Considering going Apple

topgazza

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...so I have had a quick play with Aperture in the Apple store and its quite impressive to my simple mind. I know you can get Lightroom for Mac as well but I guess that's about it in terms of choices. Not bad I have to say but is that about right ?
 
If you fancy paying over the top prices for the same hardware, go for it. I work on Macs but use a PC at home. Mac also has the entire Adobe suite not just LR.
 
Not a problem to honest. I like the interconnectivity of all my Apple devices. And as people say with Apple "it just works". I have built a quad core AMD Black CPU tower with 8Gb RAM 3 x 3TB of mirrored hard disks and an SSD drive for the Win 7 OS. Plenty of power but for browsing and even photo and DVD processing I don't need all that. And its big....

No actual need to change but I fancy a nice neat Mac Mini, silent, plenty of power and all my devices will synch with it automatically. Compared to some mini PC builds is pretty competive IMo..

Only thinking about it at the moment. I could put the disks in a QNAP NAS on my LAN and build a tiny silent PC I suppose.

But Aperture is very good I have to say although without all the sophistication of CS or LR to be fair.
 
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Mac mini is okay for the money, but IMO they are slow and would really struggle with a large LR catalogue, only benefit (size + cost). I ordered a few of the latest model for work and upgraded the RAM.

One extremely annoying habit they have is an error with the HDMI when they go to sleep (even though sleep is turned off!), makes your monitor display snow, its very random and ****** everyone off here. Got to pull cable plug back in to reset the display.

If you still fancy it, get the quad core.
 
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I would want at least 8gb and might as well get 16gb...another £120 at Ebuyer costs. Plus £50 for Aperture as a bare minimum. Interesting about the HDMI... that would be a pain.

I would also have to buy an AirPrint printer or dual boot to Windows for office work which is kind of a nuisance. Mmmmmm.... Looking at mini PC options but not many are fanless and usually i3 level. I would stick with CS5 in that case
 
What about an M-ATX? Or is it to big?
 
btw, you can click customise at the bottom to change spec, good company to deal with from what Ive read. If you want to build you can also just copy the spec ;) but their prices are very good.
 
Wow ...impressive spec. I'll check those out. Thats the sort of thing. That would easily cope with CS5 by some margin. Against that would be the i7 Mac Mini or even an iMac but I've never been a fan of all in one PCs. And at that sort of price bracket buying Aperture, printer and assorted sundries would just balloon the budget
 
I agree.... and you get the degree of "discrete" that I want
 
Yeah, havent checked their site in a while but I was impressed when I saw the spec, can even add a 2TB for additional storage and remove OS if not required to save a few quid.
 
I'd go with a NAS.

Might give a second hand Mac Mini a try as well to see how I get on. Quite like Mountain Lion although to be fair Win 7 does the job just as well. Option of using my existing CS5 or buying LR or even Aperture is a consideration as well. Aperture was quite nice IMO especially for the price
 
Gazza, you've also got the option of a Hackintosh :D

I ended up getting the all singing and dancing 27'' iMac and haven't regretted it one bit - dual boot in Win 7 so I can still do gaming on windows based games and the fact that the mac is pretty much silent, plus it does look sexy on my desk with the other equipment etc!
 
I must admit the only all in one I would consider would be the iMac 27"...the smaller one is just a bit too small screen wise. Its a lot of money of course and the dual boot option is not bad. How do you get on with photo software ? PC or Mac ?
 
All processing is now done on the Mac :) LR 4 and CS5 and it handles beautifully, Slightly quicker than windows with the same specs but I ended up getting an SSD and 32 Gigs of ram. I use the dual boot because of AutoCAD, although I bought it for the Mac, it's just a totally different setup and I'm used to using it in Windows and that works for me :) Plus when I'm using the large format printers it's easier for CAD files etc! If you were to buy the base model 27'' you will realize that the high end version just isn't required - check out a second hand 27'' on eBay etc, do not buy the new version as you will lose the DVD drive which is always handy, plus there's not much difference internally apart from the GPU etc :)
 
Only problem I find with anything Apple is the employees at the Apple store, anyone else had that problem? They are eager to sell you anything, and when it doesn't work, they scratch their head saying, it should work!! Any way... The other option is to use Parallels which you can then run MacOS and Win7 at the same time, it also has the added advantage of when Win7 software is installed you can still open it within MacOS. Another way to go?

Andy
 
I wouldn't worry about the Apple Genius team, they're a bunch of plonkers that refer to a manual instead of diagnosing something correctly. Plus you'll find it hard to get any help as there's always too many teens in the Apple store touching things that they're not going to buy or using the free internet etc! But putting that aside, you'll enjoy the mac, just decide on whether you'll use it enough as they're quite pricey. I was an IT tech for a number of years and was the last of the gang to buy a mac but haven't regretted it :)
 
We bought ours through Ebuyer as it was £100 cheaper than Apple! And buy any Apple care separately, I bought that for £59 instead of Apple's £129 :p
The decision is yours though Gazza, it's a lot of money to spend etc, keep an eye out on the classifieds on here just in case, and don't be pulled by deals on Gumtree as there are too many on there with underlying faults if you're looking at second hand etc :)
 
Only problem I find with anything Apple is the employees at the Apple store, anyone else had that problem? They are eager to sell you anything, and when it doesn't work, they scratch their head saying, it should work!! Any way... The other option is to use Parallels which you can then run MacOS and Win7 at the same time, it also has the added advantage of when Win7 software is installed you can still open it within MacOS. Another way to go?

Andy

I wouldn't worry about the Apple Genius team, they're a bunch of plonkers that refer to a manual instead of diagnosing something correctly. Plus you'll find it hard to get any help as there's always too many teens in the Apple store touching things that they're not going to buy or using the free internet etc! But putting that aside, you'll enjoy the mac, just decide on whether you'll use it enough as they're quite pricey. I was an IT tech for a number of years and was the last of the gang to buy a mac but haven't regretted it :)

Parrallels is an interesting thought.. I shall look into that Andy, thanks.

Genius team is best summed up by Sheldon in the Big Bang Theory

"I asked myself, what is the most mind-numbing, pedestrian job conceivable, and three answers came to mind, uh, toll booth attendant, an Apple Store genius, and what Penny does"

I spend a lot of time on the PC so i would use it a lot. I guess I am looking for a mixture of style, quiet, decent performance and Apple do fit that bill. Mainly used for browsing, some games, photo processing hence asking about Aperture and watching You Tube.

Choice is a Mac Mini, iMac (happy with a new model but might check older ones out) or a mini PC such as Chillblast (not cheap but very good and then utilise a Qnap NAS for files , music and videos
 
Best of luck mate, if you want to have a play, find a large PCWorld, they have all the kit but without the genius crew and teenagers!
I use 8 Zyxel NSA310 NAS boxes and they all pop up in finder as an external drive, it's just a simple system to use, everything is plug and play and the speed is perfect for what I need etc :)
 
Buy a Mac, don't buy a Mac. There's a thousand reasons to do either. Ultimately it's personal choice. I've used PC's since the days of DOS and build, service and support PC's as part of my working life and have done for the past 23 years.

About 5 years ago I decided to switch to Mac at home and I can honestly say that I can't ever imagine buying or building a PC for home ever again. Does my Mac do stuff my PC's can't do? No, of course not but my productivity has gone through the roof using a Mac and it's just such a huge pleasure to use which is something I could never say about Windows. But none of these are reasons why YOU should buy a Mac only YOU can decide that.

If you do decide to buy a Mac, Aperture is a joy to use and as I've said in other threads on here recently, there are parts of Aperture that stomp all over LR. That said when LR3 came out I finally made the switch from Aperture to LR because the difference had become so small but there were a couple of killer features in LR3/4/5 that I wouldn't want to be without.

The other thing to remember with Aperture is that it is a bit sluggish compared to LR. On an low spec machine you will get the dreaded beach ball if you have a large library. On a mid spec machine you may get it occasionally. On a high spec machine you should be fine.

When it comes to hardware though, you can't do a direct comparison between Windows and OSX running the same CPU and the same amount of RAM etc. A very generalised summary would be that given the same CPU and the same RAM OSX will run faster but there are so many other things that can affect things that even this isn't really a fair summary and the amount it runs faster could be a lot or very little depending on these factors.

Will a Mac mini run Aperture? Yes. Will it run it well? Maybe. It will depend on how much RAM you have, whether your library is on the system drive or an external one, how big the library is and whether your library uses referenced files or not. You would definitely be better off buying a 27" iMac. Yes they are expensive but you will not only have a very powerful computer more than capable of running Aperture but you will also have one kick-ass screen that will really show off your photos to their absolute best.

Buy a Mac, don't buy a Mac. The choice is yours. Personally I wouldn't buy a Mac just to use Aperture. Aperture is good but not that good. Buy a Mac because you want or need all that a Mac has to offer.
 
Cheers flightphoto

I have had a good play already and would be happy with an iMac. Reason for considering the Mac Mini was that I have a good screen (22") and everything else. Initial concern was which photo software to go for but it seems I have plenty of choice anyway. So its down to smaller, quieter hardware and I've no predjudice with either MS or Apple based systems. Which ever way I go its going to be expensive
 
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Buy a Mac, don't buy a Mac. There's a thousand reasons to do either. Ultimately it's personal choice. I've used PC's since the days of DOS and build, service and support PC's as part of my working life and have done for the past 23 years.

About 5 years ago I decided to switch to Mac at home and I can honestly say that I can't ever imagine buying or building a PC for home ever again. Does my Mac do stuff my PC's can't do? No, of course not but my productivity has gone through the roof using a Mac and it's just such a huge pleasure to use which is something I could never say about Windows. But none of these are reasons why YOU should buy a Mac only YOU can decide that.

If you do decide to buy a Mac, Aperture is a joy to use and as I've said in other threads on here recently, there are parts of Aperture that stomp all over LR. That said when LR3 came out I finally made the switch from Aperture to LR because the difference had become so small but there were a couple of killer features in LR3/4/5 that I wouldn't want to be without.

The other thing to remember with Aperture is that it is a bit sluggish compared to LR. On an low spec machine you will get the dreaded beach ball if you have a large library. On a mid spec machine you may get it occasionally. On a high spec machine you should be fine.

When it comes to hardware though, you can't do a direct comparison between Windows and OSX running the same CPU and the same amount of RAM etc. A very generalised summary would be that given the same CPU and the same RAM OSX will run faster but there are so many other things that can affect things that even this isn't really a fair summary and the amount it runs faster could be a lot or very little depending on these factors.

Will a Mac mini run Aperture? Yes. Will it run it well? Maybe. It will depend on how much RAM you have, whether your library is on the system drive or an external one, how big the library is and whether your library uses referenced files or not. You would definitely be better off buying a 27" iMac. Yes they are expensive but you will not only have a very powerful computer more than capable of running Aperture but you will also have one kick-ass screen that will really show off your photos to their absolute best.

Buy a Mac, don't buy a Mac. The choice is yours. Personally I wouldn't buy a Mac just to use Aperture. Aperture is good but not that good. Buy a Mac because you want or need all that a Mac has to offer.

Thanks

You sound similar to me. I used to make and supply PCs and networks as a "proper" business through the 90s so I am am OK with building whatever rig I want. But I've just got a bit bored with upgrading my PC to the highest specs every year or so especially when i don't actually use half the power I currently have. It IS a personal thing as you rightly point out and I like the iMac a lot. My thinking is that would be the better choice going the Apple route and I would still want to use a NAS so I'd be interested to see how any photo software/hardware copes with that. It would be handy for the wife on her iPad to view photos and to be honest....I fancy a change as well
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Thanks

You sound similar to me. I used to make and supply PCs and networks as a "proper" business through the 90s so I am am OK with building whatever rig I want. But I've just got a bit bored with upgrading my PC to the highest specs every year or so especially when i don't actually use half the power I currently have. It IS a personal thing as you rightly point out and I like the iMac a lot. My thinking is that would be the better choice going the Apple route and I would still want to use a NAS so I'd be interested to see how any photo software/hardware copes with that. It would be handy for the wife on her iPad to view photos and to be honest....I fancy a change as well image

Good enough reason right there!
 
So true always the case isn't it :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

We rationalise, debate, consider and compare the various alternatives and views put forward. Then we buy the most expensive, prettiest shiny thing we can. I should have known that from the A77 consideration... I knew I'd end up with one anyway :facepalm::rotfl:
 
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