Home · Register · Join Upload & Sell

Moderated by: Fred Miranda
Username  

  New fredmiranda.com Mobile Site
  New Feature: SMS Notification alert
  New Feature: Buy & Sell Watchlist
  

FM Forums | Post-processing & Printing | Join Upload & Sell

1      
2
       3              5       6       end
  

Archive 2013 · PC to Mac - your thoughts?

  
 
aubsxc
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.2 #1 · p.2 #1 · PC to Mac - your thoughts?


Bifurcator wrote:
Waycool,
An old Mac Pro (2008 for example) performs like a desktop PC from 2011. So there is like a 4 year performance equalizer here.


An old MacPro from 2008 will be running a Core2 based Quad Xeon or a pair of C2 Xeons. A PC built in 2011 running a Sandy Bridge 2600K, or a pair of Xeon SandyBridge hyperthreaded quads will be 30 to 100% faster than the 2008 MacPro. You don't have to take my word for it, check out the benchmarks.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/49?vs=287

These benches were run at stock speed. If you factor in the 30 to 40% gains that can easily be achieved with overclocking on a PC, the older MacPro is not even close to being in the same ballpark.

All opinions are civil. It's not until one person starts challenging the opinions of another that things get messy

You will get challenged if you spread misinformation. Your previously cited statement is not a matter of opinion, it is outright wrong, as the benchmarks show. Factchecking can get messy




Feb 15, 2013 at 11:52 AM
Brit-007
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.2 #2 · p.2 #2 · PC to Mac - your thoughts?


I will add my bit in the mix. I changed from Windows a few years ago. Why did I do it? Well, my stepson was a Mac fan and I bought a Mac Mini to try out. It was running Tiger and MS was about to release Vista. I realized then that MS was about 20 months behind Mac in their OS with the exception it was a poor rendition.

Having said that, I really loved the user friendly OS. There are some things that are harder to do on a Mac but these are the odd things people normally do not do such as setting up a non standard printer on a print server. With Mountain Lion now it is so easy.

I bought an SSD for my Mac Pro and installed the OS by going to the recovery partition of the old drive. After install, I completely forgot myself . Went to print a document and it told me that I did not have a printer specified and would I like to print to the Epson R340? This was connected to my print server and I use for documents. I said yes and it not only downloaded and installed the drivers but had actually spooled the print job and printed.

On some things it is great and takes the worrying out of everything. I find it is so user friendly that you can just put your concentration on the images. I do use CS6 but I do not use LR4. I have been toying with the idea but I have been using Aperture since V1.5 This is really a personal thing in that I find it way easier to use and there is not much difference between the two. In the current version, Aperture has really improved the import process: http://www.apertureexpert.com/tips/2012/6/19/import-browse-test-aperture-vs-lightroom-vs-photo-mechanic.html

That was getting off the subject a little but just more food for thought.

Is the Mac Faster? Not necessarily except I did upgrade my laptop to the 13" retina and wow, from cold to the desktop in 4 seconds. CS6 in another 5 seconds. This was a nice bit of speed improvement. Would I switch back? I would say no, I am happy with the workflow and prefer the desktop of the Mac.

Food for thought. I would suggest you go to the Apple Store and spend a little time with a rep going through the system to decide for yourself. There is no real pressure on you to actually purchase but you should get an insight in to the differences.



Feb 15, 2013 at 03:21 PM
Alan321
Offline
• • • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.2 #3 · p.2 #3 · PC to Mac - your thoughts?


If you like AppleThink then Apples are really great but in fact AppleThink is becoming increasingly restrictive in terms of what you can do and how you can do it. e.g. Want to sync your Mac with your iPhone or iPod? Then the only way with up to date products is to use iCloud (the web). Too bad if like me you spend time where the iCloud doesn't exist or doesn't work or is just too expensive - Apple have taken away the possibility of direct connections to do the syncing with.

My 2011 MacBook Pro has thunderbolt but the latest drobo won't work with it unless I update to a more recent operating system than 10.6 (Snow Leopard), but then I ran into the syncing problems.

Another example of deteriorating AppleThink is the lack of any significant upgrade to the Mac Pro line for over three years. It's the top of the range computer but it is also the oldest vintage in the range. They wouldn't even announce whether or not they would release a new model, let alone when.

The latest office software from Apple is several years old and is a crippled version of MS Office. Even Office 97 has better (and useful) features than iWorks does. The Mac versions of Office are cut down from the Windows version.

Overall I think I benefited from switching to Mac but the benefit is gradually being eaten away and if my Mac died today I'd probably revert to Windows for better software. I'm far from being a Windows fan but I'm increasingly disillusioned with the way Apple is headed.

Disclaimer: I am cursed and therefore a bit jaded. I've been having as many problems with my Mac and accessories since 2011 as I used to get with Windows. OS bugs. Drive failures. Software limitations. Things not working as you'd reasonably expect, or as they used to. etc.

- Alan



Feb 15, 2013 at 04:07 PM
CreativeStudio
Offline
• •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.2 #4 · p.2 #4 · PC to Mac - your thoughts?


Interesting perspectives - thanks to all who contributed. I think I would mostly use the mac's OS for the Adobe programs and web browsing - maybe do a Win7 install on parallels to allow use of my current Microsoft Office, etc.

Is a mid-2011 Imac display wide enough gamut for photo editing? I -could- see how the mac thing works out by starting with that, then a mac pro with my Dell Ultrasharp monitor later.



Feb 15, 2013 at 10:08 PM
gpchase
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.2 #5 · p.2 #5 · PC to Mac - your thoughts?


You will luv the 27" imac...try to get one from the Apple site..refurb..bottom left of screen...better yet wait for this summer...I'll bet a new Macpro will be released..either way you will not be disappointed..get min ram and add your own from OWC


Feb 15, 2013 at 10:12 PM
WAYCOOL
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.2 #6 · p.2 #6 · PC to Mac - your thoughts?


The Imac is not wide gamut but covers sRGB many consider this fine for photography.


Feb 15, 2013 at 10:44 PM
Bifurcator
Offline
• • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.2 #7 · p.2 #7 · PC to Mac - your thoughts?


With deals like this: Mac-Pro-2-8GHz-2008-8-Core-6GB-ATI-2600-320GB-HD-BT-MacPro3,1 - $900 and often two or three hundred cheaper, happening all the time I don't think I would monkey around with any of the iMacs... Not even the newest models.

I don't follow MacPro prices in the USA but that would sell for $550 to $650 here in Japan - for example.




Feb 16, 2013 at 03:35 AM
CreativeStudio
Offline
• •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.2 #8 · p.2 #8 · PC to Mac - your thoughts?


Has anyone bought from gainsaver.com? I was considering buying a mac pro pretty well stripped then fixing it up like I would want it - but the reviews are pretty mixed. Any personal experiences - good, bad, or indifferent?

-Gerald



Feb 19, 2013 at 10:25 PM
Chrissearle
Offline
• •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.2 #9 · p.2 #9 · PC to Mac - your thoughts?


There seems to be a bit of an apple backlash these days however the fact remains that once you get used to working with Macs, PC's seem rather sad. I have never had a piece of malware, I have never had a crash or bluescreen, I have yet to experience any software or hardware compatibility issues and my machines always boot fast. Furthermore,the OS is simple and elegant. I went from a desktop and laptop PC to an iMac, an MBP and two Mac Minis and find it difficult to imagine going back, this has also been the experience of my friends and family. They are less cost effective however so if cost is the major factor and/or you are a computer geek then yes, by all means live with the malware, the crashes and the incompatibilities.


Feb 20, 2013 at 01:07 AM
aubsxc
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.2 #10 · p.2 #10 · PC to Mac - your thoughts?


Chrissearle wrote:
There seems to be a bit of an apple backlash these days however the fact remains that once you get used to working with Macs, PC's seem rather sad. I have never had a piece of malware, I have never had a crash or bluescreen, I have yet to experience any software or hardware compatibility issues and my machines always boot fast. Furthermore,the OS is simple and elegant. I went from a desktop and laptop PC to an iMac, an MBP and two Mac Minis and find it difficult to imagine going back, this has also been the experience of
...Show more

I use the PCs I build for some things I do and (a) I haven't had a malware infection in over 10 years, (b) don't get crashes because I test the hardware using tools like Prime95, Memtest and Furmark every time I build a new machine, and (c) all the software I need to use works without incompatibilities within the Windows OS (mostly PS/LR, a few games, MS Office and some other work software). Most of the work I do for a living is done on Unix systems. If you do a Google search for PC or Apple problems you will find many, many results where people report problems with both systems. Its not like Apple computers don't have issues either, its just that a majority of the planet runs on Windows and those tend to get much more coverage. At the end of the day it doesn't matter what platform you choose; all that matters is whether the system works for you and allows you to do your work in a smooth, efficient manner, and in that regard both the modern Windows and Apple platforms work well. The rest is a matter of personal preference.



Feb 20, 2013 at 08:03 AM
WAYCOOL
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.2 #11 · p.2 #11 · PC to Mac - your thoughts?


Chrissearle Ironic that 7 min before you made this post you posted about a glitch in Lightroom that you couldn't fix just learned to live with, seem OSX has its share of incompatibilities. The only thing you said about OSX is in your opinion OSX is simple and elegant and your untitled to that opinion. Otherwise everything you said can be said about any modern OS. Nothing bad about Apple its hardware or os has been said in this tread, apple fans that stretch the truth or make misrepresentations to justify there choice of OS or hardware are free game I like OSX is all the justification you need.


Feb 20, 2013 at 12:26 PM
aubsxc
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.2 #12 · p.2 #12 · PC to Mac - your thoughts?


WAYCOOL wrote:
Chrissearle Ironic that 7 min before you made this post you posted about a glitch in Lightroom that you couldn't fix just learned to live with,



Amen



Feb 20, 2013 at 12:44 PM
morganb4
Offline
• • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.2 #13 · p.2 #13 · PC to Mac - your thoughts?


I like OSX.

I've gone too far with it now to go back to windows. Its just where I am now. It would be like moving house because the pizza was slightly different elsewhere.

Really a well thought out and assembled PC will not be significantly less reliable than a Mac.

A bad build will suck badly. I do good builds and thats why my main machine is a Hack.



Feb 20, 2013 at 11:04 PM
RustyBug
Offline
• • • • • • •
Upload & Sell: On
p.2 #14 · p.2 #14 · PC to Mac - your thoughts?


Late to the party ... but I've got a couple questions?

If the OP is trying to garner more performance with LR, what is it about Mac that would offer an increase in performance over PC? I ask that relative to the way LR is designed to run, which is different from PS or many other programs. What hardware or configuration design makes a Mac better suited for LR?

The issue presented that Mac is more intuitive, crashes less or integrates with Apple products may be good reasons for "loving" a Mac and will always be part of the Mac vs. PC debate, but I still don't see how that "love" makes LR (specifically) gain performance on a Mac vs. PC.

BTW, I bought my daughter the "must have" Mac ... it died, she went to PC, loving it. OTOH, >80% of my family owns i-pods, i-phones & i-pads, so I give props to Apple ... yet they all use PC's for computing. So, I still don't understand how a revamp of my software and hardware over to Mac ... would generate a compelling performance gain in LR that is not attainable in PC.

Edited on Feb 20, 2013 at 11:51 PM · View previous versions



Feb 20, 2013 at 11:24 PM
morganb4
Offline
• • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.2 #15 · p.2 #15 · PC to Mac - your thoughts?


There is no real performance gain that I am aware of or have found or have been able to exploit. To me W7 = W8 = ML10.8

Crashiness and reliability IMO is more related to quality of build/implementation and quality control processes.

These days, straight-line application performance is much less of a convincing reason to switch.



Feb 20, 2013 at 11:45 PM
WAYCOOL
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.2 #16 · p.2 #16 · PC to Mac - your thoughts?


RustBug I believe the op was bored or frustrated with his PC and looking for a excuse to try a mac which is cool more power to him. I'll stick with my home built and boot Windows 7 or OSX whichever I like both run screaming fast at 4.5GHz


Feb 21, 2013 at 12:04 AM
morganb4
Offline
• • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.2 #17 · p.2 #17 · PC to Mac - your thoughts?


^This.

It feels like only yesterday we were doing laps with this argument under a different thread title. I've half a mind to request that these kind of threads get locked when people start getting so dogmatic.



Feb 21, 2013 at 01:00 AM
morganb4
Offline
• • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.2 #18 · p.2 #18 · PC to Mac - your thoughts?


Alan321 wrote:
If you like AppleThink then Apples are really great but in fact AppleThink is becoming increasingly restrictive in terms of what you can do and how you can do it. e.g. Want to sync your Mac with your iPhone or iPod? Then the only way with up to date products is to use iCloud (the web). Too bad if like me you spend time where the iCloud doesn't exist or doesn't work or is just too expensive - Apple have taken away the possibility of direct connections to do the syncing with.


Not sure I follow, I plug my iPhone (when I had one) into my macbook and it synced via USB.


My 2011 MacBook Pro has thunderbolt but the latest drobo won't work with it unless I update to a more recent operating system than 10.6 (Snow Leopard), but then I ran into the syncing problems.

Another example of deteriorating AppleThink is the lack of any significant upgrade to the Mac Pro line for over three years. It's the top of the range computer but it is also the oldest vintage in the range. They wouldn't even announce whether or not they would release a new model, let alone when.


There are several reasons for this which are slightly outside of the scope of this, for instance the i7 platform has undergone a huge amount of flux in the last three years and I would imagine that they are waiting for a socket to settle on or something entirely different. Short sighted and surprising yes but would only affect you if you were in the market for a very high power bleeding edge MacPro. I think they actually have announced one for sometime in 2013. I find the existing line up to be very powerful.


The latest office software from Apple is several years old and is a crippled version of MS Office. Even Office 97 has better (and useful) features than iWorks does. The Mac versions of Office are cut down from the Windows version.


What do you feel has been axed/missing from Microsofts Mac version of Office, I thought it was OK.


Overall I think I benefited from switching to Mac but the benefit is gradually being eaten away and if my Mac died today I'd probably revert to Windows for better software. I'm far from being a Windows fan but I'm increasingly disillusioned with the way Apple is headed.

Disclaimer: I am cursed and therefore a bit jaded. I've been having as many problems with my Mac and accessories since 2011 as I used to get with Windows. OS bugs. Drive failures. Software limitations. Things not working as you'd reasonably expect, or as they used to. etc.

- Alan


Hmm, I had a drive die in my C2D iMac and a yellow screen. AppleCare fixed all on site.



Feb 21, 2013 at 01:06 AM
WAYCOOL
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.2 #19 · p.2 #19 · PC to Mac - your thoughts?


morganb4 wrote:
^This.

It feels like only yesterday we were doing laps with this argument under a different thread title. I've half a mind to request that these kind of threads get locked when people start getting so dogmatic.


morganb4 whats your problem OP was asking about a switch asked if OSX was faster for Lightroom and was told the hardware ran the same and that people has problems under both and decided to make the switch anyway. What exactly did you find argumentative about my post?



Feb 21, 2013 at 01:18 AM
mhayes5254
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.2 #20 · p.2 #20 · PC to Mac - your thoughts?


I switched from PC to a Mac Pro in 2008 because I was tired of rebuilding my PC every year or so when it started getting unstable (XP). I was more interested in editing pictures than screwing around with maintaining the PC. With the stability of Windows 7 (and probably 8), I think that reason would be less compelling today but it payed of well for me.

In the 5 years since I switched, I only had one problem last year and this brings me to the second reason for my switch (in addition to going almost 5 years without an OS problem). I started getting kernel panics and tried doing some self maintenance with only partial success (permission repair, etc). I have an Apple store nearby and brought it to them. They spent 30 minutes working on it while I waited. They sorted out the problem on my out of warranty system free of charge, and things were good as new. It turned out that my permission repair would have fixed it if I had booted from an external drive before running it.

With PC's, I used to build my own but as mentioned above, I lost interest in being my own computer tech. Having easy access to fully functional hardware and software support is huge for me. I have found that Apple support is far superior to anything I have seen from the PC side. Granted, my last experience with PC support was Dell, and that may not be a big hurdle to beat. I just went to a top end late 2012 27" iMac and am very happy with that. This was my first Mac upgrade and was amazingly simple. Backup old system, restore to new system - NOTHING to reinstall or reconfigure.

With the current availability of high speed drive ports on the iMac, I do not see much need for the internal expandability of the Mac Pro. The choice of imac vs mac Pro probably comes down to a decision on wether you want a wide gamut monitor vs the iMac screen. The new IMac seems perfectly fine to me. I did a quick cal with my Colormunki and was in business.




Feb 21, 2013 at 02:12 AM
1      
2
       3              5       6       end




FM Forums | Post-processing & Printing | Join Upload & Sell

1      
2
       3              5       6       end
    
 

You are not logged in. Login or Register

Username       Or Reset password



This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.