MacCentral on Tuesday brought readers news about a page on Adobe System Inc.’s Web site that showed how a PC could outperform a Power Mac in video post-production head-to-head tests. Apple tonight responded to the page on Adobe’s Web site and the claim that “the PC consistently outperformed the Macintosh machine, at an impressive rate.”
“Apple stands by our claims that our latest Power Mac systems perform equal to or better than competing PC systems,” Apple said in a statement given to MacCentral. “The reported tests on Adobe’s Web site showing slower performance of After Effects on a Mac than a PC is more an application test than a platform test and is not indicative of all Pro application performance on the Mac.”
The showdown pitted a single-processor Dell 3.06GHz Pentium 4 and a 1.25GHz dual-processor Power Mac G4 (the fastest Mac then available). The contest compared renderings of files created in Adobe After Effects, Illustrator and Photoshop software.
For years Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Senior Vice President Phil Schiller battle it out on stage at Macworld Expo keynote presentations, showing the superiority of the Macintosh platform. Typically, the two use Photoshop for their test in which the Mac wins over the PC.
Apple contends that the problem is not with the platform, but rather the application that is being used in the test, specifically After Effects. Apple points out that its own products outperform After Effects in similar tests. The companies are working closely together to fix any problems Adobe’s applications may have on the Mac platform.
“Other applications, such as Apple’s Final Cut Express, run some of those same tests on a Mac faster than the results for After Effects on either a Mac or a PC,” Apple’s statement reads. “Apple and Adobe remain extremely close partners and have been working together to improve the performance of After Effects on the Mac.”