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 Re: PC to Mac - your thoughts? | |
CreativeStudio wrote:
1. All civil opinions welcome. I don\'t want to start a scuffle here...
2. I am considering moving my LR4 and PS6 to the Mac. However, I remain undecided. I have a Dell Ultrasharp 24\" monitor, so maybe a used Mac Pro? or a mid-2011 iMac?
3. I am currently using a Dell Precision Workstation PC - Xeon processors, 12 GB ram. Even with a Samsung SSD boot disk, it seems LR4 is sluggish - and yes, I\'ve deleted the preferences file, etc. These things help incrementally, then it gets lackluster again.
4. Some say the Mac is more efficient and will outperform an equivalent spec PC. Is this true?
I\'m especially interested in hearing from anyone who made this move. Would you do it again? What benefits have you found? What drawbacks?
I have noticed that many of the training/tutorial stuff out there is done on macs. Maybe that\'s because they once held an edge they no longer do, but have built a brand loyalty. I like the simplistic layout and user interface, from what I have seen of it.
It would also be interesting to hear if anyone has moved from Mac to PC - maybe that would scratch the itch for me.
All right, what are your thoughts?
Gerald
1) All opinions are civil. It\'s not until one person starts challenging the opinions of another that things get messy.  If everyone gave their own opinions and considered the opinions of others without challenging them it would always be smooth sailing.
2) For sure a used MacPro over an iMac... For all the obvious reasons. You can more easily trick out the hardware, expand, and etc. iMac seems so closed off to customization.
3) LR just has problems - it doesn\'t matter what platform. If your main goal is obtaining a speed-up in LR-like image editing then just switch applications. 12GB is a little small for ultimate speed - 16 or 24 would be better if you can swing it. What speed and model are those Xeons?
4) For what? Windows 7 will be faster and some things and OS X 10.7.5 will be faster at other things - given the same hardware spec. I guess we can say the same things about Win8 and OS X 10.8.x. For LR... hmmm, I dunno, I would guess that without tuning the systems they\'re both about the same. A lot of OS X is based on unix/linux and is more tunable to various types of application execution than Windows. Of course learning how to do this and what things affect what will take a bit of on-line research because OS X (like Windows) doesn\'t come with a manual which outlines how to tune your OS for specific tasks. So for these topics community support matters quite a lot. For OS X you\'ll find a wealth of system tuning advice which stresses OS customization and using the given facilities. For Windows PCs I mostly see infos about hardware upgrades and not much meaningful info about how to tune or use the OS optimally. The logical organization of OS X is much simpler and more sensical so it\'s much easier for an end user to learn and control - I suppose that\'s another critical factor given your stated concerns.
Etc.)
I didn\'t necessarily move from one to the other but I have and use both and I\'ve maintained just about every kind of system commonly available: Solaris, IRIX, Next, DEC/unix, OSWarp, OS2, OS9, AmigaOS, MacOS, Windows, Linux, Human68k, DOS, CP/M, Gem, GEOS, Pos, BeOS, and so on.
Would you do it again?:
Sure...
What benefits have you found?:
Simpler easier to learn, use, upkeep, and optimize OS X. It\'s also more stable than Windows in many circumstances.
What drawbacks?:
Developer support. There are still a few applications not available on OS X which are available on Windows. And I mean industry leading apps which are extremely well suited to their respective tasks and often extremely expensive too.
\"I have noticed that many of the training/tutorial stuff out there is done on macs. Maybe that\'s because they once held an edge they no longer do, but have built a brand loyalty. I like the simplistic layout and user interface, from what I have seen of it.\":
I think when after easily assembled multi-media presentations Mac still has a considerable lead over Windows so that\'s probably why you still see this. Remember, part of \"easy\" means you don\'t have to go out and research different 3rd party applications, and whatever you make can interact or interface with a host of other system/subsystems components. A simple user-ish example of this would be dragging and dropping a video from an OS X\'s quicktime application (like the player) into OS X\'s text editor or Mail. Of course the examples are multitudinous and I\'m not even sure that one is exclusive but interprocess communications on OS X is generally more robust.
\"It would also be interesting to hear if anyone has moved from Mac to PC - maybe that would scratch the itch for me.
All right, what are your thoughts?\"
It sounds to me like you should get a used 2008 or 2010 used MacPro and use the heck out of it for three to six months and then draw your own conclusions. It kinda sounds like you\'re not even sure WHY you\'re considering this - only that you hate the performance of LR4. There\'s nothing wrong with that IMO but it makes discussions like this one a little more difficult as there are fewer specific points to focus on and maybe too many general ones. So if you really want to know what to do before just doing it then maybe some more specific goals would be nice to define for yourself. My advice is always just to try it and see - then you\'ll know for yourself and of course it\'s a lot of fun learning. 
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