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Mac vs PC

daSkeptic said:
You are quite correct that this is an area where Macs have not seen a great deal of use. SGI was the big name for a long time, but once things started becoming cheaper it shifted to Windows PCs. There's not really any technological reason to exclude Macs, the market just shifted to where the bulk of the business was.
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Absolutly true. With cards like the Quadro 4800 becoming available for the Mac and highend 3D animation software like Maya, Houdini and XSI porting to the Mac, we will see more and more effects houses putting Macs into the pipeline.

Presently, effects houses render farms are usually bladeserver type PCs running Linux. Autodesk and other software producers ported thier software and renderers to Linux a long time ago.

I don't know if you will ever see Mac render farms seeing as the mantra for render farms is cheap, cheap ,cheap. Try writing the check to buy 3000 seats of OSX. Linux cost of $0. per CPU is just right.

Autodesk also owns Smoke, Flint and Luster which is used by just about every major film/video studio for editing and processing. The exception being Nuke which was developed by Digital Domain and distributed by The Foundry.

Autodesk pretty much has the video/film and effects industry by the short hairs. Which has more than a few effects houses concerned.
 
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GreNME said:
Why?
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From my point of view, to make application development easier. I develop a multi-platform application for which some launchers and other "glue" are implemented using shell scripts for UNIX/Linus/OS X. On Windows, the machinery isn't there to do the same with bat files, so applications are required. Development and maintenance for those bits is much heavier on Windows. For our own use in development and testing, we use shell scripts running under Cygwin, but we can't require our users to install it.
 
Ducky said:
There are similar equivalents to be installed with powershell. It's only a weakness if all you know is unixy bash scripting and are stuck on a windows server.
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But PowerShell wasn't standard until Windows 7 (assuming it is there).
 
Haven't been following this thread on the assumption that I've seen most of the arguments before. I don't hate Mac products besides the I-Pod. I hate many of the aspects of Mac as a company, but not their computers.

However what is Apple's answer to these? That would be this.

SOOOOO innovative! Cutting edge! :p
 
Yea. Apple's condition in the PC market place is due to Steve Jobs.
 
daSkeptic said:
You are quite correct that this is an area where Macs have not seen a great deal of use. SGI was the big name for a long time, but once things started becoming cheaper it shifted to Windows PCs. There's not really any technological reason to exclude Macs, the market just shifted to where the bulk of the business was.
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Side note: the shift hasn't been solely Windows on the PC for 3D CG work. Linux has some notable movies under its belt-- the Star Wars prequels, the LOTR movies, and I believe the Shrek films if I'm not mistaken, just to name a few.

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Modified said:
From my point of view, to make application development easier. I develop a multi-platform application for which some launchers and other "glue" are implemented using shell scripts for UNIX/Linus/OS X. On Windows, the machinery isn't there to do the same with bat files, so applications are required. Development and maintenance for those bits is much heavier on Windows. For our own use in development and testing, we use shell scripts running under Cygwin, but we can't require our users to install it.
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From most of the rest of the developing world's point of view, application development is doing quite fine. Choosing arbitrary reasons to support your assertion makes no more sense than saying that Apple computers are stupid because they only have one mouse button. Windows has several scripting shells to choose from, they're just not command-line-based. If you want to access the hardware on Windows through scripting-- learn to utilize the Windows Script Host and stop demanding that a square peg go through a round hole.

No offense meant, but you should attempt to preach that "application development" speech to the Linux crowd first, since package management is a clustersomething depending on distribution, which is simply a microcosm of platform differences anyway. Macs have pretty tight package installation, but as I pointed out the lack of an uninstaller leaves a huge hole in its elegance factor.
 
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Here's a good question. I'm looking for a decent, inexpensive, multi-track recording and sound editing application for Windows. Like Garage Band. Does anyone know of such a thing? The research I've done suggests that I'm going to need to pay rather a lot of money for something, which I really don't want to do.
 
arthwollipot said:
Here's a good question. I'm looking for a decent, inexpensive, multi-track recording and sound editing application for Windows. Like Garage Band. Does anyone know of such a thing? The research I've done suggests that I'm going to need to pay rather a lot of money for something, which I really don't want to do.
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I don't know of anything quite like Garageband for Windows, but here's an open source multi-track app (for Windows, OS X, and Linux):
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Cheap or free audio apps for Mac or Windows:
http://www.ncsu.edu/it/multimedia/audiotools.html

I know you said Windows, but here's a decent looking, free app for Linux (and OS X):
http://ardour.org/

eta: shareware Windows app that looks kind of GB-like:
http://www.acoustica.com/mixcraft/index.htm
 
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arthwollipot said:
Here's a good question. I'm looking for a decent, inexpensive, multi-track recording and sound editing application for Windows. Like Garage Band. Does anyone know of such a thing? The research I've done suggests that I'm going to need to pay rather a lot of money for something, which I really don't want to do.
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Acid Music Studio. Nuff said. That's essentially the program GB emulates anyway, since the program hasn't really evolved much since ACID 4.5 back when Sonic Foundry was the company making it (Sony bought Sonic Foundry and re-branded the software). If the $50 is too rich for your blood, it seems Sony offers a limited 'ACID Express' version for a free registration.
 
jimtron said:
Someone dedicated a Web site to their search for a Windows version of GB:

http://garagebandforwindows.wordpress.com/
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From that site on Acid:
Bottom line for MIDI. I think it will fit the bill. If you need MIDI support, Sony Acid Music Studio 7 can be your GarageBand for Windows.
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:dl:

Acid predates OS X, let alone GarageBand. Sonic Foundry practically wrote the book on loop-based mixing of tracks on the computer.

ETA: for reference, I was looping MIDI, a drum machine, my keyboard, bass, guitar, and mic all together in ACID ten years ago.
 
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GreNME said:
Side note: the shift hasn't been solely Windows on the PC for 3D CG work. Linux has some notable movies under its belt-- the Star Wars prequels, the LOTR movies, and I believe the Shrek films if I'm not mistaken, just to name a few.
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We played the third Shrek movie at work all the time, and according to the credits, all rendering services and computers were provided by HP.
 
tyr_13 said:
We played the third Shrek movie at work all the time, and according to the credits, all rendering services and computers were provided by HP.
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HP machines, but the operating system was supposedly a Linux build. The ILM guys had custom builds for their rendering, and WETA apparently followed similar steps.
 
GreNME said:
HP machines, but the operating system was supposedly a Linux build. The ILM guys had custom builds for their rendering, and WETA apparently followed similar steps.
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That figures.
 
Is it just me or are Mac people more anti-PC than PC people are anti-mac?
 
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