My Mac is running painfully slow with hardware failure imminent. Its not worth repairing.
I've always been a Mac user (though prefer android phones) and know my way round them very well (use to work in tech support for a college). I don't know anything about Windows. Really, nothing at all. But still tempted to make the switch due to the costs. Also worth noting; my entire backup strategy is Mac based.
Before dropping 2k on a Macbook pro for photo and video editing, is there anyone who can convince me to go over to Windows? What do I need to know?
Before dropping 2k on a Macbook pro for photo and video editing,
Maybe you don't need to get a MacBook Pro? Maybe an Air, or a Mini would be sufficient ?
I was a mac fanboy since 2006, once they started soldering everything to the logic boards circa 2011/2012 I had a couple of macbook pros fail and cost a canny penny to fix so I ended up moving to windows and stuck with them until this year
Have recently been given a macbook pro m4 with a new company and I gotta say I really like it, however I wouldn't purchase one myself, purely because if your battery fails, apple repair center, ribbon cable fails (happens more often than you think), apple repair center, if your memory fails, apple repair center, if your SSD fails, apple repair center. And it's always a costly £400+ fix for things that would cost you just the hardware price if they didn't make them such a pain to work on.
Windows 11 has certainly come a long way, and you could build an absolute killer video editing PC for the price of a macbook pro, but if your sole purpose is portable video editing unfortunately I still don't think you can beat a macbook for that use case.. Unless you got something like a an MS surface pro and used Capcut as your video editing software? There is other alternatives Lenovo do some powerful windows laptops but you will miss the sleekness of everything just working smoothly (until something goes wrong) of a Mac
Maybe you don't need to get a MacBook Pro? Maybe an Air, or a Mini would be sufficient ?
Indeed,have a look at Mark Payne's comparison. Note it's for M1 MacBooks, the M4s are even more capable.
Or shopping around you might find cheaper M4 Pros now the M5 is out. John Lewis currently have a couple of hundred quid off M4 Pros. Having said that, with a discount on a Pro they are only a couple of hundred quid more than the equivalent Air.
Hadn't considered the Macbook Air. It doesn't need to be super portable so the weight doesn't matter.
I use mostly Adobe for editing. It needs to be able to handle large files (several GB). Not a gamer though will be used for the occasional Zwift ride.
I read a Reddit review the other day from someone who had gone M1Pro -> M4Pro and was using Lightroom/Photoshop and claimed little difference IRL.
I’ll say that i7->M1Pro was a huge change.
I’m happy with my 14” MBP M1Pro 16GB RAM 1TB SDD machine. Limited video editing but works well for Lightroom/ON1 and photoshop when I open it. Other things, like R, it does a fine job. In the future when I change it I might go for more RAM and SDD for convenience. Having a 4TB T7 plugged in affects its looks a little.
I said on the Mac Mini thread that I’m impressed by my SO’s M3 MacBook Air. Tempting if it’ll run ON1 or Lightroom OK for when fiddling with R is behind me.
I read a Reddit review the other day from someone who had gone M1Pro -> M4Pro and was using Lightroom/Photoshop and claimed little difference IRL.
This year I went from an M2 Air to an M4 Pro. I wanted to pass on the Air to Ms. Slow to replace her ageing Intel MacBook plus I wanted a bigger HD. I was going to get another Air as I was perfectly happy with the performance of the M2 but John Lewis were doing a £200 reduction on the 14" Pro so that was only £200 more than the equivalent Air so I went for that. The screen is superb, better than the Air, and the built in speakers are excellent for a laptop. It also has an extra USB socket plus MagSafe power supply, HDMI out and card reader which the Air doesn't have. Oh and the standard RAM has gone up to 16Gb from 8Gb on the M2.
But, for everyday use the performance is very little different to the old M2 Air. I'm pretty sure it would be quicker rendering large video files but I don't do much of that. It might be a refurbed M2 Air would satisfy the OP's requirements.
Thanks for the replies. Did a bit of research this last week and quite overwhelmed by all the different brands. I understand all the hardware specs so don't know what the different brands offer.
My main concerns are:
All my drives are APFS formatted. Can a PC read them?
I use an old MacPro as a NAS. Can a PC access it too?
Does Windows have an equivalent to Apple's Time Machine for backups?
I literally switch between a Mac studio and windows 11 to edit on the same drive in Davinci Resolve.
Works fine.
Preference? I've always worked with Windows - and W11 is horrible but to run edit software it doesn't really matter - you need ram, plenty of it.
I think one of the shortcomings of the Mac mini 4 is have to pay a fair chunk to jump up to 32GB for editing which is really what you need.
The OS is largely irrelevant to me. I struggle with MacOS simply because I just haven't used it that long.
I think I did something similar to the OP and jumped from an i7 to an M2 Pro Max. Such a big difference, it's staggering.
I suggest giving Hoxton Macs a call. I found them very helpful and happy to suggest something that matches your current and future needs. Their stock is pretty good and having bought from them previously, hard to distinguish from new but not in a fancy box....
If you work in education the educational discount on the Apple store is pretty sweet.
PCs have much the same software if you use the Adobe suite.
However as an PC specialist by day it's always a pleasure to use my personal mac for photo editing & limited video editing outside of work. Just a much nicer experience.
I am surprised the EU have yet to get involved in Apple's device pricing struture, where an extra bit of ram or 512gb on a SSD is an extra £200 when you configure your device.
As far as time machine on a PC I don't think anything like it exists. Too baked into the Mac OS I think.
I use to work in education and do miss the discount with Apple. I was an Apple tech in a college for a while before teaching and honestly think Macs are not as good as they use to be. Hence why I'm considering a PC. I still have a 2009 Mac Pro that is amazingly fast and never missed a beat. But, it's too old to run any current software so now just used as a NAS for the occasional drive clone and storage.
If I go for a PC I wouldn't want to spend more than about £800 in case i don't get on with it. A laptop would be nice but not put off by a desktop. At least that way its upgradable.
If you're used to a Mac, stick to it. You'll find Windows annoying, in the same way I find Macs annoying when I find myself using them. If you're not planning on using it on the go the Mini does look excellent value - and I say that as a Windows user 🙂
The Mac Mini with the M4 Pro CPU is pretty good value. Had a quick look on a few PC builder sites and cant beat the Mac Mini spec for the money.
I'm a working pro in the field you're referring to. I use my machine daily for 2-12 hours of heavy video editing or image processing. Normal projects are 200-800gb of video files. It's a 16gb base spec M1, and it's fine. I'm looking to upgrade to an M5 but I certainly don't need to, it'll just help with faster renders.
So even an apple certified refurbished M1 will do a stellar job for you... M2-M5 will be unbelievable... Definitely don't need the pro unless you're a power user (where thermal throttling might actually affect you) OR want genuine all day battery life (which of course is a big plus if £ is no object!)