PC or Mac... HELP!

[ORourkeK]

See below for my likes and dislikes so far.

Pros

• The build quality is amazing. Seriously, for how thin it is, it feels SOLID.
• It is BEAUTIFUL.
• The screen is incredible.
• While I am not a huge fan of the build in keyboard, I love the magic keyboard.
• I love how I can open it and start working almost instantly. (This is pretty common now on the PC side though, with Win10 and SSD)
• It is fast and switching between programs is flawless. Especially when selecting a photo in LR to "edit in PS". (Although, this is mostly due to the SSD and the fact that it is a $3k machine)
• I didn't think I would, but I love the touchbar.

Cons

• Learning all of the new "Shortcuts". This was expected, but phew, it is a pain.
• I HATE the file system. PLEASE APPLE, JUST LET ME DRAG FILES. This could be my newness to the OS, but right now I feel like I have to move everything to the desktop before I can move it to where I want it to go.
• Still can't get the price out of my head. It isn't that I can't afford it, it is mostly just trying to justify the money I spent.
• The world is not ready for all of the ports to be lightning. I hate having to have adapters just to use all of my equipment. I would have loved two USB 3.0 and two Lightning.

Well crap, the Pros are bigger than the Cons. I do want to pick up the Dell XPS 15 just to run stress test comparisons. Everyone is saying Macbook's do not need 32 GB of ram, but I will believe it when I see it.

 

[williamptitus]

I finally pushed my 6-year-old laptop to its limits and it is no longer with us. Now I have to decide if I want to stick with PC, or sell my self to the devil and go Mac. Right now I am stuck between the Dell XPS 15 with an 8th gen i7, GTX 1050 Ti, 1 TB SSD and 32 GB ram, or a MacBook Pro with the same processor, 1/3 the storage, half the ram, and an AMD processor... The MacBook Pro is $2400 while the Dell is $2100. The biggest thing stopping me from switching isn't even the price, but the environment. I have a full smart home setup with everything Google. A google pixel 3. A PC desktop (which I would probably end up turning into a server). So I have nothing invested into Apple which I think is Apple's biggest selling point. Owning everything Apple and having it just work everytime you need it, with ease. The biggest selling point for me on the MacBook side is the 4 USB-C (Lightning ports) as well as the rendering speeds in final cut pro. But, I edit photos way more than I do videos. So, I am just not sure I can justify going with the MacBook Pro. What do you all use? Any recommendations or insight from either side?

I owned Apple for a relative brief amount of time and was pleased with the computer itself except for the fact I felt very limited concerning software. There was much more choice of editing software when using PC. It has been a few years ... and things may be different and even improved at this time in regard to Apple software selection.

 

[DGMPhotography]

See below for my likes and dislikes so far.

Pros

• The build quality is amazing. Seriously, for how thin it is, it feels SOLID.
• It is BEAUTIFUL.
• The screen is incredible.
• While I am not a huge fan of the build in keyboard, I love the magic keyboard.
• I love how I can open it and start working almost instantly. (This is pretty common now on the PC side though, with Win10 and SSD)
• It is fast and switching between programs is flawless. Especially when selecting a photo in LR to "edit in PS". (Although, this is mostly due to the SSD and the fact that it is a $3k machine)
• I didn't think I would, but I love the touchbar.

Cons

• Learning all of the new "Shortcuts". This was expected, but phew, it is a pain.
• I HATE the file system. PLEASE APPLE, JUST LET ME DRAG FILES. This could be my newness to the OS, but right now I feel like I have to move everything to the desktop before I can move it to where I want it to go.
• Still can't get the price out of my head. It isn't that I can't afford it, it is mostly just trying to justify the money I spent.
• The world is not ready for all of the ports to be lightning. I hate having to have adapters just to use all of my equipment. I would have loved two USB 3.0 and two Lightning.

Well crap, the Pros are bigger than the Cons. I do want to pick up the Dell XPS 15 just to run stress test comparisons. Everyone is saying Macbook's do not need 32 GB of ram, but I will believe it when I see it.

What's the issue with the file system? I've found it to be much better than Windows 10 file system.

 

[eja]

I have been a MAC user for about 15 years and recently when it came time to upgrade various machines around the house I did not choose mac. I like the MAC OS and am very comfortable with it. I would have preferred to stay with the mac but I did not want to pay a premium for MAC hardware that was in comparison, older than that available for windows machines. MAC has only recently upgraded the MINI and that has taken over 4 years if I'm not mistaken. I don't want to be tied to MAC and their slow implementation of upgrades. The process of switching has taken some time but now I will not go back because I have found WIN 10 to be very reliable. I purchased 4 Lenovo laptops for the family use. 2 are being used by college students and one is being used by me. I also purchased a Dell tower that was taken back from a lease and am very pleased with the price and components that were installed.

So, in summary, I left the mac because I don't want to be tied to their upgrade cycle. I don't want to pay a premium for older hardware. I do want to be able to easily swap a hard drive, add memory, and I don't want to pay a premium when I need to buy that hardware. Would I go back to MAC. At this point, I would go back even after making an investment in WIN machines if they began to build machines that were keeping up with current hardware, and were building machines that were more easily upgradeable and customizable. However, I would not go back becaue of displeasure with Windows 10. I have found it to be very reliable and I have more software opportunities in the WIN world. But, after working in OS 10 for so many years, I still have a soft spot for it.

 

[ORourkeK]

What's the issue with the file system? I've found it to be much better than Windows 10 file system.

It turns out I do not have write privileges to my disk, so it is not being displayed when I go to save. I am unable to change these settings on my profile, which is the admin. Currently looking into this more.

 

[ORourkeK]

When you go to save a file, do you see your Hard drive? I do not, and feel like I should be able to, but the only way I see to change the read/write settings is to boot to the terminal and disable the integrity protection, log in and change permissions, then reboot to terminal and enable integrity protection. But, i am also reading that you shouldn't do this.

 

[DGMPhotography]

When you go to save a file, do you see your Hard drive? I do not, and feel like I should be able to, but the only way I see to change the read/write settings is to boot to the terminal and disable the integrity protection, log in and change permissions, then reboot to terminal and enable integrity protection. But, i am also reading that you shouldn't do this.

Yeah, that's not normal. I don't have any issues like this.

 

[ORourkeK]

So much for "It just works". Waiting for the head of MAC support to call me after lunch. I do not want to mess with anything since I am not familiar with the OS.

EDIT: Never mind, I figured it out.

Finder > System Pref > General > Select check box for "Hard disks".

My sarcasm comes back to bite me. User settings: 1/ Me: 0.

 

[DGMPhotography]

So much for "It just works". Waiting for the head of MAC support to call me after lunch. I do not want to mess with anything since I am not familiar with the OS.

I would say your case is an exception to the rule. I've never heard of that happening.

 

[ORourkeK]

@DGMPhotography I edited my last post. Turned out to be in the settings. I didn't disable it though, so I am not sure why it was not checked off by default. I am so much happier with the machine now.

 

[dxqcanada]

The only thing that turned me off of MacBooks was GPU (soldering) hardware failures ... though I figure they have fixed that some time ago.

 

[LCL999]

I am as biased in favour of PCs almast as much as Apple lovers are biased towards Macs. I gave up on Macs when my first one kept crashing. After two warranty replacements it died again out-of-warranty, Never again.
I'm very happy with MS Surface Pros. I use one as a PC with lots of extra storage and USBs attached, another as a laptop, and my wife uses one also. They are all on the same wifi network and that works well.
From your info, if you are comfortable with Windows and Google, why change? There are now ample quality s/w packages for the MS world.

 

[thereyougo!]

I figured this would be the verdict (Mac). It will just kill me spending $300 more for something that has 1/3 the storage and half the memory. If the MacBook had the same specs and was $300 more, I would be having an easier time with this decision.

DO what I did and get it from the refurb shop - though I had to get mine from the UK shop which is less attractive financially. I forgot about the refurb shop when I was in California for a month (d'oh) and got a i9 with 1TB and 32GB RAM for about £600 off list price. The pain in the arse is having to use hubs for USB-A and card slots.

 

[dxqcanada]

When you really don't know what OS to use, do what I did with my MacBook ... triple boot MacOS, Windows 10, and Linux.
If you get angry with one, just reboot to another !!!
The only problem that I had with that combo was lack of HD space ... though today storage space is no longer such an issue.

 

[Bollygum]

Interesting read with lots of emotion.. I have a Dell XPS and it is quite good. No real thought of paying 50% more for an almost equivalent Macbook Pro. My partner is a cinematographer and she has always used Mac as video software was always better, but not now. So she now is moving to Windows.