Apple-related Question - I don't understand this statement. | The Coffeehouse

Jason I

I have heard some people, including a few friends, say that they use a Mac because, "It's better for graphics."

I suppose I should have asked them, but, what, exactly, does this mean? Don't both PCs and Macs use the same graphics cards? I thought DirectX was a lot easier to work with than OpenGL, generally speaking, with newer graphics hardware?

What is it I don't understand? A quick search on the net doesn't help me.

CannotResolveSymbol
{insert caption here}

By "better for graphics", they're referring to applications like Photoshop or Illustrator.

This used to be true (the PowerPC architecture was great at heavy-duty imaging-type calculations), but after the Intel switch, that benefit is gone and any advantage that Mac OS has over Windows is purely due to Mac OS's display system being faster than Windows or due to Adobe's Mac code being more efficient than their Windows code. With Photoshop CS4, they'll probably lose any performance advantages they have left: CS4 on Windows is going 64-bit, but they're not going 64-bit on Mac OS until CS5 at least (Photoshop and friends contain a lot of Carbon code, and there's no 64-bit native Carbon API).

Minh
WOOH! WOOH!

In reply to CannotResolveSymbol

#Sep 2nd, 2008 @ 7:42 AM

CannotResolveSymbol wrote:
the PowerPC architecture was great at heavy-duty imaging-type calculations

I wouldn't say CPU was the reason the Mac had more design apps on it. The old high-end Macs was the first computer that can support a graphical environment that made it possible to have design apps on a PC. And we all know people are creatures of habbit, both the consumers & producers of these graphics apps.

stevo_
Human after all

In reply to CannotResolveSymbol

#Sep 2nd, 2008 @ 7:42 AM

OS X has a more efficient display system? cite some proof at least please.. and I don't think the cpu itself has much to do with churning graphics..

Here's the thing with the graphics statement, it used to be yonks ago that macs were the only system to use when doing print work because they better supported postscript printing and probably at the time had more professional apps on the system targeting that kind of work.. as it goes now, the os's are that close with power and the focus on what type of tools people need has changed that much that really windows is a superior platform for 'graphics'.

The only other argument I've heard is in regards to crossing the font barrier of PC to Mac, ensuring you have all the fonts identical on each system, although personally I think thats a poor excuse because its often the case that different instances of macs have variants on fonts that make them just that bit different anyway..

Ray7

MacOSX uses PDF to render its display, which means that what you see on the screen is pretty much what'll show up on the printer. That's why design bods swear by 'em.

Detroit Muscle
Wii!

The PowerPC 601 featured a single-cycle floating point MAC unit, which made Macs at the time much faster at multimedia tasks than their x86 IBM-PC counterparts. Single cycle FP MAC units didn't make it to the x86 world until much later.

Also, the Altivec vector unit introduced with the PowerPC G4 beat the pants off of the equivalent vector units in the x86 world for years after Altivec was released.

matthews

DirectX is more performant than OpenGL pretty much right across the board (and most people seem to agree it's the more programmer friendly API). Not only, all Macs sold today and in the last little while have come with really crap graphics cards relative to their prices.

Minh
WOOH! WOOH!

In reply to matthews

#Sep 2nd, 2008 @ 10:31 AM

matthews wrote:
DirectX is ... more programmer friendly API

Oh, I would have to disagree w/ that Smiley

Because DX has to support a much wider range of hardware, you have to have lots of "if hardware can do this effect" in your DX code.

OGL is the opposite. OGL hardware MUST support an API set in its entirety.

But we know which API won the gaming war.

Now OGL is going the route of DX. Interestingly enough, DX is going the route of OGL, requiring a known set of functionalities.

Harlequin
http://twitter.com/TrueHarlequin

In reply to Ray7

#Sep 2nd, 2008 @ 9:08 AM

That means "Better for print layouts", not "Better for designers".

Designing on Mac for the web does nothing special you can't do on the PC.

Jason I

In reply to Minh

#Sep 2nd, 2008 @ 10:59 AM

Minh -

I haven't done any OGL or DX programming.

But it would seem, from your description, that DX would be better - With DX (and the if/then statements), the 'bottleneck' would be the hardware: (software can be tailored to whatever hardware you're running). With OGL, you know what you can do up front, but you can't do much with newer features, until the OGL has been update.

Is that a fair statement?

Minh
WOOH! WOOH!

In reply to Jason I

#Sep 2nd, 2008 @ 11:14 AM

Jason I wrote:

But it would seem, from your description, that DX would be better - With DX (and the if/then statements), the 'bottleneck' would be the hardware: (software can be tailored to whatever hardware you're running). With OGL, you know what you can do up front, but you can't do much with newer features, until the OGL has been update.

Yep. You're right about that.

Although it's much easier for a programmer to target OGL w/ its complete set of features, hardware on the DX side is allow to evolve at a much faster pace. Eventually, everybody doing games (except for iD) don't bother with a more inferior OGL platform, and used DX to take advantage of the new features.

So, MS took their "3 versions" to get it right approach, and beat the pants off OGL. Although, MS has money to throw at DX as it brings Windows sales. OGL doesn't have the same motivation.

DCMonkey
Monkey see, monkey do, monkey will destroy you!

In reply to Minh

#Sep 2nd, 2008 @ 10:59 AM

OGL doesn't require the whole API to be supported in hardware. You have to be careful to stick to the code paths optimized for the hardware in each driver implementation.

Also, though DX has had that capability bits stuff as you describe, with DX10 they've done away with them and now require DX10 hardware to support the features of the revamped API, though I'm not sure what minimum performance guarantees that requirement enforces. I heard Intel was going to put out a pretty crappy integrated DX10 chip a while back, but I don't know how that turned out.

DCMonkey
Monkey see, monkey do, monkey will destroy you!

I seem to remeber superior monitor color correction support early on being one of the selling points for the "Macs are good for graphics" claim.

Minh
WOOH! WOOH!

In reply to DCMonkey

#Sep 2nd, 2008 @ 11:51 AM

DCMonkey wrote:

OGL doesn't require the whole API to be supported in hardware. You have to be careful to stick to the code paths optimized for the hardware in each driver implementation.

Oh really? So you have to know the hardware you're running on? That sucks. DX has a better approach w/ the caps bits.

Dovella
Go Microsoft !!!!!!!

this is a fake of the history !

regard photoshop, so far there is no difference between Mac and PC (on equal hardware)
for the future , photoshop begin to exploit the GPU, and Windows here begin to sing loudly + the very difference 64 Bit only for Windows
(for apple in 2014-2015)

regard 3d Application

regard gaming

regard price

CannotResolveSymbol
{insert caption here}

In reply to Dovella

#Sep 2nd, 2008 @ 1:59 PM

Not you mistreat? What's that supposed to mean?