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Sean's review of the Apple Mac Pro is very interesting

wparsonsgisnet

By wparsonsgisnet
in Digital Forum

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sean_reid

sean_reid

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It's not a mountain out of a molehill article, Imants, if one is contemplating the change or is tweaking the Mac Pro for photography. But to each his or her own. Mountains and molehills are very much in the eyes of the beholders. Not every article can be interesting to everyone.

 

Bill, for example, only discusses my articles when they're of interest to him. This one was useful to him but not to you. That's how it goes.

 

------------

 

There are a few reasons that I run some, though not most, programs in Windows. The first is that I have a voluminous and complex set of information in Eudora and this does not translate well to Eudora for Mac. The second is that there are specific features in BB Pro that I can't yet find elsewhere and Chris Breeze does not make a Mac version of that (though I've been talking to him and trying for one).

 

The third, and this is the least important, is that I find text (smoothed or unsmoothed) to be more readable in Windows. So I often run FireFox in Windows. This is a luxury, though, and I wouldn't run Windows for just that purpose.

 

I'm using VMWare Fusion and it works very well so long as the application operates "within its own world". The challenge comes when, for example, I want to use BB Pro to browse and organize MFS hard drives. Using MacDrive 7, I can do that but the lag times are just awful. My drives are either direct SATA 2 or E-Sata 2 and this lag slows access times to a crawl.

 

One can format all the drives in FAT32 but that system isn't very efficient with partitions larger than 32 GB. Since I use a bunch of 500 GB drives, that isn't workable for me.

 

Temporarily, for certain projects, I'm using an external USB, FAT 32, Seagate drive (100 GB in three partitions) and I can switch between having Mac or Fusion control the drive (without rebooting). When Fusion controls the drive, it's as fast, with BB Pro for example, as a USB2 drive can be.

 

So, the advance that would be very useful for me would be for programs in Fusion to be able to access HFS drives with no read or write lag. I'm going to contact Fusion and discuss this.

 

FTP also runs better in Windows so far; I'm not sure why and am experimenting with FTP clients.

 

Otherwise, for the "heavy duty" software: RAW conversion, Photoshop CS3, etc. I'm all Mac. If I can gradually find a way to migrate to Mac for everything I will but the current arrangement works well for me save for the drive lag. If I could fix that, dual OS is fine with me for now.

 

Also, with Windows I use RegMechanic regularly and it helps keep things running smoothly.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

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MPerson

MPerson

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William,

One modest piece of advice from a Macophile since 15 years (2 minor glitches after about 8 or 9 machines, laptops and desktops) :

- in case of intensive use (my PPC 2x2.5GHz is on 12 hours a day) springclean your HD once a week with "Socks" (previously SOX) MKD Software (I run it since 3 years with excellent results — a 10 minutes operation on a 250 Gb disk)

- once or twice a quarter, run Drive Genius to defrag and check your HD

;)

 

 

I also use MacJanitor

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Jamie Roberts

Jamie Roberts

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I've just checked my Windows 2003 server and it's been up for 233 days...

 

Mark I'm with you; though there is a very big book of Windows annoyances (not the least of which is that 64bit XP/Vista still has application compatibility issues), with XP Pro at least (and the other post Win200x variants) OS reliability is not really a core issue anymore.

 

My main XP Pro machine only gets rebooted when application upgrades or virus upgrades demand it. Now, if I could just run more than 3.5 GB of RAM. Oh, and if only FW worked properly for removable drives... And so on...:D

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sean_reid

sean_reid

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Hiya Jamie,

 

That's the rub and that's what pushed me to switch over. 64-bit Windows doesn't yet play well with many drivers, some software, etc. and 32-bit is, of course, limited to a theoretical 4 GB and less in practice. Of course, 3.5 is plenty for some but not for the stuff you and I are doing.

 

I'm running 6 now in the Mac and will go t0 8-10 down the line.

 

I did find that XP, well-maintained, ran pretty well and I said this in the article. There was no Windows bashing, as Bill mentioned, for a change of pace from most of these articles/discussions.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

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Eoin

Eoin

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I've just checked my Windows 2003 server and it's been up for 233 days...

 

So I take it you have not applied any of the updates for the past 8 months :eek:

 

I would have something the same other than for the updates. On the other hand, my Warp Server SMP and the 15 workstations around the plant would have an uptime in excess of 4 years.... now there was an operating system that was rock solid.

 

For my personal use (other than work) I use a G5 PPC and a MBP, I got into macs just for Aperture and have had no real problems. If and when I upgrade the office systems I'd seriously consider Macs providing I could get the back office accounts system running on it.

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wparsonsgisnet

wparsonsgisnet

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... Bill, for example, only discusses my articles when they're of interest to him. This one was useful to him but not to you. That's how it goes. Cheers,

 

Sean

 

Well, even though I pay my subscription fee, Sean keeps writing about things I'm not interested in. :)

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harmsr

harmsr

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Sean,

 

You may want to look at a program for the MAC called "Fetch" to handle all you FTP work. It is cheap, very fast, and also intuitive.

 

I do any work on the pages in the Adobe CS3 applications then upload, organize, and download to the FTP site with "Fetch".

 

Best,

 

Ray

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jrc

jrc

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I like the toaster-like aspects of the Mac, because I've very little interest in computers per se -- on the other hand, I've had trouble with most of my Macs at one time or another, since shifting over four or five years ago (I now have four of them -- one G5 Mac tower, 2 iMacs and one MacBookPro; I got rid of another Powerbook some time ago.) My feeling is that in general, Mac hardware is NOT as stable as a mainline Windows machine from a well-known maker like Dell. The software is more stable, but there's much less of it.

 

My MacBook pro is just at the beginning of some problems, I think -- the screen shows wild jiggley lines when I boot up, and yesterday, for the first time, the whole thing suddenly turned itself off in mid-program (Word.) It will no longer rip a CD to iTunes; iTunes freezes after ripping one or two songs. The problem is, I can't reliabily force the machine to show the faults, so I haven't yet taken it to the Apple store. If you do change over, be sure to buy the Apple service plan, because it's quite possible that you will need it. It's an expensive rip-off, but cheaper than throwing away a 13-month-old Mac.

 

Mac (I think Steve Jobs) also takes a pretty peremptory stance on deciding what you will need and won't -- like the number of ports and so on; and they seem to think you won't need many.

 

All in all, I've been thinking of changing back, but it's so inconvenient, that I haven't. (Also, there is no good MacBook travel solution yet -- the Air is not a candidate for most of us.)

 

JC

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Jamie Roberts

Jamie Roberts

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Hiya Jamie,

 

That's the rub and that's what pushed me to switch over. 64-bit Windows doesn't yet play well with many drivers, some software, etc. and 32-bit is, of course, limited to a theoretical 4 GB and less in practice. Of course, 3.5 is plenty for some but not for the stuff you and I are doing.

{snipped}

 

Sean, you're so right. I cringe a little every time I start up Photoshop... Working on album spreads with layers in full resolution is enough to bring PS to a crawl on my system (or at least it seems that way).

 

Ah well. I haven't read your article yet, but I will ;) I'm trying not to spend money on different system; I just emailed the computer guy I buy from all the time about a RAID and he emailed back a quote for a brand new Vista 64 bit machine, which evidently won't run my iPod Touch... so that's that for now ;)

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charlesphoto99

charlesphoto99

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Sean,

 

You may want to look at a program for the MAC called "Fetch" to handle all you FTP work. It is cheap, very fast, and also intuitive.

 

I do any work on the pages in the Adobe CS3 applications then upload, organize, and download to the FTP site with "Fetch".

 

Best,

 

Ray

 

Yes I was going to mention this too.

 

Macs aren't infalible but they've always made more sense to me esp since the introduction of OSX. The way things are labeled and organized seem more intuitive, and yes, more aesthetic. Though my wife being a p.m. at Microsoft the Mac/PC wars wage daily on the home front. I actually turn a bit red and feel bad when those mac/pc ads come on tv.

 

Anyway, you'll enjoy the Mac. I couldn't imagine life without one. And yeah, you might want to figure in an iPhone on your budget.:D :D

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zapp

zapp

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I am a Windows person, working with Mac only. After acquiring a digital medium format back, I got a Mac book pro for raw data development in the original software - much better results than camera raw (brrr). Besides that my Mac runs windows only. With bootcamp and macdrive this is a very nice compromise - Macs are lacking a couple keys on the laptop keyboards, under windows I need some fancy key combination to write an @ , but all this is minor. My images are used after processing in a Windows only environment and I have no trouble these days working with windows on the Mac.

What is lacking from my mac book pro: More USB ports, a Fire Wire 800 port (the latest mac books have one). My board has a problem after 15 months, because I cannot charge the battery anymore (battery is fine). Repair or even opening and replacing anything inside is a a costly pain. A single USB port does not supply enough power to my external disks. I don't like the need for an adapter using VGA monitors (beamer).

What is great: Design, "the complete all in one and everything is great feeling", speed, monitor, powered Fire Wire 400 port - looking at the newer faster machines already.

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Michael-IIIf

Michael-IIIf

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Sean,

 

You may want to look at a program for the MAC called "Fetch" to handle all you FTP work. It is cheap, very fast, and also intuitive.

 

I do any work on the pages in the Adobe CS3 applications then upload, organize, and download to the FTP site with "Fetch".

 

Best,

 

Ray

 

Even cheaper is Cyberduck | FTP for Mac OS X. It's free :)

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wattsy

wattsy

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Otherwise, for the "heavy duty" software: RAW conversion, Photoshop CS3, etc. I'm all Mac.

 

These are the things that usually seem to work faster on a PC (especially RAW conversion). Mac (which I've used for 20 years) has, for me, always been about the overall computing experience.

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wattsy

wattsy

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That's the rub and that's what pushed me to switch over. 64-bit Windows doesn't yet play well with many drivers, some software, etc. and 32-bit is, of course, limited to a theoretical 4 GB and less in practice. Of course, 3.5 is plenty for some but not for the stuff you and I are doing.

 

I think you'll find that, even on a 64-bit Mac OX machine, Photoshop can only directly access around 3.5 GB of RAM. The remainder of the RAM is made available to PS by the OS as a kind of 'RAM scratch disc'.

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sean_reid

sean_reid

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Sean,

 

You may want to look at a program for the MAC called "Fetch" to handle all you FTP work. It is cheap, very fast, and also intuitive.

 

I do any work on the pages in the Adobe CS3 applications then upload, organize, and download to the FTP site with "Fetch".

 

Best,

 

Ray

 

Hi Ray,

 

Thanks. That's the one I'm using now but its slow over a satelllite connection.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

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