Graphic Design: Mac vs PC?

[JonDuke]

I own a PC. It's almost 4 years old and it's time for an upgrade.
I don't game or watch movies on it. Other than surfing the net, I use it mainly for messing around with graphic design. Lot's of Photoshop and a slowly increasing amount of Illustrator.

My buddy is trying to convince me to get a Macbook. I am not a huge fan though, and want to stick with PC, but he insists it's a lot better for PS and AI.

I just don't like the feel of a Mac and I don't really know much about them. I don't know if I want to start from scratch and have to learn about macs as I enjoy the familiarity of a PC.

Also, after 5 years with an iPhone, I just switched to an Android, so I think switching from PC to mac now would be silly as well.

Can anyone shed some light to the performance difference?
Are macs REALLY that much better for graphics? Is it really worth spending 1200 on a macbook or, at that price point, could I get a superior machine by staying with PC?

[sclitheroe]

Go with the platform that has the apps you need, and secondarily that you prefer or are more experienced using. The OS is mostly irrelevant, and it's all the same hardware basically under the hood.

Is it really worth spending 1200 on a macbook or, at that price point, could I get a superior machine by staying with PC?

Edit: I'm sure this thread will now descend into the rat hole of cost vs specs, so I might as well start You can almost always find a better spec'ed PC on paper than a comparable Mac. You won't find a better built machine (and others can argue this point, but they are wrong); at best you'll find something similar, and by the time you get to that level of build quality on the PC side, you are once again paying premium pricing. Macbook's are not your trailer park Vostro's.

Amortized over the lifespan of ownership, I think all the discussion about specs and price is truly moot - the performance differences hardly matter real world, and any price discrepancy over 2-3 years of ownership is barely a blip. Macs do have better resale value though, so you'll recoup more of your purchase costs at the end.

All of this becomes a more complicated question when you move up the rung though and start talking about HiDPI displays - I can see graphics pros having a strong preference for the Retina class Macbook Pro's, simply because you can work on images and video at Retina DPI. Essentially, the machines render text and controls at sane resolutions (so they look great, but aren't super tiny), but the actual content you're working on is displayed at the native HiDPI. So for example, you can work on a 1080p video without having to zoom out and sacrifice onscreen fidelity, or zoom in and only see part of the content. I don't think Windows is capable of doing anything approaching this, or at the very least, it doesn't look as nice.

I'll add this though as a final though: Once you use something like a Retina class Macbook Pro, and if you're someone that uses a computer for 8 or more hours a day, you will have a very, very hard time going back to PC hardware, in my experience.

[octothorp]

With Illustrator 5, there was a significant difference in speed. I had it on windows at work and OSX at home, and despite my OSX system having less RAM, it felt equal or at times faster than my windows setup. Whether the difference is enough to make up for having more of a comfort level with PCs, I don't know.

However, that's pretty-much useless info if you're using AI6 and PS6, which have been changed significantly to take advantage of 64 bit architecture. If you are running windows with 64 bit architecture and AI6, this should be significantly faster than running the same setup with AI5. I'm not currently using a Windows computer nor have I used AI6 on a Windows machine, so I'm just going by what I've read here.

So I guess my advice would be stick with the operating system you're comfortable with, make sure you're running on 64-bit architecture (not sure if that's what's installed OEM these days), get at least 8GB RAM, and use version 6 Adobe products rather than version 5.

edit: sclithero's point about retina displays is very true... I don't personally have one, but my wife does and it is really stunning. I actually didn't realize they were a Mac-specific technology at this point. Go to a mac store and have a look, see if it makes that big a difference to you.

[TheGrimm]

You can get great monitors for a PC as well, but if you are planning on rocking a laptop I am not sure, the biggest thing isn't the DPI as there are lots of manufacturers that sell high DPI screens, it's the color quality and calibrated color quality that matter the most for your work, which I am sure you already know.

As far as the whole Mac vs. PC thing, I could just never justify the extra spend required for a Mac but I am a fairly technical person, so having something that "just worked" has never been high on my priority list.


I should add that my wife is a photographer and works exclusively on PC with Photoshop/Lightroom and Illustrator.. And I've had no problems turning her computers into workhorses over the years. There are video card acceleration drivers for nVidia cards which can help for intensive tasks as well.

[Russic]

I've worked with graphics on both Mac and PC, and while I much prefer the Mac, the usage of Photoshop or Illustrator has very little to do with it. In my opinion if you're more comfortable on the PC and (more importantly) an aversion to Mac products already exists, I'd recommend you stick to what you like. I agree fully with sclitheroe in terms of the Mac advantages, but at the end of the day if you just don't like using it there's no point having it.

[Hack&Lube]

Macs will give you a general higher standardized level of quality overall as a starting point but choosing the PC platform will give you more choice in both hardware options and price points.

For graphic design, another thing to think about aside from speed of hardware and richness of display is the choice of peripherals you want to use. For Mac and PC there are various options as well (which are mostly interchangeable) but that is something to consider as well. What I'm talking about is there are a lot of design/editing macros and keyboards and interfaces available and also drawing surfaces, etc. that may work better for you on either Mac or PC.

I personally prefer having choice and the familiarity with the PC environment. Going to Mac will take a bit of a learning curve. You're not going to be able to ever build a faster Mac than you are able to build a faster PC and the PC can consolidate many other things you need a computer for. Either option will have some software choices not available on the other.

I say build a super-fast PC and bootcamp OSX onto it if you really want to try a Mac software experience but also have the ability to boot into Windows/Linux either on top of the bare metal or as virtual machines.

[renny]

I have a buddy who designs for a living, he refuses to go with the Mac route.

He has used Apple in the past due to it being the "standard", but has since gone back to the PC. It's what he's comfortable with, and I think that's what matters most.

Use the system you're comfortable with, is the mac going to run Adobe better? Maybe. Is it really going to be that noticeable? Probably not.

[sclitheroe]

In guitar, we say tone is in the fingers. Same holds true for graphics design or other creative work. Whatever amount of time you're spending worrying about the platform and specific versions of the tools would be better spent on your craft - especially when all the common tools exist in both places.

How's that for a totally non-biased opinion