Mobile phones & tablets thread

[Mark]

OK fine maybe Ferrari is a bad example. Notice I'm not claiming Apple is 'better' in any way. Just that their profit margin and prices don't need 'justification' when the sales stand up.

[CaptainRaiden]

Apple expected to sell 100 millionth iPad this year

Given that this is from a standing start two years ago you would describe that as "slow growth rate" and "hype"?

I believe I was talking about PC and laptop sales, and not tablets. A few posts ago Jag said Apple laptops were "flying off the shelves". Not so.

In tablets, Apple obviously has a stronghold with the iPad, but it's still surprising their tablet market share is only 61%.

[CaptainRaiden]

Moving on, I believe this discussion will only go on like this:

[youtube]YiTvgYRUKFg[/youtube]

While this has been great fun, the time spent here means my productivity has hit astonishingly low levels.

If I wanna enjoy my weekend barbecue with some whiskey, I better get to finishing my work now.

[ArrowsFA1]

I believe I was talking about PC and laptop sales, and not tablets.

Apologies. I read "Apple products" in your post

[Dave B]

Moving on, I believe this discussion will only go on like this:



While this has been great fun, the time spent here means my productivity has hit astonishingly low levels.

If I wanna enjoy my weekend barbecue with some whiskey, I better get to finishing my work now.

I think where you hit a brick wall is rubbishing Apple products. I'm with you that I think they're hideously overpriced, overhyped and under-specced for what they are; and I have found better products for my personal needs. Your mistake is to extrapolate that and call their stuff rubbish when it's clearly not, and it's clearly selling in phenomenal volumes. It's views like that which make it extremely difficult to have a meaningful debate. Enjoy your BBQ!

[CaptainRaiden]

Your mistake is to extrapolate that and call their stuff rubbish when it's clearly not, and it's clearly selling in phenomenal volumes.

I didn't call Apple products rubbish because of the tech inside or because I imagine they don't work. They are very well built, very well engineered, slick products and I'm aware of that, as I've personally used their computers, tablets and phones. Not owned, but used for a valid period of time. I'm also aware that they're the current numero uno in the smartphones and tablet arena. The criticism of the iPad was because IMO current tablets (Apple and others) are useless for their price, and that's just my opinion.

It'd be really silly of me to call them garbage depending on just my imagination.

But if I'm paying considerably more $ for a product, it better not lag behind in ANY area, and that was the crux of my gripe.

Enjoy your BBQ!

Thank you. I will.

[CaptainRaiden]

A good question to ask at this point would be, 'how many British Universities teaching Graphic Design or Graphic Communication are PC based?' It would be interesting to see the conversion rate of post graduates going to PC once they have graduated. As I have stated before though, not every single graphic designer on earth uses a Mac. I do know 'Final Cut Pro' is the industry standard for video editing which is Mac based. My friend owns his own consultancy in Cardiff and be it Artworking, digital media, or film editing, his staff all use Mac.

Here is a good discussion on this very topic with mixed opinions:

Mac Vs PC - what is the industry standard for graphic design - bit-tech.net Forums

**I underlined the above because last time I provided an impartial link which is largely opinion, it was ignored.

I ran through it quickly, and yes, it does have mixed opinions and quite an interesting discussion.

But then PC has gotten double the votes of Mac, 44 to 20, and there's the good old Mac vs PC discussion going on throughout the thread with good points made from both sides.

What you have to realize though is that US and UK may be a big chunk of the world's graphic design pie, but it's certainly not the biggest, and it's those two countries where Macs have their largest sale. As you saw in the graph I posted a few posts ago, Apple is a contender in the desktops and laptops area majorly in the US, but it's not really a threat to PCs on the world map.

What you also have to keep in mind is that a lot of companies are outsourcing their designing needs to save money, and having been to many offshore graphic design companies and media publishing houses, cost cutting is the first parameter, and so there again PC wins hands down.

While I will agree that Mac is catching up fast, but like some of them said in that thread, and also from my personal experience, the default software suite used by majority of graphic/web designers is the Adobe CS, and it works pretty much in the same way on both systems. But when it comes to rendering, better hardware always helps, and this is where PC is better value for money.

[CaptainRaiden]

Macs have been the primary choice for graphics designers for years now.

Maybe in Britain, henners, and maybe also in the USA, but that's still quite a small chunk on the world map. When it comes to cost cutting and getting better value for money, media companies around the world hardly care about aesthetics and ease of use.

PS: My wife disagrees strongly with the notion CS6 runs better on PC with regards to rendering etc. When she started in marketing one of the first things they did was change over from PC due to adobe's support preferences, monitor calibration preferences, and additional bolt ons you get with Mac. She would say depending on spec, Mac and PC are generally the same on a rendering level. PCs are though, as you say, better value for money on a hardware level.

That's the keyword, "Depending on spec".

Well, that's what I've been trying to say throughout. Of course, for the same hardware spec, rendering would be the same on both PC and Mac. The OS can only go as far as the hardware will allow it to go.

But for around the same hardware spec, Mac would set you back on average between $400 to $800 extra.

With that extra money, on a PC you can double the system RAM, double the GPU (graphics) RAM, get an SSD, maybe even get a better processor, and rendering will be much, much faster.

So, ultimately, if your budget is $1500, a PC will probably operate Adobe CS the same way, but will render much, MUCH faster. And for huge rendering tasks in print, video and animation, that's a huge boon.

[airshifter]

The term "over-simplistic" is used a couple of times by you in this thread. First of all, I assume and it seems like I'm the only person in this thread who cares about what tech goes into the gadgets I buy, who can build his own PC, and miraculously keep Dell products running without any failures, so in my opinion, buying Apple products and paying close to 50% more money just because "it works" without looking at what you're getting inside the box is rather noobish and "over-simplistic" as well.

Making assumptions is part of the problem. I've built more systems than I want to count, and have tossed parts that would easily pay for a car by now. I've got a background in communications and was dealing with storage arrays that used large standalone metal cases weighing hundreds of pounds.... they stored less than what a flash drive would hold these days.

I've run my own business making signs and graphics, and had DOS based true multitasking software that used only 1 megabyte of memory yet would run circles around the windows software of the time. Being CAD/CAM type software it was also very hardware hungry, and I tossed a lot of dollars in search of better performance systems.

But the reality is short of intensive software hungry apps, almost all PCs have plenty of horsepower these days, and half of the "bragging rights" are based on benchmark programs.... the user wouldn't see the difference a great deal of the time and has to run a benchmark to prove "superiority".

Back to reality, I've already had a number of times my newer Droid phone lags at execution, but my daughters 3rd gen iPod doesn't. It's an "inferior" product that performs better at times.

[CaptainRaiden]

Making assumptions is part of the problem. I've built more systems than I want to count, and have tossed parts that would easily pay for a car by now. I've got a background in communications and was dealing with storage arrays that used large standalone metal cases weighing hundreds of pounds.... they stored less than what a flash drive would hold these days.

Didn't you also assume that I don't know what I'm talking about a few pages ago as well?

But the reality is short of intensive software hungry apps, almost all PCs have plenty of horsepower these days, and half of the "bragging rights" are based on benchmark programs.... the user wouldn't see the difference a great deal of the time and has to run a benchmark to prove "superiority".

I believe what I'm talking with henners is about the rendering aspects of a computer, not everyday, general use. If someone is using their computer just for surfing websites, what difference would an OS or hardware make?

Back to reality, I've already had a number of times my newer Droid phone lags at execution, but my daughters 3rd gen iPod doesn't. It's an "inferior" product that performs better at times.

Well, Motorola has had lots of issues with Droid, and it's hardly a benchmark for Android phones, as it's not the main competitor of Apple. A better comparison would be Samsung's Galaxy range of phones. I'm using an SGS2, but my ancient Samsung Galaxy 5 i5500 still handles Android 2.2 (Froyo) without any lags or glitches.