Why no Mac Software?

JCitron said:
Today's Macintosh computers are a little better than the older machines, but Apple sacrafices a lot of hardware to make the machines work at a decent speed.
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Could you explain what hardware has been sacrificed please? As far as I am aware Macs have pretty much the same components as other computers.

Gandalf0444 said:
And another thing,if apple users want there mac to run windows programs and run like windows,why not just buy a PC? If I wanted my PC to work like a Mac wouldn't I just buy a Mac?
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I am considering buying a Mac to use software like iMovie, iPhoto and Garageband. To carry on using Trainz I also have to have the capacity to run PC software. Therefore my only option is a Mac.
 
I've worked with Macs since 1990 & PCs since 1985. I did support for both platforms at a publishing company. Macs are compromised today by having a lack of upgrade paths for video cards, unless you can swing getting a MacPro tower. So the rest of the Macs (non tower) are like other pre-fab comsumer electronics. The older Macs usually had a special upgrade slot (PDS) or NuBus slots, PCI/AGP slots, etc until Steve Jobs returned to Apple. Video cards for Macs were also a bit behind the PC based cards in the GPU area as Apple had to get involved in driver development. For most media development what Apple supplies for graphics in iMacs, MacBook Pros is all you would need. For high end graphics work-3ds Max is PC only, Maya works on Macs although getting a certified video card may require MacPro tower.

I have a cheapo PC with a PCIe slot that allows me an upgrade path to very recent video cards, as long as my power supply can supply the juice.

Erika
 
eeic4768 said:
I've worked with Macs since 1990 & PCs since 1985. I did support for both platforms at a publishing company. Macs are compromised today by having a lack of upgrade paths for video cards, unless you can swing getting a MacPro tower. So the rest of the Macs (non tower) are like other pre-fab comsumer electronics. The older Macs usually had a special upgrade slot (PDS) or NuBus slots, PCI/AGP slots, etc until Steve Jobs returned to Apple. Video cards for Macs were also a bit behind the PC based cards in the GPU area as Apple had to get involved in driver development. For most media development what Apple supplies for graphics in iMacs, MacBook Pros is all you would need. For high end graphics work-3ds Max is PC only, Maya works on Macs although getting a certified video card may require MacPro tower.

I have a cheapo PC with a PCIe slot that allows me an upgrade path to very recent video cards, as long as my power supply can supply the juice.

Erika
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Hi Erika and welcome to Trainz.

I too support and supported the Apple computers for the graphics industry. Right now I work at a manufacturer of digital proofing equipment and support everything from the Power Computing clones right through the current line of Macintosh computers.

Anyhow I agree for people to get what they really want out of a Macintosh they could get one heck of a PC and then some. You are correct about the video card options. I believe the only decent video card available for the tower machines, that is Maya certified, is the high-end Nvidia Quadro. These cards cost more than the machine that supports it.

John
 
If I need my next computer to run 3DS Max or Maya, I'll certainly give another PC very serious consideration.
 
amigacooke said:
Could you explain what hardware has been sacrificed please? As far as I am aware Macs have pretty much the same components as other computers.

I am considering buying a Mac to use software like iMovie, iPhoto and Garageband. To carry on using Trainz I also have to have the capacity to run PC software. Therefore my only option is a Mac.
Click to expand...

Imovie and IDVD are pretty good. My wife uses I believe iMovie to create really cool DVDs of our 2 year old daughter. The cool thing is they have these different templates and then you put your movies in. The templates create the root menu on the DVD where you select which movie to watch, some of them are pretty cool. Its also nice that on the Mac you can watch DVDs. I have Vista Ultimate, so I can watch DVDs already but for the other version of Vista you have to buy a DVD codec to watch movies.

Be careful of iPhoto. My wife uses iPhoto and he 1 year old mac book just ran out of memory on the 120 Gig hard disk. After looking around I found the iPhoto was using 50 Gigs! After I did a search online I found people complainign that iPhoto uses a lot of space. I guess if you change a photo then it keeps backup copies. People suggested using some other application. I don't remember the name but if you search on iPhoto and library then you will find articles complaining about it.
 
iMovie is just another video creator. The functionality can be found in products such as Pinnacle Studio which I use. The latest version of Pinnacle also supports the new ACVHD format so I was able to import the videos directly off of my camera without using any special conversion utilities.

iPhoto is okay. I've used it myself and I find it no different than many of the simililar applications for the PC. Corel among others sells a similar photo-library application.

Regarding the orginal poster's question, that was anwered probably 3 pages ago. This is now turned into the PC vs. Mac wars and it won't stop. :hehe:

I'm not here to flame the war, but as other posters have said and I agree, it takes way too much Mac hardware to do what you need to do the a straight PC thing.

Why would anyone to purchase really high-end hardware (cost-wise) like that that runs a special operating system and software only to reboot the machine to run the software like the rest of the world? This is like buying a high-end car and driving it to the market and never getting it out of first gear. Besides, for the same amount of money spent on a Mac tower, you can get one heck of a PC that will be even more powerful than the Mac that is priced equivlently.

John
 
JCitron said:
Why would anyone to purchase really high-end hardware (cost-wise) like that that runs a special operating system and software only to reboot the machine to run the software like the rest of the world? This is like buying a high-end car and driving it to the market and never getting it out of first gear. Besides, for the same amount of money spent on a Mac tower, you can get one heck of a PC that will be even more powerful than the Mac that is priced equivlently.

John
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OSX is, in my opinion a superior OS. Having used it since the first iteration it is far less trouble to maintain than Windows which I've been wrestling with since 3.1.

While some are worried about having to depend on one hardware supplier, others are worried about having to reply on one OS provider.

Much like which version of Trainz you use, I guess that the PC v Mac choice depends on what is most important to the individual user. Therefore it would follow there is no definitive answer.

PS Amiga OS 4 is the best of the lot. ;)
 
amigacooke said:
My guilty secret is that I don't actually have or use Amiga OS4, but the elite do. ;)
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Ahhhh! Amiga WB 1.4 (OS 1.4 to you non-Amiga users) - they were the days!! Apple Macs had microscopic gray scale only screens, MS DOS/Windows 3.1 had low resolution colour displays, the Amiga platform with 65,536 colours (16.7 million if you had the ColourBurst video card) beat them all.

My school had two computer rooms of Amiga computers.

Peter Ware
 
amigacooke said:

Boot camp - Intel Macs can be used as a PC, that is run the Windows operating system.

Parallels - the most recent version supports both DirectX and OpenGL.

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If it's a choice between those two (I am using Boot Camp and have used Parallels.) I would take Boot Camp. It supports a higher version of DirectX and is more realistic. It's kind of like having a windows computer.
 
Now that we've been 'round the Mulberry bush several times, let me ask a completely different question. Has any PC owner on this forum had success running a Mac emulation program? With faster processors and better graphics I'm wondering if any of the emulator's actually work with reasonable results. My reason for asking is simple enough. There are a couple of Mac Programs I'd love to try. Garage Band would be one.

If you've had any success at all, please let me know and tell us what emulator you used. Ta.
 
Johnk said:
Now that we've been 'round the Mulberry bush several times, let me ask a completely different question. Has any PC owner on this forum had success running a Mac emulation program? With faster processors and better graphics I'm wondering if any of the emulator's actually work with reasonable results. My reason for asking is simple enough. There are a couple of Mac Programs I'd love to try. Garage Band would be one.

If you've had any success at all, please let me know and tell us what emulator you used. Ta.
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One time I was able to successfully install OSX on VMware (It was OSx86 though). Not sure if that counts.

PS: Garageband is nice, excellent if you take in the fact that's it's technically free I suppose. I'm surprised Microsoft hasn't added in a "Windows Music Maker" to compete (probably because of antitrust problems. :eek:)
 
re: Trainz 2006 on a Mac

I just installed VM Fusion 2.0 last week on my Mac Pro (2.8ghz quad-core, 10gb ram, 1tb drives) and I was digging out some old PC software to test and I found my old copy of Trainz 2006.

I decided to install it in Fusion and test it out. I switched the 3D processing over to Directx9. The installation and running the software gave me a couple of errors messages (saying that motherboard, ram, video drivers needed to be upgraded), which I ignored.

The software started fine and I went into Surveyor tested a track and then dropped in some cars and an engine. I started up Driver and have fun running around just like I remembered.

I switched from the PC world last summer and I purchased VM Fusion but wasn't able to get it to work correctly with Boot Camp. I was installing WinXP as per Boot Camp and the Windows Installer reformatted my Mac OS drive in the process :(. Stuff happens on both sides of the fence.

I am really impressed with VM Fusion. Check out the demos on Youtube. It seems to be pretty stable at the moment and it was super simple to install.

Here's a link to a screen capture I did while testing Trainz 2006. The screencast.com video is uploading as I write this. Please ignore the jumpyness of the video as I used Jing for the first time and I don't think I had the right FPS. Trainz runs just like it did on my old 3ghz-2gb PC system. I also have dual screens, which is great to have whether you are a Mac or PC user.

Running Trainz on a Mac is definitely something to check out for all Mac Railfans out there.

Rob

Trainz on the Mac image:
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=32058330&l=b72ea&id=708787

Trainz on the Mac screencast video:
http://www.screencast.com/users/roberths/folders/Jing/media/b77679fa-f4b6-48de-bebc-f43e148cf7ea
 
amigacooke said:
To be fair Rob, not every Mac user has a setup like yours. :)
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To be fair to everyone, not everyone has a setup like his.
Also, he didn't mention his graphics which, IMHO, such a configuration is worthy of GTX280s or 4870X2s in 3 way SLI.

Cheerio,
Nicholas.
 
nicky9499 said:
To be fair to everyone, not everyone has a setup like his.
Also, he didn't mention his graphics which, IMHO, such a configuration is worthy of GTX280s or 4870X2s in 3 way SLI.

Cheerio,
Nicholas.
Click to expand...

Fastest Mac video card out is a 3870 512mb...and it's something like $400.

Mac hardware is overpriced, especially on Mac Pros. If you can afford it, go ahead, but I can still build as fast of a machine(for everyday use) for $500 with about the same Trainz capability.

EDIT: It runs as fast on a 4-core, 10gb RAM Mac Pro as a 3ghz(presumably single core), 2gb RAM PC? How is that at all good cost-effectiveness?!
 
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re: Trainz 2006 on a Mac

Sorry to stir things up listing my system specs. My point is that with the Macs being released today - powerbooks aside - the Leopard / Virtualization solution should work for the Mac users out there. Download the free trials and see what cooks up. Seize the day!

As for the graphics - nothing special as I have the CPU/ram to handle it - two ATI HD2600 256mb cards in the system. I do a lot of video editing and 3D modeling work with e-on software's Vue 6 Pro Studio. The displays are LG 196 running at 1440x900 widescreen.

Rob
 
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