The Mac towers have been going downhill foe years. I think it is not really Apples focus anymore. They are a digital lifestyle company and they do that very well. Sadly I think it comes at the expense of their worksatations. At least I get mant breaks at work watching the beachballs and reboots while I an in CS5.
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Drank the Kool-Aid did I make a mistake?
- Thread starter dansmac
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What? Downhill for years? How are you going to back that up? Because there has not been a refresh in a while. Guess what, hasn't been any better processors released yet. So some of the best processors Intel offers and great design and expandability way better than G3/G4/G5's ever were and they've gone downhill? Don't follow that at all. The CS5 part is Adobe's issue not the Mac Pro HW. My Mac murders so many PC's test for test in Win. Score exactly the same as a i7-980x with HD 5870. No difference at all. The rest is software. Educate.
I just saying if you use Adobe CS suite and it works better in Windows than Windows boxes are better for that task. Macs used to be the killer platform for Adobe products I think they lost their edge. It does not matter if its Adobes faults or Apples.
I don't do benchmarks with my machines I use them for specific tasks. I have a environment of Macs, Windows and Linux each has their specific tasks.
There's no doubt in my mind that storage I/O plays a role in your overall performance. Moving thousands of 25-30MB images through an intensive workflow will absolutely be constrained by your storage sub system. I would definitely look at SSD's as a relatively cheap and easy performance upgrade. For $800 you can get a couple of top-notch 256GB SSD's to run in RAID0 that can easily handle your OS/Apps/Scratch and dozens of active projects. When the SSD's get full, offload the inactive projects to a mechanical RAID1 or RAID5 array for safe keeping.
I work with much less intense image processing than you, and SSD's made a world of difference.
Understand. Just wanted to call a spade a spade. It is not Mac Pro that has gone downhill. It is Adobe caring about performance in OS X.
Okay... I'm perfectly fine with investing in newer technology if in the end provides value and a decent return-on-investment.
I guess I'm just a bit confused on the SSD tingly and my workflow. From time-to-time I do use the Activity Monitor as insight to any bottlenecks that may improve performance and workflow. As far as I can tell the image processing in PS CS5 even with all the crazy filters I use is not swapping anything to disk. Am I missing something? I understand with a much faster storage system (SSD) the initial loading and saving image files would be faster do doubt. But that is less than 10% of the image processing time.
Willing to learn but struggling with what will I gain in SSD performance assuming no swapping during an image process, and what will I loose since the capacity is much less?? Help?
....Dan
----------
I Hear ya loud and clear with OnOne.
However I'm not willing to say one is "better" than the other. I love NIK Software and do use them all the time. NIK Software has sponsored several of my Photography Workshops and they are great people here in San Diego (I'm about 50 miles north of SD).
BUT ... the main point I was originally making was experience with switching from PC to MAC for core work about 3 years ago and somewhat disappointed with the results.
Again, really like NIK Software. That said I also prefer many of the filter designs with OnOne and use them both depending on the look I'm going after. Back to the point: The same Exact configuration on my older Dell never crashes and now just assume companies like OnOne spend more quality control efforts at the larger WIN Market... I Guess???
....Dan
I guess it depends on your definition of new, but I need to go back to 2008 to find benchmarks that compare performance of SSD systems to HD systems. A Google search for "SSD vs HD benchmark photoshop" comes back with really dated links. No one even bothers to compare performance between SSD's and HD's anymore. SSD's are anywhere from 5 to 100 times faster than HD's depending on what statistic you're looking at. It's like asking if a car is really faster than a horse drawn carriage. That may have been a relevant question when the Model T first emerged on the scene, but no one I'm aware of bothers to race them anymore.
All humor aside, I'll see if I can find some worthwhile Photoshop benchmarks for you and post back here.
Cheers.
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I guess it depends on your definition of new, but I need to go back to 2008 to find benchmarks that compare performance of SSD systems to HD systems. A Google search for "SSD vs HD benchmark photoshop" comes back with really dated links. No one even bothers to compare performance between SSD's and HD's anymore. SSD's are anywhere from 25 to 100 times faster than HD's depending on what statistic you're looking at. It's like asking if a car is really faster than a horse drawn carriage. That may have been a relevant question when the Model T first emerged on the scene, but no one I'm aware of bothers to race them anymore.
All humor aside, I'll see if I can find some worthwhile Photoshop benchmarks for you and post back here.
Cheers.
I found this link: http://macperformanceguide.com/PhotoshopCS5-performance-memory.html
Pretty much comes to the same conclusion that I did. SSD with my machine configuration and workflow would be of minimal performance improvement?
Missing something here? If so please let me know!
Is your workflow based primarily in Photoshop?
I ask, as looking at how it handles disk I/O seems to be single threaded, so faster disk I/O will only get you so far (end up with a faster storage system than the application generates the data being written).
In terms of using an SSD, perhaps a small one for scratch space (say ~40GB model from OWC, which can be had for ~$100), and another for working data would provide a nice speed boost (then transfer completed data to a mechanical based archival location, and preferably backed up properly as well).
As a part time photographer I would make damn sure you immediately back up any images you put on a working data SSD. My OWC 120GB SSD gave me no end of problems before I finally sent it back for replacement. I'm not entirely convinced yet of the technologies reliability. We'll see as I get my new one this week.
I think the debate on SSD vs. none for my particular workflow is interesting although off point form the original thread.
I was opening up my first Mac Pro Forum thread on user experience and delight .. or lack thereof when moving from the PC environment to the MAC for a good chunk of our workflow here in the studio. We still use PCs for some jobs.
As the thread evolved there was pushback on the Kool-Aid reference. Okay I get it and get over it I should have done a bunch more research on the MAC before moving. At the time we were upgrading our PCs to Windows 7 from XP Pro and wanted to just toss the iron out the window. What a mess. And of course I have all the normal frustration with hardware manufactures (Dell) separate from the base OS (Microsoft) plus virus and malware, etc. Concurrently Apple was running an AD campaign comparing MAC to PC. Funny for sure but hit home with my annoyance of the PC world at that time.
Again I should have researched more I assumed there we a natural and close relationship among elite software developers (Adobe) and Apple that I honestly believed would provide the absolute best possible application tied to the OS and user experience OOPS
As said before Im happy with the Mac Pro. It works a good the majority of the time. Pretty fast. Very reliable OS. Clean user interface. Just not as fast or as reliable as my old Dell for my particular workflow.
Ill describe my workflow. May not be what you all think is right, but, for the 200,000 images I have processed over the years seems to suit our studio just fine.
Step 1: Shoot the wedding (or other photo gig). I have two photographers and an assistant for all these jobs. We synchronize the camera bodies to the second for reasons described later. Total of six camera bodies for a typical wedding yielding about 3,000 RAW images to be processed. About 40-50Gig of photo images.
Step 2: Launch Photo Mechanic to copy from the CF Cards to the Internal RAID 1 disk array. Photo Mechanic is used because of it is by far the fastest way to copy. Its a very small and simple 3-rd party app.
Step 3: Copy the newly created folder on the RAID 1 to the large external RAID 5 USB Disk box. This is slow and I know can be a bunch faster with an SATA rig. Only done once per job so it set up and go. Takes about 20 minutes have lunch and come back
Step 4: Remove the USB Drive box and store it in a fireproof safe in my studio garage. You know way I do this
Step 5: Using Photo Mechanic browser my Studio Assistant will select the keepers from the non-keepers going through the wedding as it happened in time ... Again Photo Mechanic is used because it can load up 3,000 RAW images for browsing in less then one minute. Simple app and I dont try and make it do other tasks. KISS
Step 6: The keepers will be moved to a new folder for post processing.
Step 7: Light up Photoshop CS5 (left screen) and Bridge CS5 (right screen). Bridge is pointed to the post-processing folder.
Step 8: The real work now begins: Click on next image in Bridge browser screen automatically launches Adobe RAW make the adjustments as needed . Move into Photoshop CS5 touch up, filterize, correct, crop, and a bunch of other stuff as need to make the images rock.
Step 9: Do step 8 about 1,000 times and call it a day .
Step 10: Develop a personalized website, DVD, and physical photo album for our customer.
Step 11: Go to step 1 for the next client....
Dan
EDIT: I get this is off topic from your original post, but I think now, many of us including me, are trying to help you optimize your performance.
As I said, most reviewers are trying to find out what SSD makes the most difference now, not whether SSD's are faster than HD's... here's a good example of how the latest SSD is twice as fast as an older SSD. HD not even in the picture here.
"As is plain to see, its real-world performance on the diglloydMedium Photoshop benchmark sets a new performance standard"
Link
Here's a good comparison of the power of a couple of SSD's in RAID0 vs 4 HD's in RAID0 (and I assume you're running a single HD).
"With monster Photoshop jobs to run, a 2-drive RAID-0 stripe of the OWC Mercury Extreme SSD offers the potential for vastly improved performance, even over a fast 4-drive striped hard drive setup."
Link
Here's another... where RAM also plays a key role. This reminds me, how much RAM are you using? Are you running tri-channel or dual?
"But just adding an OWC Mercury Extreme Pro SSD sped that same task up by 50% alone – completing that 12 minute task in just under six minutes. Here’s where the magic happens though. With both the maximum memory installed and an OWC SSD drive installed, the same test is completed in only 4.7 minutes….that’s over two and a half times faster than the stock machine"
Link
Here's another test (again going back a few years) that was funded by Intel...
http://download.intel.com/design/flash/nand/extreme/photoshop_cs4_performance_comparison.pdf
There are lots more out there.
I mean, why not try it out on one of your workstations. Buy two SSD's and run your entire workflow on them for a few days. if you don't see any difference, sell them on Craigslist for nearly what you paid. However, I'd be very surprised if you didn't fall in love with them immediately.
My photo editing app of choice is Aperture. I'm not sure how it handles disk I/O.
There is no doubt that backups are important... but not just for SSD's. In the last three years, I've had two new WD HD's die on me within a year, yet all three of my now 2+ year old SSD's are just fine (knock on wood). BTW, Sandforce based drives probably have the worst record for reliability among SSD's, which might explain your issues and it's one of the reasons I don't recommend them.
"Drank The Koolaid" did I make a Mistake..(no)
dansmac
May the Kool-aid was bad(bad pun), but Apple/Mac's are a very good machine and solid operating system, 3 party software wether for Mac's or PC's (or those daring enough to run 'bootcamp" can always (potentially lead to conflicts) and ? a Lifestyle to some!
(Conflict-Catcher was a software utility for the OS9 "Classic" Mac Operating Systems (and when You had conflicts You had conflicts and third party stuff was usually the culprit) I am not a Professional Photographer, iPhoto is fine for me and the (free) Mac Apps coming out , I am using a 2010 iMac
i3 intel processor 4GB ram 500 GB Hard drive (though Adobe comes in to play at times with myself and I am not a fan favorite) I use Garageband
(and third party Audio Units) and lately the driver updates have kept the Audio Manaufacturers a step behind in driver updates (in those products requiring them, but I would rather fight this Malware than record (I do have a cassette Porta II by Tascam for those in between times (and in a ideal world I should have a recording Mac (not used for email-web surfing) and a seporate one for email and web surfing * but then I might not have all six strings on my guitar at once (ha) but Keith Richards plays often with 5 out of 6 strings leaving the low E off I believe.
I hope things turn out better and one thing for certain, Mac's change all the time and with Thunderbolt (currently? used on external Hard drives as well as USB 3.0 will lead to unknown territory and the iPads who knows
may replace lap tops and desk tops as we know them(or something altogether different) I have a iPod Touch which I find the plethora of apps
just extraordinary and so many for free
My family has used Mac's since the days of the Apple IIC and IIE (with a 5 1/4 floppy disk, then a 3.5 disk wow have things come a long way!
I am unsure if You signed up for Applecare (best deal out there for tech support and also mac-hardwarew support) exends phone support(basically 24/7 and parts and labor from 90 days phone and 1 year parts and labor to 3 years of each at a reasonable price (damage self inflicted not covered
such as liquids, accidental droppage (but their is personal property insurance for that) at pennies on the dollar
PC's are no picnic either but 3 have made their way in, a Dell Netbook, a Sony Laptop for School and HP tower thats a bit outdates
Still have a up and running 2001 iMac (less than 1GB ram and less than 1ghZ CPU!, two emacs both 2004, a 2009 Mac Book pro and a 2010 iMac
luckily free tech support on the Windows 7 and Windows XP at College
and Apple Care on the current Macs (I still can not get over the 2001 iMac (which is partioned 50% OS9 and 50% OSX 10.3.9
I wish You nothing but the best!
This is a great web site as is Cnet.com (cross platform site)
macworld.com and its print magazine
versiontracker.com
great book (Snow Leopard The Missing Manual, with a OSX 10.7 Lion one I am sure on the way (its about 600 pages but wow what You learn)
TUAW.com not sure what that stands for but its a Mac site
and Mactracker (a free app in the Mac App store a history of Mac A-Z
from Day 1 I think, even the garage model that Steve W and Steve Jobs
made (out of partially wood, how far out is that!)
best
dwwave
a.k.a
david
dansmac
May the Kool-aid was bad(bad pun), but Apple/Mac's are a very good machine and solid operating system, 3 party software wether for Mac's or PC's (or those daring enough to run 'bootcamp" can always (potentially lead to conflicts) and ? a Lifestyle to some!
(Conflict-Catcher was a software utility for the OS9 "Classic" Mac Operating Systems (and when You had conflicts You had conflicts and third party stuff was usually the culprit) I am not a Professional Photographer, iPhoto is fine for me and the (free) Mac Apps coming out , I am using a 2010 iMac
i3 intel processor 4GB ram 500 GB Hard drive (though Adobe comes in to play at times with myself and I am not a fan favorite) I use Garageband
(and third party Audio Units) and lately the driver updates have kept the Audio Manaufacturers a step behind in driver updates (in those products requiring them, but I would rather fight this Malware than record (I do have a cassette Porta II by Tascam for those in between times (and in a ideal world I should have a recording Mac (not used for email-web surfing) and a seporate one for email and web surfing * but then I might not have all six strings on my guitar at once (ha) but Keith Richards plays often with 5 out of 6 strings leaving the low E off I believe.
I hope things turn out better and one thing for certain, Mac's change all the time and with Thunderbolt (currently? used on external Hard drives as well as USB 3.0 will lead to unknown territory and the iPads who knows
may replace lap tops and desk tops as we know them(or something altogether different) I have a iPod Touch which I find the plethora of apps
just extraordinary and so many for free
My family has used Mac's since the days of the Apple IIC and IIE (with a 5 1/4 floppy disk, then a 3.5 disk wow have things come a long way!
I am unsure if You signed up for Applecare (best deal out there for tech support and also mac-hardwarew support) exends phone support(basically 24/7 and parts and labor from 90 days phone and 1 year parts and labor to 3 years of each at a reasonable price (damage self inflicted not covered
such as liquids, accidental droppage (but their is personal property insurance for that) at pennies on the dollar
PC's are no picnic either but 3 have made their way in, a Dell Netbook, a Sony Laptop for School and HP tower thats a bit outdates
Still have a up and running 2001 iMac (less than 1GB ram and less than 1ghZ CPU!, two emacs both 2004, a 2009 Mac Book pro and a 2010 iMac
luckily free tech support on the Windows 7 and Windows XP at College
and Apple Care on the current Macs (I still can not get over the 2001 iMac (which is partioned 50% OS9 and 50% OSX 10.3.9
I wish You nothing but the best!
This is a great web site as is Cnet.com (cross platform site)
macworld.com and its print magazine
versiontracker.com
great book (Snow Leopard The Missing Manual, with a OSX 10.7 Lion one I am sure on the way (its about 600 pages but wow what You learn)
TUAW.com not sure what that stands for but its a Mac site
and Mactracker (a free app in the Mac App store a history of Mac A-Z
from Day 1 I think, even the garage model that Steve W and Steve Jobs
made (out of partially wood, how far out is that!)
best
dwwave
a.k.a
david
Thanks for sure and I applaud the effort. Again thanks. That said I may try SSD sometime in the future. Yes I am positive the speed to load applications and files will be a bunch faster.
BUT ... if you review my workflow in the previous post you can see most of my time is in Step 8. Like 99% of my time.
AND .... all the benchmarks you presented do not represent my configuration. I'm not using CS4 (32-bit maximum internal cache is 2G) and I'm not using a Macbook (8G configuration demonstrated). For sure both of these configurations would benefit big time with a scratch disk that performs blazing fast. In my case I do not use I/O but to load the image in Step 8.
If I had to upgrade I would believe the biggest benefit for "my" workflow and "my" internal memory configuration is a faster CPU. I could get another 10% with a 3.33GHz. I really doubt an SSD would get me 10% if I'm not using it for 99% of my workflow time.
But ... I could be wrong ... wouldn't be the first time! If I do decide to upgrade to SSD in the near future I'll report back ...
Dan
OOPS - just read your question: 24G tri-channel 8Gx3.
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No worries... I do agree clock speed and memory should be your first priorities. You might benefit from one of the new Sandy Bridge Mac Pro's anticipated in the next few months... the top of the line CPU is expected to have clocks in the 3.6 to 3.9GHz range.
We both better get back to work now
"Drank the Koolaid" did I make a mistake..
dansmac
Forgot one thing,
I have never used Antivirus software on any for of OSX OSX 10.3.9 to OSX 10.6.8
yes on OS9 Classic Mode in Apple
and yes in all Windows Based Machines (Win XP and Windows 7)
They tend to just slow down Your computer in Macs and so much is built in to the Operating System (hence the need to keep software updates up to date, the Malware issue of Spring-Summer 2010 was troublesome
and I read up alot and did what Apple indicated to do and some great Info from Macworld.com and cnet.com
I could tell some tales what anti virus does on a HP Tower we have and once taken off (and its a top ranked anti-virus/malware program and replaced by Windows Security (which barely affected the CPU and caught just as much "malware" as a Kasp program that bogged things to a halt
9and things slipped by all the time,? maybe we did not set it correctlt but
with Apples Disk Utility (software based and disk based if nee be, really does a tune up and gets things rolling (some people run disk utility (verify/repair Permissions and Verify Disk (and need be repair Disk)
(its in utilities in your applications folder) every time they down load anything they will run the program (its not that time consuming) I run it frequently (after reading Snow Leopard The Missing Manual) and never a beach ball, never crashs etc even with countless windows open
Not trying to preach to You, You are obviously a very intelligent person!
A good friend (who I met when He was doing Apple Demo Days at Comp USA got me reading and troubleshooting on my own as He said what am I tech support, He is a great friend ! and taught me a lot and increased my confidence in trouble shooting a lot (though He backs up every 20 minutes or less and is furious if I don't (and I do not that frequently) ha
I do think it will work out, its a big change PC to Macs and Visa Versa
dwwave
peace
dansmac
Forgot one thing,
I have never used Antivirus software on any for of OSX OSX 10.3.9 to OSX 10.6.8
yes on OS9 Classic Mode in Apple
and yes in all Windows Based Machines (Win XP and Windows 7)
They tend to just slow down Your computer in Macs and so much is built in to the Operating System (hence the need to keep software updates up to date, the Malware issue of Spring-Summer 2010 was troublesome
and I read up alot and did what Apple indicated to do and some great Info from Macworld.com and cnet.com
I could tell some tales what anti virus does on a HP Tower we have and once taken off (and its a top ranked anti-virus/malware program and replaced by Windows Security (which barely affected the CPU and caught just as much "malware" as a Kasp program that bogged things to a halt
9and things slipped by all the time,? maybe we did not set it correctlt but
with Apples Disk Utility (software based and disk based if nee be, really does a tune up and gets things rolling (some people run disk utility (verify/repair Permissions and Verify Disk (and need be repair Disk)
(its in utilities in your applications folder) every time they down load anything they will run the program (its not that time consuming) I run it frequently (after reading Snow Leopard The Missing Manual) and never a beach ball, never crashs etc even with countless windows open
Not trying to preach to You, You are obviously a very intelligent person!
A good friend (who I met when He was doing Apple Demo Days at Comp USA got me reading and troubleshooting on my own as He said what am I tech support, He is a great friend ! and taught me a lot and increased my confidence in trouble shooting a lot (though He backs up every 20 minutes or less and is furious if I don't (and I do not that frequently) ha
I do think it will work out, its a big change PC to Macs and Visa Versa
dwwave
peace
Hi Dan, with all due respect not using Lightroom if you have it already is costing you $. -- You can setup repeating filters and adjustments, sync images....etc before you even get to PS. and still be using the same kind of familiar raw features but better & faster.
my2¢
I have nothing against Lightroom. I have V3 and it does what it is designed to do. However using LR for my workflow would almost double the time to finish a job. Just about every image (90%) I need to perform some feature that is PS exclusive like Liquify, Clone, or spot healing. I would need to LR for it chores like color correction and filters and then launch PS to finish the job ... or batch all LR and go back and start over in PS again. In either case it is better for me to do it all in one app that can handle all my needs. If LR had the tools to complete my image processing then for sure I would move ... but it doesn't ... Dan
Regardless of storage technology used or how it's implemented (single disk, RAID, or JBOD <spanning>), backups are necessary to protect a user from data loss. No way around it. //OK, end of this
As per the OWC SSD, hopefully it was just a bad unit (generally speaking, their SSD's do seem to be decent from what I usually see from posts here in MR).
Unfortunately, consumer electronics have been declining in Quality Control for some time generally speaking. In terms of storage devices for example, Seagate's 7200.12 series HDD's have ~ 31% failure rates from what I've seen, which is absolutely disgusting. Even their enterprise grade disks have been affected as well (ES series, which are based on the consumer models <both 7200 rpm SATA>; different firmware and a few additional sensors are all that separates them). So I've switched exclusively to Western Digital when the final word on parts selection is mine to make.
I get the impression you're after additional performance in areas that will improve your workflow, so the SSD comments have merit (VirtualRain's post offers a trove of helpful information).
Understandable.
But really all that separates a Mac from a PC these days, is the OS (few other things as well, such as firmware is EFI when most PC's are still BIOS, and the enclosure aesthetic of the MP is definitely distinctive). Same hardware platforms are used to build either (just make sure you're comparing like systems, as there is a tendency for posters to compare consumer PC's to the MP, which is a proper workstation).
Research is definitely necessary, as mistakes are expensive as well as aggravating.
Storage throughput could improve this to some extent, particularly if the RAID 1 volume is where the files are retrieved from/written back to, as the performance is that of a single disk for large files. IIRC, you've stated memory is sufficient (generally speaking, this could improve matters if it's paging out to disk).
Also keeping the OS and applications (including filters) on a separate disk, an SSD in particular, would speed things along for loading applications (SSD's are the fastest disk technology for random access performance, which is what OS/applications require).
In the case of Photoshop, it contains some very old code, as it still looks for a scratch disk (carry-over from the days when RAM was very expensive, so paging out to disk was much more cost effective). Hence the mention of using a small, inexpensive SSD for this, even if your memory capacity is truly fine (PS still hunts for a scratch volume, and it will slow you down if it's not present from what I understand).
But if the issues are in the software (disk I/O is up to speed, as well as memory capacity), including the filters, you'll have to file a bug report with the software vendor in order to get them to even consider improving matters in a future revision.
Ah, OK.
It's my understanding that Aperture does utilize multi-threading in many area, so it's more likely to do so I would think (allow it to keep up with threaded subsections).
Might be worth a phone call to find out for sure if you can (hint... hint...).
the OP has 24GB of RAM. look at that chart again. still think IO is his biggest problem?
Lloyd, in his rush to praise OWC (his sponsor), neglected to mention that with maximum memory installed and a 7200 RPM drive, it only took marginally longer than with an SSD. I'd venture to say that IO should be a last priority unless you have less than ~12GB of memory. coincidentally, the chart linked immediately above the section I quoted was for a test ran with 12GB.
of course, if the OP (or anyone else) were looking to upgrade memory or IO, there's a cost trade to look at there (more memory vs solid-state), but I doubt that's worth looking at here.
and I don't even know why you're bothering to mention triple/dual channel memory. since when did that bottleneck anyone?
OP: did you have the same problems on 10.6/Snow Leopard? I'm curious of upgrading to 10.7 introduced any more.
I think this is a software problem, and you're better off berating the plugin developers and Adobe...and Apple, while you're at it, since I doubt they're faultless.
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optimising PS
Has the OP looked at these links on optimising PS performance via preferences?
http://macperformanceguide.com/PhotoshopCS5-performance.html
http://macperformanceguide.com/OptimizingPhotoshopCS5-Intro.html
Maybe more relevant than the I/O stuff? Especially the sections on speeding up opening and saving files.
Has the OP looked at these links on optimising PS performance via preferences?
http://macperformanceguide.com/PhotoshopCS5-performance.html
http://macperformanceguide.com/OptimizingPhotoshopCS5-Intro.html
Maybe more relevant than the I/O stuff? Especially the sections on speeding up opening and saving files.
Yes, I think Lion would boot into the 64-bit kernel by default
given your setup. Wouldn't hurt to double-check if you have
not already done so, though.
System Information->Software->64 bit Kernel and Extensions.
It would be interesting to see Geekbench results for your Macs
and your previous Windows machine(s).
As far as his hardware goes, after CPU clock speed, storage IO is certainly a major bottleneck.
He can't solve the software design problems by himself - and complaining to Adobe, Apple and Plugin vendors isn't going to result in some new found productivity. So we're trying to give him ideas on stuff he actually has control over that might provide some benefit.
Agreed... this is great advice!