p.2 #2 · Imac or Mac Tower or Macbook Pro with Monitor
Thanks all for the advice - its great. Interestingly where I would lean based on all of the above would be the laptop and a connected monitor, but the imac gets the most votes.
Considerations:
1) Fastest processers = imac or macbook pro
2) Largest number of inches of monitors = tower
3) Most mobile = mac book pro with separate monitor
4) Most internal hard drives = tower
p.2 #3 · Imac or Mac Tower or Macbook Pro with Monitor
Scott Stoness wrote:
I appreciate your input. Did you calibrate your imac with spyder or something and do you have trouble matching your screen color to your print color?
I have not calibrated my iMac with a Spyder (or any other colorimeter). I have an old Spyder2 I used on my monitors when I had a PC, but it won't work in the iMac. I have calibrated the iMac monitor with the built-in OS-X calibration tool.
Yes, I do have difficulty matching my prints to the screen. But my printer is an HP Photosmart All-in-One that seems to have an absence of ICC profiles.
p.2 #4 · Imac or Mac Tower or Macbook Pro with Monitor
Scott Stoness wrote:
Thanks all for the advice - its great. Interestingly where I would lean based on all of the above would be the laptop and a connected monitor, but the imac gets the most votes.
Considerations:
1) Fastest processers = imac or macbook pro
2) Largest number of inches of monitors = tower
3) Most mobile = mac book pro with separate monitor
4) Most internal hard drives = tower
Scott
1) Imac
2)tower or macbook
3}macbook
4)Dose it really mater with USB3 and Thunderbolt?
If portability and screen size are important, macbook pro
If speen and future proof are a concern Imac
Haswell is going to be only slightly faster than Ive Bridge and going forward after that power and graphics not speed seem to be where processors are headed. A 3.4GHz I7 today will likely be a reasonable chip for a long while it seems. An Imac's screen is supposed to be less reflective than ever, in the afternoon when the light in my editing environment is at it's worst the white frost on my Dell U2700 is not any better than the reflections off my glossy Auria.
If they must get Apple hardware and they don't need to move the computer around it seems that a Imac is the way to go.
p.2 #5 · Imac or Mac Tower or Macbook Pro with Monitor
Scott Stoness wrote:
Thanks all for the advice - its great. Interestingly where I would lean based on all of the above would be the laptop and a connected monitor, but the imac gets the most votes.
Considerations:
1) Fastest processers = imac or macbook pro
2) Largest number of inches of monitors = tower
3) Most mobile = mac book pro with separate monitor
4) Most internal hard drives = tower
Scott
Almost right, but I reckon most mobile = macbook pro without separate monitor
Separate monitor can be way above the iMac standard in terms of colour gamut, tonal and colour uniformity, profiling with more than 8 bits per channel, glossiness, etc. Or it can be worse.
Portable macbook pro is short on expansion ports these days. OK at a home base but not ideal when you've got lots to plug in (drives, modem, cd, CF card reader, etc.) and/or you're without mains power. Only two powered USB ports. Also more limited on internal storage now that only one drive can be installed (older format had an internal cd that could be replaced with another drive).
I've just discovered that buying speedy external storage can be problematic. Even thunderbolt-fed eSATA RAID0 (striped) 6G SSDs can be a lot slower than a single internal SSD, which is rather disappointing, and eSATA cables are very much prone to being unreliable due to the cable stiffness and the poor mechanical grip of the connections - not good for portable applications.
Expect new models to be announced in a few weeks. Maybe then we'll know for sure what the future holds for Mac Pros.
