Mac Laptops - Photographers Love or Hate?

[Digital Matt]

I find it very funny the level of almost religious fervour Mac users get worked up to when someone disses their little toys.

Hahah, yes, it is funny. It's also funny how nobody who defends a mac that religiously can offer one solid statement to backup their claim, which is always simply, "Macs are better for graphics".

PCs are built to be compatible with thousands of different types of hardware and software, which makes them a logical choice for the general public. A pc built for a specific purpose however, such as video, audio, or image editing, can be made to run at or beyond the level of any mac, in terms of performance and stability, for less money.

 

[digital flower]

I find it very funny the level of almost religious fervour Mac users get worked up to when someone disses their little toys.

Yeah,thats real funny. What a bunch of weenies
:lmao: :lmao:

That being said, my powerbook could beat up your computer with one hand tied behind it's back.

I am not sure about the speed thing. All I know is having started with Photoshop 4.0®, the speed I have now is incredible. The comparisons are a lot closer, so if one type of machine is a tiny bit faster it doesn't really add up to much. I just like the way the workflow is set up on Mac. It really all comes down to personal needs.

One area that Mac w/Tiger seems a little better about then my wife's Dell 9400 is start up speed. Hit the switch on the G4 and you are ready to compute in about 40 seconds (thats with 10 gigs of software and 150 out of 320 gigs of storage filled up. The Dell seems to take a lot longer, though this was not a scientific test.

 

[suryad]

Sorry but I disagree respectfully of course about Macs being best for digital content creation stuff. Maybe they used to be the best but definitely not anymore. Compare a quad mac g5 with a similarly clocked Opteron setup and be astounded. I have used FCP on a 17 inch powerbook and the performance was abysmal at best. This is all from personal experience. I was astounded as to how slow a G4 processor is. If you are going for a powerful powerful notebook look no further beyond getting a Sager with an AMD 64 bit proc in it and it has 2-3 hour battery life as well. HP also has a nice model out with the same proc that my brother got and it is really fast. I would say Macs are great if and only if you are using a G5 processor and nothing less than that. But for the money you pay you are better off building your own. I am in the process of researching computers because we will probably need a powerful setup soon and my budget is over 10k if things work out right. So far I am leaning away from Mac esp if they go with Intel procs.

 

[Unimaxium]

You've always been able to run windows inside of mac as an emulator but only the fasstest, newest computers even now can run it properly... choosing the OS you want as the base would be far too kind to users vs. companies. OSX runs a different architecture than Windows so they're not compatible. If that were the case the new macs would just use pentium (probably more souped up) chips.

Yes, there are things like virtualpc for the mac, but they are slooow. It is extremely inefficient to try running something like Photoshop inside of virtualpc.

Apple will be transitioning to intel chips starting this year; the same kind that Windows runs on. So in the future it is likely they will be compatible within the next few months. We just have to wait and see when the first Intel Mac comes out. Ever since they started developing OSX they have kept an up-to-date, secret copy of the OS that ran on x86 chips, and only until recently have they released it. Steve Jobs said so himself. Also, hackers who have gotten ahold of the developer pre-release copy of the Intel-compatible OS have modified it so it can run on any PC, and not just Apple hardware. They will not necessarily be using Pentiums, but they will definitely be using something similar that will me manufactured by Intel. For more info you can see here and here.

Anyway... my original point is, and still stands, if you're going to get a mac, wait a couple months and see what Apple releases. It would suck to get a brand-new Powerbook G4 only for Apple to release a new intel-based model the next month.

 

[Becky]

I'm actually in a similar position... I have a pretty high spec self-built Windows desktop and am buying a laptop soon. One of my housemates swears by Mac and pretty much everything about them. Personally I don't like how OS looks and works... which is something alot of mac users seem to bigup so to speak. Some macs look nice in my opinion, some look awful, but that'll vary from taste to taste.

Something I'd suggest you consider is having to go between your Windows Pc and the Mac... that would do my head in eventually I think, I know macs are apparently not as incompatible with windows pc's as we think but from my experience they actually are (awaits slating....)
From the simplest things like bluetoothing a file from my pc to my mates mac turns into a drama these days... or if I size up some images in photoshop and occasionally have asked him to print them for me... he'll open them up and they go all stupid on his mac, it seems to just disregard everything I did with the images on windows, its so frustrating. :x

For me it has to be a windows laptop, mainly based on the fact that a major program I use AutoCad... is windows based and sure as hell I ain't spending a wad of cash on a mac to buy some crap PC emulation software... sorry but what on earth is the point in that? :madmad:I've seen Virtual PC trying to run imaging/design software, god it took about 7 minutes to open the "file" toolbar. It was embarrassing....! Like someone said, emulation programs are incredibly slow... why you'd want to buy a mac then spend 150quid turning OS into Windows I'd never know, but, if you were going to and wanted it to run very smoothly you'll need a pretty good mac.

Don't get me wrong, macs are very nice indeed and for the right person I think they're great, its probably just down to personal preference... it might be a good idea if you can find a friend with one or have a play with a mac in a store just to see if you like the general feel etc.

The general opinion is that macs are great for video/imaging/everything graphicy... I dunno about that these days like someone else has already said... things have changed!!

One thing I will say in their favour is the lack of viruses circulating...... pity about the fact that I think they're hugely overpriced for what the money would pay for in the windows equivalent!

Anyhoo... good luck deciding!

 

[usayit]

Buy a Mac because you want one and you love Mac OS X... not based on some blanket generalization that its better for graphics/media/etc... With a good budget, either a built PC or a nicely spec'd MAC can do the job.

For me.. I am a Mac lover. Outside of photography, I'm a linux/unix guy with two computer jobs. On one hand, I'm somewhat of a hardware specialist on the other I work closely in software development. Both jobs are heavily involved Linux and Unix distros which fits nicely with Mac OSX's freeBSD'ish core. Over the years, I've had really grown to dislike Windows for lots of reasons hence why they tend to take a back seat in my daily life.

The original poster really didn't seem to have a lot of Mac experience. My advice is to borrow a Mac for a while and see if you like it. If you think about it, buying a built PC really boils down to hardware. If you end up buying a Mac, you are making a switch in not only hardware but the operating system that runs on it.

 

[nitefly]

Too late - he got a Windows laptop now.

 

[cbay]

Well thanks all for your comments, but Yes! i went for a Windows Laptop as i am confident and know what they are capable rather than a new start with a Mac and i got an excellent deal from Dell

 

[303villain]

i started reading alll the posts, but i got lazy, so im just gonna post. i love love love my 12" powerbook, its a wee bit small for my tastes so i hook it up to an additional monitor and problem solved

 

[Dweller]

Well thanks all for your comments, but Yes! i went for a Windows Laptop as i am confident and know what they are capable rather than a new start with a Mac and i got an excellent deal from Dell

What kind of specs on the new machine?

I deal with a lot of Dell laptops at work and they are pretty solid machines usually.

 

[bbaker35]

MACS RULE!

I own my own television advertising design and production company, and all my project designers and producers swear by MAC!

I bought one about a year and a half ago and I swear it runs better today than it did when I bought it.

NEVER PC, EVER AGAIN

 

[Bada Gora]

I do not disagree with macs being very nice for PS purposes. However, something happened recently that kinda pi**ed me off regarding a mac that went bad.

Recently, whilst working on a very important project, our editors mac went bad, really bad. He took it to the mac store and they ended up having to send it somewhere via mail to get it repaired. The notebook came back and everything worked fine, for a while. Then the same problem happened again. He took it back to the mac store and talked with SEVERAL different managers and what not. In the end he did not get his mac fixed the second time around because the people at the mac store advised him, and I quote, "get an attorney".

So if something does happen the people at apple are not very great with customer service. And now our editor is out of a computer and we are currently scrounging for a replacement.

Cheers

 

[digital flower]

Sounds like a lemon.
My Mac dealer would never say something like that.

 

[usayit]

You'll see same stories across the board... Dell, HP, Apple, whatever... Just like with cars, find another dealer to deal with.

 

[digital flower]

These new MacBook Pro sound good!

By Mathew Honan

Apple expanded its laptop offerings beyond the venerable PowerBook line Tuesday, with the release of the MacBook Pro portable computer. Announced by Steve Jobs during his Macworld Expo keynote, the MacBook Pro is the first laptop from Apple to use an Intel-built chip, the Intel Duo Core processor.

Apple claims the MacBook Pro delivers up to four times the performance of a PowerBook G4, with Apple CEO Steve Jobs hailing it as the fastest notebook ever. The 5.6-pound system is housed in a one-inch thick aluminum enclosure and features a 15.4-inch LCD screen that’s 67 percent brighter than the PowerBook’s screen; Apple says the MacBook Pro’s display is as bright as the company’s desktop Cinema Displays.
Rest of Article on MacBook Pro laptop