I doubt anyone has a definitive answer for this as the reasons
can vary so much, but I'll offer my two cents.
A large part of it is historical. Eric Peters, one of the main
guys behind getting Avid up and running, reported that in
mid-development they discovered the Mac's SCSI bus could handle
tremendous data rates compared to all other machines available at
the time. Data rate being hugely important in video, they made
the decision to stop development mid-stream, and re-write Avid
for the Mac.
Now you've got shops like mine buying into Avid, a fantastic,
jaw-dropping product. People complain about Avid being pricey
now, but in those days it was very, very expensive. (Though cheap
compared to the linear bays that preceeded it.) Your business had
to have money to buy into Avid. So now if you're a developer,
you've got a really tasty ready-made market -- small in numbers,
but huge in demonstrated willingness to spend insane amounts of
money on a needed product. So products got written for us. And we
filled out our needs with other 'normal' Mac software. Very
similar thing had happened in the print industry. Adobe's
fantastic graphic software was written for the Mac at first.
(Don't know why in their case.) That software and the laser
printer (again, available on the Mac first) revolutionized that
industry. And now companies had huge investments in that
ecosystem, making a compelling market for other developers to target.
So, we all got used to Macs. Productivity really matters in a
money-making business. Switching platforms = lost productivity
for awhile. Hard to do without compelling evidence that later
gains will make up for the initial loss. And if you've been
banging away on one platform every day for five years, and it's
serving you well, you are _very_ hesitant to 'fix what ain't
broke.' Switch your system over to something that looks good,
only to discover too late that it doesn't do what you need, well,
that can put you out of business. You don't make decisions like
that lightly. And this is what all the FCPX detractors are
yelling about. And I have my own sad stories about how just
upgrading within Avid's own product line has cost us money and
grief. Hate to think about all that could go wrong in switching
our software and hardware platform.
I don't know, but I'd guess there are similar reasons for the
*nix products as well. Due to some relatively small fluke of
history, some guy(s) coded a package for *nix that got popular
enough to create its own inertia, and you build up an ecosystem
around it, and once that's established, it's very hard to justify
changing.
I gotta think there are a bunch of shops like mine. So at this
point, if you want our business, you'll have a much better chance
of getting it if you offer me a Mac product. Because, for
historical reasons, I own Macs. Nothing directly to do with the
merits of the OS vs Windows and Linux. In my experience, you're
right about the relative flakiness of Macx vs Windows -- I
haven't used a computer yet that I haven't cursed. Why do we put
up with it? Any other $3000 purchase that gave me as much trouble
as a computer, and I'd dump it back on the store's front steps,
screaming for my money back...
Tim Selander
Tokyo, Japan
On 9/21/11 9:48 AM, ripvanmarlowe2000 wrote:
> As a young chap, I'm still exploring options career-wise. I love my job
> as a post supervisor in our mostly Avid shop but I'm getting quite
> interested in colour correction and colour finishing, Nucoda Film
> Master, Filmlight Baselight, this kind of thing.
>
> One thing I always notice about these and other high-end products is
> that they tend to favour Linux and Mac OS's (OSi?!) over Windows. Can
> anyone point me in a direction as to why this is?
>
> I realise that Davinci have just anounced support for Windows but it
> seems Linux tends to get first dibs followed by Mac and Windows seems
> like a bit of an afterthought? I could be wrong but it just seems this
> way.
>
> Googling tends to bring up a bunch of "you don't get viruses on linux"
> type answers but I'm talking about the fundamental reasons why you would
> code a program to operate on linux or OSX instead of Windows?
>
> People say stability is an issue but honestly our Macs beachball as much
> as our Windows machines hang. Bit of a random question but it bugs me
> that I've never really found a good answer to what must be a pretty
> stupid question. Any prods in the right direction appreciated!
>
> Andi
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
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