So my girlfriend is an Art major and is taking a graphic design class. Her teacher told her that if they 'don't have a mac, they aren't serious about graphic design.' I can proselytize about PC over MAc for days, but unfortunately I don't know enough about graphic design software and the options and benefits for each platform. How can I reassure her that she didn't make a bad choice being on PC.
TL;DR My girlfriend's graphic design teacher is an Apple shill, how do I reassure her that WIndows is A-Okay
Not a graphic designer, but an engineer. Apple has as a plus side that it is mostly locked down and child proof. While on Windows, you can do whatever you want (mostly).
"Do you want to become like that stupid teacher? No? Then don´t buy apple products!"
I think the stigma comes from the fact that Mac OS really pioneered the GUI, and thus, early on when graphic designers bought a computer, they'd go straight for an Apple.
In my opinion, that statement hasn't been true since probably about 2000. The availability of design software on both platforms is pretty much identical, and so is the support for different devices, such as graphics tablets.
Certainly, in the industrial design/engineering fields, there are many programs, such as SolidWorks, which don't have an OS X version at all.
@CrossCarbon@Zavar Thanks guys. I told her that probably the only thing thing this teacher knows about computers he learned in those 2006 "'Hi, I'm a Mac.' 'And I'm a PC'" Commercials
I'm not really deep into those kinds of things, but there is a YouTube channel, called Tech Uploaded. He have made a small comparison, between an apple laptop from 2013 I believe and his 5820k system in video rendering. Well the apple was like few seconds slower. 2013 macbook... 6c/12t system... May be the things are not as black and white as many people think... PS: I would have linked the video, but it's one of his 2 hour vlogs....
This looks like it may be targeted towards graphics designers... and it's not apple so yay?
And yeah there's many other software tools that allow for great graphic designing. Not to mention designing in VR (maybe there's a mac out there that can do vr but idk... i don't keep up on apple hardware). I mention VR purely for the more artistic stuff, it may allow the artist to be more in-tune with the piece of work but I'm no artist so idk
Final Cut Pro X is amazingly optimised for the hardware, and it also renders whilst you're editing. That is one of the benefits of a Mac. I believe Dimitry from Hardware Canucks does his editing on a 15 inch Macbook Pro for this exact reason.
Saying that, you can pretty much guarantee that a graphic designer will be using Adobe CC/CS and maybe a handful of other softwares. These aren't that well optimised on either platforms, so the difference is pretty negligible.
Her teacher is a Putz. there are plenty of people that make their living in art on Linux of all things. It's about your skill and work ethic, not what ecosystem you want to use. If you need a shining paragon of artistry outside of apple, check out david revoy:
Reassure your girlfriend that her teacher is a moron that should stick to teaching Art, Design & Creativity and refrain from making statements about I.T. This is not a Mac vs. PC argument. It is an argument about tools. Even before computers were used for design, artists argued about "What is better: Oil paint or Acrylic paint?"
If you don't use oil's you aren't a serious painter.
But I like acrylic's. They are easier for me to create the type of art I envision. Isn't the final result more important than how I made it?
Same bullshit. Different Millennium.
At work they FORCED me to get a new Mac when the rest of the company got new PC's. I begged them to give me a PC, but got the Mac. IT could not support it, fix it, or back up my work to the corporate servers. I had to do it all on my own, being my own IT guy and taking time away from my design responsibilities.
Anyone who says 'not buying a Mac for art means that you are not serious about art' is either a paid shill for Apple or clearly has not heard of Paint Tool SAI. SAI easily has the highest power-to-weight ratio for a standalone raster graphics program - and it is only available for Windows. Now, that's not really a valid argument for full-on Graphic Design, it's just a little paint program, but in terms of general art one only has to go online and see how much people use SAI. It's damn near ubiquitous. Macs are an outlier in that regard.
In any case, your gf's teacher should be focusing on teaching students Graphic Design - That is his job. His job is not to push his ill-informed and short-sighted biases on his students. Using a Mac as a newbie will not make you better than a grizzled professional using a Windows or Linux PC any more than the reverse. What matters is not what platform or what tools you're using, what matters is what you are doing with them.
Professional designer here. I've done my work on PCs daily for the last five years. The only time I worked on macs was when I was in school. Personally don't have any issue with either platform but I prefer PC for the flexibility it gives me. Instead of having a machine that I use purely for design, I can also use it for gaming, programming, etc.
Her professors should be focused on teaching visual problem solving vs "how to do x with y program". The programs and materials will change rapidly, but being able to adapt and think for yourself is a far more useful tool, or so I've found in my practice.
Tell this: all base belong to us. Teacher may like being corporate apple shill, but you are not. PC is better... if she disagrees she doesn't know enough to make statements as such or know anything about graphics (worked in 3d graphics on 3dsmax, poser, vue, and 3dstudio eons ago on dos).
i would ignore anything that a art teacher has to say about tech. however im assuming most art companies are rocking apple hardware. so it would be easier for her to learn on that platform. i dont see it changing any time soon. just get a cheap 11 macbook and plug it into a monitor
Krita is arguably the best raster painting software out there right now, and it's free, and will install on windows, linux, mac, and your IoT toaster if you want it to. inkscape and synfig are good for vector, and blender + greasepencil cover 2d and 3d CG and animation.
From my interaction with tech-savvy art people and the like, the stigma came from when apple hardware had CPU instructions that photoshop took advantage of to allow the software to run 4x as fast on a Mac vs a PC at the same clock speed. The problem is there's not a difference anymore, since all the macs are on low-end intel CPU's now.
Essentially, they USED TO have an advantage when they were using RISC and POWER, but when they switched to AMD64, they lost all the advantage.
EDIT: this might be an informative article. I don't know enough to speak on it at length, but I would be willing to do research if people are interested.
The only advantage I can think of is that on the all-in-one iMacs the display is already callibrated. Other than that, it's the same thing. Granted, the Adobe suite runs a bit better on OS X if you compare it to a PC with exactly the same specs.
I'm a graphic design student and halfway my career I switched from an old iMac to a self-built pc. I bought everything checking on a compatibility list for a Hackintosh build. It never happened: I started screwing around with Linux programs and to this day I still use libre tools. Adobe is great in some respects, there are a lot of automations and powefrul tools. but as a teacher said to us, "Great tools just make the user lazy" (he made us do stuff by hand instead of digital, though)
Here's what I'm using
Calligra Suite + Krita: Publishing, general documents, digital painting -> MS Publisher, MS Office, ArtRage Studio GIMP: general purpose graphics processing -> Photoshop Darktable: Image classification, sorting and post-processing -> Lightroom Blender: 3D modelling and rendering -> Rhyno, Maya Inkscape: vector-based illustration --> Illustrator Scribus: Document layout and publishing --> inDesign
It's just a matter of taking some time to adjust the program to your workflow or your workflow to the programs. Gimp is great in a sense because is compatible with all sort of stuff from Photoshop: brushes, palettes, etc. Krita is great for true digital painting, and Scribus is ugly as fuck but I grew to love it over inDesign for document layout, imposing, etc.
Hope it helps! almost all those programs are cross-platform win/mac/nix and free