The Mac at 20: What's in store for the future?

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Not my experience.

I own ad advertising agency, and have been doing graphics and technical press support since before either the PC or Mac were around. I have Linux, Mac and Windows boxes on my network and do graphics, audio and video editing on both the Mac and Windows boxes (I'll be experimenting with video/audio editing on Linux this year). My advice: unless you have a real hard-core rotorhead in-shop, stick with Macs.

Real-life example from just yesterday: a buddy of mine who does digital photography went the Windows route. He just upgraded from Win98SE to Win2K Pro and spent 2 hours on the phone with Microsoft trying to get them to help him with a non-functional network setup. After 2 hours with Microsoft, he reported: "I'm more confused now than I was before I called them." He called me and I spent an hour on the phone with him getting a simple peer-to-peer setup going between two of his machines. We still couldn't get his color laser to see the network in the limited time I had to spend with him, so if he didn't figure it out on his own overnight, I'm probably going to have to drop by his shop and give it the hands-on treatment. Since this is a buddy of mine, it'll only cost him a steak dinner for me and the Missus. If it had been a customer, they'd be out a couple hundred bucks by the time I had stopped by and got all his printers back online. If his network had been all Macs...he'd have been up and running within a few minutes of any OS upgrade, without any outside technical support. My three geographically-closest comrades in the Graphic Arts who have mixed-platform environments...let me do a mental tally of their Windows systems for you: One's got her PC running fine (largely thanks to me), the other's not using his two PCs (hardware and network problems...I'll help him out eventually, but I don't have time now...he's got three Macs and is in good shape otherwise) and the third had her PC totally taken out of commission by a virus. Six months ago. She's on XP. I won't touch XP. Her PC will probably never be fired up again, because she's already shelled out money on two AV programs that failed to protect her, and she's not relishing the prospect of shelling out another $100-200 to have a techie come out and fix it. She's turned back to her Trusty Ol' Mac. So, here's the score: only one out of the four PCs here is currently functional. Not due to any fault of the owner's...just because PCs are much, much harder to get running and maintain, especially if you're not a Tear-It-Open-And-Perform-Surgery sort of person.

Using Windows in a hard-core fast-paced production environment, I've been there...done that...got the Tee-shirt. The nice thing about PCs...parts are everywhere, cheap. I can run to Fry's Electronics, buy all the parts and build a PC in less than 6 hours (including 1.5 hours for the round trip and another hour in the Software and Books aisles gawking). In contrast, in a metropolitan area of 4 million people, there are only about a half-dozen places where you can get bona-fide Apple-supported parts and service. The downside of PCs...virtually no good support if you're in the advertising / printing / publishing / design / audio-video production biz. Seriously. PCs are mostly used for spreadsheets, data entry and word processing. Again, in a metropolitan area of 4 million people, I can think of only maybe 10 outfits whom I would trust to set up a hard-core graphics production workflow on PCs. And one of those ten is me, and I only do this when I've got the time, and for folks who beg and whine and flash a lot of money at me. So...if you run PCs, be prepared to be like me--able to build your own systems from scratch, able to debug DLL and VXD and OCX and Windows Registry problems, able to install (and reinstall and reinstall) Windows and all your apps in your sleep. 'Cause it's a Brave New World out there in PC Land and you're on your own, Bunkie. Tell the guy at CompUSA that you want the latest version of PServe and carefully observe the blank expression on his face. PCs and graphics do not mix well in the real world. It's chewing gum and duct tape for you if you want to try to patch together a PC system for doing professional graphics. I won't even mention the problems with color profiling and fonts on Windows...you'll find out all about that for yourself.

However...after all that's said and done, if you're the type of person who just loves technical goodies and will tear into a box just to see if the CPU fan has a brushless motor--then you may be on of the Few...the Proud...who can actually survive trying to make money doing graphics on Windows. I know I've had a fun time with my 6-year experiment with Windows. Windows just doesn't work well, however. My PCs will probably eventually all go to Linux once the graphics apps that I need are there. The experiment just didn't work out, but it's been a kick in the pants as a learning experience.

Posted by: Yen_z   Posted on: 01/08/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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