After 6 years of mac based production I’ve made the switch back to a Windows machine with widescreen monitor which arrived today at renga HQ.
Apple products are a designer’s dream. For one, they look good. For even the most practical of designers the sleek appearance of a mac on a desk is alluring. I bought mine when moving abroad. The ‘computer’ part of the mac is integrated with the screen so much easier to transport.
The operating system is minimal without all the extra bloatware you get with windows, it’s intuitive to use and although less easy for the user to refine the operating system it rarely seems to need fixing in this way.
Another perceived bonus from my point of view is functionality of adobe suite on the mac. I have been running an old adobe suite legacy license (not the creative cloud version- which I am about to upgrade to) and I find working between the various programmes seamless, I seem to be able to drag and drop, nothing crashes or seems convoluted. I also use the adobe suite on a windows machine elsewhere and for some reason of which I have no empirical evidence for I feel like it doesn’t sit as well on a windows pc.
Macs are also very quiet as well as being sexy. No whirring fan in a box on the floor sucking up dust.
So why make the change?
Three reasons
- Damaged screen
- Software availability
- Power (and a thirst for world domination)
Damaged screen
When we shipped the computer back to the UK, despite being in a bespoke travel case some black spots appeared on the screen. This is a total pain when editing photos which is one of my main hobbies- I already have to deal with the dog lick and mud on the lens cover.
Software
This is probably the main reason for the switch. AutoCAD was released for mac os around 2013 and works just fine. However despite Autodesk making both autoCAD and REVIT they haven’t yet released REVIT for mac. Similarly 3dS max and Lumion are not available on the mac OS.
There is a workaround for this. You can install something called Bootcamp on your mac which essentially simulates using a windows machine. I did do this for some time and it was a total nightmare for me. It involved partitioning or splitting the hard drive which reduced my overall storage. As a designer that likes to make big files A1 photoshop files for example are a regular occurrence and video editing is particularly storage hungry. I work across a lot of programmes at the same time so the partition I would be constantly flicking back between Bootcamp and the mac operating system which was clunky and unworkable. I have spoken to other designers who are fans of Bootcamp but it just didn’t cut it for me.
Power
I am a heavy computer user. At any one time I’m likely to be working across multiple pieces of software. I may be putting together an Indesign document and editing the content in Photoshop, Sketchup and Autocad whilst also listening to streamed music and making notes in word and answering e-mails. While my mac crashes far less than the pc I work on elsewhere it does get sluggish when I’m being overly demanding. My new machine is a specifically built graphics machine that should be a bit more nippy and tolerant of my abuse.
Return of the mac?
I’m interested to see how the switch pans out. I’m nervous and a bit sad about leaving the simplicity of the mac OS and returning to the cluttered and error ridden windows operating system but very excited about the design opportunities of using software that was previously difficult to access. One of the big technical goals I’ve set myself is to complete ‘grand designs style’ model animation and explore VR capability. Watch this space…
post script
This isn’t a technical post but if you want to see the machine specs it came from novatech and can be found here. The screen here.
For comparison I was previously running a mac with the following spec:
