DisAdvantages of a Mac
MacIntosh Integrity
I have to say that ever Using that first Macintosh Computer the Personal PC up to the G4 I own now. There are constant problems with Memory allocation and Data integrity when running graphic applications, which is about the only reason I even own a mac.
So why is it that there are so many pitfalls when it comes to using the Most powerful macs as a creative tool in the video and graphics arena. Why can't you guys simply get it right before you release it!
I swear you should give me a G5 for all the MaCinCrap I've had to deal with in the past 4 years alone. Including one of my favorite Mac typical problem releasing a dual processor computer before an operating system that actually uses both processors is released! Ie: Me buying a Dual 500mhz G4 with OS 9 only to find out that it was only utlizing one of the processors the whole time. This I find out two years later!
Or buying the DVD RAM Drive recommended and then not being able to Use any Mac DVD authoring Software with it! Come On!
How much harder can you make things for those of us who pretty much beta test your latest and greatest only to find out that we should have waited a few years to buy an older, yet more stable system.
And yet the latest problem that has put so much data at risk is the Problem Panther has with Lacie hard drives or any external fire wire hard drives above 120 Gigs! I even had 10.3.4 loaded and the firmware updated and my internal Hard drives Catalog Trees got screwed up and get screwed up every time I try to repair the Lacie FW 400 EXT Hard Drive in the Disk Utility, which I can't even do because I get an error (-9972) which doesn't even allow the volume to be repaired. And no I didn't suddenly unplug the drive!
When will Steve 2 Jobs get these seemingly small "bugs" fixed so that those of us who depend on Macs for a livelyhood don't spend entire days and sometimes the better part of a week troubleshooting problems that should have been shot down before they were passed along to the public.
Scott
Chicago
I have to say that ever Using that first Macintosh Computer the Personal PC up to the G4 I own now. There are constant problems with Memory allocation and Data integrity when running graphic applications, which is about the only reason I even own a mac.
So why is it that there are so many pitfalls when it comes to using the Most powerful macs as a creative tool in the video and graphics arena. Why can't you guys simply get it right before you release it!
I swear you should give me a G5 for all the MaCinCrap I've had to deal with in the past 4 years alone. Including one of my favorite Mac typical problem releasing a dual processor computer before an operating system that actually uses both processors is released! Ie: Me buying a Dual 500mhz G4 with OS 9 only to find out that it was only utlizing one of the processors the whole time. This I find out two years later!
Or buying the DVD RAM Drive recommended and then not being able to Use any Mac DVD authoring Software with it! Come On!
How much harder can you make things for those of us who pretty much beta test your latest and greatest only to find out that we should have waited a few years to buy an older, yet more stable system.
And yet the latest problem that has put so much data at risk is the Problem Panther has with Lacie hard drives or any external fire wire hard drives above 120 Gigs! I even had 10.3.4 loaded and the firmware updated and my internal Hard drives Catalog Trees got screwed up and get screwed up every time I try to repair the Lacie FW 400 EXT Hard Drive in the Disk Utility, which I can't even do because I get an error (-9972) which doesn't even allow the volume to be repaired. And no I didn't suddenly unplug the drive!
When will Steve 2 Jobs get these seemingly small "bugs" fixed so that those of us who depend on Macs for a livelyhood don't spend entire days and sometimes the better part of a week troubleshooting problems that should have been shot down before they were passed along to the public.
Scott
Chicago
Comments
Originally posted by Macanthrope: )
And yet the latest problem that has put so much data at risk is the Problem Panther has with Lacie hard drives or any external fire wire hard drives above 120 Gigs!
tell that to my 320GB lacie chugging away on an mpeg-2 right now.
I think the people that really love there macs don't want to see the obvious problems that reoccur in every generation.
I can crash a PC many times in a row with no data corruption, at least none that isn't fixed on starup.
It would be so nice if Apple would address the Data integrity problems and Hardware software interface problems on lack of interface entirely.
It pained me too read two years later in MacAddict (CrackAddict) that the Dual Pro G4 could only run in dual mode in OSX. An operating system that didn't even ship with the computer! What the F#@!
And so what if I bought a third party DVD-RAM drive. it was recommended at the time as well then apple decides to only support the pioneer drive. What kind of crap is that. No firmware updates nothing.
Apple Customers pay a premium and get far less in return. The better the PC graphic programs get the less people will have to rely on the Mac Software Like Final Cut Pro, which is exceptional as are most of their bundled A/V programs and "good looking" interface but it's all crap if it doesn't work when we need it to.
That's all I want. I sure as hell paid for it!
- Xidius
Lacie Makes great products and Apple does as well but when things go wrong with them they really go wrong and from what I have research and experienced apple could do less marketing and more testing.
By the way, It would be nice if that Lacie didn't have to "chug away" on such an easily compressed format as an MPEG2
Macs aren't perfect but they certainly are less clunky than PCs and OSX is improving rapidly.
PCs have frankly become boring. It was fun watching AMD and Intel chase the Ghz crown but now that's over we're stuck with the same ole Windows. Bleech
I've *NEVER* seen a 'memory allocation' problem under OS X... but then, I'm not a graphics person, so I don't use apps that try and do an endrun around the OS.
Dual processors under OS 9: ANY application was free to use both processors. Most weren't going to get a good deal of use of it, believe it or not, due to poor application design (ie, lack of discrete paths of behaviour that can be pulled out into individual threads, etc). Many areas of 'the OS' (QuickTime for instance) *DID* use both processors. Again, gripe to the developers of your favorite applications if yours didn't.
Bottom line: it looks like many of your problems are due to a lack of technical knowledge, misunderstanding of what you were purchasing, or misuse. Some are valid. (10.3.3 did indeed have problems with *some* FireWire external drive chipsets, but 10.3.4 fixes that bug. Update.) Most are misinformation, I fear.
Luckily, you've stumbled into a nest of folks happy to help with most things.
Truthfully I think anyone who uses a PC and a Mac prefers mac but would have to honestly say that macs have far to many Unknown errors and overdue fixes than PC's. Security holes excluded of course!
As for DVD-RAM they're back and they have always been superior to R's but they pose problems to certain people in the motion picture industry if they become ubiquitous, or at least that was the thinking a few years ago. Anyway, RAM or RAM like DVD's are better for storing data and allow much more recording flexibilty.
Excuse me for venting but I hope that some developer at apple reads my original post because there are people who want to have faith in Apple's latest and greatest but have a hard time doing so when they are sold bad apples.
Thanks to MacAddict for the Misinformation and FinalCutPro for being requiring more memory then recommened. I don't know if I should bitch at the developer anymore than apple since they "should be" in concert.
If you don't run graphic intensive programs and move large files frequently you probably shouldn't reply to me
Thanks for replying. Don't mean to spam.
Originally posted by Macanthrope: )
When apple produces a new computer there should be an OS that fully utlilizes the basic hardware like two or more processors.
Mac OS Server 1.2(v3) supported dual processors and SMP.
This was around when the first G4's came out.
However I seem to remember new G4s comming out that didn't support the OS, was this in fact the case?
Dobby.
I was there with you a few years back. I was disgruntled with crashing in OS9 multiple times a day. I began to curse OS9 as an unstable POS. Then I went to an Apple get together to use Final Cut Pro 2 and other Apple apps. During a weekend of being a total newbie and clicking everything in FCP I noticed that it didn't crash once. I was amazed. I knew then that it wasn't OS9 that was crashing it was poor code written in 3rd party applications.
Developers are extremely talented and creative individuals but as Kickaha says. They can be prone to doing their own workarounds that impede stability.
I know they don't want to drink nothing but the Apple Koolaid but while Apple's solutions may not always be sexy they do work for the most part. I guess the next thing for Apple is to continue to offer features that developers need in the APIs and with that stability will return if we can minimize the "freelance" code causing problems.
Venting is fine..we all do it here every now and then. Stick around. The best is yet to come.
If you have specific problems, feel free to post them in the Genius Bar forum - this one, if you hadn't noticed, is Current Hardware. It's for discussing, wait for it... currently shipping hardware.
A generalized discussion of this type should probably go in... aha! General Discussion.
In fact, I'll kindly move this over there now for you...
But I was quite amazed about 6 months ago when Adobe and Macromedia were demonstrating their products to us at a studend orientation day. Adobe were domonstrating Adobe CS on a Powerbook and Macromedia showed their Studio MX 2004 on a Windows laptop. The Powerbook cruised through the demo without breaking a sweat, the wintop (though did not crash) had the demonstrators worried a few times, I felt quite embarrased for the demonstrators and was left wondering why they chose to use a wintop?
Anyway the differences were clearly aparent.
It is my opinion that people stick to what they are comfortable with.
I have no issues whatsoever over speed and RAM usage, I run a Dual 1.8 G5 with 2 Gig of RAM. I use it in a design sense too.
A typical day will either be digitizing analogue video streams, editing them through FCP, adding bits in After Effects, retouching through Photoshop, mixing some things for web output into Flash MX and / or burning to DVD with DVDSP.
Or straight design work for large format print dealing with Hassleblad output 14 MP images and hundred-odd layer PS files.
I do serious work and I really give my machine some stick and it doesn't care, it just carries on and works all the time. The only complaints I have is that Flash runs badly on my Mac and I could probably do with a bit more RAM to save some time in the day.
I can't see how you can be having trouble.
Originally posted by the061
I use the kind of programmes you are talking about. On a daily basis I run Licensed copies of Photoshop CS, Illustrator 10, FCP 4.5(HD), DVD Studio Pro 2, After Effects 6 and Flash MX.
I have no issues whatsoever over speed and RAM usage, I run a Dual 1.8 G5 with 2 Gig of RAM. I use it in a design sense too.
A typical day will either be digitizing analogue video streams, editing them through FCP, adding bits in After Effects, retouching through Photoshop, mixing some things for web output into Flash MX and / or burning to DVD with DVDSP.
Or straight design work for large format print dealing with Hassleblad output 14 MP images and hundred-odd layer PS files.
I do serious work and I really give my machine some stick and it doesn't care, it just carries on and works all the time. The only complaints I have is that Flash runs badly on my Mac and I could probably do with a bit more RAM to save some time in the day.
I can't see how you can be having trouble.
I could use about a gig of ram but I feel 768 should be adequate on this system.
You make the G5 sound as good as its been touted however I really don't feel people should be hyped into upgrading their computer all the time.
The Ti Powerbooks are not very appealing to me. Would love to see if the G5's are offered in black and yes plastic!
A computer's form should follow its function not the other way around.
Appologies to all those I have offended.
Thanks.
And I'm guessing you have recent versions of software, which will be built to last on current and future technology with older hardware support and capabilities being an added extra.
Put it this way, did you have any complaints about it in the first year or so of ownership?
Don't get me wrong though. It took me ages to finally upgrade to the G5, lots of waiting, but inevitably you have to move on, especially if you need to run resource hungry apps. It was overall well worth the wait. Remember Apple build their best stuff for the latest machines like any business would, they support older machines because they are nice people.
IT DOESN'T RUN WINDOWS