One thing about visiting Manhattan is that it puts one into direct contact with a lot of people who make their living being creative. One friend is a working classical and jazz composer and I asked him why he uses Windows. “The best program for composition, especially for opera, is Sibelius, and for the first couple of years there was no Macintosh version so I switched to Windows and now I know how to use it.” As for architects, the perennial choice of Hollywood for a cool character’s occupation (cf. “One-Hour Photo”), it turns out that they all use AutoCAD. AutoCAD is a Windows-only application and therefore young architects are Windows users.
Most Macintosh users, of course, only need basic email, Web browsing, and word processing. But a big part of Apple’s premium price depends on the perception that Macintosh users are somehow more creative. How long can this last given that people who actually ARE creative have seemingly all switched to Windows?
Apple wants that image, but the user base has somehow morphed over the years. I am a switcher, and one of the reasons I really love the mac platform is the ability to run *nix applications without bothering with multiple partitions/rebooting/etc. Out of the box a mac can run programs written for OS 9 (in classic mode), OS X and it will compile many freeBSD applications without any issues. The gnu camp has been wonderful about embracing the platform, so you don’t even need to run X11 in order to use popular open source programs on your mac. And this is without even taking into account the fink project and the darwin ports!
Another reason I like it is because it has an insane and super creative shareware community. There are tons of really sweet freeware and shareware for the Mac, and the shareware is usually very affordable. On top of that, the authors are usually very accessible. I have had shareware authors address issues within hours, and this is for programs that cost $10 or less to register.
As for Autocad, it has been the standard since forever, it is the kind of application that you forget that you are using a PC. It is the same as working on a Final Cut Pro rig: you are not working on a mac rig, you are working on a FCP rig (ask any of those poor bastards that spend 12-15 hours a day glued to a FCP or AVID video station).
And I don’t think the entry is article is dumb, but I don’t understand how come with Phil’s ties to MIT he doesn’t know at least 100 CS majors that favor the mac as a *nix platform.
As previously stated, AutoCAD was available for the Mac from Release 10 through Release 13. Release 13 for the Mac was limited to an educational version. Initial sales of Mac AutoCAD were pretty good, but once the 386 processor was commonly available and AutoCAD/386 came out the performance of the protected-mode DOS AutoCAD pretty much blew everything else away (including UNIX AutoCAD).
With Release 14 AutoCAD went Windows only to simplify development even though Apple offered to pay the full cost of a Mac port (The R13 UNIX ports were financed by the UNIX vendors, too).
Most architects probably still prefer Macs, but the sad reality is that few architects nowadays do actual drafting. That task is left to the near-minimum-wage “AutoCAD drafters” (which are sometimes junior architects, too) toiling away in darkened interior offices.
What a strange argument. You infer that because architects and one musician use pcs there are no creatives on macs? First off, Sibelius may be the best music notation application, but it is cross platform and Finale (which is arguably as good or better than Sibelius) is on the Mac. Aside from the notation niche the Mac is easily the equal to the PC in music making any way you look at it in applications and userbase. All prominent audio applications are cross platform and there are many Mac only applications.
You completely ignore photographers (the NYTimes photo desk recently attempted to switch to PCs and beat a hasty retreat), layout designers, graphic artists, web designers, fashion designers, typographers, the entire film industry and dozens of other creative careers where Mac users enjoy equal footing and often a majority. And my list completely excludes the hacker class which (as was noted above) is both creative and is in greater and greater numbers switching from win and linux to MacOSX. If memory serves a recent survey of the creative industries in NYC indicated that while Mac users are roughly 4% of the wide userbase they are more than 50% of the NY creatives.
All the music people I know, both musicians and the engineers and the composers, use Macs.
I use Macs for everything *except* my architecture design, which I do on Windows because right now the best tool is Revit (recently bought by Autodesk) and it only runs on Windows. But Mac is moving to Intel and if you think there isn’t a pass-through in the works so that it will run Windows applications then you aren’t paying attention.
Every film and video editor I know in Los Angeles works on a Mac. Nearly all the television and screenwriters I know also use Macs.
My sample is larger, and points towards the Mac being the platform for creative people.
The one fellow I know at Google uses all Mac machines because he’s from Bell Labs and likes that *nix stuff.
–Colin
Thinking back, it may have been R12 that was the last of the Mac and UNIX ports of AutoCAD — it was a long time ago and even though I worked in Autodesk’s Ports and Platforms group at the time it’s hard to remember which release did what.
It is nice to see the always great interest in listing and discussing the various pros and cons of the two computing platforms. Similar discussions seem to occur in most communities; why would anyone buy a car of brand Y when brand X does the same job, is so much cheaper and spare parts are easy to find? Like in those other discussion threads, is it not simply a matter of finding the qualities you value most? Apple, for example, sell highly stylized computers that perhaps appeal more on average to creative people like designers and photographers, whereas other people may be completely indifferent to the design aspect, let alone all practical factors like which softwares are avaliable etc. Similarly, Volvo probably sell many V70s on account of their safety reputation even though there exists nowadays more or less equally safe vehicles at lower prices and perhaps better gas mileage. (And why would brands like Jaguar sell at all?) I believe the process through which consumers selects which products to buy is very complex and varies a lot from person to person.
I think you have a bit of a sampling error there, Philip! I am sure there are more “creative people” using Windows than Mac, much more. But the percentage of Mac users being in the creative industry is no doubt much higher than the percentage of Windows users. I think that makes the point valid; many companies wouldn’t be spending large amounts of money developing professional audiovisual and music software (and hardware to match) for the platform if nobody was buying.
I wouldn’t call architects part of the “creative crowd” apple says it is owning. Some architects are doing fine creative and even artistic work, but for most, AutoCAD is simply an industrial engineering application they use to mass produce extentions for your beloved McMansions.
Ah. Well, who knows what the reality is. But as someone with an architectural background I can say that Autocad is bollocks. It’s not intuitive, and hard to use for design. Engineers love it, because it suits their processes better.
Architects not a creative crowd? Huh? That’s a strange view of the world. You mean engineers surely (as in civil engineers).
Archicad does a pretty good job of providing both technical and design-based functionality. I’d say that’s one of the best packages available.
But in general, no, I don’t think that creative types have jumped ship to PC at all.
Interesting side note: I know three people who develop cross platform audio software (audio plugins in all three cases.) They all report the same thing… On the surface you’d think that 9 out of 10 people who use their products are on Windows. This is based on questions asked and support calls and survey results and the like. However they sell between 50/50 mac vs pc versions on up to 75/25 mac vs pc. So even if pc users are a majority mac users are more likely to buy (vs steal) the software. So how does that paint the audio creative industry? You’d hope that anyone who profits from the use of software (a pro) would buy it, so this small-sample survey seems to show that there are many more hobbiest creatives on the pc and a much, much higher percentage of professional/serious hobbiest users on the mac, which supports my impression: there are more serious creatives on the mac platform.
I think a lot of new Apple “switchers” aren’t musicians or artists, but GNU/Linux users who want a slicker GUI and access to some more mainstream applications. The main reason I use OS X over GNU is, indeed, the GUI and iTunes (which I admit I got pulled into via Pepsi’s free song giveaway).
Most of the art people who use Macs now have probably used Macs for ten or fifteen years (or work for companies that I have done so), back when Windows really wasn’t a good choice for most art. Unless they have a reason to switch to Windows, they probably won’t; they are used to Apple just like so many other people are used to Windows. Non “computer people” probably don’t relish learning a new OS as much as some programmers might. 🙂
There are also probably some new Apple users who aren’t computer saavy at all; they just want web, email, and WP, and somehow became convinced that Apple would be easier for them than Windows (which, depending on their specifics, may be true).
$0.02
Here’s a good essay on the mac’s recent resurgance in popularity. Like most paul graham essays, it’s a fun read even if you disagree:
http://www.paulgraham.com/mac.html
At the recent OSCON open-source-software convention in Portland, Oregon I bet at least half of the participants were using Apple PowerBooks. I can’t say for sure, but I’d hazard a guess that the fellow pictured in this link isn’t working on a Mac because of its style and “sexy exudation”: http://flickr.com/photos/chrys/19570108/in/set-459331/
Gee Bee and Mike: Selling to open-source and Lisp programmers is a very different and smaller market than what Apple has had and needs to sustain its revenues and lofty stock price. If people with money to spare no longer associate the Mac with being cool and creative that will force Apple to seek new markets for its incompatible OS (I was unable to buy an Amtrak ticket back to Boston, for example, from a friend’s iBook, because the amtrak.com site didn’t work with Safari (she is a mother of two young children, not a creative hipster)). Programmers are a pretty bad market in the long run because their salaries are falling, their jobs are being shipped overseas, and the general public has no desire to buy a product that is associated with programmers.
N=2. ’nuff said.
Macintoshes simply work, with no spyware, no extant viruses, software that is (at a minimum) good enough.
My mother has far fewer problems with her computer than my in-laws do — guess who is using what? That’s right, OS X vs XP. I spend an average of 1 hr every 2 months doing phone support with my mother in NY, and an average of 2-5 hrs doing hands-on fixing of my in-laws XP computer. And they have a physical firewall on their computer, too, which has cut down on the rootkits.
Technogeeks seem like good early adopters to me, not least because they often serve as references for their less savvy friends. By the comment that “…the general public has no desire to buy a product that is associated with programmers.” do you mean that “the general public is actively against buying a product associated with programmers”, or do you mean “the general public has no idea what programmers do or what they use and hence that’s not a pro-Mac argument”?
In any case, as long as we’re making personal anecdotes into overly general statements, I can certainly say that an awful lot of my fellow scientists out here on the West coast use macs. Maybe scientists don’t fall into your category of “creative”, though.
–titus
p.s. tell your friend using Safari to try out Camino instead, an OS X-native Mozilla derivative. Works with everything Mozilla works with.
Amtrak has lots of problems; not having their website coded to followed established standards is just one of them. Apparently they don’t want disabled folks either — click on the link labled “Information for People with Disabilities” and they tell you to call them. Probably doesn’t work from a cellphone, either — something which would be rather useful. Sure is a nice looking site, though. Kinda like those Acela trains with the disintegrating brake rotors. “Low bid” probably explains things well in this case…
I just noticed Macs (PowerBooks) showing up in a business school environment that has historically been Windows only.
When asked one of them said he’d simply grown tired of fighting the various Windows viruses.
Phil – did you try using IE on the iBook to reserve your ticket? I’m curious if this is a safari issue or a problem with the Mac itself (ie., if so, amtrak has written some very bizarre code…)
Gotta giggle over one thing: I’ve tried to buy Amtrak tickets with an XP machine running IE. In fact, I’ve had confirmation numbers and everything, gotten to the station and… well…
Let’s just say that given my success rate, I have trouble believing that the effect of the client computer on the ability to buy Amtrak tickets from the web site is distinguishable from statistical error. That organization needs some serious information services revamping, and the failures of their web site are but a nose peeking out of the underbrush relative to the bear lurking in the bushes that are their real problems.
I love trains, and I even love traveling by Amtrak, but you don’t do it unless you’ve got a cell phone to call their 800 number when (not if) your reservations go bad, and unless you’ve got the sense of humor necessary to laugh with the conductors and other staff at the overall ineptitude of their organization.
I was rather amused to notice that in the season premier of the show “Boston Legal” there was a scene involving a bunch of lawyers around a PowerBook viewing porn. The producers of the show felt the need to cover the Apple logo on the back with a piece of silver gaffers tape.
BTW, normally I don’t bother to watch this show — it’s rather silly — but I just got this new Mac-only HDTV tuner from Elgato Systems and this show was the first in HDTV in the list of available stations. Cool product this EyeTV 500; just hook up this small box via Firewire — no other power source needed — install one executable by dragging it from the included CD (or download it) and presto — instant HDTV. It even has Tivo-like recording ability that saves to Quicktime format. Now, I’m sure a similar product exists for the PC, but it likely involves cracking the case to install a card, installing several device drivers and applications, and needs three reboots. 😉
Quark at least used to be Mac-only and Mac used to have better color management than Windows. Many “creative people” I’ve met use Macs. Mac laptops seem to be a hit in the computing field because the only other easy laptop alternative is Windows and many technical people I know are fed up with it. But this is all just anecdotal bull; the real reason is that Apple has branded itself to be cool and the computers look cool. My desktop PC at work that’s made by a major manufacturer looks butt-ugly, makes irritating noise when I drive it hard and Windows 2000 doesn’t have much to give in terms of aesthetics…buying a stylish and cool PC is about as easy as it was in 1995.
Philip, that is an incompatibility with the Amtrak website, not Safari.
Robin, I know a few architects and what they do. Calling it an inherently creative industry is, I believe, a misconception. 90% of what they do seems to be taking standard designs, moving a few walls around or replacing windows with other off the shelf models. After that it’s all engineering, like making the structure or cabling work. That certainly requires “creative thinking”, but in my mind it is far from the kind of creativity and artistic work that musicians and film makers do. If it were, I could say that being a computer programmer makes me work in a creative job as well as I very creatively find new ways to write code that ties system a to system b or come up with a better looking and working GUI.
Of course there are the priviledged few who get to design the Freedom Towers of this world or entire neighborhoods and are pushing the boundries of design, making true works of art. I am also sure most architects think themselves a Rem Koolhaas or Frank Gehry and will do the kind of thing they do some day. Dream on.
Don’t get me wrong, I love good architecture and am very impressed by and interested in it. I would not be surprised if it is the highly creative and artistic kind of architects Philip hangs out with or that is the kind you are; that is impossible to tell from here. You may well design great buildings and spaces from scratch but the only architects I know design wheelchair entrances to existing buildings and box out lofts and put in extra staircases to create an extra bedroom. And that is all they’ll ever do.
First off, I have never owned a Mac…
However, I used to work with a land use planning company that used pc and macs. I did cad on a pc and the mac group did desktop publishing, which they delivered via imagesetter.
They were two isolated worlds with a utility called Dynadisk to bridge the gap… what a pain in the butt…
Years later I was doing automated mapping in a unix environment. The software vendor introduced a postscript map publishing tool that we used to produce high resolution maps through large format image setters.
There was a long testing phase, in many cases I had to work with vendors whose technical people had tied their imagesetters to macs….
To call these people ‘creative’ was an overstatement. They were merely used to doing the same thing over and over like a hamster in a habitrail.
The mac was perfect for them because it offered a closed environment that did a set number of things really well. In my opinion it was the Fischer-Price of computers.
Eventually, I found an imagesetter that had their machine tied to a unix box. Not only did they handle the data transfer sseamlessly, they were able to analyze my postscript code, their image setters debug codes and help me to produce useable output from the imagesetter.
When mac went to osx, and a unix operating system, I had hopes that they would expand beyond the group of users that were happy using a dumbed down toy for a computer and attract users who would help to create a larger community for mac to sell to…
Apple is going to have to really, really piss off their current set of ‘elite’ and ‘creative’ users if they are ever going to see the sort of market growth that linux has enjoyed.
Gary: there is one distinct different between market growth of Mac and Linux: Mac grows on the desktop, Linux is a server OS. Only geeks use it for a desktop. And even this geek – however much I like it for my servers – won’t go near it with a barge pole; every time I tried I was deeply dissapointed. Nice for sysadmins, useless for office or “creative” task.
But I agree with that Mac OS pre-X wasn’t very nice at playing with others. Good to see that is sorted now.
Bas,
When I look at my workplace, I mainly see linux as a server. Oddly enough, we use quite a bit of SCO on laptops and have not considered replacing it with linux, yet…
When I look at the problems that our enterprise faces with windows on desktops, I see opportunities to use a linux desktop.
Our main windows problem is too much software, there is a ton of ‘unoffical’ software that our users are prone to download and install. Each piece of additional software adds the risk of malware, not to mention unntentional downloads and the malware associated with them.
I believe that there is a postential for an enterprise to select a set of linux services and applications that meet business requirements and can be delivered to a desktop in a lock-down configuration.
This model would be pretty close to a modern citrix configuration, or even remote desktop services on osx for that matter. Whatever the case, I think that an enterprise would benefit by having the least functionality available on the desktop as possible.
heh, just try explaining that to Power Users 🙂
Last year I got to spend some time in a recording studio in Hollywood where a little indy band was making their latest album. The band members are mostly typical LA types–a couple former child actors, star of a current prime time episodic, soundtrack composer, and database programmer. All said, among the 5 band members, the producer, and a few visiting friends, there were 3 iBooks, 2 PowerBooks and a G5 running ProTools doing the actual recording. There actually was a PC in the studio, hooked up to the mixing board for fader automation, but it wasn’t in use.
I took pictures of the recording session, had them digitized and brought them back to my Mac where I did the CD cover. Delivered InDesign (and backup PDF) files to DiscMakers, and I’m lead to believe that the output to the printing press came direct from a Mac. (Or at least, from a Mac “Print” button into their RIP for the press)
All evidence I see shows that the Mac is still going strong among creative professionals.
Gary, totally agree regarding enterprise use, but I don’t think the software is there yet for Linux, nor is it friendly enough.
If I had 5000 seats to support, I’d mostly want something like the Sun Ray thin clients and everything running on the server, you’d easily save millions. In reality, when I look at the bank I am now working, that is hard to accomplish. There are just tons and tons of complex Excel sheets traders and backoffice alike use, many using 3rd party plugins. (Reuters, Bloomberg, etc.) Traders have a lot of power, they tend to get what they want. On top of that, so many in-house MS apps are running; a switch is too risky and expensive; an extra 50 floor support monkeys is cheaper than re-writing it all. Could use Citrix, but I have nothing but bad experiences with that and foolishly, most companies that employ it run the client on a full windows PC, which takes away the whole point!
As a programmer, I am one of those “Power Users”, thankfully they do trust me with Admin rights. But even without those, you’d be amazed how many “locked down features” like IE security settings are user registry entries. They tried to stop people from running “FixIE.reg” by not giving non-admins the rights to run regedit.exe. So you simply email yourself the version from your home PC and run it from “My Documents”. There is no such thing as a locked down Windows install.
If I were to start a company/office now, I’d simply go 100% Mac, not even using MS Office, people will just have to deal with it, there is no business reason for it.
It seems that Philip’s original provocative post had two problems: (a) sample size, and (b) definition of “creative.” One thing I’m seeing here, and also see in more general terms, is that if you consider leading-edge “Web 2.0” programmers and pundits to be “creative,” they use a lot of Macs too. Now, Philip may argue whether these are creative types, but it’s another demographic for whom Macs seem attractive.
Now, in many cases, the majority (or significant minority) of people in a particular field may still use Windows. But the percentage of Macs may be significantly higher than the overall population average. And these people are probably not just long-time zombies seduced by Apple’s marketing campaigns: there are reasons they continue to do their work on machines that are still (in some cases in reality, in some cases merely in reputation) more expensive and harder to come by than commodity Wintel machines.
In any case, it seems clear that Macs aren’t disappearing among creative types of some sorts. That doesn’t mean Windows is useless for those pursuits, or even that some people don’t prefer it, but Mac OS X remains interesting to many, which is probably to the general benefit of the industry.
The answer to your rhetorical question is this Philip: As long as it is the mainstream alternative operating system. If the Mac were to say, garner 80% desktop OS market share, something else would become the creative operating system. It has been my experience that people pay for an image. Sure, the Mac does a handful of thing better than Windows.. Color Management is seemingly easier, for instance.. however for the most part it is a matter of preferences and the pocketbook which combined project an image of the consumer.
I use a Wacom tablet, Adobe Illustrator (inspired by your friend ET), Acrobat, and InDesign on a 17″ Dell laptop to take notes in medical school. At least one other classmate with a Mac has switched to the same method. I’m in the Navy, have been since age 18, and race bicycles. He’s a 32 yr old music major who spent several years as a pro kayaker.
“Well, who knows what the reality is.” [?]
Glad you asked, Robin. Not to come off as pretentious, but I do. And believe me, it’s not easy being the only person in my part of the world that does. It’s a load, big burden, my “cross to bear,” etc., but I do the best I can if you can imagine what I mean.
As to the Golden Gate’s Machine versus the Wozjob, it’s all about Third-world bus ridership versus Martha’s Vinyard Popsicle sails.
In short, we need more accurate info before chiming in (irrevocably), on this critical issue, don’t you think?
Despite their aspirations and pretensions, most architects have among the least creative jobs on the planet. They spend their time arranging floor joists and bathroom fixtures in pedestrian buildings so as to conform to various building codes.
At the International Lisp Conference 2002, 2003, and 2005, a surprisingly lange number of programmers were walking around with Mac portables. Granted, this community is small, however, it is indicative of the sort of attention Apple are getting from the hacker/tech community. The same has been observed at O’Reily conferences, sci/tech conferences, academic conferences, etc. Apple’s OS X operating system, being Mach/FreeBSD-based, leverages the Unix code base quite effectively, which seems to also translate into increased sales to member of these commmunities. Added together, these can represent a significant increase of Apple’s user-base.