Re: CMYK or RGB? Macintosh or Windows? How's a poor guy to upgrade?

[Dov Isaacs <isaacs@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hedley,

Disclaimers: The following is not an official Adobe recommendation
or communication! I have and use both Macintosh and Windows-based 
systems and own no securities in either Apple or Microsoft!

Ten years ago, the answer to your question would have been a total
no-brainer; the Macintosh would be the ONLY way to go. Five years
ago, perhaps I could give a nod to the Macintosh primarily on the basis
of generally but not always being "more stable" (i.e., not requiring
reboots "n" times per day) and being less of a pain-in-the-butt to
configure and maintain. Today, Apple's advertisements notwithstanding,
I would personally recommend Windows for a variety of reasons:

(1) MacOS X is "a work in progress" that will require a number of
additional dot and dot-dot releases before major issues including
font support, PDF support, printing in general, software installation,
and system administration are really nailed down. There is tremendous
potential in MacOS X, but even the experts and Mac aficionados are
still learning how to really work with it and integrate it into their
workflows.

(2) In the case of Windows, I would only recommend Windows 2000 (any
flavour) or Windows XP Professional (not the dumbed-down "home"
variety). Basically, Windows XP Professional is Windows 2000 Professional
with "an attitude" and an "improved" (that is quite subjective) user
interface. Both are exceptionally stable and fully support Type 1 fonts,
TrueType fonts, and OpenType fonts without any requirement for ATM unless
you need support for Multiple Master fonts in a few Adobe applications
(FrameMaker and PageMaker) or any non-Adobe applications. 
Windows'9x, Me, and NT 4 are not worthy of your consideration. 

(3) The PostScript drivers for Windows 2000 and XP (actually the exact
same driver as of Windows 2000 SP3 and Windows XP SP1) are by far the most
reliable and least problematic.

(4) I must most vehemently disagree with Rich Quatro's assertion that 
"Mac is still a superior graphics platform, especially with InDesign/
Illustrator/Photoshop family." In fact, except for FrameMaker, all
Windows versions of Adobe applications have full feature parity with 
the Macintosh versions and in some cases exceed the functionality of the
Macintosh versions (especially with regards to Acrobat). In terms of 
performance, Adobe applications run every bit as well under Windows as 
on the Mac and in some non-compute operations, especially when dealing 
with font enumeration, file operations, and printing, performance under
Windows can dramatically outshine that on the Macintosh. (Try 1400 active 
typefaces on a Macintosh!) Perhaps Quark XPress runs better on the Mac!

(5) The RGB-CMYK problem is strictly a FrameMaker issue. All other
Adobe applications generate their own PostScript (and PDF) and allow
you to use whatever colorspace you want or need. By the way, on the
Mac, most non-graphics-oriented applications such as Microsoft Office
applications are fully RGB, not CMYK. This issue is really a 
red (not 100%Y+100%M) herring.

(6) Personally, I have had no problems going to press (monochrome or
four color) with publications authored and published using Adobe software
under Windows as long as I didn't tell the printing company where the 
files came from. And even that is changing dramatically now!

        - Dov



At 10/17/2002 05:33 PM, hedley_finger@myob.com.au wrote:
>Keyboard tappers:
>
>My daughter's partner intends to leave the hospitality industry and change
>career to desktop publishing and multimedia.  He intends to buy a new
>computer for his studies and therein lies the problem: Macintosh or
>Windows?  From being in full employment with a steady income, he is about
>to become an impoverished student, so needs to spend his savings wisely on
>computer hardware.
>
>Macintosh does CMYK and Windows does RGB, so the unthinking decision would
>be to simply go for Macintosh.  Yet Macintosh hardware comparable to
>similar Windows hardware is so much more expensive (remember, we are on a
>budget here).
>
>So is anybody out there using the full panoply of Adobe graphic arts
>products (InDesign, PageMaker, Photoshop, Illustrator) to produce
>publications for PRINT on Windows, with high-quality, fully separable CMYK
>PDFs or camera art?  Is this possible?  Is this desirable?  Are the
>algorithms for converting Windows RGB to the CMYK for print sufficiently
>acceptable?  Which hardware should this man buy?
>
>I look forward to advice from the four-colour printing experts.
>Unfortunately, most of my work is B&W or two-colour, so I have no
>experience in this field.   By the way, I am no platform fanatic: at home I
>have an elderly PowerMac 7300/200, at work a Gateway Windows PC, and have
>used probably twenty different operating systems in the last 20 years.
>
>[Windows 2000, FrameMaker 6.0p405, FrameScript 1.27C01, Enhance 2.03,
>Acrobat 4.05.2, mif2go 31u33, WebWorks Publisher 7.0, IXgen 5.5.h, HTML
>Help Workshop 4.74 build 8702.0, HTML Help 1.31]
>
>Regards,
>Hedley
>
>--
>Hedley Finger
>Adobe Certified Expert, FrameMaker 5.5.x
>Technical Communications/Best Practice Mentor
>MYOB Australia Pty Ltd  <http://www.myob.com.au>
>P.O. box 371   Blackburn VIC 3130   Australia
>12 Wesley Court   Tally Ho Business Park   East Burwood 3151   Australia
>Tel. +61 3 9222 9992 x 7421  Fax. +61 3 9222 9880  Mob. +61 412 461 558
><mailto:hedley_finger@myob.com.au>


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