15 replies to this topic

[Nick Springer]

"[url="http://"http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/"]http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/[/url]

A friend of mine at Apple just sent me this. She has been working on this project.

Now I have a reason to buy a new Mac. Yay! "

[mike]

Yeah,
i read aobut that this morning off of a few sites. Steve Jobs realized
if you can't beat em, join em! I'm sure this will make Macs less
foreign to 95% of the users out there.

To really get full use
out of the system, I wish there was a cross compatibility without
rebooting and seamless file swapping between them. You basically get 2
systems in one computer.

[Nick Springer]

With an external Firewire HD, you should be able to transfer files.

[Rick Dey]

If
you only format the Windows partition to no more than 32 GB FAT32, the
Mac OS will be able to read/write directly to/from the boot drive. A
flash drive plugged into a USB port would be even more universal and
pretty cheap.

[mike]

"(IMG:[url="http://"http://images.dealcatcher.com/products/1stbluescreen.jpg"]http://images.dealca...tbluescreen.jpg[/url])

Gotta love Windows! "

[Jason]

"

(IMG:http://images.dealcatcher.com/products/1stbluescreen.jpg)

Gotta love Windows!

http://

Sweet, air hockey!! "

[Rick Dey]

Oh great, now I can experience the blue sceen of death on that fancy new intel iMac sitting on the desk behind me.

That was something I didn't miss when I left Windows, but then a good old kernel panic once in a while keeps me in check.

[BEAVER]

For
map making, is Mac any better than Intel/AMD PC? I know that Mac is
better with Art/Drawing programs like corel, adobe, freehand, but what
mapping software is available on the MAC.

[Rob]

To beaver's questions i'd also add:

why
are macs better for drawing/art programs than a comparably equiped
wintel? it is something concrete or just a personal perference?

my first computer was a mac in 1987, but haven't had one since. just spec'd a dream machine for $9k. how nice it would be....

[mike]

"

To beaver's questions i'd also add:

why 
are macs better for drawing/art programs than a comparably equiped 
wintel?  it is something concrete or just a personal perference?

my 
first computer was a mac in 1987, but haven't had one since.  just 
spec'd a dream machine for $9k.  how nice it would be....

http://

Macs
were designed to handle fonts better than PCs. Obviously, the design
industry took note of this and began to use Macs in the early 80s to
use them for print production and then eventually for all types of
graphic design. Have you ever tried to manage a huge number of fonts on
Windows? it's a nightmare and it slows down the computer so much. So
just in typography alone, Macs shine.

I have used Photoshop and
Illustrator in the Windows environment and they perform well. But on a
Mac, things processed a little faster and it was able to handle more
than what i could throw at it. I find there's also less crashing
involved in the Mac environment. The ability of the Mac to process
things quickly and easily is what makes me love it so much.
"

[Derek Tonn]

"

For 
map making, is Mac any better than Intel/AMD PC? I know that Mac is 
better with Art/Drawing programs like corel, adobe, freehand, but what 
mapping software is available on the MAC.

Beaver,

What
you say about Mac being better for Art/Drawing programs actually has
not been true for 3-4 years. It is a rumor or ""Windows 95/98/2000
hold-out"" that Mac users and the print industry use to try and convince
people to buy Macintosh. Running Adobe makes zero difference, Mac vs.
PC. Corel doesn't even SUPPORT the Mac platform anymore (gotta be on a
PC if you want to be happy on Corel). Freehand doesn't matter either,
though Adobe doesn't sound like they have any long-term plans for the
program. The only issue I have ever seen (as others have mentioned) is
a bit slower performance when managing large collections of typefaces.

Actually,
when it comes to map design, the Mac doesn't hold a candle to the PC
platform in my book. I use Adobe, Corel and Macromedia (now Adobe)
products every day in my work, and it's been smooth-sailing for me on a
PC since 1999-2000.

As for the ""blue screen of death"" comments from other folks, all you gotta do is remember the two ""golden rules"" of computing:

1. Never open anything where you don't know what it is, and
2. Never open anything that you don't know who it is from (and were not expecting to receive).

That,
and use a browser like Firefox/Opera/Safari (especially Firefox with
the Adblock extension)....not that piece of garbage IE6 (or IE5....or
IE4.....) to ward-off all the junk that you can inadvertently introduce
on to your hard drive.

You do that, and PCs are a happy place to
be....especially if you like having 20-times the software titles to
work from. One last thing: anyone out there want a ""slightly damaged
iMac"" that my father took a sledgehammer to after the thing constantly
crashed on him? He's been on a PC now for about 4-5 months, with zero
problems.....after I made sure I set him up with the right free
firewalls, anti-virus programs and browser software..... "

[Hans van der Maarel]

"

That, 
and use a browser like Firefox/Opera/Safari (especially Firefox with 
the Adblock extension)....not that piece of garbage IE6 (or IE5....or 
IE4.....) to ward-off all the junk that you can inadvertently introduce 
on to your hard drive.

http://

Another bit of advice, stay away from Outlook as well, I'm using Thunderbird instead and love it.
"

[Rob]

"

GIS and mapping software are going to be slow to come to market for Appl's platform.

http://

I can't ever see this happening. and thanks derek for the other insights. "

[Steve Spindler]

Having recently migrated from a G4 powerbook to a MacBook Pro, I thought I'd share my experience as it relates to mapping. It's not very scientific because the two computers have different versions of MAPublisher.

The big question was - How will Illustrator perform? Gerry Krieg and I did a comparison. Gerry has a 1.25 ghz G4 tower with 1.5 gigs of ram, running CS2 with MAPublisher 6.2. Steve has a 2.33 Ghz Core2 MacBookPro with 3 gigs of ram, running CS2 with 7.1 MAPublisher.

S = Steve's Mac
G = Gerry's Mac

Not all test were done on both computers.

Startup of Illustrator

S: 40 seconds
G: Didn't test

Import and reproject Montgomery County PA 42091rds-j on MAP Data USA CDs from Avenza.

S: 1 minute, 40 seconds - Import and reproject Montgomery County, PA Streets
G: 3 minutes, 35 seconds

Select by Attribute - To select roads by CFCC Type

S: 1 minute 8 seconds
G: <15 sec

Note - Gerry is using MP 6.2, which has pull down menus. MP 7.1 takes awhile to sort through the data. If you hit cancel during this process, you still probably get the field information that you need for your query without the wait.


Simplify lines to 30 ft, with bezier arcs

S: 1 minute 10 seconds
G: <15 seconds

Label all 7162 Streets

S: Stopped after an hour (about half way)
G: 15 minutes - but labels were placed horizontally instead of following the linework.

Conclusion about performance boost:

Gerry's computer was that much faster with some features. Where my computer was faster, Gerry's was faster to import. The whole process of import and reprojection took longer for him though. While I hope for much speed improvement with the New CS Suite coming out next year, Illustrator works well enough at the moment, particularily since I only have MP installed when I need it.

Windows XP on Steve's MacBookPro
I've also installed ArcGIS 9 and Manifold on my Mac via Parallels. These seem a little slower than on the PC that I had previously been using. The speed difference is most noticable when loading files into Manifold. This is when the hard drive has to do a lot of importing.

Startup of ArcMap
S: <2 seconds

Time to import 42091rds-j.shp in ArcMap
S: <2 seconds

Time to label all streets in ArcMap
S: 1 minute

Final Conclusions:

Having spent a lot on the Mac, Parallels and Windows XP, the benefit is that I can run GIS on my Mac at a tolerably fast speed. There was not much data available to me prior to getting the new Mac, and I really didn't know if it would be worth it. The reason I didn't get the MacPro desktop (faster, for less money) is that I like to have everything in one place, and I need to be able to work while traveling.

I have no complaints about the speed, and the utility of the various GIS programs on my Mac increases my productivity. So if I were to do it over, I'd probably still upgrade. Gerry, on the other hand, doesn't need the Windows capability. He's waiting for a faster, less expensive computer once the new CS Suite comes out.

By the way, my computer is connected to an apple monitor, so I run Windows on one screen and OSX on the other.

Steve Spindler