i have a mac wit 2X 6-Core Xeon, so 12 cores, and 16 gigs of ram, but there is room to upgrade to 64 gigs of ram, so thats a whole lot of upgrade potential and i have a feeling i will not need a new computer for good while. upgrading a mac is pretty easy too because there is no internal wires or screws, so everything is plug and play, you need no tools to upgrade anything http://www.apple.com/macpro/design.html#expansion
To be fair that is a Mac Pro. Which is the absolute highest end Mac, and the closest to a PC in terms of form. And the easiest of Macs to upgrade.
And 80% of people who buy a Mac, won't buy that. Unless they need some serious power. And 90% of Mac users don't. Industry professionals, most definitely yes, but Joe Slow, he'll buy for image, and he won't get a MacPro.
The rest of the Mac family, the iMac, the Mac Mini, and the macbook family, you can't upgrade easily, just about the only thing on those Macs you can upgrade, is the memory(which is limited on the model you originally bought) and the hard drive. And even then, if you don't want to void anything, particularly with the iMac, you have to take it in to an authorised Mac technician.
And to be fair, before you jump on me accusing me of not having worked on both platforms. I've been working on macs from the eMac, to the powerPC iMac, the intel iMac, the and the Mac Pro. And at home I have a PC.
I absolutely love the interface of OSX, but I've seen macs have their fair share of crashes and problems, and quirks, any long term user will know that. At the end of the day, both are machines, you buy according to budget, needs, and personal preference. I seriously don't get this mac is better than PC, or PC is better than mac, they're different, they're the same, all comes down to the person using it and their own reason for getting it.
dont know what universe your in but linux is not a threat to either OS X or windows, when it comes to desktop usage, only a threat with servers.
besides things dont even work how you explained within linux, let me see, GTK vs QT, Gnome Vs KDE, .DEB vs .RPM and the list goes on.
First off, Linux isn't holding any significant market position compared to Mac and Windows, but that's not necessary. It's a competitor to MS and they don't have any investment in it. That said, if MS actually supported it with their software, it would likely grow in popularity being a "free" (as in cost and as in liberty) alternative to Windows. They don't control it and they don't have investments in it so, any support of it would be against their best interest.
Secondly, I never said that Linux was a cross-compatible platform. It's not and it's not without profit motivation. Companies like Cononical and Red Hat definitely are profit motivated like some other Linux distributions and that has created many forks in the versions of Linux available, yet the kernel of Linux has always been typically unified, but it does allow people to modify it while requiring them to share those changes. That gives everyone access to new functionality and features if they choose to include the new code into the kernel on their machine.
So no, there is no universal OS that just runs everything and there isn't because there are those that want to build a closed system that is incompatible with other API's. Exclusivity creates opportunity for profit, but it also holds back progress that doesn't create profit. Only that which is profitable is produced and that which is beneficial, but not profitable is not produced. Pharma sells medication to treat any number of illnesses because as long as people are sick, they will make money selling drugs. If they had a cure on hand that would eliminate illness in people, it would be against their profit motive to cure people because then there would be no sick people to sell to.
What? I never said that. You're putting words in my mouth and your logic is flawed. Profit does not drive industry. That is patently false. Need for solutions to problems drives industry. Profit is an incentive to control access to those solutions. Believe it or not, people did do work before there was money, trade, and industry. If there was food to gather/grow/hunt and shelter to be built, people just did it because it benefited all members of their society to do so, not because they could profit from selling their goods/labor. Helping each other meant they were helping themselves. Even apes and dolphins know this and they practice it every day. How about the Amish? They work to help each other every day so they all have food to eat, clothes to wear, and homes to sleep in, all without the need for money to motivate it. They only need money when dealing with the outside economy. An individual cannot stand on their own, it takes the collaborative effort of all people collectively to effect productivity and progress.
Money is not necessary to provide incentive to build, create, and produce, but it is an incentive to control resources and those that use them to produce what we all need. You've been indoctrinated to believe that the world can't function without money. You probably think that people would have no incentive to do anything if there was no money and they had everything they needed to live. That's not true. Take away hunger and want and people will develop entirely new incentives to spur on progress for the benefit of the entire species, for personal growth and improvement of life. We are the only species on this planet that has to pay to live here.
In any case, it doesn't matter which platform you go with. They all have their benefits and they all have their limitations. Take your pick on which one you can stand to work with, but be certain it will serve the purpose you're getting it for.
I've used macs for 5-ish years in publishing/graphics, prior to landing in the industry, Growing up, its all we had in school too, but I had PC's at home. Macs where always limited and regulated at school so there wasn't much you could do on them, but things have changed drastically in recent years.
I don't have anything against mac's except their price and the lack of software that I use. Source, UDK, 3dsmax, lots of PC games, and all the misc apps that make my life easier. If you can get by without that stuff, or figure out a way to get it working great.
They've pretty much solved the upgrade issues, we've upgraded my wife's mac 2 times. But they do pressure you to have them do all the work. They used the "void your warranty, invalidate your service plan" boogie man on us and it worked. We dropped it off and picked it up, painless and all for the bill we where happy with it.
My iphone on the other hand was a different story.
[Support Horror Story]
The Apple store near me is always packed full and to even get a seat at the "genius bar" I had to make "an appointment". That was after I exhausted their tips on the apple support site and called their tech support which ran me through the same steps and ultimately gave up and made the appointment at the store for me.
After sitting at the genius bar for 3hrs and talking to 5-6 different people while the same things I had already tried two times. They told me what I already knew walking in. I was then passed off to their genius-genius who spent the next 30min wrangling with paperwork and calling some apple tech support mothership (probably the same one I called to make an appointment) to get everything cleared so they could give me a new phone.
I should have been out of there in > 30min.
[/Support Horror Story]
So yea I like macs, I've used them quite a bit, I own a few apple products but I'm not sure I would abandon windows when making games. I don't really like the idea of duel booting, I've done that before with Linux and windows and it was a pain, sure boot camp might be easier but I'd rather piece together a separate PC. Best of both worlds without having to cram a round peg in a square hole.
I've been using a macbook pro and dual booting for a year or so. I set up both sides so I have the same programs on both sides (I know wtf, don't ask).
Most PCs I have get slower over time (probably from me having no idea how to make it faster, etc) but the macbook pro runs windows better than any comparable laptop I've owned in the past. I've only gotten 3 BSOD on Windows 7 and all were during playing Deus Ex without updated video drivers. The Os X side is super easy. It's clean and sterile looking (which I like).
Topogun, 3D Coat, ZBrush, Sculptris, Maya, Photoshop, Sketchbook Pro, WoW, and Steam all work great and are virtually identical on both sides.
Macs are pricey. But they're fine computers. I'm not pro Mac or anything. I'm pro having a job. Whatever they give me. In my personal life I'll use Macs if I can afford it otherwise I dig through Arsh's trash bin for old Macs or buy a PC.
The answer is that the hardware/OS is irrelevant. You can do 3D on a Mac quite easily.
I don't see the point of all the bickering going on in this thread.
Arshlevon is straight up telling you he uses a Mac. And some of you guys are still trying to tell HIM that Mac's are not good for 3D?
WTF is wrong with you people. The original Poster just wants to know if its possible to LEARN how to do 3D, and if it's possible on a Mac.
OF COURSE it's possible.
Oh, he is? I didn't catch that. Well of course you can do it. Many of us just assumed he was asking which is best for such a purpose (I did). Nothing is stopping you from doing 3D on a Mac. Platform is actually irrelevant because options are available on every modern OS (Mac, Windows, flavors of Linux/Unix, etc.)
No one in this thread has said that macs are bad for 3d, what people are saying is that it doesn't matter.
If you however go back and read it the first entire post, you'll notice a friend of his told him that he should get rid of his windows pc and get a mac, and he most likely took it as an advice that it might actually be better to have a mac for 3d.
In my ears that go "is it worth getting rid of one expensive computer and get another even more expensive computer?"
Replies
To be fair that is a Mac Pro. Which is the absolute highest end Mac, and the closest to a PC in terms of form. And the easiest of Macs to upgrade.
And 80% of people who buy a Mac, won't buy that. Unless they need some serious power. And 90% of Mac users don't. Industry professionals, most definitely yes, but Joe Slow, he'll buy for image, and he won't get a MacPro.
The rest of the Mac family, the iMac, the Mac Mini, and the macbook family, you can't upgrade easily, just about the only thing on those Macs you can upgrade, is the memory(which is limited on the model you originally bought) and the hard drive. And even then, if you don't want to void anything, particularly with the iMac, you have to take it in to an authorised Mac technician.
And to be fair, before you jump on me accusing me of not having worked on both platforms. I've been working on macs from the eMac, to the powerPC iMac, the intel iMac, the and the Mac Pro. And at home I have a PC.
I absolutely love the interface of OSX, but I've seen macs have their fair share of crashes and problems, and quirks, any long term user will know that. At the end of the day, both are machines, you buy according to budget, needs, and personal preference. I seriously don't get this mac is better than PC, or PC is better than mac, they're different, they're the same, all comes down to the person using it and their own reason for getting it.
First off, Linux isn't holding any significant market position compared to Mac and Windows, but that's not necessary. It's a competitor to MS and they don't have any investment in it. That said, if MS actually supported it with their software, it would likely grow in popularity being a "free" (as in cost and as in liberty) alternative to Windows. They don't control it and they don't have investments in it so, any support of it would be against their best interest.
Secondly, I never said that Linux was a cross-compatible platform. It's not and it's not without profit motivation. Companies like Cononical and Red Hat definitely are profit motivated like some other Linux distributions and that has created many forks in the versions of Linux available, yet the kernel of Linux has always been typically unified, but it does allow people to modify it while requiring them to share those changes. That gives everyone access to new functionality and features if they choose to include the new code into the kernel on their machine.
So no, there is no universal OS that just runs everything and there isn't because there are those that want to build a closed system that is incompatible with other API's. Exclusivity creates opportunity for profit, but it also holds back progress that doesn't create profit. Only that which is profitable is produced and that which is beneficial, but not profitable is not produced. Pharma sells medication to treat any number of illnesses because as long as people are sick, they will make money selling drugs. If they had a cure on hand that would eliminate illness in people, it would be against their profit motive to cure people because then there would be no sick people to sell to.
@EQ:
What? I never said that. You're putting words in my mouth and your logic is flawed. Profit does not drive industry. That is patently false. Need for solutions to problems drives industry. Profit is an incentive to control access to those solutions. Believe it or not, people did do work before there was money, trade, and industry. If there was food to gather/grow/hunt and shelter to be built, people just did it because it benefited all members of their society to do so, not because they could profit from selling their goods/labor. Helping each other meant they were helping themselves. Even apes and dolphins know this and they practice it every day. How about the Amish? They work to help each other every day so they all have food to eat, clothes to wear, and homes to sleep in, all without the need for money to motivate it. They only need money when dealing with the outside economy. An individual cannot stand on their own, it takes the collaborative effort of all people collectively to effect productivity and progress.
Money is not necessary to provide incentive to build, create, and produce, but it is an incentive to control resources and those that use them to produce what we all need. You've been indoctrinated to believe that the world can't function without money. You probably think that people would have no incentive to do anything if there was no money and they had everything they needed to live. That's not true. Take away hunger and want and people will develop entirely new incentives to spur on progress for the benefit of the entire species, for personal growth and improvement of life. We are the only species on this planet that has to pay to live here.
In any case, it doesn't matter which platform you go with. They all have their benefits and they all have their limitations. Take your pick on which one you can stand to work with, but be certain it will serve the purpose you're getting it for.
I don't have anything against mac's except their price and the lack of software that I use. Source, UDK, 3dsmax, lots of PC games, and all the misc apps that make my life easier. If you can get by without that stuff, or figure out a way to get it working great.
They've pretty much solved the upgrade issues, we've upgraded my wife's mac 2 times. But they do pressure you to have them do all the work. They used the "void your warranty, invalidate your service plan" boogie man on us and it worked. We dropped it off and picked it up, painless and all for the bill we where happy with it.
My iphone on the other hand was a different story.
[Support Horror Story]
After sitting at the genius bar for 3hrs and talking to 5-6 different people while the same things I had already tried two times. They told me what I already knew walking in. I was then passed off to their genius-genius who spent the next 30min wrangling with paperwork and calling some apple tech support mothership (probably the same one I called to make an appointment) to get everything cleared so they could give me a new phone.
I should have been out of there in > 30min.
[/Support Horror Story]
So yea I like macs, I've used them quite a bit, I own a few apple products but I'm not sure I would abandon windows when making games. I don't really like the idea of duel booting, I've done that before with Linux and windows and it was a pain, sure boot camp might be easier but I'd rather piece together a separate PC. Best of both worlds without having to cram a round peg in a square hole.
Most PCs I have get slower over time (probably from me having no idea how to make it faster, etc) but the macbook pro runs windows better than any comparable laptop I've owned in the past. I've only gotten 3 BSOD on Windows 7 and all were during playing Deus Ex without updated video drivers. The Os X side is super easy. It's clean and sterile looking (which I like).
CrazyBump has a public beta of the Os X version http://crazybump.com/mac/ .
Topogun, 3D Coat, ZBrush, Sculptris, Maya, Photoshop, Sketchbook Pro, WoW, and Steam all work great and are virtually identical on both sides.
Macs are pricey. But they're fine computers. I'm not pro Mac or anything. I'm pro having a job. Whatever they give me. In my personal life I'll use Macs if I can afford it otherwise I dig through Arsh's trash bin for old Macs or buy a PC.
Is it good to have a Mac for 3D?
The answer is that the hardware/OS is irrelevant. You can do 3D on a Mac quite easily.
I don't see the point of all the bickering going on in this thread.
Arshlevon is straight up telling you he uses a Mac. And some of you guys are still trying to tell HIM that Mac's are not good for 3D?
WTF is wrong with you people. The original Poster just wants to know if its possible to LEARN how to do 3D, and if it's possible on a Mac.
OF COURSE it's possible.
Oh, he is? I didn't catch that. Well of course you can do it. Many of us just assumed he was asking which is best for such a purpose (I did). Nothing is stopping you from doing 3D on a Mac. Platform is actually irrelevant because options are available on every modern OS (Mac, Windows, flavors of Linux/Unix, etc.)
No one in this thread has said that macs are bad for 3d, what people are saying is that it doesn't matter.
If you however go back and read it the first entire post, you'll notice a friend of his told him that he should get rid of his windows pc and get a mac, and he most likely took it as an advice that it might actually be better to have a mac for 3d.
In my ears that go "is it worth getting rid of one expensive computer and get another even more expensive computer?"
Fair enough.