maybe i should add in my 2c, seeing as i'm an "impartial" linux user. (translates, i hate windows and mac both with a passion).
something that noone's mentioned yet and i'm not sure how true it is:
Macs got their name as "the photoshop system" (and to a lesser extent "the pagemaker system") in the '90s. that was in the era of the Power Mac, when they bought (almost exclusively) the PowerPC chips from IBM. i've heard it said (this is the unconfirmed part) that apple specifically got IBM to tailor their cpu design to make for faster image manipulations in photoshop benchmarks (and some called it 'cheating', but as long as it works on real images and not just benchmarks, why not?)
and this is true (according to wikipedia, too lazy to check references).
firewire was developed in the 80s to compete with/replace parallel scsi external connectors.
firewire 400 was standardised in 1995.
firewire 800 was standardised in 2002.
(apparently there's 1600 and 3200 too)
USB 1 went to 1.5Mb/s in 1995.
USB 2 went to 480 (nominal, i don't care if it reaches it), in 2000, 5 years after firewire 400.
USB 3 is blazingly faster compared (i haven't heard of thunderbolt) and it's only a year(ish) old.
ok, thunderbolt is also freakishly fast. both it and USB3 are overkill for copying anything from a CF card to any kind of hard disk, nothing can read/write fast enough.Shooting tethered might make a difference, but if the image is on the PC by the time you turn from subject to screen, there's no point in going any faster imho.
The situation has changed a lot since the mid 90s, but brand-loyalties die hard in the PC business. Especially with the Pros, who buy their hardware to last, or always want the best and upgrade often, but can't afford the time to migrate to a different system. How many people here (anywhere) have used *both* PC *and* Mac, using (say) the photoshop version for each, doing the same kind of editing in a professional environment with the same time constraints? not zero, but not many i'm guessing.
Whatever you get, you'll get used to it. I've got through so many keyboard layouts in the last few years travelling, us, uk, qwerty, qwertz, azerty, after half an hour on a new type i can touch-type as fast as i could on any other. one button mouse? apple-key? you'll get used to it.
and a bit of rambling for my story:
first family PC was a 386-25. 4MB ram, 80MB hdd, windows 3.1 on dos5. upgraded a few years later to 2x speed cd drive, 8MB ram, extra 420MB hdd.
my first PC was a pentium2-350, 64MB ram, 6gb hdd, win98 (first and only software i've ever paid for). first 17" CRT in australia under $1000 (more like $500), 1600*1200 even. By the time i stopped using it, it was a pentium3 1100 overclocked until it blew up, 869MB ram, up to 5 hdds of ide/scsi up to nearly 100gb total (until the IDE controller died, good thing i got a motherboard with scsi controller too). running SuSE Linux 10 (after using suse 9 and redhat 7). still it sees a bit of use as the webserver i tried once (just didn't have anything to serve so i turned it off).
my 2nd PC i spent ages researching, ended up with a very nice AM2 AthlonX2 system, upgraded the cpu, ram and video card after a year and a bit. i can still buy stuff to put in it to upgrade now (although now my mum's got it, and she's happy with it)
That's all i've ever used, spanning 1994ish to now.
And the point of me saying all of that is:
Can you do that with a Mac?
Can you do that with a laptop even?
I bought my first laptop even when i was living in europe in april 2009, still using it now. got the only 1680*1050 in a 15" screen. added an extra 2gb to the 1gb ram it came with but haven't upgraded it since (can't, because it's a laptop). main reason i'd never bought a laptop until then, because i like upgrading. still, i bought lenovo because they give good hardware with linux support, wiped Vista after a week and been running gentoo ever since.
but at the end of all of that, i was getting to a point or two:
- Some people like PCs for the upgradeability. The FSM knows i do. that arguement doesn't pass with laptops, unless you pay more-than-macbook money for a custom Alienware or similar.
- Some people formed their opinions on mac vs pc in the 90s, or even in the 00s. so much has changed since then that you probably shouldn't listen to them either if they haven't used both systems within the last year or two.
- I'll definitely agree with the people who say that with a Mac you're buying into a system. Yes that system is more expensive. Yes you get more (not a complete) guarantee that things will work together.
- - They do some things that i consider nasty though. You used to be able to plug your ipod into a linux system. apple upgraded the firmware of ipods to block that (i even heard rumours of legal action to stop it, ie not using itunes, not sure if that's true).
- - and they make non-standard connectors for things, then charge royalties to copy them (but the reason is to make sure people don't make sub-quality connectors, which may break your ipod, then you send it to apple under warranty and not say you used a fake connector). i may not like it but i can at least see why.
- If i were you, my decision would be based on the screen. If it's true about MBP only having 6-bit screens, research that and decide accordingly. anything else: most software comes in both win and mac flavours, you'll get used to 1/2/3/17 button mice and whatever keyboard you use. if you want to learn how to admin your system properly, windows 7 was as confusing for me moving from win98 and 2000 as it would be to a mac. And i have heard things about OSX having auto-handling of ColourProfiles, windows can still do it but takes a bit of fiddling. i'd verify that but getting yelled at to come to dinner already, i'll investigate later...
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Originally Posted by Dr Croubie
