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Our granddaughter has just started at university on a graphic design course and has been told that her current cumputer isn't suitable and that she must have an Apple. Why might that be? I haven't discussed it with her, but I assumed that any software could be loaded onto any computer, provided that it had the necessary amount of spare memory.
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Apple Macs are the industry standard for graphic designers.
I have occasionally worked with guys who use pcs and they are a monumental PITA especially when it comes to sharing fonts. Or sharing anything.
The last thing she wants to be doing is solving incompatibility problems when she's supposed to be learning.
Also the Keyboards have a different layout and using quick keys and short cuts is essential.
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I should add, if she wants a job in a design studio, she will be expected to know Apple System software inside out.
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> I haven't discussed it with her, but I assumed that any software
>> could be loaded onto any computer, provided that it had the necessary amount of spare
>> memory.
Apple computers use a different operating system to other PC's, so any software can not be loaded onto any PC.
Indeed much graphic design software for the Apple is not even made for the PC. The worse thing is the sometime incompatible file formats, meaning interchange between the two is difficult at best.
The main reason however for using a Mac on the course, is she will be using them when she gets to work at the graphic design studio. Mac familiarity is a pre requisite.
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As the others say the software she will probably use will be Mac only. But will she be given copies of the software by the college to load onto her own laptop? If not are you expected to buy it - could be expensive and on top of the cost of a Mac.
If she does have to get a Mac, check what spec is going to be useful. I would imagine it would have to be at least a 15" laptop and you're talking a lot of money for a new 15" bottom of the range MacBook Pro.
As the others say it is just as likely to be because she would be expected to know a Mac inside out for any job she gets in the future.
Do you know what software she will be using BTW?
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The course may have a deal to rent macs for students.
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Apple Macs run on Mac OS which is a Unix based product.
PCs can run varieties of Unix but this would not make it compatible to Apple Software.
2 of my sons have Apple Macs @ home (PCs at work) - 23 " screens and are magic - around £1300 but they start at lower prices,
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"If she does have to get a Mac, check what spec is going to be useful. I would imagine it would have to be at least a 15" laptop"
Personally speaking, I wouldn't go for a laptop. They cost a lot more and the screens are too small. I struggle with a 24 inch screen. I'm working in Indesign CS5 at the moment and the number of style windows I need to keep open is ridiculous: Swatches, strokes, colour, effects, pages, layers, links, text wrap, character & paragraph styles. Photoshop and Illustrator are much the same. The bigger the screen, the better her sight will be when she graduates.
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>> Personally speaking, I wouldn't go for a laptop. They cost a lot more and the
>> screens are too small. I struggle with a 24 inch screen. I'm working in Indesign
>> CS5 at the moment and the number of style windows I need to keep open
>> is ridiculous: Swatches, strokes, colour, effects, pages, layers, links, text wrap, >>character & paragraph styles.
>>
Would a two monitor approach be do-able with Macs? I've done that a few times at work with PCs to give more room for extra windows.
There are some marginally less eye watering prices on the Apple refurb store:-
store.apple.com/uk/browse/home/specialdeals/mac?mco=OTY2ODY3Nw
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Hi Spam
Yeah I've thought about a two monitor approach, but there always seems to be something more urgent to spend money on...
Definitely recommend Apple refurbs though, I'm using one that I bought through a Polish equivalent and saved a lot of dosh.
Last edited by: BiggerBadderDave on Sat 25 Sep 10 at 17:47
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"Personally speaking, I wouldn't go for a laptop"
I would speculate that she will be expected to turn up to some classes with her mac. An external monitor can be added later if necessary.
The "what software is required" question is a good one. If it's like book lists from my time, don't buy it until the last minute, you may never need it. Students get massive discounts. She couldn't get Photoshop for me could she (just joking, I get in knots with Photoshop Elements).
John
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No point spending money on photoshop when the Gimp is free :-) The discounts on adobe products for students aren't that great. Photoshop is still £175
A laptop for design work could be awful. The graphics capability of laptops is usually inferior to desktops even when you add an external monitor. She'll also need a graphics pad. The key to choosing a mac is to go for one with the best graphics card. Then load up with as much memory (RAM) as you can afford on the fewest sticks so you can add to it later. Apple generally do finance schemes for even students so mid range Imac would be £70 a month for 3 years. Also she should get apple care on it.
She doesn't have to buy new. There are second hand macs around or ex display models perhaps. Run outs are also good ones to get.
I'm sure the course would have recommendations to spec. They should also have mac labs where she could do the work initially while waiting for hers to arrive.
An older intel power mac with cinema display is another possibility but would be far more unwieldy.
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Alas gimp cant do all that photoshop can.
One of my private customers designs and sells skins for avatars in second life. Gimp cant produce the required multiple layers.
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I'm surprised at that as I've used multiple layers within gimp. Not more than half a dozen though. Do they need hundreds?
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>> Do you know what software she will be using BTW?
>>
No, I only know what 'er indoors has told me ~ and she knows absolutely nothing about computers. She thinks a hard drive is an arduous journey!
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It is possible to run OSX on a PC, but its not legal and you will probably spend six years writing the drivers in C++ before you even get it working.
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If you buy a PC with similar spec to a Mac then it can be made to illegally run MacOS X. I nearly did it.
A cheaper option might be a Mac mini and keep existing keyboard/screen? Assuming they exist. I use a Microsoft Mouse on my iMac but the full size keyboard (with num pad).
>> They cost a lot more and the screens are too small
This is why I was wondering about hardware - doing design stuff on a 13.3" MacBook would not be easy.
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There will be plenty of Apple Macs lurking in the computer suite in the department, and getting access to them shouldn't be difficult.
(If it's the department and University I think it is, there are large computer rooms with either PCs or Macs available)
I would suggest that using a PC from home/hall of residence will be fine for keeping in touch via email / blackborad / facebook, and wikis, and using the Macs in the lab for specific graphic design work only might be a solution.
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Having thought a bit more about this, I'm not sure the advice is true to begin with.
When he isn't writing off his Alfa Romeo, my brother in law is a graphic designer. He went through his university course, and from there, went on to set up his own business using a PC - after his business became established, he has bought an Apple computer, but, he certainly didn't *need* a mac to do good work, or to build his business.
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>>my Brother in law is a graphic designer.
>>he has since bought an Apple computer, but, he certainly didn't *need* a mac to do good >>work, or to build his business.
Courses change as years go bye, technology changes what hardware and software can do and what the market expects a graduate to know.
When I was @ Uni 45 years ago we never saw the computer (there was only one in Glasgow Uni, (English Electric Leo Marconi KDF9) - only the paper tape punch!
My eldest son was bought an IBM PS/1, 1991 @ £999 special offer price (12" Colour, 286 Processor, 128K Memory, 20Mb drive). Twins in 1996 (used PS/1 for 2 years), £1175 Pentium, 1/2 Gb, 100Mb) was required to run the course software (CAD + engineering software)
£1000 in 1991 (£2100 today @ 4% inflation) for a 286, £1300 today for an 3 Ghz Apple Mac 24" screen?
To me the Apple Mac (screens, High Definition,Vast storage, processor power, ++++) seems really good value but then again you have to have the money
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...university on a graphic design course and has been told that her current cumputer isn't suitable and that she must have an Apple...
I know of a couple of newspaper groups who bought Apples when on-screen full page make up was introduced in the 90s.
They have since changed to PCs for two reasons, a PC can do the job, albeit perhaps not quite as well, but far more importantly, PCs are cheap as chips.
Laying out a newspaper page is not pure graphic design in the sense the OP and BBD mean it, and I'm sure Apple still dominate in that field.
But in terms of getting a job, I'd have thought familiarity with both types of machine would be an advantage.
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"I know of a couple of newspaper groups who bought Apples when on-screen full page make up was introduced in the 90s.
They have since changed to PCs for two reasons, a PC can do the job, albeit perhaps not quite as well, but far more importantly, PCs are cheap as chips."
I can see why they would do that and it's no doubt the right thing to do for a "closed system".
But I have to integrate with lots of different companies, doing work as well as out-sourcing it. I wouldn't put work out to anyone who didn't use a Mac and I'm certainly not alone. I've done it in the past and it's a ball-ache. I wouldn't turn up on a landscape gardening course with a fork and a spoon either, expecting to dig as well as the other students.
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I worked with many companies IT departments.
None of them were full Apple shops and few allowed department to buy Apple, with one exception, those departments that dealt with DTP, graphics or advertising. They were always, without exemption allowed to purchase Apple.
With the exception perhaps of newspapers, there is never a "closed shop" for graphical work, much is subbed out, bought in, (stolen, some of it), or public domain, and most is Apple based.
There is absolutely no possibility of a graphic design student being able to do a course, graduate, get a job, go freelance without having Apple experience (and the freelance bit requires you to have the correct kit)
Without the reliance of the graphics industry on Apple, the company would have folded years ago.
Last edited by: Zero on Sun 26 Sep 10 at 10:10
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...Without the reliance of the graphics industry on Apple, the company would have folded years ago...
I think that's right, although I read somewhere Apple was in a bit of financial bother until ipods and iphones took off.
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Chicken and egg really, they wouldn't have survived long enough to get into Ipods and Iphones.
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It was that transparent iMac that rescued them, remember the monitor that came in 5 fruity flavours? Then suddenly everything was transparent, they even ripped the idea off for Will Smith's "I Robot"
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>> It was that transparent iMac that rescued them, remember the monitor that came in 5
>> fruity flavours? Then suddenly everything was transparent, they even ripped the idea off for Will
>> Smith's "I Robot"
>>
There was one of those down the local tip the other week PowerMac G4 maybe? I was sorely tempted to buy it, bunga few colour changing LEDs in the transparent bit and stick the internals of an old laptop in the main casing. SWMBO was with me and I get told off for bringing more stuff back from the tip than I take though :-/
Like the otehrs say, if you want a job you need to be able to drive Adobe apps. on a Mac. Full stop.
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"There was one of those down the local tip the other week PowerMac G4 maybe"
I've got one in the attic, free to you if you want to collect! On the tip? Jeez, I paid through the nose for mine...
L'escargot if you need hard evidence and have a couple of spare hours to google around, try looking at some design recruitment agencies, freelance forums or just buy a copy of Design Week and check out the classifieds. They're usually very specific about requirements regarding applications and OS systems. Those asking for experience in Adobe CS programmes on Mac OS X are all the ones that are going to file pc-only user applications in the dustbin.
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>> "There was one of those down the local tip the other week PowerMac G4 maybe"
>>
>> I've got one in the attic, free to you if you want to collect! On
>> the tip? Jeez, I paid through the nose for mine...
>>
Sorry I'm talking rubbish, having checked on Google images it must've been an iMac G3. Probably a bit cheaper than a PowerMac G4.
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>>Courses change as years go bye, technology changes what hardware and software can do and what the market expects a graduate to know.
He started his business using a PC 7 years ago, and he's had a Mac for the past 5. I wasn't talking about ancient history. There hasn't been any significant change in that time frame.
I agree that Mac experience is important, BUT, assuming that I'm think of the correct department [SHU L'es ?], there are lots available in the labs - I doubt there's any real reason for a student to buy their own.
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My work brings me in regular contact with print shops, and in terms of the design of high resolution, colour managed print artwork, what was once almost exclusively Mac is now a fair mix of Mac and PC. The choice of software (Adobe Creative Suite and Acrobat mostly) hasn't changed, but the platform has.
I think the price disparity between Mac and PC, and the recent leaps in PC useability and stability are driving this. Since the Mac moved to an Intel based platform, the high cost of its hardware has become much more transparent. The old adage of a Mac being more stable than a PC also hasn't been true for some time, in my experience. Maybe in the days of Windows 95, but not XP>.
I am not aware of any functional difference between Mac and PC versions of Creative Suite. Some of the navigation elements and shortcuts will be different, but if you can use one, you can quickly adapt to the other.
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I agree, although I'm not sure I could ever wholly adapt to a single-button mouse!
The fact that the major 'design' programs like Photoshop, Illustrator, Quark, etc all exist in PC variants suggests that somebody must be using them. Mac users can be a bit partisan, and that probably applies just as much in universities.
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I have a Mac and use a Microsoft Explorer 4 mouse. And all the buttons are used. Right mouse does what you'd expect. Then I have the back button to do back. Clicking the middle button (roller) brings up the widgets and the second side button brings up Expose.
So you're a little behind the times. The Apple mouse also has right mouse click and the current mouse with the touch sensitive panel is very flexible. I liked the ergonomics of the mouse I had though.
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Yesterday I looked @ 2 x macs in Costco (in the passing - no inyention of buying).
From memory they were about £900 - Other Windows based PCs (all in one design, screen with PC built in) were about £100-£150 cheaper.
So the extra ££s for a Mac over an "upmarket PC" HP/Acer/Lenovo etc is not that big - however compared to entry level desktops @ say £300 the Mac looks pricey!
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"all in one design, screen with PC built in"
That's a drawback, to my mind. You can't upgrade the screen, and it will be a pig to fix if anything goes wrong. A standard box isn't so sexy to look at, but it's a lot cheaper and more flexible, and easy to set up for two screens, for instance.
If it has to be Mac, I'd choose a Mac mini and standard peripherals.
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>> So the extra ££s for a Mac over an "upmarket PC" HP/Acer/Lenovo etc is
>> not that big - however compared to entry level desktops @ say £300 the Mac
>> looks pricey!
When you consider TCO, a Mac is in a different stratosphere to a PC.
Firstly, the hardware costs against a PC of the same processor / drive / RAM / gfx spec are about twice as high, or were when I last checked.
Secondly, if you want to keep your warranty intact, you have to go to Apple for things like RAM and drive upgrades, or for spare parts, for which they charge you about five times the market rate. Even if you go to a reputable third party such as Crucial for RAM, for example, you will still pay £150 for 4GB of DDR2 SDRAM that would cost you less than a third of that if it were for a PC. Apple's prices for major components such as motherboards, graphics cards, and power supplies, which you HAVE to source from Apple, are truly eye-watering.
Don't forget too that the hardware upgrade path for Macs is severely limited. A PC can be made to support new interface technologies, new processors or new applications by simply purchasing and fitting the relevant hardware, which means you can, to a point of course, have your PC adapt and evolve to your changing requirements over time. Parts of my media centre PC in the lounge are getting on for 6 years old, some are 6 months old, and others are various stages in between. As I've needed the box to do something new, better, or different, I've just bought the bits and fitted them, for anything from a fiver to £200 (once) at a time. Much cheaper than binning the whole box every time and starting again.
Macs are simple and what you see really is what you get. Every piece of hardware inside it is a known quantity, has been properly QA'd, and you know the OS will support it 100% without the driver issues or obscure compatibility problems which sometimes crop up in Windows. But boy, do you pay for it!
Last edited by: DP on Tue 12 Oct 10 at 11:27
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>> When you consider TCO, a Mac is in a different stratosphere to a PC.
Yes, especially in Europe. I bought an iBook G4 6 years whilst in the US for considerably less than what it cost in Europe at the time. Using a Mac is a revelation if you're used to the horrors of Microsoft. Everything just works, print drivers install themselves, the computer boots up in seconds, programs are intuitive and don't crash, etc. etc.
I used mine extensively for 3 years whilst travelling and then came the dreaded controller board problem. A manufacturing fault, well documented in the 'Net and subject to a free of charge recall by Apple, but only in the US. By that time I was back in Europe. I priced up a control board swap and it would have cost around 400 - 500 Euros here in Germany, even more in the UK, effectively writing the computer off. I didn't manage to find anyone outside the Apple network supplying working controller boards for the G4 at a reasonable price at the time and for a while I managed to keep it going by squeezing the body together with 2 G-Clamps, a suggestion I found in the Internet.
Fortunately I ended up back on a project in the US in 2007 so while I was there I sent the Mac to an Apple approved repairer who replaced the controller board for 140 Dollars. I still use it use it these days. I'd like to find an excuse to replace it with another Mac because I like the way they work, but I'm struggling so far. Especially with the non-US prices.
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A temporary fix for the motherboard problem on the iBook (a leg on a chip broke or was badly soldered) was to put a bit of plastic as a 'shim' over the chip to apply pressure when the case was put back on. Not a solution but a short term fix.
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>> A temporary fix for the motherboard problem on the iBook (a leg on a chip
>> broke or was badly soldered) was to put a bit of plastic as a 'shim'
>> over the chip to apply pressure when the case was put back on. Not a
>> solution but a short term fix.
Yes, I tried that (once I'd figured out how to disassemble the case) but it didn't work.
The fundamental problem was that the video processor together with the dirty great big heat sink was mounted on the underside of the controller board (why don't Apple use the term motherboard?) and used the soldered legs of the controller chip for mechanical support. Bad design basically and with time and movement a couple of the soldered links would break due to mechnical stress. Electrical contact could be reestablished by applying pressure to the chip. Some brave souls in the Internet related stories of applying heat directly to the offending chip using tea lights on top of the chip to melt the soldered joints underneath.
I tried various types of shim between the chip and the case but the only reliable fix was 2 great big G-Clamps across the case. Which didn't exactly facilitate typing...
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My work laptop literally died a week after getting Windows 7. It probably overheated (I suspect it had a fan problem for a while but IT would not help).... so it died. It eventually failed to get beyond the BIOS bootup screen. But bless IT support for asking me to try lots of things - they would be good working at Virgin Media for helpdesks there.... hang on we used to do that.
Quickest/easiest solution was to swap the hard drive to a replacement 'old' laptop.... when I press down on the left shift key or thereabouts the fan stops on this 'new old' laptop. Something is not right. I logged a call this week now I am between projects. I can literally stop the fan.
The prove how good thermal protection on CPUs is these days. I did stop the fan and run SuperPI and similar. The laptop copes fine!
Last edited by: rtj70 on Tue 12 Oct 10 at 19:46
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I admit it's a while since I used a Mac regularly, but I had a go on a friend's iMac a few days ago, and the Apple mouse didn't have any extra buttons that I could see! Since I first used Macs 25 years ago, it's certainly taken them a while to catch up.
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I could ever wholly adapt to a single-button mouse!
You don't have to - Macs work perfectly well with a two button mouse.
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>> You don't have to - Macs work perfectly well with a two button mouse.
And the mouse that came with my iMac did two button presses. Okay it was basically one big button on the top of the mouse but it worked it out. I didn't like the Mighty Mouse though - and crap name. The roller ball was good to some extent for scrolling in any direction.
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If /when L'escargot's granddaughter does go to get her mac check what discount she can get ordering via university.
My daughter also has a Macbook, as a music student it is much more capable than a laptop.
She got substantial discount buying through her 6th form college although I believe the same sort of discount would have been available at university, she wanted to heve it before she went there.
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Apple computer a must for university course. Why? - BiggerBadderDave
