What is your main OS and why? (Poll)

[dsheinem]

I use both MacOS and Win 10 a lot - including for some video creation and editing that I use for courses I teach. I have used both for more than a decade and feel like I am equally adept at both. Most recently I have been doing some VR video production on both my MBP and my new fancy Windows gaming PC (Ryzen 9 3900X + RTX 2080 Super).

Hardware is certainly the most important thing for editing/compiling/publishing, but I'd concur that the "feel" of the MacOS is just more intuitive and conducive to everything from fine-tuning an effect to dragging and dropping content to stress-testing the final product across various contexts and formats.

And not to be too dismissive, but if Adobe was simply testing the performance of hardware then yes: there is no meaningful difference in the OS. But, if you talk to basically anyone who has spent considerable time on both platforms, they will typically endorse using MacOS for pretty much any kind serious production work. As others have said, it isn't *just* about the raw power of the hardware so much as it is about the balance of the hardware/software working together to make hours and hours of editing flow more smoothly.

[Ziggy]

Uh-oh, incoming Mac VS PC debate.

Apple controls its hardware and software for Macs, so you would expect that everything plays nice together. Windows tries to support a wide variety of hardware on many kinds of configuration. So when these Mac VS PC comparisons are made, what PC is it compared against? I crappy low end desktop with tons of bloatware? Any random PC that might have poor drivers or a hardware configuration that doesn't play nice together? Or a custom high end machine, with no hardware or driver issues?

Even a high end machine, with all the most expensive parts you can get, it could still be configured like crap. You could be using generic drivers from a Windows install or update but the drivers from the manufacture might be more stable or have better performance. Or both. Or you could have an otherwise good brand motherboard, and install the chipset drivers from the manufacture's website, but be unlucky enough to have a poorly written driver with bugs that the manufacture never cares to fix.

I've heard some people say they prefer Macs because they "just work." Granted, most of the people that say this use the web browser and nothing else. But I do have one friend that is does audio engineering. I asked him why he was using a Mac over PC and his answer was, in short, because "it just works." He did explain in detail, though. He explained that to get Pro Tools running as smoothly on his PC as it does on his Mac he had to do a bunch of system tweaking and also manually shut down a bunch of background apps (which you would have to do every time you boot the PC). Of course, this was back in the XP days. That OS really did get trashed with the system updates, to the point that it massively affected system performance.

But even on a modern Windows 10 PC, I can still understand the sentiment that a Mac "just works." You could have a high end PC that's configured correctly with great drivers that have no issues, but that situation isn't static. You might get a OS update one day that breaks something, or causes a drop in performance. This is always a possibility because Windows doesn't control the hardware like Mac does. Time is money, and if you're doing some kind of editing or whatever on a computer you might not want to waste you time making sure your PC is fine tuned or rolling back updates and stuff of that nature.

So if THAT'S your reasoning why a Mac is better for Adobe and Adobe-like apps, then OK. Nothing wrong with that. But that's not to say that Adobe apps CAN'T run as good on a PC, because of course they can. And that's not to say Mac computers NEVER have issues, because of course they can.

It's just annoying that this kind of discussion gets whittled down to "Mac is better than PC" for people that don't understand how or why. There's a lot of people that use a Macbook and do nothing more than use a web browser. In this case, I say "better" is subjective. For example, I think for a person that only uses a web browser that it's "better" for them to buy a PC at half the cost since they wont notice a difference anyway.

[o.pwuaioc]

The funny thing is, the argument has been moot for a long time. Macs are PCs. It's now all about iOS vs. Android.

[isiolia]

The funny thing is, the argument has been moot for a long time. Macs are PCs. It's now all about iOS vs. Android.

Eh, same as saying consoles are just PCs now, which is only comparing part of the platform. Plus, at that point, most phones out there are just a light *nix OS running on ARM, so they're all the same too.

[Ziggy]

The funny thing is, the argument has been moot for a long time. Macs are PCs. It's now all about iOS vs. Android.

I've heard though that Macs are switching off of Intel.

[opa]

Unless you're self-employed, most professionals are just gonna use what work is paying for. This is the only reason people still suffer with ms office/outlook.

I don't have issues with office but I certainly don't use it for home use. The free alternatives are good enough for my needs.

I have seen a shift to chromeOS in education (which I approve of). Not that I like google all that much but the quick boot times really help in the classroom setting. About five years ago I was the weirdo that used a chromebook in public. Now they're everywhere.

[Ziggy]

I was using alternatives to Office for a while at home. But then I started using Office a lot for my day job, especially Excel. After using MS Office so much, it's hard to use an alternative with a different interface. Something I could do really fast would take me longer in the alternative program just because I have to figure out where the options I want are located, and that can be frustrating. For that reason, I decided to start using MS Office at home. It's a "time is money" thing.

[opa]

Yeah, I totally get it. That's just one of the reasons Office has the market it does. If you've been using the same program for the past twenty years, guess what program you're gonna upgrade to?

I mostly just do word processing so Excel doesn't have much of a draw for me but I get it. Office is nice to have.

[o.pwuaioc]

Yeah, I totally get it. That's just one of the reasons Office has the market it does. If you've been using the same program for the past twenty years, guess what program you're gonna upgrade to?

I mostly just do word processing so Excel doesn't have much of a draw for me but I get it. Office is nice to have.

I've been just fine using LibreOffice (with one big exception: the line separating the main pages from footnotes!), but I thought WPS Office was supposed to be very close to Word (and likewise to Excel), more so than LibreOffice's Writer and Calc.

[benderx]

Mac osx is pretty good overall. A simplified mac without being worried. Easy to update the OS, free upgrades. Only issue is when installing old apps unable to do work. Some apps/adobe will stop working on the new OS version. Apple needs more options for graphics cards instead of limits or expensive hardware. Apple need To make a custom consumer with more options and low cost.

Windows 10 bloated OS. I don’t want the OS running background apps and services eating up unnecessary data. Needs to be slimed out machines. Bitdenfender is bad, that I rather use other free apps (never use norton).

Loved Windows XP 64 bit pro. I guess Windows 8.1 was okay.

Linux is cool ubuntu, sussie, debian, centos, etc. there is a learning curve for understanding linux commands. Or how to install/ uninstall by commands. Linux does feature an updater to install packages, whick is easy. Never learned how to install mame on linux, didn’t know how to back then 2000’s.