[patrickt]

I'm not enthusiastic about computers to flame but we do need a little honesty.

Your stats:
Windows. (times are approximate.)
1. Defrag hard drive--once a month--3 hours
2. Virus Scan--once a week--2hours
3. Adware scan---once a week--30 minutes
4. Spyware Scan--once a week--30 minutes
5. Registry Clean (to get rid of stuff that windows uninstaller can't seem to find when it uninstalls/deletes a file)--once a week--15 minutes

My stats:
Defrag- runs in the background so I never defrag -0
Virus scan- runs in the background -0
Ad-Aware- including updates -6:07
Sypbot - including updates -18:29
Registry Clean - I don't -0

Of course, while I'm doing all of those I can do other things suck as responding here while Spybot is running. It's been months since Spybot or Ad-Aware found anything bothersome so I suppose even bothering to run them is a little compulsive but it's part of my Sunday morning ritual--like reading the funnies.

[fletcherkane]

Again, just my personal observations...
Maybe my Mac has spyware somewhere on it...maybe it has a virus (I doubt it.)...maybe the disk needs to be defragged...all I know is that those things haven't presented issues on my Mac the way they do on my PC.
Again, I am not slamming PC's. I accept the maintenance hassles as part of the PC world. They have a much larger sharer of the market, and thus garner a larger portion of the hackers time and energy. I get this and accept it.
Again, I am not so naive as to think that my Mac is completely impervious to any attack...I've just never enountered any problems (nor have I met someone that has).
I do know this....and I know it is mainly just personal preference...whenever I have a choice of machines to work on, I find myself migrating to my Mac...

[and]

Anyone up for "Intel vs AMD" and/or "Nvidia vs ATI" while we are at it ?

[jmdeegan]

And-I'd take AMD every day...which is odd that I went to Mac (to try) when they went to the dual core intels....

As for the maintenance times, I agree more with patrickt's findings. My defrags don't take terribly long, nor spyware. don't run the other apps. I used to do registry cleanup, but found (from experience and other feedback) that it created as many problems as it was purported to resolve, so off it went.

Here's my position on my mac, which I've had now since the beginning of September, and I use as my home laptop now instead of lugging my work laptop back and forth all the time (only if I have work to do at home).
1-As I've added apps to it (bibble and other trials, for example) it's gotten less snappy. This is odd to me, as it was incredibly snappy to load apps and never hung at all prior to them, so perhaps I need to remove a few. Could also be memory, but for only having a gig, for the most part it seemed alright/quick.
2-especially now that a feature being pushed (as a prominent add-on in Leopard, and as standalone apps otherwise) is dual-booting/virtual machines, if you thought a mac was barely susceptible to virii and spyware before, think again. I treat it as a similar argument as to why there are few issues with Linux in these areas, when compared to windows--its not that the issues don't exist, its that 1-the user base is comparitively smaller, so the reports will be naturally lower, and 2-because the numbers aren't as significant, there are going to be fewer folks programming virii and making spyware for mac and linux respectively.

I've still had apps become unstable and restart, and actually probably with the same regularity (a few times a week). what I miss is that in windows, I know how to check things out, figure out why it happened and perhaps how to avoid it. with the mac, because i am new to it, its not as obvious.

i do chuckle though, im not a mac fanboy at all, but for those who i know who are (like a guy i work with who has more macs than i have pcs)....a lot seem to rush out to get bootcamp or similar running so they can dual-boot......can't escape windows.

depending on how things go, I may end up selling the macbook and getting a moderately equipped dell for the same or a little less, but without missing my right-clicks and what have you.

[AlexL]

Right. And everyone who honestly believes a Mac hard disk never needs defragmentation, or the Mac never gets a virus, or adware, or spyware, raise your hand. Didn't think so. Even Apple wouldn't make that claim.

I will raise my hand most of the way up, not all the way, and I do so as someone uses a Mac for specific technical reasons and also a long-time Windows user. I'm not a fanboy blindly defending everything, I use both systems extensively.

The HFS+ file system that Macs use prevents some fragmentation, and the OS X also automatically defrags files under 20 MB when they are moved, copied, or created. I have heard of people dealing with a lot of huge files daily (hundreds of megabytes, like videos) having fragmentation issues since the built-in preventative features can't keep up, those people use defragging software. Fragmentation can also become an issue if there isn't much hard-drive space free (I've heard less than 15% free, but I never verified it), since the preventative features need some free "wiggle-room" in order to work. Macs aren't immune to to fragmentation, but for most users it appears to be much less of an issue than on Windows.

There the issue of rebuilding directory structures, which is a very special kind of fragmentation, but it takes a few minutes to do and I make sure to do it once or twice a year.

Fragmentation issues could eventually be much less of an issue for Windows users once Microsoft gets the WinFS file system working, one of its features is much less file fragmentation, but WinFS got cut from Vista.

The only known OS X virus that made it into the "wild" I know of was OSX/Leap-A/OSX/Oompa-A from last year, with very limited damage and spreading. There was a recent OS X trojan that spread through a supposed porn video, but again there haven't been that many trojans. Microsoft never wrote a Mac version of their COM programming interface that was used in Outlook, which many viruses took advantage of to easily infect and spread to other unprotected Outlook running machines. So these kinds of viruses that once plagued many Windows users couldn't be rewritten or adapted for Macs anyway because there wasn't a similar interface for Macs, and Microsoft never bothered create a version for Macs. Recent versions of Outlook have now been patched up so this isn't as much of an issue in recent years for Windows users.

I don't think that the "market share" argument isn't that strong. It's probably plays some role, but Unix and Linux systems have a tiny user share, they dominate network and server systems, like in many business and production environments and running large chunks of the Internet. They're a huge and tempting target, and I think they've been proven to be far less vulnerable. This is not an all fair comparison, Unix systems have been on networks and dealing with such issues longer than Windows have, so maybe with more years Microsoft will be able to catch up. Since Macs are now much more Unix based, it's very easy to assume that they inherit many of the Unix security, and to a degree and very specific features I think it's true, but I don't think anyone can really say without more time, given that Macs have been expanding their marketshare in recent years will prove the real test.

Regardless of the reasons for far fewer viruses and trojans, it's not going to stop Mac users (like myself) from enjoying it and seeing how long it lasts.

Alex

[PDL]

Ok, I am going to chime in here. I own both a Mac and a PC. I do not claim to have more than a cursory knowledge of how either system "works" on the inside. All I know, is that I am much more productive on a Mac than a PC. And, it has nothing to do with being able to do certain things on my mac that I can't do on my PC. With the right software, my PC can do all the things that my Mac can do. What it comes down to is maintenance time. Let me chart it for you. I will outline the amount of time spent on my Windows machine per month doing routine maintenance, and the amount of time per month I spend on routine mainenance on my Mac....

Windows. (times are approximate.)
1. Defrag hard drive--once a month--3 hours
2. Virus Scan--once a week--2hours
3. Adware scan---once a week--30 minutes
4. Spyware Scan--once a week--30 minutes
5. Registry Clean (to get rid of stuff that windows uninstaller can't seem to find when it uninstalls/deletes a file)--once a week--15 minutes

I do know how this stuff all works (it is my job). And on my PC's at work - all these tasks run in the background - scheduled to run when I am home asleep - no impact on me at all. But this is not the question that I posed. And as for having a sick machine (slow, spyware, virus etc.) I have been using PC's (Radio-Shack Model I to quad Xeon dual cores - 16KB - that's KB of memory upgraded from 8KB - to 24GB of memory) since 1978 and I have never had a virus. I do practice due dilligence on where I go and what I open.

I am probably forgetting something, but just with the basic 5 I have listed, I count 16 hours a month that my windows machine spends cleaning junk off my hard drive. And, don't tell me these things aren't needed. Rare is the week when these programs don't find numerous issues, and if I skip a week on any of these, I immediately begin to notice slow downs in productivity and machine speed. snip

If you are having issues where spyware, malware and viruses are actively eating away at your machine - then you are going to places where you should not be going, opening unsolicited emails and quite possibly not patching your system. I would bet that you are also logging on as Administrator or a Admin level user. When you use a Mac - you do not do that by default and by not running, surfing opening bad ju-ju you are protected by the OS. Windows (based on NT) does the same thing - but time after time I hear "it's too hard" not to run as an admin. Excuse my language but BS.

Oh - when I earned my degree in CS I was the only student running Pascal and Ada on a PC - the other students were using Apple IIc's (Just as Mac's were being introduced and when Widows was just getting started). Our main "business" machine for COBOL and Assembly Language was a Dec PDP11. (Yeah, I had to take COBOL to get my degree - I am that old)

Again, I am aware that there really isn't anything you can do on a Mac that you can't do on a PC. My Mac just (at least to me) seems to do it all with much less headache and frustration. I am not interested in why my Mac isn't as suseptible to all the Windows problems. I am interested in getting work done, and my Mac simply allows me to get more done in less time.

Now, let the flaming begin...

Ah - now here is an answer to my inquiry. Can you tell if an image was processed on a Mac or PC - or Linux/UNIX box. Nope. Are there pieces of software that let you do things differently on each platform? Yes. Are there specific applications that only run on that particular platform? Yes. But overall, there is nothing that I can do on my PC (manipulate images, make movies, burn multimedia etc.) that you can not do on a Mac and visa versa.

Get what makes you happy, get the work done and show off what you can do. I do not give a rip if it is off a Mac (OS 9.x OS/X.x), Linux (Debian, Red Hat, Ubutu, SUSe ad nosium), UNIX (Solarius, IRIX, AIX, ad nosium), XENIX, VMS, MVS, RISTS, MS-DOS, TRS-DOS or Windows. If you think about what you are doing - you will be able to compute with relative safety and PP to your hearts content.

The Elitist - formerly known as PDL

[fletcherkane]

I shoulda known better than to reply to any thread on any forum anywhere that opens the discussion of apple vs. microsoft....
I've read many threads and chuckled many times about all the vitriolic hatred for one operating system over the other being spewed in both directions...
I thought, just this once, I would share some personal thoughts and observations. This, after all, is a friendly place....
I was wrong. This place isn't any different....
I don't know why i expected anything else.

[PDL]

fletcherkane - you use the word flame - then expect what?

This was not a Apple vs MS vs Linux thread, but one as to why the perception that Mac's are better at PP images than any other platform. All this stuff about virus, spyware and other malware came out of left field - has nothing to do with PP.

Just because you own a Mac does not imply that you are a "better" photographer and visa versa. Explain to me how the hardware/OS of your personal computer makes you a better photographer than I.

The Elitist - Formerly known as PDL

[jmdeegan]

I only started this to gauge this user group on mac/windows PP usage, because my feeling was that photo magazines were helping perpetuate the urban legend that macs are superior in multimedia apps, as most of the handful ive purchased in the last month or so, primarily when showing pictures of pp, are of pp running on a mac. very few token shots of pp on vista/xp.

I've been a lifelong Windows user, and I got the macbook..just to try it, see what folks were raving about. And probably the few things I use it for that are snappier than windows, aren't enough for me to say macs rule (I like that OS X booted up to usable quicker than XP; i like the speed of imovie importing dv footage; i like ripping my dvds via handbrake). I wasn't trying to start the bad idea of debating maintenance for one platform via the other. Besides, especially when running the better multi-core systems, or using the scheduling to your advantage, no one should ever lose productivity to typical PC maintenance. The only times I ever had to stop what I was doing and just let a process run, were if I was processing/transcoding in Adobe Premiere, or if I was running some DVD encoding or burning. However, both of these system hogs went away when I moved from single-core to dual core, and added some RAM.

I don't think anyone's been too harsh-most have helped support the conclusion I arrived at, that macs, while nice, don't really have inherent advantages over PCs anymore. I like the firewire, but I've had firewire on my desktop and laptop systems for years thanks to add-on cards. As for a unix based OS being more robust, it's hard to argue that generally, but it wasn't an argument worth having.

Its just that when folks bring up things like PC support/maintenance/security, those IT professionals among us-myself included-are likely to take umbrage at some numbers. I help a lot of friends and family out with tech issues, so I've seen the maintenance take forever, but usually it is caused by one of a couple things--older hardware, maintenance that's been neglected, or someone who frequents alot of the undesirable corners of the 'net.

That said, I am more and more leaning toward selling the macbook....not that I don't like it, but I'd rather re-use software I have on hardware it was designed for, as opposed to using the vm software to run windows on the mac. If I still had regular access to my desktop, I wouldn't even have worried about the macbook...

[fletcherkane]

fletcherkane - you use the word flame - then expect what?

This was not a Apple vs MS vs Linux thread, but one as to why the perception that Mac's are better at PP images than any other platform. All this stuff about virus, spyware and other malware came out of left field - has nothing to do with PP.

Just because you own a Mac does not imply that you are a "better" photographer and visa versa. Explain to me how the hardware/OS of your personal computer makes you a better photographer than I.

The Elitist - Formerly known as PDL

I know....I used the word flame half joking. I really didn't expect to receive any.
I was just posting my observations as to why it may seem like more people are switching to Mac, for PP or for anything else. I never said my mac makes me a better photographer. I never said that it runs Photoshop better. As I said, I own and work on both platforms and was simply stating the reasons that I find myself migrating to the mac more than my windows machine.
Again, comfortable with both platforms. Understand that both, all hardware being equal, are capable of the same quality output.
My original reply was to simply state why I, for PP or anything else that I am leaning towards Mac over PC....

[Kami]

snip...
That said, I am more and more leaning toward selling the macbook....not that I don't like it, but I'd rather re-use software I have on hardware it was designed for, as opposed to using the vm software to run windows on the mac. If I still had regular access to my desktop, I wouldn't even have worried about the macbook...

If you use Bootcamp, then you are booting natively into Windows XP with full access to all of the Macbook hardware. There is no emulation involved.

[Gaelen]

Windows. (times are approximate.)
1. Defrag hard drive--once a month--3 hours
2. Virus Scan--once a week--2hours
3. Adware scan---once a week--30 minutes
4. Spyware Scan--once a week--30 minutes
5. Registry Clean (to get rid of stuff that windows uninstaller can't seem to find when it uninstalls/deletes a file)--once a week--15 minutes

Your routine there scares me....My work computer doesn't even get that much attention...And they're pretty anal here. Usually gets a good clean out every 3-6 months. It is your choice how uch you do that stuff, but unless you are constantly installing and uninstalling software and downloading things, most of it is redundant.

Well I work on PC's every day...I just prefer them, no real reason to it.

[jmdeegan]

I've tried paralells, not impressed. And I don't feel like dropping 130 for Leopard if I am thinking about selling, just to get Bootcamp-since its now the only way you get bootcamp.

My point was, I got a mac not to run OS X and Windows. Because I've never had a desire to dual boot in Windows, nor have I had the need.

Not saying I hate the macbook. Just, not in love with it like some people I work with are in love with theirs.

[Kami]

I've tried paralells, not impressed. And I don't feel like dropping 130 for Leopard if I am thinking about selling, just to get Bootcamp-since its now the only way you get bootcamp.

My point was, I got a mac not to run OS X and Windows. Because I've never had a desire to dual boot in Windows, nor have I had the need.

Not saying I hate the macbook. Just, not in love with it like some people I work with are in love with theirs.

If you want the advantages of OS X and Windows on a single computer then there really isn't much in the way of an alternative - you need to dual boot on a Mac. VM type apps are obviously way too slow for your needs.

If you purchased your Macbook after Oct. 1 then you might want to pick up the phone and call Apple Support to see if they will sell you the Leopard upgrade for $9.95. Even if you bought it just before Oct.1 you may still want to give them a call and explain that you are a "switcher". Never know, they may still sell you the upgrade to Leopard.

And I don't think anyone answered your question about right clicking on a Mac in OS X.

1) Hold down the CTRL key and tap the track pad (if you have tapping turned on via the System Preferences) or hold down the CTRL key and click the button
2) Use any USB 2 button mouse and right click away (just about every USB mouse works with OS X)

[Kaimarx]

Macs are always in mags because they pay through the roof to be there. PC's is not so easy to advertise because...well....no one company really "owns" the PC platform. As far as workflow is concerned Macs are popular because their much easier to use...they were designed to be efficient for the industry user from the get go at the expense of customization. Personally i prefer to use PC because i know exactly how to run my machine inside and out, upgrade my components or basically build one from scratch....all at a fraction of the cost of buying a pro mac and much more powerful. Most of friends own g5 Macs and they are very powerful machines, i just dont like the idea of sending my computer away to some else to customize when i can do it myself for free.