[Syntax1985]

im starting a graphics design course this year and need a mac for homework / course work etc

ive been looking at the air alot ( il be honest im a ponce and love flashy stuff ) just wondering if anyone knew if it would be enough for graphics design or would i need a mac book pro for specs?

obviously im only going to be using it for homework, when i finish and start proper work il invest into a mac comp rather then a portable.

any insight would be appreciated.

p.s im aware it doesnt have a disk drive and only 1 usb slot but i have no probs getting the portable dvd burner + port HDD for music and movies etc.

[The_Terminator]

If you're only going to be using it for homework and nothing else (and are you sure you actually *need* one? Macs are really expensive, I'd be surprised if any course had that as a requirement), then you might consider using a program like VirtualBox (which is free), or VMWare (which costs money), and just running Mac OSX in a virtual machine on your Windows PC. It won't be quite as fast, and definitely not as flashy, but then you'll also save £500-£1000

As for what I'd recommend, I only have limited experience with macs, but my mate has an excellent Macbook Pro, cost him £1073, but it is a very nice looking laptop. Might be a bit out of your price range (though it was far from the most expensive on sale), but its a truly beautiful machine.

[Pronam]

Mac's are know to be used by designers though. Programs like photoshop were firstly intended for Macs..

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p.s im aware it doesnt have a disk drive and only 1 usb slot but i have no probs getting the portable dvd burner + port HDD for music and movies etc.

Indeed and If someone has a Mac with a disk drive, you can link them together to use disks!

Graphic design usually goes for the best specs as it allows you to work simultaneously with a multiple of programs.
but like The_Terminator says, they are quite expensive! So check around what other studymates will do!
Macbook-air is just a showoff. Because it is that small and still fast.

The simple differences between the 13" Air and Pro can be viewed here
It saves your $300, you got a disk and another usb..the mac-air is just a showoff in its size, only its disk is faster...
If you go for a 15" though, its graphic capabilities are quite increased. From 9400M to 9600M-GT

[Vagrant0]

I highly doubt that any course would require work done on a specific system. Maybe file type and format, but not system. I would look long and hard at these supposed requirements before making any decisions. If it's your teacher suggesting that you "need" to get a mac to do work just because that is what they know, and because they happen to like the format, chances are that that teacher is just a pinhead who will likely cause other problems down the road due to an inability to learn and adapt themselves. The preference for using Mac in design environments deals more with the inability of those designers to handle learning other systems, or deal with minor issues. Although more stable and less complicated in design environments, macs also lack much of the potential for fine tuning and adjusting of settings, or changing processing priority according to what you want done. Furthermore, if there should be any serious issue with your mac, you cannot fix it yourself, and instead either need to link your mac (along with everything on it to tech support) or send your mac away to be fixed. A mac shouldn't really be considered a computer so much as just a terminal that you can surf the web, read e-mail, write documents, watch movies, and do 2d/3d design work on. If you plan to do anything else, you will find a mac very limiting.

The design software for mac often utilizes different folder structures and interfaces than software for PC, so anything you learn on a mac can only be used on another mac. And if you've used a PC for any length of time, you will likely find much of how things are handled on a mac to be totally intolerable.

I had a writing course on a mac once, even though most of the time was spent in just the word processor, there was just so much with how user friendly everything is supposed to be, that there were problems left and right just with trying to manage files. The fact that all of the work that was done for that class is on a mac formatted disk, that a PC cannot read, and in files which are of a format that cannot be converted for use on a PC only adds further insult to the injury. I would get all your information first before you wind up like I am, having done work that I can't look back on, can't access, and can't use just because of a teacher who was playing PC politics. Granted, things move back and forth across OS's a bit better these days, it's still however something you should take the time to look into.

[The_Terminator]

Vagrant0, on Jul 26 2009, 04:25 PM, said:

The design software for mac often utilizes different folder structures and interfaces than software for PC, so anything you learn on a mac can only be used on another mac. And if you've used a PC for any length of time, you will likely find much of how things are handled on a mac to be totally intolerable.

I was under the impression Mac OSX was UNIX-based (or at least descended from UNIX), and so uses the same file structure as just about every OS except Windows (to put it *extremely* simply: / = C: and /Users/<user name>/Documents = My Documents.) It is pretty much the same as every non-Windows OS, and really not difficult to understand. Blame Microsoft for making Windows as incompatible with other operating systems as possible, don't blame it on macs.

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I had a writing course on a mac once, even though most of the time was spent in just the word processor, there was just so much with how user friendly everything is supposed to be, that there were problems left and right just with trying to manage files. The fact that all of the work that was done for that class is on a mac formatted disk, that a PC cannot read, and in files which are of a format that cannot be converted for use on a PC only adds further insult to the injury. I would get all your information first before you wind up like I am, having done work that I can't look back on, can't access, and can't use just because of a teacher who was playing PC politics. Granted, things move back and forth across OS's a bit better these days, it's still however something you should take the time to look into.

I find it extremely hard to believe that you can't access a Windows-formatted hard disk in a Mac, and copy files between the two. The Windows disk may well not be mounted by default, but it will almost certainly be possible to do it easily enough. and if not, the Apple are just as bad as Microsoft, shame on them.

And I know for a fact that you can save files created using a Mac word processor in a format readable on Windows, I have seen it done plenty of times myself.


I do agree though, don't get a Mac unless you absolutely have to for your course - and that is extremely unlikely. If you still feel the urge to get a new operating system anyway, get Linux - at least you won't need a new computer for that.

[LHammonds]

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macs, i know nothing about em , but need one

I am truly sorry. hehehe.

There are some very helpful posts already so I do not need to repeat. I was also going to recommend looking into the "ACTUAL" requirements for the class. A PC can be used to save files on a medium that is compatible for a mac-using instructor to read. And as said, a PC can run a virtual environment to run OSX. I have seen articles that allow you to dual-boot your PC with WinXP and OS X...but depends if the BIOS supports it. The next OS after OS X will be called Snow Leopard and available to purchase for only $30 in the 4th quarter of this year! Would be awesome to have a quad-boot system with WinXP + Win7 + Ubuntu + Snow Leopard.

LHammonds

[Vagrant0]

The_Terminator, on Jul 27 2009, 02:41 AM, said:

I find it extremely hard to believe that you can't access a Windows-formatted hard disk in a Mac, and copy files between the two. The Windows disk may well not be mounted by default, but it will almost certainly be possible to do it easily enough. and if not, the Apple are just as bad as Microsoft, shame on them.

And I know for a fact that you can save files created using a Mac word processor in a format readable on Windows, I have seen it done plenty of times myself.


I do agree though, don't get a Mac unless you absolutely have to for your course - and that is extremely unlikely. If you still feel the urge to get a new operating system anyway, get Linux - at least you won't need a new computer for that.

Well, it was a disk that was formatted for mac, to be used on the school's mac computers that they had in their writing lab. This was also a good 8 or 9 years ago, and when saved, there were no instructions given about file format, and don't even think that whatever bass-ackward word processing program they used even allowed saving in other formats. Not really having my own PC at the time, I really wasn't conscious enough to really look around. I'm sure things are a bit better these days, but it's still one of those issues that has always bugged me about Mac.

[Syntax1985]

Thanks to everyone for replies, my teacher hasn't requested I get a mac but I know the colledge design studios use them so it's less complication for me, on top of that I intend to make a career from G-Design so the quicker I jump on the "mac wagon" the better really.

I have used various tools and emulators while I've been doing website design but none deliver without complications and headaches.

I think I will go with an air with advise that's been given, I do really want the flashy cool one to be honest , and it seems fears of it not being fast enough were misplaced. I have every intention of buying a mac system when I do start work so the air would longterm be a nice bridge between home and work to continue my projects.

Ty again everyone !

P.s. I've never owned a laptop I could repair myself LOL

[Michlo]

Syntax1985, on Jul 27 2009, 04:28 PM, said:

/snip

P.s. I've never owned a laptop I could repair myself LOL

I agree with everything Vagrant said and I couldn't have put it better myself.

As for your P.S. there, the point here is that you'll often be able to get a friend to fix a windows machine (yup, I've been that friend many, many, many and did I mention, many times) whereas with a Mac they make it exceedingly difficult or impossible to be able to get to the bits and bobs you need to get to as they want to make money from the repairs.

Good luck.