Apple Responds to "PC Preferred"

hmurchison · March 25, 2003 8:50PM

http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/...appleresponds/

Quote:

MacCentral on Tuesday brought readers news about a page on Adobe System Inc.'s Web site that showed how a PC could outperform a Power Mac in video post-production head-to-head tests. Apple tonight responded to the page on Adobe's Web site and the claim that "the PC consistently outperformed the Macintosh machine, at an impressive rate."

"Apple stands by our claims that our latest Power Mac systems perform equal to or better than competing PC systems," Apple said in a statement given to MacCentral. "The reported tests on Adobe's Web site showing slower performance of After Effects on a Mac than a PC is more an application test than a platform test and is not indicative of all Pro application performance on the Mac."

The showdown pitted a single-processor Dell 2.53GHz Pentium 4, the Dell Precision Workstation 340, and a 1.25GHz dual-processor Power Mac G4 (the fastest Mac then available). The contest compared renderings of files created in Adobe After Effects, Illustrator and Photoshop software.

For years Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Senior Vice President Phil Schiller battle it out on stage at Macworld Expo keynote presentations, showing the superiority of the Macintosh platform. Typically, the two use Photoshop for their test in which the Mac wins over the PC.

Apple contends that the problem is not with the platform, but rather the application that is being used in the test, specifically After Effects. Apple points out that its own products outperform After Effects in similar tests. The companies are working closely together to fix any problems Adobe's applications may have on the Mac platform.

"Other applications, such as Apple's Final Cut Express, run some of those same tests on a Mac faster than the results for After Effects on either a Mac or a PC," Apple's statement reads. "Apple and Adobe remain extremely close partners and have been working together to improve the performance of After Effects on the Mac."

ast3r3x · March 25, 2003 9:27PM

good...adobe apps would run better if they werent' lazy!

1337_5l4xx0r · March 26, 2003 12:15AM

Adobe aren't 'lazy'. They just don't have as much time as you'd like set aside to hand-optimize their billions of lines of quality code for a bandwidth-starved co-processor on a platform that runs less than half as fast as the competition.

No one at these forums uses Macs for the 'speed advantage', but rather the 'ease of use' and distinct pleasure of not using a POS like windows XP.

hmurchison · March 26, 2003 1:03AM

Ahhhh I don't know. As you can see Apple's response is " our apps run just fine"

This is a stalemate. Adobe says PC's are faster. Apple says AE is slow.

cybermonkey · March 26, 2003 3:32AM

No one at these forums uses Macs for the 'speed advantage', but rather the 'ease of use' and distinct pleasure of not using a POS like windows XP. [/B][/QUOTE]

Actually i do.

The G4 RISC PPC far outperforms the x86 in multitasking and i've said it before it's classed as a super computer which is capable of doing a billion calculations a second, p4's CAN NOT!!

people look at PC's, see they have a higher GHZ and then look at mac's and see they have a lower GHZ and presume mac's are slower.

jll · March 26, 2003 4:19AM

I like this quote:

Other applications, such as Apple's Final Cut Express, run some of those same tests on a Mac faster than the results for After Effects on either a Mac or a PC

You would think that Apple would compare Adobe's DV apps to Final Cut Pro, but nooo, Apple's mid range app. is better that Adobe's offering

1337_5l4xx0r · March 26, 2003 5:49AM

Quote:

Actually i do.

The G4 RISC PPC far outperforms the x86 in multitasking and i've said it before it's classed as a super computer which is capable of doing a billion calculations a second, p4's CAN NOT!!

The G4 lags far behind Intel/AMD in multitasking. I suppose you meant "OSX has better preemtive multitasking than Win XP"? There are many more OSes for PC (and Mac!) than Windows.

A billion calcs a second? When a P4 runs at 3 billion clock cycles a second, simple math suggest peak performance of 3 Gigaflops, for unoptimised code. With MMX, perhaps much more.

Look, I have a Powerbook g4 867mhz, because it's the raddest damn laptop money can buy (well, besides 17" PBG4). But it ain't because it 'leaves pentiums in the dust'. It's because of a huge bright screen, radeon 9000 graphics, a Gig of RAM, every port I could ever want, WiFi, Ti enclosure and clean, minimal, elegant industrial design. I can run OSX, OS9, Linux, OpenBSD and virtualPC/win98 on one gorgeous slim machine. The 867mhz G4 and PC133mhz frontside bus are simply 'good enough' for my needs.

The reason we're all so damn eager for the PPC970 is because for the first time in like 5 years Macs will meet or exceed the performance of cheap commodity PCs that cost 1/2 to 1/3rd as much. Now that's a cause for celebration!

majormatt · March 26, 2003 7:32AM

Isnt calcs and flops different?

When they say a G4 can do 4 Gigaflops a second, doesnt that refer to the nmeumonic instructions rather than calculations?

leonis · March 26, 2003 10:21AM

Over 90% of the apps are currently faster on the PC. That's the truth

Also what's true is that ALL Adobe's app are so "poorly-written" and not optimized no matter it's for PC or Mac.

After Effects, while is the easiest to use compositing app in the market, is the worst in performance.

Dual proccessor on both PC and Mac only shows less than 20% improvement over the SP machines. Ironically. Some third-party effects plug-ins offer over 80% improvement.

Look at other competitions. Using Discreet's Combustion for example. This app is truly multi-threaded and very MP-aware. On a dual CPU system the app can get over 93% of performance boost than the SP system. Even on a single processor machine Combustion beats AE hands down.

Also same to Photoshop. Very minimal improvement on MP systems. And gotta tell you that verion 7 is SLOWER than version 6!

Let's bring back the Illustrator vs Freehand thing now

Freehand MX is almost 2x as fast as Illustrator 10. Illustrator is so bloated.

All in all.....all Adobe's apps are slow and not fully multi-thread or MP-aware.....while other companies products are fast and "higher tech"

These really show how "technically handicapped" those programmers in Adobe are....

Adobe is getting so big and they can be arragont. They don't seem to care so much......except with inDesign

709 · March 26, 2003 10:50AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Leonis

Let's bring back the Illustrator vs Freehand thing now Freehand MX is almost 2x as fast as Illustrator 10. Illustrator is so bloated.

Ooog. I almost didn't even upgrade Freehand after the horrible experience than 10 was....but, I did, and Freehand MX absolutely rocks. I'm falling in love with Freehand all over again.

chych · March 26, 2003 1:24PM

Quote:

Originally posted by 1337_5L4Xx0R

The G4 lags far behind Intel/AMD in multitasking. I suppose you meant "OSX has better preemtive multitasking than Win XP"? There are many more OSes for PC (and Mac!) than Windows.

A billion calcs a second? When a P4 runs at 3 billion clock cycles a second, simple math suggest peak performance of 3 Gigaflops, for unoptimised code. With MMX, perhaps much more.

I dunno, the G4 definetely has potential, and pure processor crunching apps such as RC5 convince me of that. Too bad for most apps this isn't true.

Personally, I find it impossible to use Adobe's products in windows due to MDI. Could never like the stupid maximize-every-frickin-window mode.

Apple Responds to "PC Preferred"

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