PC vs. Mac for Digital Photography Tasks
Happy New Year! Sorry I’m six days late. I’ve been struggling to get back into my groove since getting back from the Philippines.
Just ran into this article via the PhotographyBLOG… it’s a great comparison between the Mac and PC in terms of processing speed for digital photography tasks. I’ve been itching at getting a Mac as our next home computer, but maybe I’ll wait. Aside from OS X and the cool looking machines, it’s still slightly behind the PC when it comes to speed.
[via Rob Galbraith DPI: A report on processing performance]
Though we haven’t published specific performance numbers for laptops in this report, we did run a Mac Powerbook and a Dell laptop through a subset of the same tests. The 15-inch Powerbook G4, powered by a G4/1.25GHz processor, was thumped in every test by a Dell Inspiron 8500 and its P4-M processor running at 2.6GHz. Until Apple is able to stuff a G5 processor inside one of its sexy Powerbook cases, portable Macs are likely to remain noticeably slower than their PC counterparts.
January 29th, 2004 at 10:12 AM PST
It depends what you’re going for - speed of functionality. I’m a network engineer who deals largely with Windows boxen during the day, and my Mac at night.
Believe me - the current G4 may not stack against the Intel boxes in speed, but it’s way more useable - something I decided was more important a year ago when I switched.
I use my Mac everyday for everything from email to music production to film editing. It just works.
February 11th, 2004 at 9:16 AM PST
I’d tend to disagree with that article. It really depends on what you’re doing, and for the most part you’re comparing apples to oranges. I have an Athlon XP at home that runs at 2.1GHz that will stomp out p4 2.5GHz+, so don’t let the speed rating alone get to you.
I bought a brand new g4 iBook last fall when they came out, and I haven’t even looked back since then. I work as a PC repair tech during the school, and greatly look forward to when I can go home at night to my mac. It may be a measly 800MHz, but unless I try to run games on it, I don’t really even notice. Like said in the previous comment, it just works. I use it for my digital photography, email, web development, and about anything else besides gaming.
I would also agree that its about usability and not speed alone. I can get the same work done in a fraction of the time when I’m using my mac simply because it works and I don’t have to fight with it while I’m working. iPhoto has worked beyond my expectations with 3 different cameras so far.
I actually enjoy using it so much, I just bought a used beige g3 for my fiance to use, mainly with iPhoto and her camera (so she doesn’t have to borrow my iBook every time she takes pictures.) Its a psaltry 300mhz computer so its no ferarri of macs, but I guarantee it will hold its own against pc’s running much faster.