said, when they cram a G5 into one of them, it will start to get interesting.

Hey,

Craig, I learned a lot from your writing and I am glad to see that the PC are more powerful now tht the macs. I like PC and I don't like macs but I have to admit they are stable and the OSX is great since is based on a BSD kernel.

I left the microprocessor world in school about 7 years ago and swithced almost imediatly to embedded design so the CPUs in my world are more like the ones in your dive computer 8 or 16 bits. I write assembler and C on those and I wrote some assembler and a lot of C on PC.

I am glad there are bigger geeks than me in this forum :-)

Vlad

FWIW, every computer I used at school up until University was a MAC. That's because they are the company that did the school promotions, not the Wintel guys...

Then I had to learn Windows 3.1 as a freshman in college...ugh!

Cheers

James

I use a Dell 8600 as well. I've been saying 8500 but that's a mistake. 8600 rules.

My current company is a zero-budget startup and we use the low-end Dell PowerEdge servers as our development platforms. You have to watch but you can regularly get these machines really cheap. Make sure if you order one to skip all the high priced upgrades and take the free mice and keyboards! I love doing this as Dell was my previous employer.