Best Mac for photography...?

[Village Idiot]

A G-5 tower and an Apple Cinema Display would be the best.

That's a great idea. Let's recommend old techonology that's slowly being phased out.

He's a college student....

I hear a "whooshing sound" coming from the other side of the country....can he afford a brand-new,expensive top of the line machine and monitor, without deflating his budget balloon? Or should he drop another $2,000 so he can shave 4 seconds off of a save operation??

You young guys kill me with your idea of where money ought to be allocated! It's no wonder you're always broke. There was a time when one of
L.A.'s top graphics shops used 100 megahertz Macs with 8 megabytes to as "much" as 16 megabytes of RAM to create large 100-megabyte graphics combining as many as 10 or 12 images...back when you were in junior high school...

You have no idea what "aging technology" means. Back to your video games now,boys!

Aging technology is when you buy a computer and vital programs that are coming out won't even work on it anymore. You think Adobe is going to make PhotoShop for PPC macs forever? And you think that schools are going to be OK with students using CS3 when they're teaching CS8?

A friend of mine that's 24 just started school this semester. With loans and grants he's got enough to pay for school, housing, a new computer, and have money left over.

Also, as stated, OP never disclosed his budget and with everything in his post, it doesn't look like he's hurting for money.

Reading comprehension is a valuable skill there bud.

Oh, and shaving 4 seconds off a save operation becomes hours when you're doing it that much.

 

[oldmacman]

A G-5 tower and an Apple Cinema Display would be the best.

Or should he drop another $2,000 so he can shave 4 seconds off of a save operation??

You young guys kill me with your idea of where money ought to be allocated! It's no wonder you're always broke. There was a time when one of L.A.'s top graphics shops used 100 megahertz Macs with 8 megabytes to as "much" as 16 megabytes of RAM to create large 100-megabyte graphics combining as many as 10 or 12 images...back when you were in junior high school...

You have no idea what "aging technology" means. Back to your video games now,boys!

Thanks for the compliment, it's been about 20ish years since I even looked young. I just checked craigslist and a 2.66 Intel Mac Pro has an asking price of $950. Asking price for a G5 Tower is $550. It's not just about saving time on startup and processing, though. It is compatibility. Unless you are an established shop with a set of software designed for your machine, it is going to be difficult to get add ons for your G5. Hard drive, video cards, memory and software upgrades will all be difficult to find. If the OP is going to school, there will likely be specific software lists.

I also remember working in PS in the 90s. Work flow was something like:
- open file
- create duplicate layer, blur, blend
- go get coffee while computer mulls over requests
- sit back down just as process completes
- things were much sloshier back then and washrooms got used more

You know I'm not joking about the time part, though. Many heavy processes were left to the end of the day as you walked away from your computer. You just accepted that was the way things were.

True facts: my first three computers had no hard drive at all. My first computer with a hard drive had 10MB... mega bytes. I couldn't justify spending the extra $300 for the 15 MB drive. Computer number 3 was 4 MHz with a whopping 128 KB of RAM, 2 5.25" floppy drives, and 9" monochrome green display. Price? $4000. Year? 1984. Shoulda got the Mac Classic. My sister still has the $4000 machine kicking around in her attic somewhere. I think I told her to throw it out, but she knows what the original price tag was and cannot bring herself to do it.

 

[sovietdoc]

That's a great idea. Let's recommend old techonology that's slowly being phased out.

I accept the criticism, by "g5 tower" I was thinking of those "mac pros", they first came out with that case design with G5's, but haven't changed it since, so that's why I called it a G5 tower. Of course, now it houses dual xeons, but then again, I don't think a college student has $2500 to spare on a computer with no monitor.

Oh and the cinema display, whoop-dee-doo, so the new ones they call "led cinema display", same thing. I am not recommending old tech, I am just calling these things what I remembered they were called a few years ago.

Get the idea right, don't pick on little technicalities.


In any case, I would probably recommend an iMac with over 2k resolution. It's not a laptop, but it'll be a lot better than any macbook or macbook pro.

 

[Village Idiot]

That's a great idea. Let's recommend old techonology that's slowly being phased out.

I accept the criticism, by "g5 tower" I was thinking of those "mac pros", they first came out with that case design with G5's, but haven't changed it since, so that's why I called it a G5 tower. Of course, now it houses dual xeons, but then again, I don't think a college student has $2500 to spare on a computer with no monitor.

Oh and the cinema display, whoop-dee-doo, so the new ones they call "led cinema display", same thing. I am not recommending old tech, I am just calling these things what I remembered they were called a few years ago.

Get the idea right, don't pick on little technicalities.

The G5 and the Mac Pro are separated by the name for that distinction, PPC vs Intel. It's a very important distinction. Used and refurbs are an option as well.

In any case, I would probably recommend an iMac with over 2k resolution. It's not a laptop, but it'll be a lot better than any macbook or macbook pro.

2K resolution? Are you talking screen resolution? That would leave only the 27" imac, IIRC.

And even though portability isn't a factor, I'd personally be more willing to go with a MBP and external monitor. You could have two screen and then you could pick and external panel that does well with color calibration. That and the fact that you don't have to sell the monitor when you want to upgrade machines.

 

[Sam6644]

A G5 tower isn't compatible with any version of photoshop past CS3.


which means you can't update the camera raw versions in it and will have to convert all of your raw photos to DNG before you open them in photoshop if you're camera is newer than 2005.

You'd be best off with a new iMac and if you're a student you can get them for $1149 from Apple. The base model is more than big enough and more than fast enoug to do everything you'll need.

Color accuracy is not very good and is not consistent on laptops.

 

[FireGirl_Photography]

I have a 13" MacBook Pro for my primary computer. I spend far too much time on the road so the small size is convenient and doesn't add to much weight to the camera bag. Used a friend's 30" desktop the other day and now it's on the top of my to-buy list. I can see the details in my images so much better!

Hopefully will get a larger screen for office use and keep the little guy for travel.

Mac all the way!

 

[adversus]

Hardware wise, sorry to say but Mac's and PC's are nearly identical. The high end Mac Pro's can scale higher for raw processing power, a Mac Pro will beat pretty any consumer or pro-sumer workstation as far as instructions per second and I/O. But those are 5k+ machines at that point, and aren't relevant to this conversation.

For the original poster, on a budget, a current gen 15" Macbook Pro or an iMac will give him his biggest bang for the buck.

I say on a budget because if you spec out a non-Apple PC to the same specs, you will pay only slightly less. The price difference isn't that great, unless you start sacrificing what makes Mac's cost a small premium (size/weight on notebooks, built in screen on iMac's, hardware/software integration etc).

I've developed software professionally on both platforms, and I can say with 100% conviction that hardware specs being equal (and software optimized to it's fully extent), a Mac will run faster than Windows.

The overhead of Windows is enormous. It's gotten better with Win 7, but the simple fact remains that when you buy Win 7 you are also getting:

Vista
XP
98
95
3.11
Dos 6.22

When you buy Mac OS X, you get:

Mac OS 10.x

Mac's overhead is negated by the fact that Apple purposefully broke backwards compatibility in native code transitioning from OS 9 to OS X, and Microsoft basically ships every version of Windows (and Dos 6.22) in every copy of Win 7 it sells.

 

[Raian-san]

I have a 13" MacBook Pro for my primary computer. I spend far too much time on the road so the small size is convenient and doesn't add to much weight to the camera bag. Used a friend's 30" desktop the other day and now it's on the top of my to-buy list. I can see the details in my images so much better!

Hopefully will get a larger screen for office use and keep the little guy for travel.

Mac all the way!

The 30 inch display is nothing but a monitor. Your macbook pro would be actually slower on the 30 inch display because your video card is not that good. The 30 inch cinema monitor are for people usually with Mac pro. If that's what you're aiming for, good luck. It's going to be pretty expensive. Unless you upgrade to a Macbook pro with i5 or i7 with a dedicated 512mb but even with that it's a piece of crap. The highest iMac with 27 inch with i5 with radeon 5750 with 1g of ram is already piece of crap. Did I say piece of crap too much? I really don't want to jusitify spending that much money on a computer that won't perform as I expected. Don't get me wrong, I love Mac and I will always use it for daily use but as a fanboy if you might say, I know what's right and wrong. Them charging that much for a computer that isn't up to par with the rest of the world is not right.

If you really want a beast computer without spending your retirement money on, build your own PC with top of the line product and get a good monitor. Although Mac will be more secure, I can't justify spending more money than I should. A macbook pro 15' and 17' that cost close and over 2G don't even have a freaking Blu ray, good HD, video card and etc. Radeon 5750 graphic card? really? Although yes they are designed in California USA, I know because I live 5 minutes away from Apple main office in Cupertino. They are assemble in China. I don't even know what memory and stuff they are made from. I'll enjoy my 13' MBP because it's the most reasonable laptop and best laptop for me. I do heavy duty on my PC and daily use on my MBP. Until Mac give us more option to explore when building a Mac without giving us POS hardware sometimes, I won't spend that much money on Apple.

P.S. before people saying I'm biased, I actually love mac and how it perform and how easy and piece of mind it is. But even with that, I won't be blind into thinking they are the best thing in the world without them improving. No Bluray, no good Graphic card, bad HD, No HDMI output, USB 3.0 and etc. That's BS to me. If I spend 2g on a freaking computer, it better have all of those. I would spend even more too if they had those but they don't. They will wait until everybody get sucker in and then release a new one soon with USB 3.0. And then pieces by pieces to milk everybody. They are not selling by the product they are given but by design. The hardware you're building it not good but you're buying for design. Instead of them giving you some of the top hardware in the market, they give you things that are outdated so it keep you wanting more. So when they update *usually withing 7 months* you will want a new one. That's messed up.

One of the question is why the Macbook Pro 13' doesn't have an i3 at least? yeah i3 comes with intel HD graphic but I'm sure Intel could had taken it off for Apple. Trust me, in 5 or so months you will see a refreshed MBP with i3. Then it'll slap everybody in the face that bought the new 13' MBP that came out in April like me for instant. If I didn't love Apple engineering, design, OS so much I would never have an Apple until they start being fair.

 

[OffTheWall]

A G-5 tower and an Apple Cinema Display would be the best.

That's a great idea. Let's recommend old techonology that's slowly being phased out.

I use a powermac g5 dual 1.8's with 3gb of ram and aperture 2.1.4 and the round trip from aperture to ps is quite smooth with itunes limewire dreamweaver firefox safari and toast burning stuff, its a great legacy machine . I haven't had a problem with it. Never anything wrong with using legacy hardware lol.