"I don’t see how you can even put them in the same sentence!" screams one print business owner, a warrior for the Mac brigade.

"PC is the portal to the world, Mac is an inward looking elitist snob of a technology," retorts another printer, a champion of the PC cause.

As with any polarising argument – both can’t be right. That said, both can be wrong. In an attempt to gain some clarity on the issue and perhaps foster some sort of peace accord, PrintWeek decided to poll a number of suppliers and printers to get their views. What we discovered is that, today, the battle lines are not drawn as sharply as they used to be and that the Mac-versus-PC fight, though still a hot topic in some pre-press departments – and still for some a defining question – is not being fought as militantly as it once was.

The question we posed was: is there any difference between using Mac or PC in the modern print business? You can have your say in the digital version of this feature, but here’s what a selection of suppliers and printers answered...

Martin Peapell Pre-press operator, ESP Colour
In pure technical terms, a PC can do the same job as a Mac. But, in my opinion and experience, drawn from 26 years of using both platforms, I find I can work far more quickly and efficiently on my Mac than on a PC. It’s difficult to say why, though. The sheer usability of a Mac does make things smoother. Other than that, I can’t explain why. On a PC, things seem more bitty, more clicky and not quite so smooth, both in terms of usability and looks."

Aaron Archer Technical director, Pureprint Group
I don’t think it really matters. Drivers are normally available for both platforms – but it is always worth checking the operating system support – i.e. Mac OS 10.8 or Windows 8 – to ensure that there are no compatibility issues."

Nicola Bissett Managing director, Optimus
It’s a straight split between our users: the design agencies, wide-format printers, specialist printers, etc, tend to be Mac houses, but may have PCs for administrative tasks; whereas the mixed litho and digital houses are more likely to be PC-based with Macs in the pre-press room."

Paul Calland Director, H&H Reeds Printers
I have to say we simply prefer Macs here, we have always used them; we design on them, we do the admin side of things on them – everything works and they last for ages. So, although they are expensive to buy, they pay for themselves through their longevity and lack of downtime. They usually have a secondhand value, too, when we do decide to get rid of them.

Most of our contacts in our industry use Macs, many of our design and trade clients use them as well. We hate the PCs we have (typically running RIPS etc) as they break often, need upgrades constantly and seem clunky. The clients that do use them, seem not to know how to. Most estimating and MIS systems are PC based – why is that? Most ‘old-school’ printers, i.e. the type that don’t usually get along with designers, use PCs – enough said."

Paul Deane Managing director, Shuttleworth
Increasingly, applications are being developed for a browser interface and are therefore not restricted to a particular platform. There are still limitations with what can be done in a browser, however, and for a rich application and best performance, the developer’s preferred route would still be hardware-based. This will inevitably lead them down the Windows PC route as this is – and will remain for the next few years – the predominant business operating system. However, the introduction of tablets into the workplace will become more commonplace and more and more functionality will be delivered by specific apps for specific job roles.’

Paul Manning Managing director, Rapidity
I don’t think it matters. I think a while back, people were very Mac-oriented, but these days I don’t think there’s enough difference. However, we run Macs in our studio in preference to PCs. Maybe we’re just Mac snobs!"

Daniel Pattison Group sales director, Augustus Martin
Macs are used for artwork and image creation, manual pre-press operations where the operator is using Adobe’s Creative Suite (CS) programs. Then the artwork is converted to PDF and, from that point onwards, generally sits on PC equipment running either Windows- or Linux-based operating systems.

Macs historically offered the only solution for the Adobe Suite, where large-scale artwork could be created or opened easily and without stability issues. PCs offer a cheap way of heavy-duty number crunching for pre-press workflows and RIPs. Honestly, the difference now is minor. Macs run on Intel chips the same as PCs and Adobe offers CS for PC. So, in theory, you could take a designer away from their Mac and get them to use Adobe CS on a PC. That said, personally, I work on a Mac because I believe they are just so good!"

Michael Donovan Technical manager, Stephens & George Print Group
In an ideal world, where all pages are supplied as PDF, the answer would be 100% in favour of a Windows-based machine. This would mostly be based on cost of purchase.

However, in the real world, we still encounter a very small proportion of work that arrives in application format. This dictates that printers need to have the latest operating systems, both Mac and Windows. Opera-tionally, there is little difference in what platforms we employ and we have operators in our pre-press department fulfilling the same roles using both Macs and Windows-
based PCs."

Julian Marsh Commercial business development and photo products consultant, Harrier LLC
In terms of functionality, the simple answer is no. The real differentiators these days are: what software is available on each platform; what do your customers use; what do your staff use, or want to use, or are best using; and legacy. Historically, printers have always used Macs in pre-press applications, so most good pre-press people love Macs as that is what they were bought up on. I believe you get what you pay for. Macs are great, but expensive!"

Geoff Stephens Managing director, TimeHarvest MIS
We are agnostic as a company – we have to be as our users tend to work on both platforms. The usual mix is that there are Macs in production and PCs in the office. That said, we do get customers who are Mac in both production and office and those that are PC in both areas. There’s no pattern specific to sector; it appears to be a very independent decision.

I would say that comparing the two is like comparing a car and a truck – they are different things, they both have wheels and an engine, but they do completely different things. I am exaggerating to make the point, but the strength of the PC is in the front office as it is relatively inexpensive and there is widely accepted software, such as Excel and Word, but they are really hard work in production. The reverse is true of the Mac, they tend to be great in production but hard work in the front office as they are not as good at connecting to the outside world or in doing the office tasks. Incidentally, where both fall down is that exchanging files between the two platforms is also not as easy as it should be."

Tim Hill Managing director, Speedscreen
Well, once you enter the world of Macs then nothing else will do. Of course, the graphics side has always embraced Mac. We have gone over to being fully Mac now using them throughout the business, running PC programs via parallels. The only PCs we have drive our RIP software and servers."

Emma Mortiboy Marketing and key account manager, Vpress
I use a Mac and certainly we have to be Mac savvy to accommodate our client’s expectations. We find that our clients are mixed – end-users tend to use PCs and creatives and printers creating templates on our Coreprint Pro solution use Macs. We have to make sure any testing for updates or general system testing goes outside the realms of just PCs and a lot of Mac testing is done using my computer in fact! We have to be sure that Coreprint works in every browser, including Safari, before any updates go live."

Kasper Roos Associate director, InfoTrends
In earlier days, Macs were preferred over PCs in pre-press environments because of native support for PDF and PostScript. Today, I would say that you can do any pre-press task on a Windows computer perfectly, but I guess it comes down to the preference of the operator."