Windows versus OS X

Look forward to seeing the new-multi touch components incorporated into Dorico 4, as I suspect they would well on my touch-enabled Windows laptop.

Trying to count ā€œoffice-based desktopsā€ in any meaningful way is going to be a hard problem. For example I worked at a company where thousands of engineers used ā€œWord and Outlookā€ every day. None of them had a ā€œWindows desktop PCā€ actually on their desk. Most of them had powerful workstations with $10,000+ price tags running Linux, not what most people would describe as a ā€œPCā€ (and certainly not running dual-boot operating systems, or Wine emulation, or whatever).

The minority of managers and others who didnā€™t do technical work had desktop boxes that only needed to be powerful enough to run a keyboard and a monitor - you probably couldnā€™t even install a full modern version of Windows or MacOS on them, let along run any apps.

There were huge economies of scale in this set-up. A ā€œpower userā€ might only need the ā€œpowerā€ for 10% of their working time, so why pay to give them their own desktop PC that is only needed for say 4 hours a week and does almost nothing for the other 164 hours?

All the Windows usage was via software from companies like Citrix, which provides ā€œdesktop-as-a-serviceā€ access to any device anywhere. Word and Office were actually running on Windows servers, and not necessarily even in the same country as the person using them, considering that many projects teams were international and the last thing you want is multiple copies of ā€œthe same fileā€ in an uncontrolled manner on multiple usersā€™ personal machines, in a project team with more than 1000 employees!

Concepts like ā€œcloud storageā€ have been around for decades. The thing that is relatively new is that companies are now marketing them to individuals, not just to large organizations.

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Donā€™t forget that Dorico is not only aimed at professionals (where MacOS surely could be dominant) but also to people new to the field. Those folks are a much more inhomogeneous group. They might be IT guys running Linux or gamers running Windows.
My most beloved games donā€™t run on MacOS at all, so even if I could switch my day job to MacOS I will still be staying on Windows :wink:

for this read ā€œone or two specialist applicationsā€. Itā€™s nothing to do with ā€œcreativesā€ (whatever thatā€™s supposed to mean) but simply due to the fact that thereā€™s more software I want/need which runs only on PC than the other way round. On the other hand, for my relatively little used iPhone and iPad, I much prefer the Apple iOS system to Android having tried both. Iā€™m not sure if you can buy completely silent and fanless Macs either whereas I finally can enjoy listening to music in peace and quiet on my PC.

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Heheh. Sure, you can.

nice! Only about 4x what I paid for my PC :grinning:

Actually, there are lots of Macs that are fanless, not just the ones that cost more than my car. The lowest cost Mac notebook is also fanless, and several reviewers of the new M1 Mac Mini and Macbook Pro thought their units were defective because the fans were so quiet they couldnā€™t be heard.

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Pretty sure the Mac Pro has fans.

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Yes but theyā€™re dern quiet. Or so Iā€™m told.

I have a pair of Noctua fans in my custom build. Incredibly quietā€¦

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Thatā€™s true! We have them in the recording studios on campus. They are dead silent.

The ā€œApple taxā€ on that is really insane! Itā€™s definitely beautiful in appearance but hereā€™s a comparison to a high end PC build (more or less specā€™ed to the one I just did in July, although I already had several of the components and sold off others)

PC
Ryzen 5950x (16-core) - $849
64GB DDR4 RAM 4000MHz - $339
MSI RTX 3080 - $1,119
4TB (2x2TB) Samsung 980 m2 PCIe4 - $799
4TB SanDisk SSD - $469
Fractal Define 7 Compact - $99
Gigabyte Titan Ridge Thunderbolt - $89
Gigabyte X570S AERO G - $349
Corsair iCue H100i Elite - $149
Corsair RM850x - $149
Razer Deathadder Elite - $49
Das Keyboard 4 - $169

Total: $4,628

Mac Pro
Intel Xeon W-3245 (16-core)
48GB DDR4 RAM 2933MHz
Radeon Pro W5700x (15,021)
8TB SSD
Stainless Steel case w/feet
Thunderbolt included
Mobo chipset?
Additional cooling not needed
Power included (1280w)
Magic Mouse 2
Magic Keyboard w/Keypad

Total: $11,499

The PC build costs only 40% of the Mac, has a faster CPU (46,134 vs 30,246 on PassMark CPU Benchmark), has a faster GPU (24,404 vs 15,021 on PassMark GPU Benchmark), has faster PCIe 4 vs PCIe 3 on the Mac, has both more and faster RAM, etc. Iā€™m sure they will sell them to studios, but they are really crazy expensive compared to PCs.

The Mac Pros are very ā€˜specific specificationā€™ hardware. The equivalent HP Z-series is more expensive.

Xeons are workstation/server-grade CPUs, and support Error-correcting Memory, address more RAM, and have all sorts of other spec not in ā€˜normalā€™ desktop CPUs. In some environments, they are critical.

I agree, itā€™s not the Mac that most people need. But Apple did a ton of research after the 2013 trashcan, and thatā€™s where the market is. People - Businesses - arenā€™t paying an extra $5,000 just to be cool.

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On the music side of things, every NYC recording studio (that isnā€™t a 1-man operation) that Iā€™ve been in uses these high-end Macs to run Pro Tools. Obviously reliability is key factor for them, and many of them have mics and other hardware that cost more than that so itā€™s not a particularly large expense. For home studios though I personally just donā€™t see the point in spending 2.5 times the cost for slower hardware. I like Macs, and we have 4 of them in the house, Iā€™m just on PC for my desktop because of the above crazy expense.

I concur (not regarding NYC as Iā€™ve never visited!). Every studio I know in the UK is wedded to Pro Tools and hence Mac. Similarly every design agency here used to run Claris Works.

I can find no evidence that Macs are any more or less reliable than PCs.

Sorry, Fred. Do you not see the irony here? You appear willing to pay over the odds for 4 basic machines to surf the net and handle emailsā€¦

(As a total aside, Doricoā€™s use of frames reminds me of Lotus Manuscript - an early MS-Dos desktop publishing suiteā€¦)

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Oh, I do! Both kids got MacBooks when they graduated middle school so they would have a computer to last them through high school, and they wanted Macs. Wife also is on Mac. We have an old Mac Mini that the kids used when they were younger that now is only to ā€œsurf the net and handle emails.ā€ Iā€™m the outlier in the house, LOL!

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I have a Mac Mini, which copes effortlessly with everything I can throw at it. Using the Dorico benchmark scores:

Fredā€™s Ryzen: 3857 ms / 3649 ms
My Mini: 4038 / 3760 ms

Itā€™s a 6-core i5 3Ghz and I paid around Ā£1,100 for it. The ā€œApple Taxā€ myth is over-stated. Appleā€™s laptops are not dissimilar in price to similarly specced HPs, Dells or other high-end laptops.

Yes, some people use Apple because they need Pro Tools or Final Cut Pro, and are thus somewhat wedded to it. Others, because theyā€™re familiar with Unix and have years of scripts and automations in their workflows. Others, because they grew up with them.

I first started using Macs in the late 80s, when no one had an IBM PC in their house. I learnt Unix on the Sun workstations at Uni, and so when OS X came along, it was the union of two old friends. I also worked in publishing, where everything was Mac. Iā€™ve use Windows about 12 times, and am completely lost when I have to!

I remember being criticized for ā€˜trying to be differentā€™. Now, Iā€™m just one of the unthinking sheeple who goes along with the crowd. :laughing:

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This is what I learned from this thread. Mac users are here in the majority. Windows is reserved to The Happy Few! :grinning:

Iā€™m quite happy with my macs, lol.