pc vs mac
- Thread starter zoranb
- Start date
ElDiabloConCaca
U.S.D.A. Prime
PCs are more significant in every line of work, simply because: a) they're perceived as "cheaper", b) people blindly use whatever is given to them, and c) they have 15 times the marketshare that Macs do.
If you prefer working on a Mac for web design, then by all means, work on a Mac. But for the time being, Macintosh marketshare is so low that Macs don't dominate any industry anymore. Even video editing is mostly done on high-end PCs or dedicated video editing machines that run an operating system other than Mac OS X.
The one industry where the Mac is still pretty prevalent is in the pre-press/printing industry, but if a survey was taken, I'd be willing to bet that there are more PCs than Macs doing that kind of stuff now.
If you prefer working on a Mac for web design, then by all means, work on a Mac. But for the time being, Macintosh marketshare is so low that Macs don't dominate any industry anymore. Even video editing is mostly done on high-end PCs or dedicated video editing machines that run an operating system other than Mac OS X.
The one industry where the Mac is still pretty prevalent is in the pre-press/printing industry, but if a survey was taken, I'd be willing to bet that there are more PCs than Macs doing that kind of stuff now.
nixgeek
Mac of the SubGenius! :-)
Is this actually the case in web development? All web development? I think it depends what you're coding for. Some people might use WIndows PCs if they're developing for Microsoft-based server environments, but there are other resources that allow you to use other operating system such as open source *nix or Mac OS X. Heck, the first web page was designed on a NeXT cube! 
Lt Major Burns
"Dicky" Charlteston-Burns
the first peoper web-browser (not sure what that constitutes) was on NEXTSTEP.
Lt Major Burns
"Dicky" Charlteston-Burns
i read it on a very deep NEXT website, but i can't remember the whereabouts. i think it was nixgeek or RacerX's links but i could be wrong again.
texanpenguin
Registered Penguin
The main reason PCs are used so much in web-design is that, unlike print design and imaging/video work, web-pages are viewed again by people with computers, most of whom have PCs.
That is, a web-designer would have to be pretty careless not to test on (and build around the flaws of) Internet Explorer on Windows, since that's where most people will see the final product.
That having been said, I know a lot of people who do their web design work on Macs and do compatibility testing on the PC browsers (instead of the other way around), myself included.
That is, a web-designer would have to be pretty careless not to test on (and build around the flaws of) Internet Explorer on Windows, since that's where most people will see the final product.
That having been said, I know a lot of people who do their web design work on Macs and do compatibility testing on the PC browsers (instead of the other way around), myself included.
nixgeek
Mac of the SubGenius! :-)
Sure, the reasoning shouldn't be this way, but that's the reality. The majority of people viewing your website will be users on Windows machines using IE. Of course, this is slowly changing in the direction of Firefox, but mostly on the PC. In truth, you really have to make your website is accessible to your end users no matter what they're using. Mind you, the rare person still browsing the web on an old 68K Mac running System 7.5 or even a PC user running Windows 3.x on a Pentium I might not be your priority, but definitely most end users will be running either a Mac OS X or Windows 2K/XP computer running either IE, Firefox/Netscape, Mozilla/SeaMonkey/Camino, or Opera. And you might even want to make sure it displays in the open source desktop enironments properly as well.
RacerX
Old Rhapsody User
The first web browser, which was also the first web HTML editor app (and it was WYSIWYG by the way), and the first web server were designed and built on a NeXT Cube running NEXTSTEP 2.0.mdnky said:Huh? You might want to double-check that.
in responce to nixgeek:Heck, the first web page was designed on a NeXT cube!
In the beginning the web (defined as hyper text transport protocol serving hyper text markup language documents) was only for NeXT computers. And the first web page can be found here... which was (again) made on a NeXT computer.
The first development version of WorldWideWeb.app was made in November 1990. First pages accessible via httpd by NeXT systems started by the end of 1990.
By March of 1991 ports to X11 and Motif had started (line mode browsers, April 1992 for HTML browsers). First port to Macintosh was in December 1992.
The basics of the hyper text markup client were quickly ported to X11, Motif and Macintosh based systems because these were the systems used by scientists, researchers and educators. But the first Windows client would have to wait until after NCSA started making Mosaic (June 1993 for development, first public release was in November 1993). This was due primarily to the fact that DOS/Windows systems were used mainly by secretaries, data entry and home users (none of which needed to be included on the web because it was originally for sharing research information).
The inclusion of Windows on the web marked a giant step backwards. Because of the limitations of DOS/Windows, web extension standards were changed. Before Windows was on the web most file extensions were not limited to three characters (for example html and jpeg were the original standard extensions), but because of the 8.3 limitation of DOS/Windows, the web file names took a step backwards until Microsoft was able to catch up with the rest of the computing world.
It should also be noted that Microsoft didn't even do the initial development of Internet Explorer. IE is based on Mosaic.
Hope that helps resolve things.
Well... Yeah, but it's not really an answer to the _original_ question.
I'd say that "web design" (not web development, the question was design...) at its very beginning wasn't really a design job for graphics designers. You simply _couldn't_ design much. The Mac-using graphics designers _I_ know of the early times had a problem with this. They wanted to replace as much of the pages they designed with pictures. But that was a problem for the web, which was very slow as soon as you had to load a lot of pix. (Well, it's still much better if you use text and code instead of images today, but with CSS etc. we have a lot more "designable" code.)
Before there were WYSIWIG HTML-editors, designing web pages often was a three step process. A designer (most probably on a Mac) desigend something in Photoshop and Illustrator/FreeHand. Then the webdesigner told the graphics designer to *NOT* base everything on 300 dpi but on 72 dpi. Then the graphics designer quit the contract. Just kidding. But I guess it's part of the truth. Designers had to adapt to the new medium or they would rather stay with print. Classic webdesign was more of a code/hack/design-appropriately-to-the-medium kind of job.
I'd say that "web design" (not web development, the question was design...) at its very beginning wasn't really a design job for graphics designers. You simply _couldn't_ design much. The Mac-using graphics designers _I_ know of the early times had a problem with this. They wanted to replace as much of the pages they designed with pictures. But that was a problem for the web, which was very slow as soon as you had to load a lot of pix. (Well, it's still much better if you use text and code instead of images today, but with CSS etc. we have a lot more "designable" code.)
Before there were WYSIWIG HTML-editors, designing web pages often was a three step process. A designer (most probably on a Mac) desigend something in Photoshop and Illustrator/FreeHand. Then the webdesigner told the graphics designer to *NOT* base everything on 300 dpi but on 72 dpi. Then the graphics designer quit the contract. Just kidding. But I guess it's part of the truth. Designers had to adapt to the new medium or they would rather stay with print. Classic webdesign was more of a code/hack/design-appropriately-to-the-medium kind of job.
nixgeek
Mac of the SubGenius! :-)
This is true. Now that I think about it, most web pages were done in raw HTML code using editors and such. Then you had the WYSIWYG editors like Claris HomePage which tried to but never really actually gave you the design you saw. Seems like web design went through a lot of growing pains during the 90s.
RacerX
Old Rhapsody User
We shouldn't discount the very first browser/editor though... or the reason it was WYSIWYG.
HTML started out life as a cross platform page layout language... that didn't really work and was dropped by most everyone. It was still very limited when Berners-Lee adopted it as the layout language for documents for WWW. Between the portability of the documents, the hypertext linking and the flexibility of the layout language (which was working against it as a page layout language), made it perfect.
So, in the original concept, people would not only browse the web, they would have populated it with documents... which was why WWW was both a browser and a user oriented HTML editor.
The problems came from the move from NeXT systems to other systems. The rendering engine was ported... for browsing, but much of the rest of WWW was left with Berners-Lee and the NeXT systems on the web. And one of the key factors of this was that HTML was (for the most part) human readable (specially at this very early stage of the web).
Writing web pages by hand was very easy for people who were currently writing their research paper in TeX. There wasn't a need for the WYSIWYG HTML editor by these people. And by the time that Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina were introduced to the web while they were at NCSA, most browsers had shed the editor that was such a big part of WWW.
When I started using the web in 1993 it was a place to communicate and find information about what other people in your community were doing... in my case, the mathematics community.
I honestly didn't realize that normal people were on the web until mid 1995. I remember starting to see web addresses on ads and thinking... why are they on the web? I was still using xmosaic on a Sun workstation and hadn't even heard of Netscape yet.
Basically my first three years on the web I never ventured outside of the interconnected institutions of research and study. Math, physics, astronomy... these were the subjects of browsing the web for me. In fact watching the first images of the impact of Shoemaker-Levi on Jupiter made me realize that the web was an almost instantaneous medium.
But I never thought that graphic designers would have anything to do with making web pages.
Sometime I end up feeling like a marriage counselor in those situations.
As for the original question... what was the question again?
HTML started out life as a cross platform page layout language... that didn't really work and was dropped by most everyone. It was still very limited when Berners-Lee adopted it as the layout language for documents for WWW. Between the portability of the documents, the hypertext linking and the flexibility of the layout language (which was working against it as a page layout language), made it perfect.
So, in the original concept, people would not only browse the web, they would have populated it with documents... which was why WWW was both a browser and a user oriented HTML editor.
The problems came from the move from NeXT systems to other systems. The rendering engine was ported... for browsing, but much of the rest of WWW was left with Berners-Lee and the NeXT systems on the web. And one of the key factors of this was that HTML was (for the most part) human readable (specially at this very early stage of the web).
Writing web pages by hand was very easy for people who were currently writing their research paper in TeX. There wasn't a need for the WYSIWYG HTML editor by these people. And by the time that Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina were introduced to the web while they were at NCSA, most browsers had shed the editor that was such a big part of WWW.
Like I said, it was originally designed for exchanging information in the science communities.fryke said:
When I started using the web in 1993 it was a place to communicate and find information about what other people in your community were doing... in my case, the mathematics community.
I honestly didn't realize that normal people were on the web until mid 1995. I remember starting to see web addresses on ads and thinking... why are they on the web? I was still using xmosaic on a Sun workstation and hadn't even heard of Netscape yet.
Basically my first three years on the web I never ventured outside of the interconnected institutions of research and study. Math, physics, astronomy... these were the subjects of browsing the web for me. In fact watching the first images of the impact of Shoemaker-Levi on Jupiter made me realize that the web was an almost instantaneous medium.
But I never thought that graphic designers would have anything to do with making web pages.
Actually I work with graphic designers on web projects and even help bridge the gap between graphic designers and other web designers on projects I'm not even part of.
Sometime I end up feeling like a marriage counselor in those situations.
As for the original question... what was the question again?
I guess it depends on your definition of web page in general. There were early instances of "pages" which could easily be justified as being called a web page (a Mac is technically a Mac regardless of it being PowerPC based or Intel/x86 based, right?). If you want to limit it to just HTML based pages, then I would have to agree with you. Personally I don't limit it to that though.
As far as why the Macs aren't as popular, a lot of it has to do with three things: Cost, Market Share and Education. PCs can be had for less, there's no questioning that (especially in the last 10 years). The PC also has a larger share (ok, most of it) of the market.
Generally speaking, designing a web page isn't "rocket science". Until recently you could easily get a job doing it with little or no formal education required. The pay for such jobs was also pretty low because of that. Graphic design on the other hand requires a bit more training in a formal sense. Sure people can and have done it without formal education, but that's far rarer than it is with web design. The pay is a lot better too.
Generally, those buying Macs have a bit more money to spend than those buying PCs. Companies, who thrive on the "bottom line" also play a small role here...why buy a $1000 to $2000 system when you can grab a $500 one that'll do what you need. Not saying I agree with it, but money (specifically profit) talks in the business world.
You could easily make a claim as to "the why" with any number of reasons mentioned here singularly. Some make sense, some don't (what in life ever does?). Some are easy to see, others aren't. Honestly the real reason is probably a combination of some or all the reasons mention in this thread. I don't think there's one concrete reason that it can be narrowed down to. ((And yes, I know I didn't make a good argument here on my reasons...it would just take way too much space to do so...no one would want to read it, including me.))
As far as why the Macs aren't as popular, a lot of it has to do with three things: Cost, Market Share and Education. PCs can be had for less, there's no questioning that (especially in the last 10 years). The PC also has a larger share (ok, most of it) of the market.
Generally speaking, designing a web page isn't "rocket science". Until recently you could easily get a job doing it with little or no formal education required. The pay for such jobs was also pretty low because of that. Graphic design on the other hand requires a bit more training in a formal sense. Sure people can and have done it without formal education, but that's far rarer than it is with web design. The pay is a lot better too.
Generally, those buying Macs have a bit more money to spend than those buying PCs. Companies, who thrive on the "bottom line" also play a small role here...why buy a $1000 to $2000 system when you can grab a $500 one that'll do what you need. Not saying I agree with it, but money (specifically profit) talks in the business world.
You could easily make a claim as to "the why" with any number of reasons mentioned here singularly. Some make sense, some don't (what in life ever does?). Some are easy to see, others aren't. Honestly the real reason is probably a combination of some or all the reasons mention in this thread. I don't think there's one concrete reason that it can be narrowed down to. ((And yes, I know I didn't make a good argument here on my reasons...it would just take way too much space to do so...no one would want to read it, including me.))
texanpenguin
Registered Penguin
zoranb said:so whats the answer to the topik in a few simple words?
Internet Explorer