[Closed] Help me decide to buy a Mac, Lifelong PC user what do I need to know !!!!!!!

I'd just stick to pc, there's not really any need for you to switch, it'll not give you any tangible benefits tbh.

btw, mac files system is HFS+ usually, and you can work around reading and writing to either file system from mac or pc.

My PC is 4 years old and is struggling. I am just so sick and tired of windows performance issues. I should of done this a while ago.

don't quote me on this but you'll probably just be ok. I converted for music a few years back and just copied my external data HD straight onto my MAcbook and didn't look back.

best computer move i ever made - couldn't believe how much less faffing there was on a Mac compared to Windows XP. I had hardware that I had literally never managed to get fully working on the PC, after god knows how many re-installs and driver updates etc, which all suddenly worked the second i plugged them into a macbook. Saved me so much time and hassle over the years, which obviously is all the more important when you're self employed...

The WD drive is plugged into my sky router, so will it be as simple as mapping a network drive. Can things be that simple, it never usually is with me. Its just I have seen Mac and PC versions of the same drive on WD's site. I will contact them.

OSX and NAS storage can be troublesome

OSX and NAS storage can be troublesome? really how so? osx can talk all network file protocols and more then windows so can't really see how this is possible.

what do I need to know !!!!!!!

not much it's just a computer end of the day

I think you need to locate a shop, check your bank account and get on and buy a Mac.

Once you have it, almost everything else can be resolved.

My PC is 4 years old and is struggling. I am just so sick and tired of windows performance issues.

Mine's eight years old and just fine. How much memory is in it?

If you want a Mac then fill your boots, but do it for the right reasons. As a tool for a professional photographer there's arguably nothing better, but if your buying it solely because of "Windows performance issues" I'd be trying to resolve those issues before I spunked a grand on something shiny.

[url= http://www.apple.com/uk/imac-with-retina/ ]You need one of these – you won't want to stop editing images on this display....[/url]

The mac will read the PC drives just fine.

THe mac and PC versions are just what format they come as, NTFS or HFS+.

Macs read either, though HFS+ is preferred.

Ditto Cougar's advice though. If you're just mostly using Adobe tools + web etc, any real reason to switch? (Devil's advocate: no reason not to switch, and you probably get nicer hardware, e.g. retina imac)

Switched to OSX 10 years ago, still use windows/linux professionally though. Still not found anything my mac won't do that a PC can. The reverse isn't true though. I'm unusually tech-literate though, YMMV.

If you do switch I recommend you gradually move away from NTFS and FAT32. OSX can't write to NTFS without third party software or some hacks, and FAT32 is a terrible file system to use for anything other than temporary storage or non-critical data.

I would ask why Windows is driving you crazy? OSX is not some mystical land of wonder and can and likely will also drive you crazy from time to time.

I've found plenty of things that I can do on my PC that I can't do on my mac, but I suspect my work and hobbies are somewhat different to IA 🙂

If you do buy a Mac I recommend buying Cloner and learning how to use it to create a rescue boot disk and backup of work docs. Fantastic software which has saved me a lot of pain. EDIT - thats Carbon Copy Cloner.

Mac and PC are exactly the same. Both run similarly on similar hardware. Neither OS has a huge advantage over the other. I'm running both and have no problem reading drives etc.

Still not found anything my mac won't do that a PC can. The reverse isn't true though.

4 year old PC? I would stick with it and put a clean install of windows (probably 7) onto a new Solid State Drive. No more hassle than switching everything to a new PC - just connect your old HDD as a slave in a separate bay and transfer any local documents/music/images you need over, then get rid of or format the old HDD to use as a second drive if required. Use [url= https://ninite.com/ ]ninite[/url] to put any software you need back on quite easily and quickly.

I reckon you'll see performance increases above those you would on a new Mac, and save many £££. Cost for a 512Gb SSD is £150, plus a copy of windows if required.

You don't even need to spend that much. The SSD I bought recently was about £60. Granted it was only 120Gb, but that was more than enough for my needs.

Incidentally, as a photographer, you haven't [i]just [/i]got all your photos stored on one drive, have you? So in a worst-case scenario if you got a Mac and the WD drives weren't readable, you could just wipe one, format it, restore the files from the backup and then do the same with the backup drive.

What does a mac do that a pc can't?

Ok, so it depends whether you mean windows or linux pc, you kinda get the best of both with a mac, which is a big deal to me. And there's "do relatively easily" and "within the realm of human endeavour"...it's all probably possible if you're being pedantic.

Some things that stand/stood out for me:

Less so nowadays, but back pre-win7 there was a HUGE difference in system responsiveness/ui performance on equivalent hardware. Especially under heavy load, XP just died a death. Still the case with win7 and a very heavily loaded system, linux does fine though.

Fix and continue in C++ with xcode. Not a big deal for me nowadays but was a game changer for me 9 years ago.

Being able to build and run X apps.

"proper" GCC support (yes, you can build posix/gcc stuff on windows but it's a ballache for various reason. And yes, pedantry-fans OSX is clang based now etc.)

Texshop/bibdesk/omnigraffle- three apps with no good alternative on other platforms, and I've looked hard. YMMV of course, and you may think different tools to do the same job are fine.

Record the screen (built in and dead easy/high performance in OSX, ball ache in linux/windows).

Booting off another mac in target disk mode.

Booting off a clone of the drive in an external bay as if nothing's different.

Being able to quickly hack up things in automator/applescript etc.

Spotlight for launching stuff (I do admit windows and unity at least on *nix have caught up here)

Easy saving to PDF everywhere.

Battery life - the only equivalent hardware that matches OSX for battery life is one of the sony vaios.

Time machine (easy, automated versioned backups)

Good (compared to most other stuff) built in photo and video apps (iPhoto and iMovie)

Installing/removing software, a world of difference.

I could go on...

And seriously, good PC alternative to any of the above things welcomed! As I say, I use a mac personally (as well as a linux box or two) but linux and win7 professionally.

Anyway, way OT. Ditto cougar again. Why a new machine, would an upgrade not do? And very much ditto on the backup point!

For balance there are a few PC only benefits:

A laptop with more than 16Gb of RAM. A big deal for me work wise and why I couldn't use a mac.

Better cutting edge GPU support.

I love snapping windows to screen edges, I've knocked up applescript to do the same with a shortcut but it's not the same.

Office - a necessary evil. The mac version would probably do me, but I suspect it's better on windows.

Oh, a mac plus on the hardware side is full size firewire ports. That's proper niche though!

Thanks for the help, now still don't know what to do, the 27" monitor looks fantastic and will be easier to calibrate more accurately than my present set up. Just checked on the box, my WD NAS drive is compatible with both so the mac will read and write straight to it.
Now do I get a new one with 5K display or buy the reduced one in John Lewis.

Present PC has 8gb ram, quad core Phenom, windows 7. ATI Radeon HD5670 graphics.

It does need a fresh install, can't afford the downtime to do it. Not had a full day off including weekends since Augusts The joys of self employment.

I just get sick of lightroom, outlook etc having a mind of its own. Sick of seeing "Not responding at the top of my screen"

thanks for you help.

can't afford the downtime to do it.

But can you afford the downtime getting used to a new system?

Oh what have I started. Very interesting reading, and this is why I came to this forum first.

ust checked on the box, my WD NAS drive is compatible with both so the mac will read and write straight to it.

Hard drives are hard drives, USB is USB(*), if it works on one it'll work on the other. The issues you may have will be at a file system level, which is software-fixable.

(* - unless it's Firewire or something exotic like Thunderbolt.)

Oh new one with 5K retina display is £1999, as apposed to £1599, is the newest and latest worth the extra 400 quid

Present PC has 8gb ram, quad core Phenom, windows 7. ATI Radeon HD5670 graphics.

I just get sick of lightroom, outlook etc having a mind of its own. Sick of seeing "Not responding at the top of my screen"

Something's wrong there, but I expect it's fixable. Memtest to check the RAM is sound, bang an SSD in it as previously discussed and do a clean install to that; if it goes west for whatever reason you can just swap back to the old drive rather than risking being stuck with an unusable system for days. With a bit of forward planning your 'downtime' will be a couple of hours.

Or, you could buy a Mac. It sounds like you really want to. Can I have your PC?

Oh new one with 5K retina display is £1999, as apposed to £1599, is the newest and latest worth the extra 400 quid

Could be worth it for photo editing, although my 27" non retina iMac (2560x1440) still has a great display and I do a fair bit of photo editing on it without issue. FWIW I have both a retina and non-retina macbook pro and although the retina display is certainly better side by side, in reality you don't really notice much difference when using them in isolation. I suspect the same could be true with the iMac displays. I guess you would have to visit a store to check them out and decide for yourself.

Office - a necessary evil. The mac version would probably do me, but I suspect it's better on windows.

Been using MS Office on macs for years. It's just as shit as the PC version!

but still better then open office / libra

May have to swing by the apple store tomorrow at the trafford centre, Shame I can't teleport straight in and out avoiding everything else.

Sorry Cougar PC will get used elsewhere, may just use it for office stuff and keep the Mac for all my editing.

Oh new one with 5K retina display is £1999, as apposed to £1599, is the newest and latest worth the extra 400 quid

Retina screens may be great for viewing images but they are compromised for retouching and colour balancing, you should be using an Eizo CG/NEC spectraview for that. The pixel pitch is so fine on the retina's that 100% view is too small to retouch and the 'true' size means pixel doubling/interpretation so any sharpening/detail can't be shown properly. The bigger pixel pitch of an HD/24in monitor is far easier to work on. The iMac/macbook screens lack the wide gamut of a proper graphics monitor and are too contrasty for critical work.

Money is better spent on a retina MBP and a separate monitor IMHO

I wouldn't worry about getting a mac and having problems acsessing drives. There is always a work around and they are free.

As for what mac to get, is your work mostly studio or location? If studio get a 27 imac, non retina. If you shoot location go for a loaded MBP and as mrsmith has said, a decent monitor for processing images at home.

The iMac screens are not perfect but if you know what you are doing (you can always go by the numbers) it's propely calibrated and you keep the brightness at 50% they are fine. I work with one and when I see my work in print I don't find myself having to review my work flow.

As for lightroom...have you tried capture one pro? We use P25's, P30's and IQ260's so it makes sense but we also use 5d's and which ever way we work capture one is fab. You can use pro on trial for 60 days. Capture one DB is free to use but will only work with thier backs.

Hope you find a solution, yes there is a perfect of way doing things but it is also very costly and being self employed that probably won't be an option so do loads of research and find what works for you.

For the last 10'years I've used windows at work and Mac at home. I've had three windows laptops at about £900-1000 each and two macs at about £800 each. They both get about 8 hrs use per day.

In my view Mac is more cost effective. The hardware lasts longer. Mac is a nicer place to work in. Everything feels a bit more polished. Definitely far less problems with Mac, but they do occasionally have problems. Office is defiantly faster on Mac. I've got a souped up windows laptop for GIS work but it still struggles with complex word documents. It flies with Mac.

If it was my money I'd buy Mac. But if I was given a free windows box is keep the windows box.

The hardware lasts longer

My current laptop is six years old and still rapid. The previous desktop workhorse it replaced was ten years old when I retired it. My OH's desktop PC which is now acting as a file / media server is well over ten years old (around 13 at a guess).

How long are your Macs lasting? 😯

Power book G3 for 5 years, Power mac G4 for 14 years. My "modern imac" is about 7. Might get a new one soon. Might not. Thats only 3 computers since before the birth of the internet.

I think non technical PC users can't do the housekeeping to keep them going and give up and get new one after 2 or 3 years when it goes slow.

You're almost certainly right, IME. "Windows is a bit slow after I installed loads of shite, I'll buy a new one." It's like buying a new car when you run out of oil.

I'm typing on a 2007 macbook which was bottom of the range at the time (620 quid) and has been used roughly 10 hours a day, 6 days a week ever since, and has been on any number of flights, trains and coaches. Still on the original battery (which does need replacing, admittedly).

compared to the Dell i used before this, which lasted barely 3 years, the difference was like night and day! it does have a bit of gaffa tape on it, mind

Conclusion: PCs and Macs both can last quite some time if you take a little care of them.

retired and sold on my PowerBook G4 about a year ago - maybe two - so that was 8 years. Mac mini got sold around the same time, year newer so 9 years.

MBP that replaced both died through water damage early this year. My only Windows laptop was really pretty duff and creaking after 4 years and got sold for postage only..

I strongly recommend using Ubuntu as when I changed from XP to Ubuntu years ago all the hassle and problems with the sub standard xp went away. Windows 7 may have improved compared to XP but I find no need to use windows. If you have a mac you can partition on the fly and have mountain lion and ubunutu on the same hardrive. It may be easy enough to add windwows on a separate partition if you were desperate to use it, although I don't know how well it would work to have three operating systems on the same hard drive.

Got my first mac (macbook pro) last month. Utterly love it - amazing battery live, amazing screen, funky light-up keyboard, wish I got one ages ago 🙂

I also run Ubuntu at work / home, so it's not too different - for me, it's just the hardware. Top notch! 🙂

a Mac is no better (or worse) than a decent PC. Depends if you like OSX or Windows. Personally I prefer Windows (I have a macbook and a desktop PC).

Present PC has 8gb ram, quad core Phenom, windows 7. ATI Radeon HD5670 graphics.

Bang in a modern graphics card and up the RAM to 16gb for peanuts and then clean up windows. Job done, spend the change on a nice groupset or something

Try a Mac before you commit. I just cannot get used to OSX at all-nothing makes sense to me and I just want to smash my mum's iMac to pieces.

A new PC, spec'd out to the max for photo editing will imho destroy a Mac and you will be actually be able to do stuff like upgrade it. It will be cheaper too.

Agree as well a Retina display is not what you want for serious photo work.

Finally Win 10 is looking really nice and works supremely well even in its current beta guise.

I love snapping windows to screen edges,

Try Better Snap Tool. I can't remember if it's on the App Store but it's a good addition to a Mac if you like the way Windows snap to the edge of the screen and size themselves. With Yosemite reducing the title bar size for grabbing and moving windows it also provides a neat "grab anywhere" solution.

Conclusion: PCs and Macs both can last quite some time if you take a little care of them.

In my experience it requires more regular maintenance to achieve this on Windows than a Mac.

As to the OP, do try and spend some time with a Mac to make sure you'll get on with it. There's lots to love but you may find "the Apple way" not to your liking. For example 3 years in with a Mac and I still think the OSX Finder (including save/open dialogues) a ball ache compared to Explorer in Windows. For my needs I have found myself using Google Drive more and more, largely due to the ease of use and cross-platform support. It'll be interesting to see if iCloud Drive has caught up or whether Apple are still struggling in this arena.

I like my Mac because it looks nice and is a joy to use.