[(((interference)))]

Also, can someone with the Retina tell me whether on the default Best for Retina scaling (equivalent to 1440x900) if you've zoomed out of an Excel spreadsheet or set a PDF to display the entire page on screen whether you would still be able to read the smaller text at this level of magnification (ie unlike on an actual 1440x900 screen)

[Pressure]

Originally Posted by (((interference)))

Really? Most people seem to think Parallels is better and it has more market share. Parallels 8 runs consistently faster than Fusion 5 too, especially in 3D performance: (Apparently, benchmarks in Geekbench with the latest versions of both titles is less than 5% off native OS X performance.)
http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/artic...hmark-showdown
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2011/10...on-4-reviewed/

I also want to run my Windows apps in coherence mode in Parallels as if they were native OS X apps, i'm not sure if Fusion 5 has the same feature.

Sure, VMware supports this. I am recommending it because of the support it has and that it doesn't hack the kernel of OS X, unlike Parallels which can leave things dice-y to say the least. Heck, they may have solved that issue by now but the pedigree of VMware compared to Parallels in the virtualization business can't really be ignored. Every business I know of uses VMware.

Originally Posted by (((interference)))

I can get a Office 2011 for Mac for $40 which is pretty cheap, so maybe i'll just get that.
I am a bit concerned that the Acrobat for Office from CS6 won't work with the Mac Office suite though, so maybe it'll be better to get Windows version of Office 2013 and run that virtualized together with CS6.

And I don't want to get Creative Cloud because it is far more expensive than buying a perpetual license since I can get the student version. I might consider getting a Mac version of CS when CS7 comes out but i'm not shelling out the $350 when I just got CS6 for Windows.

Alternatively, I could just go with my initial plan and run Windows 8 natively through Boot Camp and not use OS X. Though i'm a bit concerned about the spotty scaling support in Windows and Windows apps (for example Photoshop etc completely ignores the DPI scaling settings in Windows meaning it will render everything at 2880x1880 with no resizing of the GUI, making everything tiny.)

Maybe I'll just do some testing once I get the laptop, Parallels has a trial option so I can see how that compares to running Windows natively.

What are the general advantages/disadvantages with running Mountain Lion over Windows 8. I'm not familiar with Mac OS at all, compared to Windows is it less of an OS for power users? (like iOS).
I've heard about some of its idiosyncracies like apps not having a 'Save as' option so you have to copy and paste the file if you want to save it to a new folder.

I'm sorry, are you using your Student version of CS6 at work? Your workplace should be supplying you with a license for sure.

Setting DPI to 2 (or 200%) in Windows should make everything quite manageable, although I haven't tried it personally.

The advantages for OS X over Windows are many but they may not suit your workflow. The UNIX underpinnings are very important for me (Terminal, SSH, Apache server etc), they may not be for you. In essence, you can accomplish more in OS X as it is UNIX based and gives you far more "power user" options compared to Windows. Pretty much the entire scientific field uses Linux or Mac OS X because they are UNIX based and enables them to run and compile programs natively. Just take a look at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab mission control after they touched down the Curiosity Rover on Mars.

Acrobat Pro X and Distiller are available in CS6 for Mac?

It's true they dropped the notion of Save As (although if you like the old ways you can enable it).

The one disadvantage I can think of if running the MacBook Pro in Windows, is it only runs on the discrete GPU (the Geforce GT 650M) and gets less battery life. OS X is better suited for mobile devices, as AnandTech have shown on several occasions.

Also Adobe just released a new update to Premiere Pro to support HiDPI (both Windows and Mac OS X), so it should come to Photoshop as well.

The best way to learn Mac OS X is to forget what you think you know about Windows. It take some getting used to but all the people I personally know that have switched would never go back.

[Blazkowicz]

from the link it's been taking away in OSX Lion. was it here in the preceding decades?
this is incredible, it can lead to data loss for newcomers. if I ran into such software I would resort to a command prompt to copy and rename files

[Pressure]

Originally Posted by Blazkowicz

from the link it's been taking away in OSX Lion. was it here in the preceding decades?
this is incredible, it can lead to data loss for newcomers. if I ran into such software I would resort to a command prompt to copy and rename files

No dataloss, as you can at anytime go back and forth in revisions of the document (much like TimeMachine). Many applications even use iCloud to backup documents. If you quit the app, the document state will be saved. 'Save As' is simply not needed anymore by design. This way I can work on a document at work, shut down the computer, go home and return right where I left off.

Yes, 'Save As' was a normal behavior before Lion. Yup, I did say Lion. It was removed two versions back.

I think the confusion comes from the fact that people are too engrossed in a Windows-based workflow.

[Blazkowicz]

so, a kind of version control. if you want to mail the document or put it on usb drive you would export a choosen copy I guess. (can Finder show revision history for any file?)

Windows could do this by exposing their "volume shadow copy" (if I get it right) feature more. but 3rd party apps would all retain "save as..."

[Pressure]

Originally Posted by Blazkowicz

so, a kind of version control. if you want to mail the document or put it on usb drive you would export a choosen copy I guess. (can Finder show revision history for any file?)

Windows could do this by exposing their "volume shadow copy" (if I get it right) feature more. but 3rd party apps would all retain "save as..."

Or simply drag & drop the document to the mail. No reason to make the process more complicated than needed heh.

You can only expose older versions of the document through the given program if it exposes the Auto Save API in Mac OS X or TimeMachine (if you have that enabled) and you can always look revert the document between all the versions. You can read more about how it works here.

Have no idea how Volume Shadow Copy works in Windows, I am blissful ignorant.

Hopefully Apple will get the gear in motion and upgrade the aging HFS+ file system to something like ZFS+, so we can have bit-level backups and a non-corruptable file system. That is on my short wish list for Mac OS X.

[(((interference)))]

The lack of a "Save as" dialog makes it difficult to create multiple iterations of a document from a template. For example if you're creating variations on some piece of artwork (eg business cards) where you just change a few things each time and use the 'save as' dialog to create a different file.

OS X also doesn't seem to have an equivalent to jumplists which are extremely useful in Windows 7.

[Pressure]

Originally Posted by (((interference)))

The lack of a "Save as" dialog makes it difficult to create multiple iterations of a document from a template. For example if you're creating variations on some piece of artwork (eg business cards) where you just change a few things each time and use the 'save as' dialog to create a different file.

OS X also doesn't seem to have an equivalent to jumplists which are extremely useful in Windows 7.

There is the equivalent function hidden under the name, duplicate. Which is what you should be doing when working, in for example, Photoshop. I never edit the original photo but always use the duplicate function first (image -> Duplicate).

Auto Save specifically makes it possible to review each change between saves and you can manually add a version by using the normal Command+S, if the application allows it.

In Photoshop (and other 3rd programs) you retain full availability of the Save As feature, if they do not use the operating systems Versioning / Auto Save API, so I cannot really see why people throw such a tantrum about it.

[(((interference)))]

Ok, so maybe the no Save As dialog won't be a big deal since third party apps like Office and Photoshop support it.

Another question, how good a job does Quicktime do of upscaling videos to the Retina resolution? Does it just do simple bilinear upscaling or anything more complex?
I'm assuming if I used a 3rd party video player that isn't Retina aware (like VLC) the quality will be terrible since OS X will just pixel double the entire app including the video itself.