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Anyone Switched from Mac to PC?

OntheRez
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p.2 #1 · p.2 #1 · Anyone Switched from Mac to PC?

Had to switch due to work environment. Never again and don't know why anyone would. All significant software on Windows is also on Mac and - quite bluntly - the Mac OS does not intrude on image development near as much as M$ does.

Jan 20, 2023 at 10:26 AM

ohsnaphappy
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p.2 #2 · p.2 #2 · Anyone Switched from Mac to PC?

A couple more straightforward questions:

If you're editing on a PC are fans running loudly often?

Same question about the Studio Ultra, fans running a lot?

My 2020 iMac rarely runs fans loud enough for me to notice until I export.

If you didn't go with Apple display, what did you get for editing pics?

I use Time Machine for better or worse, does PC have a third party app that will help me back up automatically similar to Time Machine?

Thanks for all the feedback everyone!!

Jan 20, 2023 at 11:41 AM

gdanmitchell
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p.2 #3 · p.2 #3 · Anyone Switched from Mac to PC?

ohsnaphappy wrote:
I’m just looking at the fact that a mac studio ultra is like, $6000? I can’t upgrade it. I assume a $4k pc, maybe even a $3k pc, will wreck the mac studio.

But I’ve never worked on a pc in my life. I edit over 100,000 pics/year and spend 4-8 hours a day in LR. So I’m just hoping the pc is snappy in LR and very stable.

Very few people edit on pc’s so it’s hard to get any info

It takes some work to get the "studio" model to $6k, though if you try really hard you can go to $k8.

But for editing still photographs, there is little reason to spend that kind of money or get a system with those super-high-end specs. (Perhaps if your job is working with a ton of 8k video as a filmmaker or similar?)

So, I wonder, is the studio ultra really a worthwhile investment for what you do?

Even the lower end studio has quite a bit of power, and more than enough for general photo editing in LR. For my part (as speaking as a person who once, through a relationship with Apple, worked with then-top end stuff a lot) I settled on well-spec'ed large-screen iMacs for my own photography editing, and this works really well.

You do not need. the largest available RAM (or "unified memory") for photographic work. You also do not need — and probably do not want — the largest available internal SSD memory either. If you are working with the volume of photographs that you mention, you are more likely (and wiser!) to invest in very fast, high-capacity external storage... which you'll still likely need even if you spec huge amounts of "unified memory."

So, I guess what I'm asking is whether the Apple systems that you are looking at are needlessly over-spec'ed for your use case?

BTW: To be clear, there's no question that you can do the work on a PC or an Apple system.

Jan 20, 2023 at 12:38 PM

doady
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p.2 #4 · p.2 #4 · Anyone Switched from Mac to PC?

Based on GPU benchmarks, M1 Max of Mac Studio seems about as powerful as RTX 3050. M2 Pro should be roughly half that M1 Max and M2 half that M2 Pro. Apple chips have much lower power consumption, so much less heat and noise, but if you compare them to the latest AMD and Intel laptop CPUs, performance per watt is similar. Integrated GPU of Ryzen 6800H might be somewhere in between M2 and M2 Pro in terms of performance. It is hard to compare due to the lack of crossplatform benchmarks and lack of optimization for M1/M2, but it is a rough idea.

For me it's a choice between Asus PN53 with Ryzen 6800H at $1125 CAD vs. Mac Mini M2 with 512GB SSD and 16GB RAM at $1300 CAD. Same storage and RAM, similar performance, same 150W power adapters, but $175 price difference.

PN53 would mean more compatibility with PC games, but having to put up with Windows 11. Mac Mini 2 would be more expensive but better connectivity with my mom's Iphone and future Ipad. The PN53 however does have 3 additional USB ports, and on the front panel too, so connectivity with cameras and other peripherals would be easier. A bit too much form over function as usual from Apple.

I am currently using a 14 years old Windows 7 PC with Phenom II 945 X4, 4GB DDR3 1333MHz, 1GB Radeon 7850 and I can already edit images well enough in Capture One Pro 20, so I am not worried that the Asus PN53 with Ryzen 6800H and 16GB DDR5 4800MHz would "intrude on image development" in any way.

Jan 20, 2023 at 02:50 PM

ptys
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p.2 #5 · p.2 #5 · Anyone Switched from Mac to PC?

We have a lot of MBPs at work. I think all of them are intel based. *Everyone*, including me, has performance issues with them under load with an external monitor. They get thermally throttled down to 20-25% unless you use some fan and literally blow air on it. It doesn't matter if the lid is open or closed. Once you disconnect the external monitor everything is fine. I don't know how they get away with selling these things. Unless this is fixed in the new generation MBPs, I would not spend my money on one, unless you are fine with an external $20 fan whirring next to your $4k hardware to get $4k of performance out of it (or if you never use an external monitor).

Edited on Jan 20, 2023 at 05:30 PM · View previous versions

Jan 20, 2023 at 05:25 PM

mcbroomf
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p.2 #6 · p.2 #6 · Anyone Switched from Mac to PC?

Jan 20, 2023 at 05:28 PM

jhapeman
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p.2 #7 · p.2 #7 · Anyone Switched from Mac to PC?

ptys wrote:
We have a lot of MBPs at work. I think all of them are intel based. *Everyone*, including me, has performance issues with them under load with an external monitor. They get thermally throttled down to 20-25% unless you use some fan and literally blow air on it. It doesn't matter if the lid is open or closed. Once you disconnect the external monitor everything is fine. I don't know how they get away with selling these things. Unless this is fixed in the new generation MBPs, I would not spend my money on one, unless you are fine with...Show more →

That was 100% an Intel/AMD GPU problem. Apple likes to develop sleek and thin and quiet, so they paid a penalty by getting hot and throttling down. Case in point: At work my staff need to use a PC-only program. To get a PC with similar performance specs to my MBP we end up with one that is 3x a thick, weighs almost 50% more (6.5lbs vs. 3.6lbs), sounds like a jet engine when its under load, and has abysmal battery life unless you want the performance to be absolutely choked and bottlenecked.

This is 100% why Apple went with their own silicon. I have tried my darnedest to get my M1 Max MBP to spin up its fans and I can't do it. Huge imports, rendering 1:1 previews on several thousand 50-megapixel images in LR--OK, maybe that time I heard the fans. Really, it's incredible the difference--and get this, it's the same on battery or mains power, no performance throttling and crazy long battery life. I didn't believe it until I got one for my wife, and then I was convert.

Ditch the Intel MBP's and be blown away, seriously.

Jan 20, 2023 at 06:03 PM

jhapeman
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p.2 #8 · p.2 #8 · Anyone Switched from Mac to PC?

doady wrote:
Based on GPU benchmarks, M1 Max of Mac Studio seems about as powerful as RTX 3050. M2 Pro should be roughly half that M1 Max and M2 half that M2 Pro. Apple chips have much lower power consumption, so much less heat and noise, but if you compare them to the latest AMD and Intel laptop CPUs, performance per watt is similar. Integrated GPU of Ryzen 6800H might be somewhere in between M2 and M2 Pro in terms of performance. It is hard to compare due to the lack of crossplatform benchmarks and lack of optimization for M1/M2, but it...Show more →

Sorry, but the newest Intel and AMD processors are still nowhere near as close in performance per watt. AMD is closer, but real world use still hasn't been tested.

As for comparison of GPU's, I haven't seen one that really matters. Synthetic benchmarks are useless--it's well-known that Geekbench's GPU test is coded in such a way that it never even stresses the Apple GPUs, for example. In terms of the apps people here use, like Lightroom, Photoshop and Capture One, they are all very limited in how much of the GPU they use, so much so that even Puget Systems recommends the old Nvidia 3060 as their choice of GPU. Most of the performance gains in the discrete GPU market has been targeted at things like ray-tracing and rendering, which has pretty much zero impact on photo editing.

Finally I think you missed the point about intruding--that was someone pointing out that the MacOS just "gets out of your way" and lets you get stuff done, whereas Windows has a bad habit of causing issues and getting in your way. You're a long-time Windows user, so you wouldn't even think twice about it. BTW, Windows 7 was probably one of the best release of Windows since Windows 2000/XP. Windows 8, 9, 10 and 11 have all been clunky and buggy in comparison. Right now using Windows 11 is so awful I downgraded the machine we got it shipped on to Windows 10.

Jan 20, 2023 at 06:10 PM

chez
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p.2 #9 · p.2 #9 · Anyone Switched from Mac to PC?

jhapeman wrote:

Finally I think you missed the point about intruding--that was someone pointing out that the MacOS just "gets out of your way" and lets you get stuff done, whereas Windows has a bad habit of causing issues and getting in your way. You're a long-time Windows user, so you wouldn't even think twice about it. BTW, Windows 7 was probably one of the best release of Windows since Windows 2000/XP. Windows 8, 9, 10 and 11 have all been clunky and buggy in comparison. Right now using Windows 11 is so awful I downgraded the machine we got it...Show more →

I hear this a lot that the MacOS just works. Well if that was the case, why do we continually see all the issues with updating to the latest macOS and their printers stop working or their applications crash etc...

Maybe sometimes the MacOS just "gets out of your way" and leaves you holding the bag.

Jan 20, 2023 at 06:25 PM

RustyBug
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p.2 #10 · p.2 #10 · Anyone Switched from Mac to PC?

jhapeman wrote:

BTW, Windows 7 was probably one of the best release of Windows since Windows 2000/XP.

+1 for this ^
I held on to each of those (7 and XP) for as long as I could.

I've long thought that the more Windows tries to be like a Mac, the less they are like Windows.

Windows will never do Mac, as well as Mac, does Mac.

If you want a Mac experience, use the real Mac, not Mac wannabe (Win 11, etc.)

Both have their place, and both can function to the given task at hand. Imo, it comes down to how smoothly the Mac operates ... particularly when doing heavy brushwork, etc. that caught my attention for the difference in photo editing with the Mac vs. Windows.

If I could boil it down to one word ... SMOOTHER.

Never mind the massive performance specs for RAW POWER comparisons. It's kind like how a car built for top end is different from one built with a broad (read, very usable) torque curve. Sure, the top end ride might take the top end spec win, but if you spend most of your usage in the middle of the torque curve ... that top end stuff isn't the main deal. It always seems like the RAW POWER spec war, winds up with discussions about heat and noise management (water cooled, fans, etc.).

Imo, that's where Mac focuses their attention, building a machine with a really good torque curve, that still gets out and hauls for real world, creative use. But, for the folks that are hyper focused on the top end spec, they can overlook the "usability curve".

The other thing that I came to understand about the Mac (ethos) is that as I sought to understand the whole "Mac is for creatives" ... (I'm slow, btw) I never could put my finger on it for many years. That is, not until I got to a place where my thought processes had more of a "flow" to them. THEN, it seemed like using the CLUNKY was a PITA, that didn't really seem to bug me before. So, when the Mac was SMOOOTHER (less clunky), it had less detraction from the thought processes "flow" of things.

At which point, I kinda began to "get it". Like I said ... slow, sometimes.

The power spec war ... folks will continue to wage on with it. But, I'M OVER IT.

I've got a LONG WAY to go to learn the Mac well, and with over 30 years on Windows, I'm obviously very comfortable with that. But, I just can't possibly see what a seasoned, creative work flow, Mac user would find viable in trading a $$$ or two for Windows OS. Maybe I'm missing something, but ... that's my .02 as a Mac newbie.

Edited on Jan 20, 2023 at 06:50 PM · View previous versions

Jan 20, 2023 at 06:47 PM

jhapeman
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p.2 #11 · p.2 #11 · Anyone Switched from Mac to PC?

chez wrote:
I hear this a lot that the MacOS just works. Well if that was the case, why do we continually see all the issues with updating to the latest macOS and their printers stop working or their applications crash etc...

Maybe sometimes the MacOS just "gets out of your way" and leaves you holding the bag.

Honestly I don't hear that often and I've certainly never had any issues, nor have any of my family. Care to share some examples? I have HP printers that are 15+ years old, new ones, they all just work. My FIL has a 15+ year old Epson printer, just works with the Macs he's had. I can't recall the last time ANY app crashed on me, besides when I've been using beta versions of MacOS.

There are some crappy third-party plugins that can cause problems, but frankly I've always avoided giving any of my money to software developers that don't rapidly update their code and keep up with changes in the world (like the migration to only 64-bit code with MacOS). That's not on Apple, that's on developers/companies that don't want to invest in their products.

Jan 20, 2023 at 06:49 PM

ohsnaphappy
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p.2 #12 · p.2 #12 · Anyone Switched from Mac to PC?

It’s common knowledge to wait 6 months before downloading and installing the new Mac OS. I still haven’t installed Ventura.

But having worked on Macs since 2006, since 2010 as a full time professional, the OS rarely crashes. Once a year at most.

Jan 20, 2023 at 06:56 PM

chez
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p.2 #13 · p.2 #13 · Anyone Switched from Mac to PC?

jhapeman wrote:
Honestly I don't hear that often and I've certainly never had any issues, nor have any of my family. Care to share some examples? I have HP printers that are 15+ years old, new ones, they all just work. My FIL has a 15+ year old Epson printer, just works with the Macs he's had. I can't recall the last time ANY app crashed on me, besides when I've been using beta versions of MacOS.

There are some crappy third-party plugins that can cause problems, but frankly I've always avoided giving any of my money to software developers that don't rapidly...Show more →

I see 3 topics on the 1st page of the printer board here on FM that are concerned with issues of things working when installing a new macOS. Just take a peak.

Jan 20, 2023 at 07:00 PM

jhapeman
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p.2 #14 · p.2 #14 · Anyone Switched from Mac to PC?

ohsnaphappy wrote:
A couple more straightforward questions:

If you're editing on a PC are fans running loudly often?

Same question about the Studio Ultra, fans running a lot?

My 2020 iMac rarely runs fans loud enough for me to notice until I export.

If you didn't go with Apple display, what did you get for editing pics?

I use Time Machine for better or worse, does PC have a third party app that will help me back up automatically similar to Time Machine?

Thanks for all the feedback everyone!!

So at my office we have a couple PCs. One has Lightroom on it because one app that runs better on Windows than the Mac is HeliconFocus, for image stacking. We use that a lot for product shots. This machine is using a top of the line Asus motherboard, the quietest fans I could buy and an Nvidia RTX 6000 graphics card. Even with all of the fans being super quiet, there's a baseline of noise that you can hear that is substantially louder than a Mac Studio. My Studio is literally all but dead silent, with the baseline of noise in my office I can not hear anything, at all.

If I stress the machines out with large imports/exports or large batch renderings of previews the Mac Studio still never breaks a sweat. The fans never spin up to any louder sound level. I actually think that Apple designed the new Studio case and cooling system to last a few generations of chips, knowing that future ones will run hotter and need more cooling, because otherwise its basically oversized for how cool the chip stays. On the PC, on the other hand, if I do those same large jobs it will cause the fans to spin up. It kicks off so much heat that the room gets hot, and I kid you not, we had to add additional cooling to that room in part because of that.

As for a display, if you are OK with lower resolution, BenQ makes some great monitors with high color fidelity. If you want 5K the only other option is the LG UltraFine, but it's only $300 less and has a lousy camera, slower TB ports, crappy speakers, and is made out of plastic vs. aluminum. Honestly the quality of the Apple one is so much better for just $300 more I wouldn't even consider the LG (I had one for years). You might be different, but I find going back to just 4K after using 5K or 6K for years is hard. That extra resolution is soooo nice for editing photos.

I don't have an easy solution on the backup; TimeMachine is just really slick. On the PC I just figure it's easier to wipe and restart if needed and frankly with a PC that's not a bad idea either. Data backup is done by saving to a cloud backup but it's nowhere as slick as TimeMachine.

I personally would suggest you try out just a base model Studio Ultra. You have a two week return period to see how it goes, but based on what you use now I think you'll be blown away. You mentioned you are using 2020 iMacs with the 5700 graphics; that's basically similar the late 2019 16" MBP I was using. Worst case you have to send it back, however, I think you'll be very pleased what that $4K gets you. You can also find that model often on the Apple Refurb shop for $400 less.

BTW, if you're patient, I have a new PC and M2 Max MacBook Pro on the way and will do some updated testing to see where things at one year on from when I did my first round of Studio testing. It might be enlightening!

Jan 20, 2023 at 07:07 PM

doady
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p.2 #15 · p.2 #15 · Anyone Switched from Mac to PC?

chez wrote:
I hear this a lot that the MacOS just works. Well if that was the case, why do we continually see all the issues with updating to the latest macOS and their printers stop working or their applications crash etc...

Maybe sometimes the MacOS just "gets out of your way" and leaves you holding the bag.

Yes, no operating system is even close to perfect, not even Mac OS, but Windows 11 probably further away based on the stories I've heard. Online Microsoft account required now? Yikes.

But when it comes to issues and getting in the user's way, I worry as much about the hardware as the software, a Windows PC definitely easier and cheaper to fix than any MacOS PC.

The Mac zealots somehow manage to be even more annoying than the Windows zealots, in their own little world or something. I was seriously considering Mac Mini M2, but I can't help but think twice when I hear outlandish claims like "the newest Intel and AMD processors are still nowhere near as close in performance per watt".

https://www.techspot.com/review/2487-amd-ryzen-6800h/

Jan 20, 2023 at 07:26 PM

chez
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p.2 #16 · p.2 #16 · Anyone Switched from Mac to PC?

RustyBug wrote:
+1 for this ^
I held on to each of those (7 and XP) for as long as I could.

I've long thought that the more Windows tries to be like a Mac, the less they are like Windows.

Windows will never do Mac, as well as Mac, does Mac.

Jan 20, 2023 at 07:59 PM

RustyBug
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p.2 #17 · p.2 #17 · Anyone Switched from Mac to PC?

chez wrote:
Rusty with your use of SMOOTH I thought you are talking about bokeh or Canon colours or maybe even that 3d pop.

I just don’t get a feel from your description of smooth. I’ve used both systems quite extensively and when in LR/PS, I see very little difference whether I’m on a Mac or on a Windows machine.

Now if your windows experience was with an older system trying to use PS /LR, then yeh it can be clunky…just like using an older under powered Mac…no difference.

But it seems like you are comparing today’s Mac with yesterdays PC which surely you...Show more →

My initial experience in the realm of "smoother" was comparing yesterday Mac with yesterday PC ... fair comparison, imo.
In fact, the PC had 4X more memory (64GB) than the Mac (16GB). The Mac was still smoother with my brushwork, layers, etc. It was also faster in other tasks.

It was enlightening to how much difference the Mac approach made ... vs. the spec itself.

I don't claim to have tested all iterations of PC vs. Mac, just pointing out that the approach Mac takes doesn't necessarily equate to specs, in order to achieve the results ... results which I found surprisingly favorable, despite the spec "disadvantage".

YMMV

Edited on Jan 20, 2023 at 08:13 PM · View previous versions

Jan 20, 2023 at 08:07 PM

chez
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p.2 #18 · p.2 #18 · Anyone Switched from Mac to PC?

RustyBug wrote:
My initial experience in the realm of "smoother" was comparing yesterday Mac with yesterday PC ... fair comparison, imo.
In fact, the PC had 4X more memory (64GB) than the Mac (16GB). The Mac was still smoother with my brushwork, etc.

It was enlightening to how much difference the Mac approach made ... vs. the spec itself.

YMMV

Taste great…less filling I guess.

Jan 20, 2023 at 08:10 PM

jhapeman
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p.2 #19 · p.2 #19 · Anyone Switched from Mac to PC?

doady wrote:
Yes, no operating system is even close to perfect, not even Mac OS, but Windows 11 probably further away based on the stories I've heard. Online Microsoft account required now? Yikes.

But when it comes to issues and getting in the user's way, I worry as much about the hardware as the software, a Windows PC definitely easier and cheaper to fix than any MacOS PC.

The Mac zealots somehow manage to be even more annoying than the Windows zealots, in their own little world or something. I was seriously considering Mac Mini M2, but I can't help but think twice when...Show more →

Sorry, but help me out here. I use both in my work; do you? I'm not a fanboy or a zealot, I use what works and works well. Your statement that my claim is "outlandish" reveals your own bias. To comment on that article you linked: Cinebench is literally the worst benchmark to use to compare anything; apart from the fact it measures performance for one app, and one app only, it's also been very carefully optimized for x86 processors. It's also just a crappy article when they test a low-end M1 Pro against a top-of-the-line Intel i9 and completely leave out both the M1 Max and the M1 Ultra.

Apart from that the whole methodology they use in that article is baffling to say the least since they don't even explain it, but some of their benchmarks (like PugetBench) are not even Apple Silicon native, others they compare performance of one machine at 60W and another at 175W, it's an absolute mess. Even then, your link defeats your claim as the one graph they *do* share that shows overall performance at a given wattage shows the M1 Pro (again, there's two higher-performance models of the M1 available that they apparently just ignored) outperforming every single other CPU they tested.

Here's the thing: It's easy to cherrypick a benchmark, or rig things in other ways. But the reality is this: Show me an ultraslim PC laptop that performs the same as the Apple Silicon MacBook Pros or MacBook Air, and doesnt have to weigh a ton for a huge battery and huge heatsinks and fans. You won't find one because they're not there: The just require a lot more power to get to there.

The fact that Intel and AMD have suddenly pivoted and come up with processors with mix of HP and HE cores tells you how much Apple changed the terms of the game with their processor release. Global sales data for 2022 show that all of the PC makers had declines, many quite substantial, while only Apple grew in sales. Clearly buyers value the high performance, lower power usage and design aesthetics as they cost more than their average PC counterparts.

FWIW, this is good for the PC side. The race for higher GHz with almost no regard to the heat and power consumption on the PC side was somewhat ridiculous and pretty wasteful to boot. Energy use and production have a cost, environmental and financial. I personally always hated hot and bulky computers; one of the reasons I enjoyed using the MacBook Pro line was the thinner design and lighter weight and how quiet they were, even if they were hobbled to keep them in that heat envelope. Meanwhile we've all watched mobile phones become more and more powerful and power-efficient. There's absolutely no reason we shouldn't expect that to come to the desktop/laptop world, except a huge legacy world of apps and processor architectures to support. Apple's move has shown a different way, one Microsoft tried with their ARM-based laptops, but were not quite able to pull off.

Jan 20, 2023 at 08:18 PM

RustyBug
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p.2 #20 · p.2 #20 · Anyone Switched from Mac to PC?

jhapeman wrote:
the thinner design and lighter weight and how quiet they were, even if they were hobbled to keep them in that heat envelope.

I've enjoyed my ThinkPad X1 to hit that target envelope for years. For me, it was the sweet spot between power / performance / size / weight / heat / noise ... without feeling "hobbled".

That feeling of being "hobbled" kept me out of a Mac ... up till now. If the SOC Mac didn't exist, I'd be upgrading my X1. But, the SOC M1 / M2 has raised the bar, such that "hobbled" isn't part of the equation. Instead, more performance and less heat (I work off my lap, literally) is duly noted.

Folks can run all the benchmark tests they want ... but, my thighs can definitely tell the difference (without a benchmark).

Edited on Jan 20, 2023 at 08:30 PM · View previous versions

Jan 20, 2023 at 08:28 PM

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