puredrifting
Major Contributor
Hi all:
Not trolling or trying to start a flame war, just a re-hash of my PC experience today at work. I started out in the 80s and 90s as a PC person. I always was able to get media work done with PCs but was also always frustrated by the lack of logic and ease of use in the various Windows OS that I used. After I had an audio post business running for two years on PCs in the Windows 98/ME era, I gave up. I was spending/losing so much money everytime there was a software/hardware/driver update that I just couldn't run a viable sound business anymore using Windows machines. Even back then, even when running Norton and Symantec virus protection, we were still getting viruses, even on machines that were islands and not on the web or even the network. Every one of our clients only seemed to want to work on ProTools, which at the time, was only available on the Mac.
Some friends showed me this new way of editing non-linear video on a PC and I was impressed but even my friends who were doing non-linear editing a hacked together PCs with various low end cards admitted that their systems were down more than up as far as usability. In other words, because of the OS, they could barely get their non-linear PC editing systems to edit most of the time.
I switched to a B&W G3 tower when FCP 1.0 hit the market and have not looked back since. I have owned a lot of Macs since then, from low end iBooks to the top of the line new G5s that I just bought recently. Because we have three new HVX-200s, today at work, we bought a new HP high end laptop and I was installing the P2 viewer and all of the P2 drivers and software for reading P2 cards on the PCMCIA slot, the P2 store and the HVX-200 on this new laptop. We really only bought this laptop so that we could use the P2 viewer since it is not available for the Mac yet. Oh my gosh, I have used all kinds of computers for over 20 years (I had one of the first Video Toasters on an Amiga 2000 as well) and I have never experienced a stupider, less logical, more complex and unfriendly computing experience than just trying to install the P2 viewer and P2 drivers on this stupid laptop. I can follow prompts and directions but at one point, the laptop had 8 overlapping different Windoze XP dialogues telling me to tell it how to open photos (none of the P2 software has anything to do with photos!), three to shutdown and restart, two telling me not to install the viewer until I had initialized and installed the other drivers. I pointed out to two other editors who were in the room at the time how XP was contradicting itself by giving me choices to shutdown at the same time it was telling me keep installing other software in order to reach a point where I could shut down and restart to install more software. Simply amazing. We actually sat down at the table in the conference room and were making fun of this OS, it is the technological equivalent of the world shown in "The Office" This way of working on a computer is insanity. Now I am not saying that all PC programs are bad, on the contrary, I think that Vegas looks pretty good and most programs that we use a lot of on the Mac like Photoshop and even AVID are pretty much the same on the PC. Our new AVID Symphony runs on a PC.
This will sound weird but I am not anti-PC (the hardware and programs) but I am anti-Windows, it is the lamest, most ill-conceived piece of bloatware ever produced. It reminds me of the worst American cars that Detroit put out in the early 70s, it's like the ultimate form of corporate arrogance that Microsoft can put out something so lousy yet still make billions because Linux and the Mac OS are relatively boutique OS's that most people are ignorant of or just don't even know that they exist. I can't imagine any unbiased person sitting down between two top of the line editing systems and choosing to deal with the Windows OS over OSX or even Linux. Most people must buy Windows because they either just don't know that other better OS's exist or they are too conservative or afraid to try something different than what everyone else they know uses or ??
Maybe it's just me, maybe I have been away from the Windows OS for too long but after not touching a PC for almost 10 years (we have on-line editors who tame the Symphony, I don't have to deal with it;-) and hearing even from Mac users that Win XP has become very "Mac-like, I was amazed at what a frustrating, time-wasting experience even installing a simple utility and a couple of drivers was. I installed the P2 drivers on our Macs in less than :20 total with no issues, click on the package icon, it installs and you are ready to insert a P2 card.
Just wanted to give a perspective of someone who has worked a lot on both platforms and touched a Windows machine for the first time in 10 years. Yikes, FCP and my G4 PB and G5 are much more productive, friendly and practical tools for me. Oh, and I just installed Virtual PC on my wifes iBook because of that nutritional software that she HAD to have that ONLY is available on the PC platform. Even running Windows on a Mac is better and I don't even know why.
BTW, FCP rocks with the HVX-200, I can even edit 720 24PN on my G4 PB running the media off of the internal drive (which as you know is a big no-no) and it is working and not dropping frames. I tried this just as an experiment to see if it would work and it worked great. Different strokes I guess and I know that there are many talented artists and creators who work on PCs, I am just wondering if it is "Stockholm Syndrome" at work where the "captors" have begun to sympathize with their Microsoft "kidnappers" and have begun to overlook how unsatisfying the Windows experience is to new users, kids, older users who haven't used PCs before?
And no, Mac's have their quirks and problems as well but they are generally easier to solve, at least based-upon my 20 years of combined Mac/PC/Amiga experience.
Best,
Dan
Not trolling or trying to start a flame war, just a re-hash of my PC experience today at work. I started out in the 80s and 90s as a PC person. I always was able to get media work done with PCs but was also always frustrated by the lack of logic and ease of use in the various Windows OS that I used. After I had an audio post business running for two years on PCs in the Windows 98/ME era, I gave up. I was spending/losing so much money everytime there was a software/hardware/driver update that I just couldn't run a viable sound business anymore using Windows machines. Even back then, even when running Norton and Symantec virus protection, we were still getting viruses, even on machines that were islands and not on the web or even the network. Every one of our clients only seemed to want to work on ProTools, which at the time, was only available on the Mac.
Some friends showed me this new way of editing non-linear video on a PC and I was impressed but even my friends who were doing non-linear editing a hacked together PCs with various low end cards admitted that their systems were down more than up as far as usability. In other words, because of the OS, they could barely get their non-linear PC editing systems to edit most of the time.
I switched to a B&W G3 tower when FCP 1.0 hit the market and have not looked back since. I have owned a lot of Macs since then, from low end iBooks to the top of the line new G5s that I just bought recently. Because we have three new HVX-200s, today at work, we bought a new HP high end laptop and I was installing the P2 viewer and all of the P2 drivers and software for reading P2 cards on the PCMCIA slot, the P2 store and the HVX-200 on this new laptop. We really only bought this laptop so that we could use the P2 viewer since it is not available for the Mac yet. Oh my gosh, I have used all kinds of computers for over 20 years (I had one of the first Video Toasters on an Amiga 2000 as well) and I have never experienced a stupider, less logical, more complex and unfriendly computing experience than just trying to install the P2 viewer and P2 drivers on this stupid laptop. I can follow prompts and directions but at one point, the laptop had 8 overlapping different Windoze XP dialogues telling me to tell it how to open photos (none of the P2 software has anything to do with photos!), three to shutdown and restart, two telling me not to install the viewer until I had initialized and installed the other drivers. I pointed out to two other editors who were in the room at the time how XP was contradicting itself by giving me choices to shutdown at the same time it was telling me keep installing other software in order to reach a point where I could shut down and restart to install more software. Simply amazing. We actually sat down at the table in the conference room and were making fun of this OS, it is the technological equivalent of the world shown in "The Office" This way of working on a computer is insanity. Now I am not saying that all PC programs are bad, on the contrary, I think that Vegas looks pretty good and most programs that we use a lot of on the Mac like Photoshop and even AVID are pretty much the same on the PC. Our new AVID Symphony runs on a PC.
This will sound weird but I am not anti-PC (the hardware and programs) but I am anti-Windows, it is the lamest, most ill-conceived piece of bloatware ever produced. It reminds me of the worst American cars that Detroit put out in the early 70s, it's like the ultimate form of corporate arrogance that Microsoft can put out something so lousy yet still make billions because Linux and the Mac OS are relatively boutique OS's that most people are ignorant of or just don't even know that they exist. I can't imagine any unbiased person sitting down between two top of the line editing systems and choosing to deal with the Windows OS over OSX or even Linux. Most people must buy Windows because they either just don't know that other better OS's exist or they are too conservative or afraid to try something different than what everyone else they know uses or ??
Maybe it's just me, maybe I have been away from the Windows OS for too long but after not touching a PC for almost 10 years (we have on-line editors who tame the Symphony, I don't have to deal with it;-) and hearing even from Mac users that Win XP has become very "Mac-like, I was amazed at what a frustrating, time-wasting experience even installing a simple utility and a couple of drivers was. I installed the P2 drivers on our Macs in less than :20 total with no issues, click on the package icon, it installs and you are ready to insert a P2 card.
Just wanted to give a perspective of someone who has worked a lot on both platforms and touched a Windows machine for the first time in 10 years. Yikes, FCP and my G4 PB and G5 are much more productive, friendly and practical tools for me. Oh, and I just installed Virtual PC on my wifes iBook because of that nutritional software that she HAD to have that ONLY is available on the PC platform. Even running Windows on a Mac is better and I don't even know why.
BTW, FCP rocks with the HVX-200, I can even edit 720 24PN on my G4 PB running the media off of the internal drive (which as you know is a big no-no) and it is working and not dropping frames. I tried this just as an experiment to see if it would work and it worked great. Different strokes I guess and I know that there are many talented artists and creators who work on PCs, I am just wondering if it is "Stockholm Syndrome" at work where the "captors" have begun to sympathize with their Microsoft "kidnappers" and have begun to overlook how unsatisfying the Windows experience is to new users, kids, older users who haven't used PCs before?
And no, Mac's have their quirks and problems as well but they are generally easier to solve, at least based-upon my 20 years of combined Mac/PC/Amiga experience.
Best,
Dan
Last edited:
not APPLE, though 
