So my daughter is taking moving image arts as one of her A levels. She came home from school on Friday to say she needs a laptop capable of running Final Cut software for the course and a Macbook is needed.

Having a look at the price of these I got a shock.

Are there any alternatives?

The prices of Macbooks or the price of final cut? Both seems more than a little ‘spendy’ as a necessity to complete a course, so I would question their necessity, but I’ve not done A level in 20+ years, do what so I know.

Apparently she has been told the software must be Final Cut or Sony Vegas.

Final cut seems to require a Macbook and the teaching is apparently done through Final Cut. If she opts for Sony Vegas she will have to teach herself how to use it.

I agree with z1ppy’s instincts. Seems odd that they are going to ask each student / their family to fork out £1300 – £1500 for equipment.

Have a look on tier1online.
They sometimes have used Macbooks.
LINK

Pretty sure apple will do a student discount if you can prove you are a student https://www.apple.com/uk/shop/browse/home/education_routing/find_your_institution/access

As for the hardware I have the top flight macbook pro its got the same stuff in its gubbins as the dell precision or an xps for that matter and new they are still rougly a grand cheaper than a mac (dell outlet is your friend here if you REALLY need that much processing horsepower) i think its around 1k for a 15 inch xps on the outlet site so 2 grand cheaper than a top wack mac

The final cut thing I know nithing about I think the PC version was called adobe premiere or something like that,but was equally as powerful depending on who you asked http://www.adobe.com/uk/creativecloud/buy/students.html?sdid=KKTYO&mv=search&s_kwcid=AL!3085!3!184800597105!e!!!!adobe%20premiere%20student&ef_id=WK1xRwAABccAkDst:20170909101650:s looks like you can rent it

Student pricing is ~15-20% discount on Apple.

But I’d be checking with the lecturer how essential it really is. A 16/17 yr olds interpretation of essential might be a little different…

Perhaps said daughter knows parents are Luddites and has sensed the opportunity for a decent laptop! 🙂

I think you and I are on the same wavelength Jambo!

I find it surprising the school didn’t send something out in writing setting out what was needed and why – considering the outlay.

I wasn’t aware of the student discount so may have a look into that if the school confirms my daughter’s version.

I can’t help wondering if the problem isn’t right here. Whilst it still seems a lot of money to have to spend for a student to do an A level course (I’m assuming state school?), it’s not exactly a traditional A level subject and the sort of thing which is going to require a certain level of technology to do. Presumably the school doesn’t have suitable computing resources she can use when she’s there?

I suspect Macbook and spendy software isn’t essential to do the course – well clearly it isn’t as an alternative has been suggested. Ultimately the issue seems to be that the teacher has chosen an expensive way to teach it (when other options are available) and she’s going to be disadvantaged if you don’t spend the money – presumably you weren’t told anything about this when choosing courses? I’d speak to the school, if nothing else regarding why it’s not possible to be taught properly using a somewhat cheaper platform…

Offer to loan your daughter the money for the laptop and software, with her paying it back working Saturdays and Holidays – you’ll soon find out how “essential” it is.

Hmm lazy teqchers?
I can edit video on a 6 year old laptop that cost 500 quid. Adobe elements version of premier may help if she has to teach herself then use something that will come in handy later.

Aracer, this is a fourth A level she’s studying alongside three more “traditional” subjects. She had wanted to study psychology for A level but her own school stopped offering it and moving image arts was a last minute substitute.

At no stage was it flagged up that over £1,000 worth of equipment would be needed!

Further, the course is being taught at a link school. Students from three schools go there to be taught so the lapatop is apparently needed so she can bring her work to the school where the subject is being taught.

One of the reasons I have balked at spending the money is that my daughter does not really intend to pursue a relevant course at university. Currently she’s considering Law. She may drop the moving image arts at the end of lower sixth.

Memory stick then.

Granted Apples are expensive but I’d imagine you’re looking at this through the prism of ‘usual’ exposure to laptops i.e. a need for replacement after 2 – 3 years. I’m currently writing this on a 7 year old macbook which has been used pretty intensively for picture editing etc. Such life-spans are not unusual for macs so I’d suggest that should you invest in one now, you would not then be looking to replace the machine for the departure to University when/should that day come (indeed, my boss uses the same machine that I do, his machine has done a computer science degree and several years industrial use before he was able to sell it on second hand as he fancied the new one).

The obvious objection is, inevitably, “oh but there’s such and such software that can only run on windows and one MUST use it”. Paralells for Mac is the usual way to run windows on a mac, and thus run said software. There are alternative solutions but they are more involved and not as ‘nice’ for the user.

Finally, as an aside, buy a macbook you get a little cloud storage from Apple and you get the ‘essentials’ – Pages, Numbers and Keynote – MS Office equivalents in essence. Albeit much much nicer to look at and capable of producing a vastly more professional looking product more easily than the MS alternatives. I will caveat this, however, by saying that much as I’m an Apple fan (for now) MS Excel is still the watchword when it comes to spreadsheets, nothing Apple has done comes close.

One relevant thought to shooterman’s original post, don’t be tempted by a macbook air – they ain’t all that. The new macbook is the same size as the old macbook air and a vastly more capable machine. As we’re talking about video editing for this machine, I would suggest that the macbook pro would be worth investing in due to the faster processor and better graphics cards (not actually a discrete graphics card – on both macbook and macbook pro the graphics card is build onto the processor).

Ok so that’s my thoughts from a technical perspective. Hope they were helpful, having said all that, I do agree it’s a bit cheeky for an educational establishment to insist on the use of a given piece of hardware to be purchased at the students own cost.

I’d imagine you’re looking at this through the prism of ‘usual’ exposure to cheap laptops i.e. a need for replacement after 2 – 3 years. I’m currently writing this on a 7 year old macbook

It’s disingenuous to compare a £1500 Mac with a £300 PC. If you spent £1500 on a Windows laptop you could almost certainly say the same thing – I’m writing this on a 9-year old Dell laptop which cost half that.

Students from three schools go there to be taught so the lapatop is apparently needed so she can bring her work to the school where the subject is being taught.

One of the reasons I have balked at spending the money is that my daughter does not really intend to pursue a relevant course at university. Currently she’s considering Law. She may drop the moving image arts at the end of lower sixth.

The notion that you’re even considering it is barking. What you need is one of these and / or this.

Without getting tribal about anything, yes, Cougar, I agree with your point in so far as that it is possible to make a Windows machine last as long as a Mac, however to achieve that it relies upon said machine being correctly set up in the first place and a degree of system maintenance being undertaken by the user, neither of which typically occur.

Oh…and before I’m accused of being a Mac Fan-Boi… It’s not so much that I like Macs, I just dislike Windows. Hence my non – apple machines run Linux.

to achieve that it relies upon said machine being correctly set up in the first place and a degree of system maintenance being undertaken by the user, neither of which typically occur.

That was certainly true 15 years ago.

It’s not that I’m a PC fanboy, I just dislike System 7.

, however to achieve that it relies upon said machine being correctly set up in the first place and a degree of system maintenance being undertaken by the user, neither of which typically occur.

er yeah, whatever, er stuff like yeah stuff is what you meant to say.

As posted above Dell laptop circe 11/12, Intel I3 processor still chucking out lightroom photo edits and instagram vids through premiere just takes a little longer. There is zero need to a) specify Mac/software and then b) specify the other option that won’t be taught but must be used…

Such life-spans are not unusual for macs

They’re not unusual for Windows machines either. Main concern is how expensive it is to replace the battery.

Paralells for Mac is the usual way to run windows on a mac

Parallels is bloody horrible. If you need to use Windows software for serious stuff, either get a Windows machine or run Windows in Bootcamp.

Pages, Numbers and Keynote – MS Office equivalents in essence

If you’re doing professional productivity work, you need MS Office.

on both macbook and macbook pro the graphics card is build onto the processor

Some MacBook Pros have discrete graphics, as do many professional grade Windows laptops.

It’s disingenuous to compare a £1500 Mac with a £300 PC. If you spent £1500 on a Windows laptop you could almost certainly say the same thing – I’m writing this on a 9-year old Dell laptop which cost half that.
[/quote]

Pah – 6 year old Lenovo here which cost ~1/4 of that. Even “cheap” ones don’t need replacing after 2-3 years.

should you invest in one now, you would not then be looking to replace the machine for the departure to University when/should that day come

She’s looking to do a Law degree – any laptop bought now will be perfectly capable for what she needs for that (very, very few students need anything other than a basic laptop).

Aye, right

however to achieve that it relies upon said machine being correctly set up in the first place and a degree of system maintenance being undertaken by the user, neither of which typically occur.

As Cougar says, you’ve presumably got no recent experience of Windows if you think that – I’ve just installed W10, not touched any of the default security or maintenance settings and never expect to have to do any manual maintenance (I’ve never done any with my previous W7 install and the only reason for the upgrade was so I could install pro level server stuff which most people wouldn’t ever put on their home computer). Though it’s interesting you mention Linux – I’ve worked with that a lot and typical spend more time maintaining those installations than I do Windows.

I’m not sure it’s worth investing further in this discussion, it’s clear we’ve all got our own experiences and reached our own conclusions. I think what I’m trying to say to the OP is that yes, macs are expensive and whilst it is possible to do video/photo editing etc on other machines, Mac remain the default choice for that industry. Although times are changing, particularly in the UK. Were it me buying a machine for that purpose alone, I’d default to a mac.

As for my views on Windows, yes, I’ve been using this mac for 7 years as a personal machine so no recent experience of windows with it running on a personal machine. That said, the guys I work with have ‘gaming PCs’ which run W10 and they occasionally find themselves frustrated by the way W10 implements updates. i.e. they find themselves effectively locked out of their own machine. Not a problem I’ve ever had on a mac.

Finally aracer

Though it’s interesting you mention Linux – I’ve worked with that a lot and typical spend more time maintaining those installations than I do Windows.

Dare I mention Cron Jobs?

She’s not planning on going into that industry, it’s a 4th choice AS subject. Hopefully the OP isn’t planning on buying a laptop for that purpose alone (though hopefully memory sticks).

That said, the guys I work with have ‘gaming PCs’ which run W10 and they occasionally find themselves frustrated by the way W10 implements updates. i.e. they find themselves effectively locked out of their own machine.

Ah, to be fair you do have to spend 30s on setup to avoid that if you’re using a W10 computer for gaming (in the evening) as by default “active hours” are set for office hours. MS probably should provide a configuration option for that on the installation options you get when you first use it.

Dare I mention Cron Jobs?

If you like – you still have to set them up, and I can’t say I’ve ever used one for maintenance, there are better ways. Mind you most of my recent Linux stuff has been on servers where you do thinks a bit differently (and Apple has 0 market share).

Dare I mention Cron Jobs?

I know those, it’s where you can set up things manually that Windows’ Task Scheduler does automatically. (-:

Mind you most of my recent Linux stuff has been on servers where you do thinks a bit differently (and Apple has 0 market share).

It’s really interesting, isn’t it. Apple have dabbled in the server market (eg, Xserve and somewhat amusingly macOS Server), but never really got a foothold.

These days at least, Apple’s USPs are: shiny desirable hardware; intuitive software(*) which Just Works (not least because they control the hardware); operation requiring minimal technical ability; walled-garden infrastructure and a tight control over what hardware and software you can install.

Which of course is the entire antithesis of the server world, where no-one gives a crap what it looks like; no end user uses the OS directly; it’s built and maintained by geeks; and they need the freedom to install any esoteric hardware or software in order to fulfil a function.

There’s no technical reason why Apple couldn’t reenter the server market. OSX under the hood is essentially *nix with a pretty front end, and Linux has the lion’s share of Web servers (about two thirds of the world IIRC). But the elephant in the room here is, why would you pay an Apple Tax premium for hardware running an OS that you’ve lost most of the benefits of, against a Linux box which is an incredibly mature product and free?

Meanwhile, Microsoft have given up on the consumer market for most practical purposes – free Windows 10 and Office Online for everyone – so either don’t care or know they’ve won. Instead they’re pulling down the pants of enterprise customers who can be charged ten grand a pop for a database server. And if it’s one thing MS know, it’s where the money is.

(* – allegedly, personally iOS always drove me up the wall and OSX I’m too unfamiliar with to comment on beyond finding it confusing, but to be fair I think the issue here is me rather than the OS.)

I’ve been thinking about this thread a little and the responses to my Cron Jobs comment has kinda made me think I should caveat what I’ve said somewhat. I’ve been using computers professionally for about 18 months now and things like Cron Jobs are still fun for me. This probably colours most of what I’ve said, about Linux at least.

Also, Cougar, thanks for the comments about Apple’s intuitive hardware, it’s one of the things that (in my mind at least) I was trying to get at but was spectacularly failing to say.

Fair comment, and I don’t mean to be a dick (and profusely apologise if I came across that way), I do concede however that I’m a sarcastic shithouse. (-:

I have no real brand loyalty – I know Microsoft products best but I’m in no way bound to them – but I’m a firm believer in the right tool for the job whether that’s Windows, Linux, OSX, ChromeOS, iOS, Android or something else entirely. Fanboys piss me off because their answer to everything is “buy what I’ve got” with no consideration as to whether that’s an appropriate solution or not. “My PC crashes occasionally when I try to print” – “format it and install Linux.”

Macs absolutely have their place, but I’d respectfully suggest that it’s not as a stop-gap tool for a student to complete a 4th-choice AS-Level and then never touch again.

Oh, and,

I’ve been using computers professionally for about 18 months now and things like Cron Jobs are still fun for me.

For context and pointless willy-waving, I’ve been using computers professionally for a quarter of a century – my first IT job was phone-based tech support in 1992. I’ve used *nix / Linux in passing for even longer than that but I’m relatively recent to actually using it in anger, so things like cron jobs are novelties to me too. And y’know, if you’re wired the right way, they stay fun.

That’s not to say my knowledge / experience is better than yours, just different – your Apple knowledge almost certainly outstrips mine for a start.

Linux is ace. I’m in no way prepared to use it as my day-to-day primary machine yet, that’s just not practical for my usage, but there are many many situations where the best answer is “just spin up a Linux machine.” Incredibly simple stuff like curl and diff are killer apps for me, and that’s before we’ve even entertained the notion of regexps.

Not a problem I’ve ever had on a mac.

Which is horses for courses. I find my macbook far more hassle in persuading it to do what I want as opposed to want apple want compared to my windows desktop and microsoft.
I do find people talking about intuitive and “just works” curious. Since about the single lesson I got from the UI design side of things before running back to back end dev was there is no such thing. There is just who gets their hands on the user first and manages to indoctrinate their design ideas into them.

There’s an element of “what you know” as far as intuitive goes, sure.

As for “just works,” Apple control both hardware and software so they don’t have to concern themselves with the sort of third-party stupidity that Microsoft has been trying to stamp out for a long time.

Almost 25 years for me too – though I was doing sys-admin on Solaris a year or so into that (and had worked on UNIX systems whilst at uni). Linux is still fun though – if anything I’m a Linux fanboi, it’s certainly my preference for anything from a server POV. Yet my day to day machine is still Windows based because I do too much stuff which would be difficult or impossible on Linux (though I always have Linux VMs and Cygwin available).

I agree about “what you know” – I’ve done support on Macbooks, but I’m incredibly inefficient at it as I’ve never used one myself, and have to google almost everything. Apple products are great for some things though (from what I’ve seen from the inside regarding real costs, they can be good VFM for teachers, which may be one reason why the OP’s daughter’s teacher has one!)

Can’t help on the laptop but I wish there’d been an A level in making animated gifs when I was doing them.

(* – allegedly, personally iOS always drove me up the wall and OSX I’m too unfamiliar with to comment on beyond finding it confusing, but to be fair I think the issue here is me rather than the OS.)

I’m with you on this. I really struggle with iOS. They keyboard is shocking and the menu system seems really unintuitive to me.

There’s really been some food for thought for me in this thread, so thankyou Cougar and aracer, and thankyou for explaining where you’re coming from you certainly didn’t have to do that.

The UI is an interesting conversation and dissonance’s comments exemplify the sort of thing that many MS users have said to me about apple. Having recently assisted my girlfriend in a switch to a mac I would comment that perhaps part of the issue is trying to make a Mac behave like a MS machine. For example, there was a minor tantrum about the lack of a second mouse button “touch the mousepad with two fingers’ I said. “Oh….” she said. Having gone through a ‘conversion’ from MS to Apple which took a couple of hours she now struggles to revert back to MS for her work computer as she just finds it clunky. If that’s a bit patronising towards dissonance, my apologies, I was citing a recent example from my own experience to illustrate my point.

I also now see perhaps where I’ve misrepresented myself:

Macs absolutely have their place, but I’d respectfully suggest that it’s not as a stop-gap tool for a student to complete a 4th-choice AS-Level and then never touch again.

I’d never suggest a mac for such a purpose. What I was trying to say (and again, probably spectacularly failing) is that should the OP buy a Mac, this machine isn’t a machine just for this course. It’s a very good tool to achieve what is required on this course (and then some). However it’s life-span extends way beyond the course, past university and into professional life.

Windows laptops can last too.

I could lay my hands on the Dell I bought in 2011 which is still in daily use with my mum, my 2008 Thinkpad ( recently retired because whilst it is wonderfully dinky and light, it isn’t really up to ripping videos with Handbrake ), or my 2006(ish) Dell 9200 which gets light use with Linux in my workshop, or I could pop over to see my Uncle and the 2001 Dell that he still uses for viewing photos. A couple of years ago I sold a Thinkpad x60 to a friend who still uses it daily, bought 2nd hand, built 2006.

Cheap laptops, which are under specified when they are new, might not be destined for long service lives, but if you spend *approaching* what an Apple would cost and buy well, you will have a much higher specified machine than the Mac, that will last just as well. After all, a Mac is just a PC in a shiny box, that has had the Apple Tax applied to its price sticker.