PC Vs MAC

T

Tavli

Suspended / Banned
Messages
135
Name
Scott
Edit My Images
Yes
As title really,

Which is the best way to go for photo editing using CS5 or the like?

Budget would be around 2.5K ish I guess and was looking at maybe the 27" Quad MAC, but is this the best option for colour match screen to print?

Or would I be better off spending on a power horse PC and a good high end IPS monitor maybe twin monitors but second being a cheaper model?

What are you thoughts please as I am in 2 minds over this?

Pro and Con's would be great.
 
search on here loads of opinions. Its a q thats sure to start a fight
 
It used to be said that you shold buy the system that has the software you need, but in this case they'd both be ok.

Which are you used to?
Which do most of your friends use? (Not because you're following their fashion, but simply because you'll be able to get the most help if you get stuck.)

At that budget you'll probably find it hard to go wrong whichever way you leap.

One tip whichever one you buy - get as much memory as you can!
 
I recently brought two top of the range Macs, after years of building my own PC's, my son had one for his music and I had the other for photo editing and general computer stuff and I sold the Mac after a month and went back to my good old faithfull PC, I hated it, I dont know why or because Im probably a bit long in the tooth, but I just couldnt get to grips with it.

I also enjoy online gaming and I have a huge music collection so the pc is the right balance for me.
 
daugirdas said:
All the rest is preference for better OS, mac being much better obviously.
Click to expand...

better at being OS'y than windows obviously.. :shrug:

because they certainly do both crash, they do both have slowdowns, they do both suffer from malware (OSX may not be affected by it yet but they certainly can help harbour Windows malware).. shall i go on?
 
*thumbs rules*
 
Either will do the job in exactly the same way. Its all down to preference.

OP- the forum has a search function, please use it.
 
It has been discussed and turned into a fight too many times...

Have you tried both?

I was a PC man (well still am too), but went for an iMac i5 27" a few months ago and have been VERY pleased with both the OS and screen. As said above IPS monitors are great!
 
When I joined my camera club I was one of just 2 with macs. My mentor and senior club member is a computer wizard, builds his own PCs, including a hackintosh. He has since got a macbookpro, an iPad for his wife and now an iMac for himself.

Now there are about 5 club members with Macs. I don't think there is anything 'really' to choose between them, but I use PC at work and Mac at home and for ease of use, Mac does it for me. I think it mostly boils down to (a) budget, (b) what your mates have.
 
Last edited:
Mac:
- "Just works" in a good way (perfectly adequate for photoshop etc., as well as Final Cut Pro as a bonus)
- Looks pretty while it does it

PC:
- If you enjoy it, there's a lot more customisation, freeware etc. on Windows and it's much more open than Mac, but still a great OS without customisation
- Runs all adobe apps just the same as a mac, except with more choice on everything; cases, monitors, upgrades, mice etc.
- Cheaper

Monitor wise I'd feel dirty using a non-apple monitor on a mac, the whole idea of apple is everything works together and matches; adding more cables and adapters goes against that for me.
Of course it's possible if you want to, but personally if you lose the style of a mac most of it's lost for me, I'd go PC for most applications; if nothing else because I'm more than competent in Windows and it saves a lot of money (though on a £2.5k budget I guess that's not really a concern)
 
can-of-worms.jpg


Macs are the bsetest :). (spell checked on a PC) :P
 
Danny_Two said:
Once you've had Mac there's no going back.
:)
Click to expand...

Except for Lesco!

If you want Toast with those worms, you better get a Mac.........

Allan..

No Windows in my house....
 
before this gets the padlock treatment.....

Macs do crash, known from recent experience, but mostly it's just the programs that fall over, not like windows, where the whole OS gets b0rked as soon as a program crashes.

in a nutshell, if you do a lot of creative stuff get a mac

if you play games and like customising hardware get a pc

:)
 
Rob 80386 said:
before this gets the padlock treatment.....

Macs do crash, known from recent experience, but mostly it's just the programs that fall over, not like windows, where the whole OS gets b0rked as soon as a program crashes.

in a nutshell, if you do a lot of creative stuff get a mac

if you play games and like customising hardware get a pc

:)
Click to expand...

indeed.

i can safely say that on our helpdesk, the amount of logs from Mac (100% snow leo) users is pretty equal compared to our Windows (XP/7 mix) users.
 
Thanks guys and gals, I have owned a PC for many years and have been thinking of going to the dark side so to speak lol, Im still not sure what to do as I am a bit of a gamer really although I can always use my PS3 for that I guess.

I knew that in the past Mac's were known for being best suited to editing be it video, photo etc but not sure how they stood now really plus I have never used one either. I think what it comes down to is will a Mac be better for me for photo editing (is it worth buying one as I will still have a capable PC running too) or just go out and buy a good G/card and Carling Fandango monitor!!!!

Choices arggggggg :shrug::shrug::shrug:
 
Tavli said:
Thanks guys and gals, I have owned a PC for many years and have been thinking of going to the dark side so to speak lol, Im still not sure what to do as I am a bit of a gamer really although I can always use my PS3 for that I guess.

I knew that in the past Mac's were known for being best suited to editing be it video, photo etc but not sure how they stood now really plus I have never used one either. I think what it comes down to is will a Mac be better for me for photo editing (is it worth buying one as I will still have a capable PC running too) or just go out and buy a good G/card and Carling Fandango monitor!!!!

Choices arggggggg :shrug::shrug::shrug:
Click to expand...

simple answer - one is not better than the other for photo editing. its just down to personal preference on how the OS (OSX or Windows) feels to you to use.

re graphics cards - you dont really need a good one of those for photo editing either, Adobe CS4 can use some graphics cards for acceleration (see their site for list) but i wouldnt say its necessary.
 
neil_g said:
simple answer - one is not better than the other for photo editing. its just down to personal preference on how the OS (OSX or Windows) feels to you to use.

re graphics cards - you dont really need a good one of those for photo editing either, Adobe CS4 can use some graphics cards for acceleration (see their site for list) but i wouldnt say its necessary.
Click to expand...

Ah, "I see" said the blind man to his deaf dog, so I guess the main thing in the equation has to be a good monitor then? and of course plenty of good RAM?

Cheers all

P.s. I am sorry for posting in the wrong section, also I did do a search for PC Vs Mac and for whatever reason it came back with some odd results lol.
 
Tavli said:
Ah, "I see" said the blind man to his deaf dog, so I guess the main thing in the equation has to be a good monitor then? and of course plenty of good RAM?
Click to expand...

good monitor (read: IPS panel), calibrator for said screen, RAM will help so will a reasonable processor (LR on a batch export will use 90+% of my core2 quad for example)
 
Rob 80386 said:
not like windows, where the whole OS gets b0rked as soon as a program crashes.
Click to expand...
When did you last use windows???? I haven't seen the OS be borked for many, many years from a program going down. In fact, since Win98...

To give you some idea of how stable my two main machines are (we also have several laptops here..):

Main workstation running Win7:
- Last booted 22/12 @ 13:18 (after reboot from Windows update).
- On 24/7, me sat in front of it probably 30%-50% of that time (I work from home and generally do my work on my home PC)
- Currently running 148 processes
- Typically 40+ windows open plus 20-40 Chrome tabs open at any one time
- Been used for: LR, PS, Android development, device driver install/uninstall, general browsing, media info scraping etc.. etc...

My XP based home server (again on 24/7):
- Uptime 56days, 3hrs, 16 minutes (I think that's when I installed a new power supply as the other ones fan was making a noise)
- Currently running 82 processes, managed exclusively through VNC off the first machine
- Serves all video/audio to the house, used for any media recoding work needed, runs FTP, web servers and SQLite database, domain name server for the house, print server, runs a second media centre, monitors the router ADSL connection, acts as central backup server for the house etc, etc....

Really Windows is JUST as reliable as any other OS
 
FUD..... everywhere!
 
arad85 said:
When did you last use windows???? I haven't seen the OS be borked for many, many years from a program going down. In fact, since Win98...
Click to expand...

I was thinking back a bit far....

The point I was trying to make... although worded wrong, is that when a program crashes on a mac, it's the program that crashes not the OS, so all you have to do is force quit the application and no need to soft reset the machine (normally)
on windows when a program crashes, the OS tends to lock up with it, requiring a soft reset by holding down the power button.

windows has got better over the years, more reliable, better hardware support and much nicer looking

I use windows 7 pro on my liquid cooled rig,
windows XP on my file/print server
windows XP on the netbook
Mac OSX 10.6.6 on my 5 year old MacBook

windows 3.11/windows 95 on a 486 I had from 1990 - 2000 before upgrading to an AMD Athlon XP 2000 1.7GHz running Windows 98, then later XP

:)
 
Rob 80386 said:
I was thinking back a bit far....
on windows when a program crashes, the OS tends to lock up with it, requiring a soft reset by holding down the power button.
Click to expand...

That's just rubbish and/or exaggeration, I don't when I last had to restart 'soft' or otherwise either my old XP or new W7 machine when a programme crashed.
 
Rob 80386 said:
on windows when a program crashes, the OS tends to lock up with it, requiring a soft reset by holding down the power button.
Click to expand...

I don't recall ever having had to do that since XP first appeared - well maybe once or twice over a many-year period, i suppose.

That said, i moved to an iMac last year, and do prefer it now. There's no huge leap in terms of "quality" of the OS. OS X on the Mac isn't quite as stable and flawless as i was led to believe - nothing major, but i've had Aperture crash on me a few times, for example, and Hugin (my preferred photo-stitching software) has similarly fallen over occasionally on big panoramas. But now i'm used to it it does everything my PC did, and to be honest i just prefer the user interface. Seems "nicer".

To the original question, my suggestion would be, if you think a Mac might be for you, to give one a go for a few months and see how you get on. One of the big advantages of most Apple products is that they hold their value extremely well - so while it's more expensive the first time you buy, any upgrades become as cheap as upgrading a PC because your resale value is so much higher. My first experience with a Mac was just over a year ago - i got a Mac Mini, used it for 6 months, then sold it for about £50 less than i bought it for - a worthy investment a 6 month trial, snd led to me getting an iMac.

David
 
scorpius said:
That's just rubbish and/or exaggeration, I don't when I last had to restart 'soft' or otherwise either my old XP or new W7 machine when a programme crashed.
Click to expand...


Not quite, firefox has caused me to do this several times, because the keyboard and mouse both stopped responding, it also did the same on the mac, forcing me to do a soft reset on that too.

I rest my case

:)

scuby said:
I don't recall ever having had to do that since XP first appeared - well maybe once or twice over a many-year period, i suppose.

That said, i moved to an iMac last year, and do prefer it now. There's no huge leap in terms of "quality" of the OS. OS X on the Mac isn't quite as stable and flawless as i was led to believe - nothing major, but i've had Aperture crash on me a few times, for example, and Hugin (my preferred photo-stitching software) has similarly fallen over occasionally on big panoramas. But now i'm used to it it does everything my PC did, and to be honest i just prefer the user interface. Seems "nicer".

To the original question, my suggestion would be, if you think a Mac might be for you, to give one a go for a few months and see how you get on. One of the big advantages of most Apple products is that they hold their value extremely well - so while it's more expensive the first time you buy, any upgrades become as cheap as upgrading a PC because your resale value is so much higher. My first experience with a Mac was just over a year ago - i got a Mac Mini, used it for 6 months, then sold it for about £50 less than i bought it for - a worthy investment a 6 month trial, snd led to me getting an iMac.

David
Click to expand...

spot on with this :thumbs:
 
Rob 80386 said:
on windows when a program crashes, the OS tends to lock up with it, requiring a soft reset by holding down the power button.
Click to expand...

I don't know what versions of Windows you've been using, but no recent versions behave like this unless something goes very badly wrong. It's not been a common problem since the abandonment of the flat memory model, circa Windows ME.

I can't remember the last time I had to reboot a PC because a program had caused it to FUBAR. In fact, I can't remember the last time I restarted, period.



Rob 80386 said:
Not quite, firefox has caused me to do this several times, because the keyboard and mouse both stopped responding, it also did the same on the mac, forcing me to do a soft reset on that too.
Click to expand...

I save my true feelings on Firefox for another day, but that experience alone would kind of give me the hint to look for an alternative ;)
 
Rob 80386 said:
on windows when a program crashes, the OS tends to lock up with it, requiring a soft reset by holding down the power button.
Click to expand...

No it doesn't programs and (since Vista, although that was buggy) drivers run at ring three. They can't bring the OS down as they can't get at it to corrupt it, the CPL being too low which causes an exception to be raised if they get out of control and try to do anything bad to the OS which stops the application.

In the DOS kernel versions of Windows (3.x/9x/Me) it was possible to bring the whole thing down from user mode code very easily. I had a vast array of methods ;)

Some applications cause problems by spawning loads of threads with busy loops, seizing up the processor. Yes java runtime environment, I'm looking at you (although to be fair, it hasn't done that for some time) - this makes it look like a browser failure that is locking the computer as java is most commonly found on webpages.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top