Why Professionals Use Mac2

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07/25/2007 03:12 PMWhy Professionals Use Mac

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Why Professionals (and Everyone Should) Use MacPage Two

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Mac Mini: replace your PC for $499! (Courtesy of Apple)

Which Apple computer is best for digital photography?

Extra:A Recording Engineer's Guide to the Secrets of iPod andiTunes

Continued from Why Pros Use Mac, Page One.

World's Best Industrial Design: Looks Great!

Mac Mini(Courtesy of Apple)As an artist I appreciate art. Apple's industrial design has made


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everything they've done for the past several years just beautiful. There's even aniBook on permanent display in the Industrial Art wing of New York's Museum ofModern Art. I'm a huge fan of simple, practical design popular in Italian, Swiss,Danish and German graphics and product design. Apple's latest offerings haveastounded me by going beyond the classics from artists like Dieter Rams andMassimo Vignelli.

iPod (Courtesy of Apple)

Guess what: art comes from artists, not from committees. Just as Dieter Rams madeBraun synonymous with brilliantly simple design, it is the work of designerJonathanIve that gives us the look and feel of Apple products.

Just say no to ugly beige or black boxes cluttering your life.

No "Hillbilly Hatches" on Laptops

"Hillbillies," for our international readers, are the crafty indigenous people ofAmericanAppalachia respected for their ingenious ability to craft just about anythingout of scraps of wood.

Most Windows laptops have several flimsy plastic covers over the connectors.Unlike the sturdy constructions of our Hillbillies, these stupid plastic covers alwaysfall off.

Apple laptops have no Hillbilly hatches (or any doors at all), and also have no

protruding connectors or screws or other crudities to catch inside cases orbackpacks. All connections to the Apple Laptops are "innie" connectors flush withthe surface. The Apple laptop is a work of smooth and functional sculpture.

Easy to Figure out What Hardware to Buy

Any Apple computer works great and includes everything you might need. There'sno worry that you might forget some odd option when ordering and have to go backand spend more.

Likewise, some of the myth of Macs costing more than Windows PCs stems fromthe many stripper PCs advertised which lack basics like CD burners, firewire ports,speech recognition, video editing and conferencing software, color calibration


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software or virus protection. By the time you option the Windows PC to the samelevel as the Mac you're even. There is no "loss leader" Mac. Even the cheapest MacMini is far more powerful than the iBook from which you're reading this site.

I earn my living and publish this site on a machine only half as good as thecrummiest Apple made today. Any Mac ought to do what you need. I have a pageexplaining details ofwhich Mac does what to help you pick. Any choice is a good

choice.

Its easy to know what works with what when buying third-party drives or whatever. Iteither works with your version of Mac or it doesn't. All the Mac operating systemsare simply a number that has gone in order since the 1970s. I've had friends buyscanners claiming to work with the Windows 98, and it didn't work. Only after a longtelephone call were they told "Oh, of course it works with Windows 98 - service packII. You just need to go buy the upgrade." Give me a break, people don't need to putup with this baloney if they'd just make the easy upgrade to Mac next time they trasha dead Windows machine. Since you'll get more healthy years out of a Mac it costs

less, too.Costs Less

When you add up all you have to add to upgrade a PC to do what you need it to itcosts more. A well drawn example was found on this sheet I picked up at a localcomputer store in April 2006.


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Easy to Figure out What Operating System to Buy

There is just one Mac operating system. End of question.

Just like when Mercedes was unquestionably the world's finest car and every onecame standard with every possible option, the Mac OS on even the crummiest Maclike mine comes loaded with every possible feature ever created by Apple.

On Windows you have to guess among buying XP professional, XP media center

edition 2005, XP home, or Professional x64 edition. Good freaking luck! See if youcan figure it out on Microsoft's selection page here. If they haven't cared to make the


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sales page helpful, how helpful do you think the actual product will be? That pagenot only is no help in figuring out which version of Windows you might need (hint: noone needs Windows), it told my wife she was running XP SP2, while in fact she'srunning Windows ME! Good luck, amigos! Click the link and play RedmondRoulette!

I tried ordering a Dell once and quickly gave up when they expected me to guess

how much operating system I needed to buy.

It's sad that Windows makes itself some sort of challenge to understand. Somepeople enjoy this technical challenge for its own sake, and send me hate mail whenI expose that they're wasting their time on the wrong challenge.

I'm a professional earning my entire living working for 10 hours a day on a kid'swhite plastic 12" iBook laptop. If you can't do all that on the cheapest version ofWindows, why bother?

Remember "Longhorn?"

"Longhorn" was Microsoft's code name for their next operating system. It wassupposed to be out in 2005 or maybe 2004. Even Microsoft can't get it to run, sothey changed the name to "Windows Vista" and kept working. Good luck toMicrosoft getting it to work in 2006!

If Microsoft can't get it to run, how much luck do you think we'll have?

Remember "Vista?"

In January 2006 Microsoft promised Vista by 2006. On March 21st, 2006 they stillcan't get Vista to run properly, so they are delaying its introduction to January 2007.WHOOPS! It's funny to read the press releases: Microsoft talks about being "ontarget" while the NY Times on March 22, 2006 describes it accurately as "Microsoftto Delay New System." If you haven't been in business you might not realize that ifyou can't meet a promise, you move the target to "stay on target" as Microsoft justdid.

Vista is now up to 50 million lines of code. I doubt it will ever work. This articleexplains Windows Vista is so bad that 60% of it is having to be re-written.

As of early 2007 Microsoft was still working on it. It's just a buggy rip-off of MacOSX. See the video here.

As of Mid-2007 it finally shipped.

Honesty

When Microsoft's Bill Gates promises less crashes, easier use or delivery dates,Microsoft rarely delivers. Vista is now pushed back to 2007!

When Apple's Steve Jobs in 2005 promised Intel Macs by mid-2006 he delivered

them at MacWorld, in January 2006. Early.


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Steve Jobs announced the MacBook Pro laptop in January 2006 as 1.67 GHz and1.83 machines. It shipped in February 2006 as promised, and was upgraded to 1.83GHz and 2.0 GHz speeds, for the same price!

Desktop Search

Longhorn was supposed to introduce a "desktop search" feature for finding things

easily in your Windows computer. It still hasn't happened.

Mac OS 10.4 has had this since spring, 2005. Free. Apple calls it "Spotlight" and it'sthe little blue magnifying glass at the top right of your screen.

Windows Vista: Who Cares?

In 2004 Mac OSX already did what Vista will try to do in 2007. Here are videos ofBill Gate's CES 2006 presentation where Bill demonstrates prototype featuresproposed in Widows Vista. The funny part is some wise guy has kept Bill's speech,while replacing the video doing all these things in last-year's Apple Mac OSX 10.4!

Caution: Presuming you get the humor, be sure to pee before you watch the videos.

Here are some things Windows Vista will try to rip off:

Widgets: These are a clunky copy of OSX' Dashboard. Dashboard allows me to tapone button on my mouse and have a ton of things pop up, like weather in eightcities, world time clocks, stock quotes, live weather radar and dictionaries. In a yearVista may have this, except it will only let these be in one part of the screen. OSXlast year lets you put everything where you want it.

3-D application switcher: In a year Vista may let you throw up all your open windowson top of each other to help you select among them. You only can see the top one.Two years ago OSX added Expos which does the same thing, but instead of pilingthem all on top of each other Apple's Expos lets you see all the windows at thesame time by reducing them. You have to guess with Vista.

Desktop Search, just like last year's OSX' Spotlight.

Vista also claims to add a copy of Apple's iPhoto.

You can hope Microsoft can get Vista to run in a year, or just get a Mac today.

Remember the old "Windows 98 = Mac 84" bumper stickers? Widows itself is aripoff of the Mac visual (graphic) interface from the 1980s. Microsoft originallyexpected us to type commands in DOS and then Apple invented using a mouse andclicking for commands. I know. I've used all these systems since the 1970s.

Great Fonts!

Windows machines usually only come with free crappy street fonts like Arial andTimes. Create a document with them and it looks like something created by a boredsecretary taking a break from playing Solitaire.

Macs include, as part of the operating system, professional fonts which cost real


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money if you had to buy them for a PC.

For example, in Mac OS 10.4 I see Caslon, Copperplate, Didot, Futura, Gil Sans,Helvetica, Helvetica Neue, Hoefler, Optima, Papyrus and Zapfino among othersincluded, free.

Here are some examples I whipped up in Photoshop so you can see them. A real

designer would know how to make these look much better.

Caslon is a classic font often used in 1950s advertising. The numerals are cool.

Copperplate is often used on lawyers' business cards.

Didot is a great font often used for corporate logos in the art and design fields. Thenumbers aren't that pretty, but the lower case letters are.

Futura is used forNBC's logo, business cards and letterhead. Futura is distinctivefor the pointy ends of its upper case N, seen in the NBC logo.

Gil Sans is an update based on Johnston Railway type designed by EdwardJohnston and used for London's train stations.

Helvetica is used everywhere as one of the world's most perfect fonts. This is thebold style.

As I understand it Microsoft made a poor copy of Helvetica and called it "Arial" tosave having to pay for the real Helvetica. An easy way to tell is to look at the top ofthe "1."

Of course Mac also includes the usual fonts included by Windows, like Arial, if youwant that amateur look for ransom letters or what-have-you. I left this Arial example


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aliased as it usually looks on Windows machines for comparison. You have controlof all of this on Mac, but no control on Windows. This is why the Arial "0" looksjagged, but smooth for the other fonts. This jagginess is a factor of aliasing, not ofthe font itself.

Helvetica is used for American Airlines' logo, most US National Parks brochures, allthe maps and signage for the NY City subway system and numerous corporate

logos. DesignerMassimo Vignelli uses Helvetica extensively. Today he seems to beusing Didot (or a similar variant) as well.

Helvetica has been so popular that it is also available as a new (neue) version, alsoincluded on Mac. Each of these fonts comes in every weight. Apple includes regularand bold for Helvetica, and four weights of Helvetica Neue, as well as condensedand oblique (italic) versions. These versions are real fonts, not synthetic

approximations used in other operating systems too cheap to use real versions foreach weight and style.

This is a cute old-time font which looks quite graceful for business cards and otherarty things.

Optima is an unusually clean sans-serif Roman font.

Papyrus is a fun font.

And so is Zapfino! Macs come with all this and more.

Of course anyone can buy any font for any machine. I get some of my favorites fromLinotype.

Some of my personal favorites are:


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Univers 67 is one of a huge family called Univers. I use it for my notices. Universwas extraordinarily popular in the fine art field for catalogs and brochure in the1980s and 1990s as well as used for practically every high-tech companies' logos.Today most of these applications use Frutiger instead.

and

DIN Schriften are from German Autobahn signs. You'll find them engraved onGerman lenses, too.

Magic "Clear Away the Screens" and "Tile all Screens" Selection Modes(Expos)

Apple calls this "Expos." You just drag the mouse to a corner and it does whatyou've chosen in SYSTEM PREFERENCES > EXPOS.

I tell one corner to clear all the screens away and show me my desktop.

Cooler still is my other corner programmed to tile every open window. When I do thisevery open window gets smaller and lines up next to all the other open windows. Inow can see everything I have open. Just click on the window you want and you'rein that program. DUH! Now that I know better I can't even work on Windows with theold crutch of alt+tab or having to click a small text box at the bottom.

Of course on Mac these tiles are all live and show you exactly what's in eachwindow, and even move if they're playing video.

This saves both a ton of time when you're working in many programs at once, andalso saves the need for a big screen. I used to need a 22" monitor to help me; withExpos my 12" screen is so flexible I don't miss the big screen.

Easy to Type Odd Characters Like or the "" in "Expos"

Just hold "option" and type "e" for or opt + g for . Want an or or ? Use opt +n or opt + u or opt + o. Want an ? Use opt + ` and then type the e. Easy.

If you want something that's not obvious you can call up a picture of the keyboard tosee what does what when you press different keys. Go to SYSTEM PREFS >INTERNATIONAL > INPUT MENU. Check KEYBOARD VIEWER which will put alittle flag up in your menu bar. When you want to see what key makes what, just clickthe flag and select KEYBOARD VIEWER. In INPUT MENU you may select amongabout 100 different languages, including eight versions of Chinese.

In Windows you have to do a two-handed masturbation of holding the alt key while

typing the four-digit ASCII code of the symbol. Don't know the ASCII code? Tough!Windows expects you to memorize that is alt + 0142 and is alt + 0169. You have


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to use the separate numeric keypad on a full sized keyboard. The number keysalong the top row won't work in Windows.

Of course on a laptop the process is the same on Mac. Since Windows requires thededicated separate numeric keypad keys you're really screwed on a laptop. It tookme ten years to learn how to get the symbol on a Windows laptop: You have touse the NUMLOCK command! You have to:

a.) put the laptop into NUMLOCK mode (another screwy two-finger function keywhich varies by brand of computer) and then

b.) hold down ALT and

c.) type 0169, but you have to type 0169 NOT on the regular numeric keys along thetop row, but the

d.) letter keys on the right of the regular keyboard specially marked with teenynumbers that correspond to the numbers in NUMLOCK mode.

e.) After typing all that remember to take the laptop out of NUMLOCK mode or allyour other typing will be messed up!

Now do you see why we all use Apple computers? There is a way to get a "characterMap" in Windows, however since it's not easy enough for me to find when I need it Idon't count it.

Most people stuck on Windows simply copy and paste a good symbol from someother document! That's what I do when I'm on Windows.

Real Help

Mac's help screens really work. Whenever I need to learn something I just punch upHELP and get the answer, even to things like how to change the clock battery in mymom's 7 year old laptop, with pictures!

Trivial Hardware Upgrades

I bought a big hard drive to stick in my desktop five years ago when my new scannerquickly overflowed the built-in. I spent quite a while perplexed by all the installation

paperwork and floppy disks with different instructions for each version of Windows. Ifinally gave up, since I saw no Mac instructions, and called Maxtor. I wasn't evensure if it would work on my Mac.

Duh, I was told. Macs didn't need instructions so they didn't bother including them.All I had to do was pop open my Mac (no tools required), screw it in the empty slot,plug in the plugs that were already there, and I was done.

I've found that reading instructions just gets me in trouble with my Mac. I'm alwaysbetter off "just doing it" and clicking OK than trying to read directions.

Today I just buy firewire drives and I'm done.


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Your Mac Gets Better with Time!

I'm still amazed: my 5-year-old desktop Mac keeps getting better and faster withtime!

Unlike Windows machines that crawl to a screeching halt after which you throw themaway, each time I've done an easy major operating system upgrade to my Macs

they run better and faster!

I'm serious: I bought my dual G4 desktop in 2000 with OS9. I upgraded it to OSX10.2 and it did everything twice as fast. Today I'm on OS 10.4 and it runs faster still.I just can't believe these Apple guys. Apple doesn't understand plannedobsolescence the way the good people of Microsoft do.

No Crashes

Mac doesn't crash. Sometimes an individual application, like Microsoft Word forMac, might crash, but almost never the actual OSX operating system. For me

almost never means I can't even remember when I last saw a system crash.

On the other hand, remember when Windows crashed on Bill Gates during hispresentation at a press conference? The sad part is that no one was kidding. It'sclear to me that Windows is designed to be buggy and get worse over time so you'llwant to upgrade it. Same for Word; the last copy I used didn't even scroll properly,and it's only a simple word processor!

Easy to Delete Unused Programs

Simple: drag them to the trash.The Mac is smart enough to do everything needed to delete or uninstall a programall by itself. You don't have to go scrounging around looking for all the programcomponents and certainly don't have to find and run any demeaning uninstallprograms as Windows users do.

It's Easy to Figure Out What Computer You Have

Just click the Apple logo in the upper right and select ABOUT THIS MAC. It will tellyou the processor speed, the version of the operating system and how much RAM

you have. I've never figured out how to get a Windows PC to tell me that.

Want to know more? Just hit MORE INFO in the window that opened. It can't getany easier.

You can get some of this in Windows by right-clicking MY COMPUTER and thenPROPERTIES. On my wife's Dell, for instance, it leaves out important basics like thespeed of her processor, but does tell me how much RAM she has . Good luckbeyond that, there is no easy way to hit MORE INFO. You have to sift throughobscure raw details in another couple of tabs that only make sense to an engineer.

It Listens and Talks!


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Macs have understood speech and talked back for years. It's not science fiction, butsounds like it to Windows users.

Apple talks more about this at their pages on today's Mac's ability to understandwhat you're saying and Mac's ability to speak and read to you. Mac does all this forfree, standard.

Mine tells me what time it is automatically. It's a no-brainer to set up. If I wanted tohear it read your emails to me I just click EDIT > SPEECH > START SPEAKING inmy email program. It freaked out my wife once when I tried it just for laughs and sheheard some woman speaking, obviously to me personally!

Macs have understood speech for years. It's mostly used by disabled people, sincemainstream talking cars and speech recognition came and went back in the 1980s.

Even the Wall Street Journal Loves Them

Walter S. Mossberg and Katherine Boehret said in the Wall Street Journal's

November 30th, 2005 "Mossberg's Mailbox" column titled "A New Gold Standard forPCs" that "No desktop offered by Dell, HP, Sony or Gateway can match the newiMac G5's combination of power, elegance, simplicity, ease of use, built-in software,stability and security."

Free UNIX (not related to we photographers)

UNIX is a professional computer language used by serious programmers. UNIXforms the backbone of most web servers, universities, military, governments, largecorporations and other highly secure environments.

UNIX programmers used to have to buy expensive commercial computers on whichto do their programming at home.

Mac OSX is really UNIX with a very well thought out human interface. This alsomeans programmers can write their UNIX code on nice friendly, inexpensive Macsinstead.

Macs Don't Burst Into Flames as Often as Windows PCs

Macs are made with better quality control. They are a premium product. Maybe it

doesn't matter to you, but for those of us who fly on airplanes it matters if our laptopexplodes into flame due to a manufacturer skimping and using sub-optimal lithiumbatteries rejected by other makers.

Dell made the news in July 2006 for a couple ofexploding laptops. It was even inthe New York Times.

Mac Runs Windows, too!

Of course you'll need to buy software for your Mac. Most software, like Photoshopand Microsoft Office, comes in versions for Mac or for Windows. Advanced

programs like Photoshop need to be bought in the correct version. Some, likeDreamweaver, have both on the same disk. Read carefully when you buy.


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Of course there are some programs, like some font management programs, that areonly available in Mac, and other software, like most viruses and spyware, which onlyrun on Windows. In those instances where you can't get one for your platform youalways can find a similar replacement. I use to love Breeze Browser, but got iViewinstead when I upgraded to Mac. I'm sure someone could send me a virus, it's justnot a daily occurrence and inherent feature like it is on Windows.

Guess what: if you really need to run a Windows program on your Mac, you can buya piece of software called Virtual PC which runs Windows on your Mac! Windowsrun as this simulation won't run any better than Windows anywhere else, and afteryou look at everything involved you might just want to get a second throw-away$200 PC instead if you only need to run just one program, but you can indeedsimulate Windows on your Mac.

New Macs will come with Bootcamp which allows them to run Windows.

Many people love Parallels, which runs Windows in a separate window.

Game over.

MORE INFORMATION

Apple's website is here, and they have information for Windows users upgrading toMac here.

SUMMARY

Of course you can do photography on Windows. It's just not worth the bother and

specialized technical expertise required to keep Windows running. I prefer to spendmy time doing photography and sharing what I know on this website instead ofdebugging Windows.

These are all my personal observations. Your results may vary. Nothing is perfect,Mac just seems that way after banging my head against a wall with Windows for somany years. Everything breaks, just that my Mac breaks less than one-tenth asmuch as any of my Windows PCs did. I beat on my Mac so hard I'm surprised ithasn't died long ago.

I was just pulling your leg about Mac being the right tool specifically for photography.It's a better tool for everything!

I also lied at the top. Of course Mac is better than Windows, unless of course youwork in an IT department and personally profit from what I see as a silent collusionbetween Microsoft and your IT department which thrives on users always needingconstant support from your department in exchange for your company having to buy"upgrades" which never work any better anyway. Remember Windows PCs in the1980s? My 1992 486-DX 33MHz Windows PC ran faster in DOS than the Windowsmachines I use today, and all we're trying to do on it is send email, create worddocuments and surf the internet. These are trivial basics for Mac.

Some people take this all personally. I don't. I'm just trying to help you with my


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personal observations and I hope you find it helpful. I appreciate that you may seethings differently. I thank you if you do, and please don't misinterpret this as aninvitation for hate mail or proselytization.

I'm so happy with all the work I get done that I'd like to share the secret with others.

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Why Professionals Use Mac2