Tom’s Graphic Design Journal

Despite what some of my co-workers think, I do like both PC and Mac. The whole one is better than the other rarely gets my attention these days. I've used both a LOT. I've logged more hours on a Mac than many Mac "lovers" and even more on a PC. So what?

Here's the thing. They both have issues. The most important thing to remember here though in my ranting is the operating system. When we talk about Mac vs. PC, we're talking about Windows and Mac OS. Guess what? BOTH have their problems. What? Don't believe Mac OS X has issues? Come check out the computer I work on all day long...the dock bar is stuck. Only a restart fixes it. Hiding it and showing it again doesn't work. Oh what else? Hmmm let's think, applications can get frozen and won't even force quit...again you have to restart...hmmm...How about Firefox disabling the keyboard? Yea, there's a fix, display the help and close it. Weird huh? Mozilla's issue and not Mac's huh? Maybe. Still an issue.

So I'm not gonna sit here and point out where the pitfalls are, anyone using a computer long enough knows where they are for both Windows and Mac OS. However, what caught my attention just this past minute was a Mac/PC commercial where it claims a Mac runs Windows Vista faster....

Perhaps there was an article somewhere of computers tested that it did. However, there's equally as fast PC machines. It's simple logic...why??? Glad you asked...The answer is because both Mac and PC are using the same hardware these days. Intel Core 2 Duos exist in both PC and Mac. The RAM again is the same type. What else? Oh graphics cards...and? Should I go on? There's slight differences, I'm sure many in the motherboard, but don't think for a minute one runs one operating system faster than the other.

You know...You can get a PC running Mac OS X? Yea, there's hacks made (no emulators yet?) so you can install OS X on a PC. So how does a PC run Mac OS X? Well I bet my Core 2 Duo would run it a shit load faster than an Core Duo Mac and I'm going to guess about the same for a comparable system.

Those Mac commercials are absolutely pathetic. Of course most commercials trick people into buying their product by lying, but it's getting out of hand. You don't see any PC manufacturers attacking Mac which I think is interesting. Dell, HP, Sony, etc. all hold their integrity. In fact Dell and HP are up on commercials lately and I think it's amazing that they don't blatantly lie or bash Mac. Hmmm...Guess they don't need to when the market share for PCs is higher than Macs.

Again, I use both and like both. 

I'm just a few short tasks away from completing the alpha version of Minerva, my media blog. Finally. I'm missing my goal by a day or two, but I've also added in some features planned for beta into this alpha version that I'm using to show off my idea. It's just a very rough application at this point, there's no form validation, there's some code that needs to be shortened, etc. but it's working. Not only is it working for posting text, leaving comments (with captcha), and uploading files...But it also will encode videos to flv on the server!

This of course requires the popular ffmpeg which I had to go seek out a shared web host who had that. Many more web hosts are having this support these days. I went with Apthost and they seem to pretty sharp and very fast with support. Probably the best customer support I've seen in a while, though their service is spotty. My site will go down at times or will be slow. I'm not happy about that at all. Aside from that, no coplaints. There is another web host with ffmpeg, Cirtex, that I'm going to try though in the future probably. I know it won't be as fair since their datacenters are on the east coast so it'll probably always be fast for me, when in reality it could be slow for the rest of the world. Well, that's what you get for $60 a year.

Anyway, you can check out a preview of Minerva blog here. I didn't expect to have something to show the public so soon. Enjoy.