Rather than cracking, if you haven't already tried then speak with Adobe. It is not unheard of for them to allow cross-grades as it were.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Graphic Design - Mac or PC?
- Thread starter definitive
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Rather than cracking, if you haven't already tried then speak with Adobe. It is not unheard of for them to allow cross-grades as it were.
For me it's the other way around. It all comes down to how entrenched you are on either platform. I've used PCs since 1992 and Macs occasionally since 1996 and daily since about 2003 (i.e. all my relevant Mac experience is from the OS X era). And I'm just so much faster on a Windows PC. With the Mac it kind of feels like trying to run waist deep in maple syrup. All the little Mac quirks like the fact that only the bottom right corner has a resize handle, or that application menus live in a bar at the top of the screen, or that you don't have full Finder functionality within the boundaries of a load or save dialog, or the window clutter that comes with SDI (Windows is still predominantly MDI)... it all makes me lose seconds every minute and minutes every hour, even after 6 years... and ever so often you're interrupted by a stupid jumping globe in the Dock, when Program Updates finds something and wants to share its unbridled enthusiasm about some useless "Camera Raw" update which will require a reboot for no apparent reason.
But I know it's not the Mac's fault as such, it's just a dog person/cat person type thing. For some, the Mac switch is an epiphany, and for others like myself it's a wee fart in the wind.
There are two areas where the Mac serves me better, though. The first is font management, it's really nifty on Mac and sucks miserably on Windows -- it's from the stone age, and actually got worse in Vista because all font utilities (such as the ancient ATM, which I kept using because it was still better than Windows) stopped working thanks to UAC. They've finally revamped it in Windows 7, though, for the first time since... oh... Windows 3.11. Now you can manage fonts in families, enable/disable them and so forth.
The second thing is QuickLook that was introduced with Leopard. I just love being able to hit space to preview pretty much anything, including PSD files that don't even get basic thumbnails on Windows.
So if you ask me, it's a tossup... the relevant applications all have identical cross-platform functionality, it all comes down to which system keeps you more productive, and that's where the dog person/cat person thing comes in. Neither platform is universally "better", neither is tailor made for you, but one is guaranteed to suit you better than the other.
I'm not sure what you mean by that. I can create new folders, drag folders into the sidebar (which I can't do on Windows)...I can even drag a finder window icon or program icon into the dialog box and, rather than copy the file or folder, it moves me to that folder - something that saves me loads of time while attempting to traverse our über-nested file hierarchy at work.
How many of you knew that in most program windows and in Finder windows, you can click and drag the icon in the title bar as though it were an actual file or folder? I find that very handy.
I do, however, agree with you on personal preference. If you've been using Windows since the days of DOS, you're going to be faster on Windows.
I honestly haven't checked if they've improved Finder functionality in Save & Load dialogs in Leopard, but what I mean is this...
Say I start working on a project and want to save my first file that I've completed in Photoshop, and then as I'm in the Save dialog I think hey, let's organize this project right from the beginning. So right there in the dialog I create folders, rename them, drag files in and out of folders etc, and then I save the file I was working on. A Save dialog is certainly not the ideal place to organize files, but the omnipresence of Windows Explorer allows for it, so why not...
The last time I tried the same on a Mac was probably in Tiger, and everything in the dialog was 'locked'. The only remotely funky thing I could do was create a new folder, but if I accidentally named it wrong I couldn't correct the problem in the dialog, I had to open a separate Finder window, navigate to the folder in question and organize it there.
Hopefully they'll beef up the Finder in Snow Leopard, it has a few shortcomings that makes it look kind of dated next to Vista. I remember one time when I moved a huge amount of files (well, 50 gigs or so) from one location to another, and when Vista stumbled upon a file that was open, it paused the copy process and asked me how I wanted to proceed - overwrite or save the separate copy - basically it pauses the process and lets me fix the issue with the culprit file so it can continue doing whatever it was doing. When I did a similar thing on Mac and it hit an open file, it just threw me some cryptic error message ("Error -13" or whatever) and stopped moving files halfway through the process, so I ended up with a jumbled mess of files, half of which had been copied but not moved per se, because the Finder copies all files and deletes them from the source location later, rather than actually move them.
Don't misunderstand me, I *want* the Mac to be better in every way, if for nothing else than to give Microsoft something to aspire to. But amidst the cutting edge aspects of OS X there are some residual parts that reek of the Cretaceous era, like the overly intrusive and clunky Software Update applet. Where Windows Update generally installs things silently in the background, and all I notice is a tray icon that pops up and then disappears, Apple Software Update goes HELLO! HELLO! HELLO! I FOUND AN UPDATE!!!!, and then it always wants to reboot the system for even the most miniscule of updates, and usually I have to click through some infernal license agreement crap, as if I would suddenly have stopped agreeing between QuickTime 7.0 and QuickTime 7.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.1... and I hate how the Mac talks to my NAS drive. In Windows it just pops up and you use Map Network Drive, and voilá, the NAS drive is treated like a local drive until I say otherwise. In Leopard, the NAS drive didn't appear automatically at all, I had to either disable the firewall entirely to make it show up, or mount it and have it show up not by its name but as smb://192.168.0.X... or I could drag the share to Startup Objects so it would mount automatically, but then I'd get a stupid Finder window thrown in my face on every bootup. OS X is a weird mix of 2010 and 1997. Please make it 2010 across the board...
What is more important
Mac OS
+ OSX is still the most stable platform and easiest to use
+ Not having to mess with conversions (it is a good point)
+ When apps crash (and they do) your entire system isn't FOBAR
+ Not being shunned by snooty designers (we are be honest)
+ Can run windows via virual or bootcamp.
- Lack of hardware choices forcing you to spend minimum $3,200 for their only real design machine. (running photoshop, illustrator, inDesign, lightroom with 4GB on an iMac sucks)
- Lack of 3rd party apps (especially free ones)
- Forced kool-aid drinking creates reality-distortion field around you making it impossible to fault apple for any decision they make. =)
VS
Windows
+/- Vista x64 isn't bad, don't listen to people but still OSX is better.
+ Save $1,500+ on hardware for same/faster computer (You only need xeon/ECC ram/4 HD bays/8 Cores for Video and 3D work)
+ Access more ram in x64 version of CS4
+ 11ty billion more free apps/online support forums/communities
- Learn to surf net/download smarter
- Mandatory firewall
- Potentially system killing Antivirus crapware (if you don't have a firewall and if you don't shame on you.)
- Build thick skin as fellow designers point, laugh and shun you as they blind you with their glossy macbook pros. =)
Mac OS
+ OSX is still the most stable platform and easiest to use
+ Not having to mess with conversions (it is a good point)
+ When apps crash (and they do) your entire system isn't FOBAR
+ Not being shunned by snooty designers (we are be honest)
+ Can run windows via virual or bootcamp.
- Lack of hardware choices forcing you to spend minimum $3,200 for their only real design machine. (running photoshop, illustrator, inDesign, lightroom with 4GB on an iMac sucks)
- Lack of 3rd party apps (especially free ones)
- Forced kool-aid drinking creates reality-distortion field around you making it impossible to fault apple for any decision they make. =)
VS
Windows
+/- Vista x64 isn't bad, don't listen to people but still OSX is better.
+ Save $1,500+ on hardware for same/faster computer (You only need xeon/ECC ram/4 HD bays/8 Cores for Video and 3D work)
+ Access more ram in x64 version of CS4
+ 11ty billion more free apps/online support forums/communities
- Learn to surf net/download smarter
- Mandatory firewall
- Potentially system killing Antivirus crapware (if you don't have a firewall and if you don't shame on you.)
- Build thick skin as fellow designers point, laugh and shun you as they blind you with their glossy macbook pros. =)
Is it, though?
Let's be completely honest here.
I've used Windows foverer. Well, since 1992. Up until Windows 2000, which was released in 1999 I think, Windows was ludicrously unstable and either the apps, or Windows Explorer, or both, would crash/hang/freeze several times daily. But all subsequent versions built on the NT platform, i.e. Win2K, XP, Vista and Win7, are much, much more stable, and they also have a lot of fallback technology built in, in terms of error handling and reporting. If you do get a crash, Windows is fairly informative about it and gives you the option to keep an eye out for fixes relating to this particular crash, even if the culprit is a third party.
OS X on the other hand is sort of in denial about crashes, because the system that "just works" is too aloof for that kind of stuff. Once you do get them, "informative" isn't the word I would use. Rather, it resorts to pre-OS X style error handling like throwing you cryptic codes that you have to look up with Google. We've all laughed at classic Windows error messages, but really, is "Error 102" any better? (it means "System is too old for this ROM", supposedly.)
And let's be honest, Macs do crash. Perhaps no more than Windows, but shall we say more primordially, without any sophisticated error handling. The upshot of Microsoft's screwups in the 90's is that their pants are still down, and they're constantly working on improving everything that relates to errors, crashes, security holes and all the things that gave them a bad rep in the 90's.
The introduction of Vista was quite the ordeal, due to the fact that Microsoft changed the driver model completely so that all drivers run in user mode rather than kernel mode. It took a while for hardware manufacturers to migrate to Vista style drivers. I was an early Vista adopter (2 days after the public release, specifically), and it took about 3 months before all hardware drivers I needed were sufficiently, and yet another 3 months before the system was stable. That's bad, but not too bad considering the substantial changes to the core technology.
I bought an iMac just after Leopard was released, and I gotta say it was pretty much FUBAR initially. There were grave issues, like the fact that if you saved CS3 documents (PSD etc) to a network share, the files were literally destroyed. There were tons of people who had a "BSOD" thing with Leopard where you'd get a light blue screen for ages before the the desktop showed up, if it ever did.
Perhaps the initial release of Leopard was no more trouble ridden than Vista, but then again, look at the odds. Apple has complete control of both the hardware, the OS and a fair chunk of the most popular software for the platform. Leopard only had to work on a very limited range of hardware configurations that had been done according to Apple's exact specifications. Microsoft had zero control over the hardware configurations that Vista had to deal with, there are millions of combinations of internal and external components. Microsoft's job was a billion times more difficult, unpredictable and arbitrary. So which system is tougher and more stable? Which one can take more crap thrown at it? If Leopard would hang due to some miniscule third-party add-on like DivX for Tiger not having been updated for Leopard, was that a more stable system than Vista was?
Just sayin'.
Well that is what I meant
If you are doing design 8hr/day on it you are more than likely going to want at least 3-4 apps open at the same time. I find myself with mail, photoshop, illustrator, word, cybderduck, firefox and itunes open 90% of the time so yeah 4GB starts to go quickly.
Whoa I didn't mean to get your riled up! (I had to say something like that or I would have been flame-bait!) My 2007 iMac crashes/hangs etc too, and trust me read some of my other posts and you will know I'm far from an apple apologist.
Plus I did note "+ When apps crash (and they do) your entire system isn't FOBAR" which is true, the crash but I can force quit them. Even in Vista if something crashes it can lock up the entire computer. Man I wish they would fix that.
Oh, I'm not riled up at all! All I care about is getting the best possible workflow, regardless of whatever platform it's on. I just try to keep the discussion honest because I know a few hardcore Mac fanbois who can't be reasoned with in an honest fashion. One of them literally cried when Apple announced they were switching to Intel a couple of years ago, and he maintained with frightening ferocity that a Mac Mini G4 was faster than the fastest Intel-based Windows desktop machine at the time. When we did a shootout where my old Centrino laptop (1.6 GHz) ran circles around the Mac Mini G4, he insisted that the applications we were using weren't properly optimized for Mac. It gets really hard to have an honest and informative discussion when people are so biased that they lie without meaning to be dishonest. I get especially annoyed when it's blatantly apparent that they haven't used Windows in ages, if ever, and use stereotypical arguments along the lines of "oh but don't you know it gets swamped with viruses and malware as soon as you switch it on, and it crashes constantly". That wasn't even true for Windows ME, which was the worst version ever.Whoa I didn't mean to get your riled up! (I had to say something like that or I would have been flame-bait!) My 2007 iMac crashes/hangs etc too, and trust me read some of my other posts and you will know I'm far from an apple apologist.
Plus I did note "+ When apps crash (and they do) your entire system isn't FOBAR" which is true, the crash but I can force quit them. Even in Vista if something crashes it can lock up the entire computer. Man I wish they would fix that.
I've stuck with the PC in a field where it's subjected to even more scorn than in the graphics biz -- namely music and audio production -- and it's served me really well over the years. But I'm not a Mac hater by any stretch of the imagination; I do have some serious reservation about Apple and their practices, but not enough to keep me from using their products. I have an iMac, an iPhone, two Mac Minis, half a dozen iPods... I just steer clear of the "church of Apple" type community because it gets a little too narcissistic and creepy, Scientology-style.
Anyway, I've had a few bad Vista crashes but I've never encountered one that locks up the entire computer in the 2+ years that I've used it daily. That's sort of the point of Vista. In XP, if something that used Kernel level drivers (such as the video vard) crashed, you'd get a blue screen of death and all data was irrevocably lost; in Vista, it's in user mode so the machine simply recovers if the video card driver crashes. I really don't understand why people are having such problems with Vista. It sucks in many ways -- in particular, it tortures the hard disk incessantly with a myriad of background processes like Windows Defender, Defrag, SuperFetch and all that, but in terms of stability, I've had zero issues after the initial 3-month bumpy ride, which is less than in XP.
Well that is what I meant
If you are doing design 8hr/day on it you are more than likely going to want at least 3-4 apps open at the same time. I find myself with mail, photoshop, illustrator, word, cybderduck, firefox and itunes open 90% of the time so yeah 4GB starts to go quickly.
Yeah, 4GB is no longer enough anymore. I usually run Photoshop, iTunes, Mail, Coda, Safari and some other small ones and ram fills up very quickly.
As for the question. I don't think it really makes a difference. I have been using Photoshop CS4 in Windows 7 for a while now and it seems just fine to me. I have not had any crashes. It gets hung up at times but that is to be expected as I run many things at once.
I think it's really up to you some things mac does better some things Windows does better. Neither of them crash often, and when they do it's only the program. The good thing about buying windows is you have many choices when buying a computer not just a few. There are also many more configurations.
If you want 64 bit then windows is your choice especially with adobe CS4 because it allow more ram to be used by the application.
It's not just "allowed," it's common practice. Call Adobe at 1-800-833-6687 and ask them to set you up. It's no secret.
Crossgrade is all fine and well, but Adobe are such cheapskates for not including the Windows and Mac versions on the same DVD. In my business (audio software) it's common practice to do that. We'd be jerks to force people to buy two separate licenses if they have one PC and one Mac, when the license agreement allows for installation on two computers provided that you don't use them simultaneously. And now with Bootcamp the agreement technically allows for installation on two platforms on the same computer, or 4 in total.
Right if they offered me what I know I can build myself for $1,500 that would spank even the 8core MP for everything but serious video compositing ( 2.93 i7, 12GB DDR3 1333, 2x 1 TB Hard drives, 4850 1GB card, SB XFI 7.1 etc) on the mac platform every complaint I have would go away and I would be like the other happy-go-lucky mac users, but the reality is that product doesn't exist and won't by the looks of things.
I'd even buy one if they took my $1,500 rig and marked it up to $2k I would still buy it because that would be 50% the cost of a MP with the same amount of ram/video card upgrade/2nd HD!
Yep tried and go the big rasberry.... they were surprisingly uninterested.... I'd heard about the cross overs before but I had no luck with it. Cracks etc are an absolute last resort for me as I'd rather not have to worry about getting caught out with updates etc.
Sounds fishy. The crossgrade is standard practice for Adobe. Was your original copy paid for or was it also cracked?
Oh emotionless internet
Sometimes I hate the internet because I was being sarcastic.
I actually agree with you on most of your points and I can't stand a die-hard apologist in either the windows or apple camp. I was just pointing out my feelings on the matter that overall OSX has been better (mostly because XP crashes in my previous corporate world on low-end Dells, and Vista pre-SP1 wasn't so nice) and my thoughts for a graphic designer and gave my two cents on what I see as good/bad aspects. And I commend you for going against the grain and taking a few punches, it isn't easy!
The biggest issue was pointed out by someone else and you do run into font/conversion/style sheet issues between programs, especially quark and indesign, that could cause a headache if everyone you are working with uses a mac and you are on a pc. In that situation you should be using the same platform to save time/money. (The reverse is also true, get a pc then)
Sometimes I hate the internet because I was being sarcastic.
I actually agree with you on most of your points and I can't stand a die-hard apologist in either the windows or apple camp. I was just pointing out my feelings on the matter that overall OSX has been better (mostly because XP crashes in my previous corporate world on low-end Dells, and Vista pre-SP1 wasn't so nice) and my thoughts for a graphic designer and gave my two cents on what I see as good/bad aspects. And I commend you for going against the grain and taking a few punches, it isn't easy!
The biggest issue was pointed out by someone else and you do run into font/conversion/style sheet issues between programs, especially quark and indesign, that could cause a headache if everyone you are working with uses a mac and you are on a pc. In that situation you should be using the same platform to save time/money. (The reverse is also true, get a pc then)
Now, they haven't. And the same goes for the upcomming Snow Leopard.
For Finder functions inside Open/Save dialogs, you need additional applications/utils like Default Folder X.
In that point, Windows (especially Vista/7) is far superior than MacOS.
For a long time now, there exist great tools, like FontLab's TransType and Asy's CrossFont, that can convert your fonts from Mac to Win and vice versa with 100% success (outline info, kerning etc.) ...
I'm using Acute Systems Crossfont and converted all my old Type1 fonts to OTF, that works great on both platforms. The same goes for Type1 fonts. These font conversion tools are mature now, it's just a personal matter, what platform you wan't to use.
Verbose, sure. Cryptic? Could you give an example of a cryptic error message that Vista or Win7 throws you? Not funny internet classics from strange alerts in third party apps under Windows 3.11, we've all seen those.Yes, we all know Windows never throws you cryptic error messages
Cryptic as in blatantly non-descript, random or utterly confusing...? I mean, "Error -13", Mac style, is pretty hard to beat. How hard is it to map these error codes to text strings that describe them in some detail?
It was paid for as well but not by me. I bought it off my ex-brother-in-law who purchased it himself, i think that played a big part in it.
Fishy or not, that's the facts Jack!
That's just so plain wrong. I know more graphic designers both freelancers and employed ones that work with iMacs or MacBook pros than Mac Pros. Many even still use G5s with around 2 gb ram & CS3/4. You simply DO NOT NEED a Mac Pro for graphic design anymore. For animation & video editing yes, but not for graphic design.
I have more stuff opened like you on my iMac with no problems right now Mail, Firefox, Adium, iCal, iTunes, Acrobat Pro, Illustrator CS4, InDesign CS4, Photoshop CS4 & Handbrake.
You don't have to do everything in Photoshop, vector programs are there for a reason.
Why are people still using the old "Windows is unstable" argument? What exactly is unstable about Windows? It hasnt been prone to crashes since Windows 98, I cant even remember the last time it crashed on me. Modern OS's do not have stability issues anymore, get some new material. Its not the OS's fault if your network at school or work is unstable and breaks everything since the techs thought it was a good idea to tie all the software and login information to the network.
Yeah that's true, finally good to here someone is informed, but it has to be said mac users, especially those who hang around on forums, have become more accepting of the fact that windows is decently made as opposed to 5 years ago, though Vista upon launch might have refuelled some debate.
I'm currently using Windows 7 in its beta stage on the mac mini and is performing very stable. It's crashed once, but it's a beta. Vista hasn't to my suprise crashed yet on my VAIO.
It's really a matter of preference now. I've got alot of friends who use home-built rigs for their graphic design work, but I've got just as many friends who are loyal to their Macs for all there graphic work.
It's not really a battle of which is more stable or better anymore, because there both pretty equal in that regard.
Windows 7 is easily the best software to come out of Microsofts studios
It's not really a battle of which is more stable or better anymore, because there both pretty equal in that regard.
Windows 7 is easily the best software to come out of Microsofts studios