What Mac to use for image processing?

Another thing to note with Macs is that the don't dramatically drop value like PC's, and PC hardware does. For instance, you could buy a current iMac, lowest stock spec for £800, and in two years time you could sell it on for at least £600.

You still see PowerMac Cubes on eBay that sell for circa £200, despite them being 7 years old!

Also OS X alone is worth the extra over a PC any day in my opinion.
 
Not much to add myself. But it's just that that PC case made me laugh being compared to a Mac aluminium tower, all personal opinion obviously but I find cases like that hideous!

Apart from that I'm with the PC guys. I've worked as a graphic designer for a few years soley on Macs and I'd rather use a PC. I do the same work at home on my own PC.
 
Just to answer a few of the untouched questions the OP has asked...

Canon do provide a full suite of tools for Mac OSX, they work just like the windows ones do.

Once youve got a Mac you may want to look at Aperture, for any OSX user Aperture is the killer photography App.

Id say an iMac is your best bet, i have the big 3 Mac options and love them all...

As for price, when I bought my Macpro (2days after release) it was cheap, i mean it was the same price it is now, but, at the time buying a similar spec PC wasnt possible and building one of the same spec would have cost several hundred pound more.
 
So yeah thanks for validating my point exactly.

That case is hideous

Since when was your point validated exactly? You mean the case is hideous in your opinion. I might stress opinion and not matter of fact which is what you are entitled to believe.
 
i hate mac's, ever since my mac days at college,
un-reliable, huge, very slow, *industry says its the norm to use it*, and teachers allways praze it,

I've had:

Performa 630, Powermac 6100, 7600, G3 Beige, G3 B&W and a Powermac G4.

They all worked perfectly, infact I still have my performa 630, ah brings back memories!

In that time I've also had a number of PCs, from Windows 95 to XP and all of em had atleast one big problem I had to sort. Nothing like that with OS7/8/9 or 10.

i hate it, and i think many can vouch for me too.

I've converted 8/8 mates so far, 4 to iBooks and other 4 to Mac
Books. What you think of that eh? (oh and I've never been asked for support from em, while I have been asked for help with PC ppl and all 8 of em are pretty much novices to computer usage. :)

i prefer pc's, much faster, you can upgrade without problem, easy too do everything, easy to fix, pc's dont crash like mac's for one.

Faster? Nope. Use C2Ds now, and G4s/G5s were NOT slow for Pro use. I have a G4 still held its own against my AMD64 X2. Upgrading, ummmn yea, until a new socket comes out with new mem and oh look, new PC time!

Easy to fix? Why do you need to fix em in the first place LOL

My PC crashes a hell of a lot more than OS X. Only yesterday did I need to spend 2 hours making MSN work on my laptop, 2 hours!!!!


there getting better now apple, but few years ago i hated them, probably the reason i still do. but i still wont work on them.

and for the quote above image processing, i would take my pc over a mac anyday!!!

Have you used one for a month, doing all sorts of work? If not, you really don't have an valid opinion IMO. I've used both for 10 years, and Mac always comes out ontop, thats why im buying a MacBook Pro for photography work.

Mac = Work
PC = Gaming.

How it always will be here.


and for the OP.

Get a Mac Book/Pro, I was going to get a Mac Pro but then being a photographer a laptop is a much much much better idea :)
 
I've had:

Performa 630, Powermac 6100, 7600, G3 Beige, G3 B&W and a Powermac G4.

They all worked perfectly, infact I still have my performa 630, ah brings back memories!

In that time I've also had a number of PCs, from Windows 95 to XP and all of em had atleast one big problem I had to sort. Nothing like that with OS7/8/9 or 10.



I've converted 8/8 mates so far, 4 to iBooks and other 4 to Mac
Books. What you think of that eh? (oh and I've never been asked for support from em, while I have been asked for help with PC ppl and all 8 of em are pretty much novices to computer usage. :)



Faster? Nope. Use C2Ds now, and G4s/G5s were NOT slow for Pro use. I have a G4 still held its own against my AMD64 X2. Upgrading, ummmn yea, until a new socket comes out with new mem and oh look, new PC time!

Easy to fix? Why do you need to fix em in the first place LOL

My PC crashes a hell of a lot more than OS X. Only yesterday did I need to spend 2 hours making MSN work on my laptop, 2 hours!!!!




Have you used one for a month, doing all sorts of work? If not, you really don't have an valid opinion IMO. I've used both for 10 years, and Mac always comes out ontop, thats why im buying a MacBook Pro for photography work.

Mac = Work
PC = Gaming.

How it always will be here.


and for the OP.

Get a Mac Book/Pro, I was going to get a Mac Pro but then being a photographer a laptop is a much much much better idea :)

i can validate all your points. looks like i stepped on a mac fanbase here. *runs..*

and no... i have used them for more than 1 month, thanks.

but for my thoughts alone... i hate them.
why... cause i used them for 5 years during studying graphic design, (mind you... they are old now, and we had it tough) but all the times i lost work, print problems, mac crashes, programs running slow...

but i really dont like them, there good for what they do. but for me... not worth double amounts of what my pc can do.

but i like my pc's and being able to work/play/ in an instant.
bought my acer ferrari 3400, at the end of my years at college, and my work doubled in time, and was so so much more easyer!

thanks just me. there good the newer ones,


edit: just read... 2 hours installing msn... lol?
why even bother with it. i hate that too. stick to x-fire ;)

once you learn how to build your own, and run it without problems. (just like my mini)
there invaluable. for a mac... you can never build it, upgrade it.. even harder, and problems with it? well... there goes your money.

fixing myself... - priceless
but you never forget when things go wrong.
 
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but for my thoughts alone... i hate them.
why... cause i used them for 5 years during studying graphic design, (mind you... they are old now, and we had it tough) but all the times i lost work, print problems, mac crashes, programs running slow...

I'l put money on that being your colleges server that is causing that. I had exacatly the same during my education. Its because your work was being accessed from a server and not a local machine which during a network lock up can cause any application to hang. Same goes with printing.

Believe me Macs are great but if people are more comfortable on a PC then thats fine as there are adjustments needed to work on either platform.

I defend Macs like a war veteran defending his country and I'm a primary PC user for now. Im fully moving to Mac but my machine at the moment is a currently crashing vista pc.
 
No my point was that a case such as the MacPro's build quality and appearance is unmatchable and that was easily validated from your link to that awful case.

Well my point in providing the link to that "hideous case" as you say, was to show quite clearly that pc cases were not quite the lego and cardboard representations you were making out.

http://images.google.com/imgres?img...ods&um=1&start=1&sa=X&oi=images&ct=image&cd=1

At the same time having just looked at the Macpro's build and appearance I would be a fool to concur that it wasn't very nice case also if not a little bland compared to the example shown above.
 
I'd get a Macbook Pro for photography stuff. As for looks, it's all a matter of personal preference really, I think my P182 is a good looking case, and besides, you don't spend most of your time looking at the actual case when you use it, right? ;)
 
i can validate all your points. looks like i stepped on a mac fanbase here. *runs..*

and no... i have used them for more than 1 month, thanks.

but for my thoughts alone... i hate them.
why... cause i used them for 5 years during studying graphic design, (mind you... they are old now, and we had it tough) but all the times i lost work, print problems, mac crashes, programs running slow...

but i really dont like them, there good for what they do. but for me... not worth double amounts of what my pc can do.

but i like my pc's and being able to work/play/ in an instant.
bought my acer ferrari 3400, at the end of my years at college, and my work doubled in time, and was so so much more easyer!

thanks just me. there good the newer ones,


edit: just read... 2 hours installing msn... lol?
why even bother with it. i hate that too. stick to x-fire ;)

once you learn how to build your own, and run it without problems. (just like my mini)
there invaluable. for a mac... you can never build it, upgrade it.. even harder, and problems with it? well... there goes your money.

fixing myself... - priceless
but you never forget when things go wrong.



MSN was working perfectly the night before, sleep it as usual, wake it up and it kept hanging at the login screen, cue 2 hours of messing around to finally get it to work.

Oh and I have built my own, about 10 times now.

Can upgrade macs, memory, hard-disks, graphics cards, processors in the Mac Pro.

So I don't know why you think you can't upgrade em LOL. Yes the lower range isn't easy but then they aint for pros and ppl who know what they are doing, they are for the average consumer.

The reason macs work is because they are coded for a set spec of hardware, IE, nothing changes from one setup to the next. Windows has to cope with billions of configs and thats why it crashes more!

As I say, after 10 years of using them both for general usage, photo and video editing, school work, presentations, infact nearly every type of work you can do short of 2D/3D modelling. The mac wins, every time!

:)
 
look at its interior and you'll see my point soon enough. I cant be bothered going any further off topic in this thread anymore.
Yes. It's very neat. But do you look inside the case when using it? No. You look at the screen, and both PCs and Macs are perfectly capable design rigs.
 
Yes. It's very neat. But do you look inside the case when using it? No. You look at the screen, and both PCs and Macs are perfectly capable design rigs.

Its not my point at all. Stop trying to turn it that way. I don't care if I don't look inside it. Fact is Im buying an overall product that has had as much care and design inside its box, outside its box and everthing the internals do.
 
Main issue here then is differing tastes. That case may have had some thought put into it's design, but it's still quite fussy and if although there may be a lot of aluminium in it, it looks like a plastic radiator to me. It is kinda cool I agree, but I doubt it's going to get a point across to the Mac veterans :)

It's taste and preference that decides the favourite OS too. I've been using both XP and OSX for years but prefer XP. In my experience there's very little in it for stability. At this point in time my boss' MBPro randomly crashes for the second time this year (dim curtains + message, reboot) can't figure that out yet. And my MBPro isn't solid as a rock either but it's still great. I'd still rather use a PC for graphic design work though.
 
I do wish people would get some perspective in "debates" like this. It's always a load of Mac fans claiming that all PCs are designed by blind monkeys (when in reality only some are) and are unstable (when in reality XP is just as stable as OS X and both had their fair share of teething problems), and a load of PC fans claiming that Macs are over-priced toys that don't play games (when that hasn't been true for ages).

Neither a Mac nor a PC will hinder you in any way; all the major and the vast majority of minor apps have competitors on both platforms and any difference is one of personal preference rather than any possible objective comparison.
 
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