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Is Apple worth the extra cost?
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Jan 16, 2015 15:12:12   #
SNicker317 Loc: North NJ
 
Bram boy wrote:
thats a laugh and a half they last three times as long and never run hot


Well to be fair..
Heat was a problem with some earlier versions of OSx but that has long since been rectified. Now if my mac starts getting hot I can inevitably find that it's due a poorly written app stealing constant bandwith. I can although just simply force-kill the app, without the all too familiar Power-Off, Power-On, then wait the requisite 5++ minutes for boot-up-sequence on the PC. Boot-up time on the Mac is under 1 minute, albeit that's with an SSD as the main drive.

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Jan 16, 2015 22:11:27   #
RichieC Loc: Adirondacks
 
Gene51 wrote:
Has anyone ever noticed that Apple fan(atic)s ALWAYS trash everything else, but PC guys tend to have a more overarching viewpoint, and the Apple complaints all sound like this, "switched to Apple 4, 5, 6, 8, 10 yrs ago because of reliability/stability/durability issues. Haven't had a single problem since. Been using the same computer for 5,6,7,8,9 years AND IT STILL WORKS. Besides, the graphic people use them. Oh, and no viruses."

Now for a more balanced view.

Reliability/Stability. Yes, laptops running Win2K or XP did have their share of OS stability issues. Thanks to the standard set by Apple, this is a thing of the past. Machines break, and Apple is no stranger to this. This is why they have an extended care program that for a top Macbook Pro costs $350/yr. A comparable plan from Clevo/Sager costs from $79/2 yrs to $350 for 3 years which includes accidental damage. The most expensive plan is 1/3 the cost of Apple's plan. If you do not go for an extended warranty, the machine is covered by a lifetime labor, 1 yr parts, with free shipping both ways in the event they need to see the machine to repair it. And they provide 24/7/365 hotline with real people in the US who answer the phones. There are other small companies that also have good product and support. Clevo is a favorite of mine because they have been around since 1985, and still going strong.

Durability. Does anyone here REALLY want to work on a 5 yr old machine? The industry forges ahead, and the development cycle is usually set for a new product every 18 months to 2 years. Regardless whether you use a PC or an Apple, for the most part, old machines will always work with the software that was designed to run on them. but 5 yrs ago we were using 12mp cameras, jpeg files were 6mb, we used USB2.0, and 4 gb was more than enough to do what you needed/wanted to do on a display system that displayed, in the fuzzy language that Apple resorts to in order to avoid direct comparison to other companies that publish specs that are meaningful "millions of colors." This was their way of obfuscating the fact that their display pipeline was only 6 bit, and their monitors were incapable of accurately displaying 8 bit sRGB color gamut without dithering. This is something PCs have been able to do for quite a while, certainly longer than 5 yrs ago. It was the source of several lawsuits and resulted in Apple's "coming clean" on this spec.

But now cameras are 24mp or denser, 16gb ram is the minimum for serious photo editing, 8 bit displays is a general standard with 72% or higher NTSC coverage and 100% sRGB considered entry-level minimum - high end graphics workstations for critical work in Photoshop use a 30 bit display pipeline, using the 30 bit option in Photoshop, an ATI Fire Pro or NVidia Quadro graphics card, and a 10 bit display for 100% AdobeRGB gamut. The bit depth and color space size are important for editing because in a smaller color space it is easier to clip a color channel, or fail to see detail (even a dust spec) on a lower bit depth panel that you can see on a 10 bit. Also, there are colors that your camera can capture and printers can print that cannot be seen in the tiny sRGB color space.

While the notion that graphics professionals "prefer" Apple products, the real power users are working with PC products or Silicon Graphics or better workstations. The numbers make sense. Apple's market share is 11%, the Windows market share is 89%, Even if every single Apple computer user was a power graphics user (Photo editing), it is still a small fraction of the entire photo editing community. The reason why there are more power users on Windows has to do with ROI and machine power. In the simplest terms, Apple's best offering, maxed out with all the options, is still no better (faster) than a middle of the road graphics workstation, and the Apple machine will cost as much as a more powerful Windows workstation. Other than the bit depth issue, which is hard coded into Mac OS, there is nothing "wrong" with an Apple machine - it as good (but not necessarily better) than a Windows computer, and it will cost more.

I don't have to trash Apple computers to make the Windows machine look good. I just rely on facts to point out the differences. The OP's question was a simple one - is Apple worth the extra $$. Only the OP can answer that, since everyone's idea of value and priorities is uniquely different. For me, it is not. But that's me. I'd rather save the extra $$ and buy another lens or camera body and end up with the same or better functionality. I routinely do panos, hdr, restoration, fashion retouch, and focus stacks that often result in in images that are several gb in size. The most cost effective solution for me was a desktop, with dual 10 bit displays, 32 gb ram, 2 gb Quadro K620 display adapter, 1 tb system drive cached with SSD drive, and a 4 Tb "enterprise-class" storage volume with RAID 5. The total cost, including the dual displays, was under $2300. Enterprise class drives are the best drives with the most robust construction and materials, intended to survive 5 yrs of 24/7/365 duty in a RAID array, with very low failure percentages. They are often the only drives provided with a 5 yr express replacement warranty. My system serves me quite well, and frees up a lot of time to take pictures.
Has anyone ever noticed that Apple fan(atic)s ALWA... (show quote)


I've worked for 8 different ad agencies, any number of professional photographers, and been self employed most of my life, but heavily linked with large end off-set printers and other vendors for artwork and photography all along the eastern seaboard. All of the creatives on Macs- every one. Your percentages are how statistics, which is based on including all the paperweight mom and pop systems and those put together with hay wire in Bangladesh put together with a hodgepodge of components but all running windows figures into your percentage. It fails to recognize how mac-like the windows machine has increasingly become. Have to ask yourself at some point , why isn't apple chasing the inovation of Microsoft… When I began, you couldn't output a brochure or even design a page on a windows machine… images were Scitex machines at service bureaus and high end in house prepress printers who could afford them. YOU are pretending like windows machine invented the genre.. you know that windows was dragged kicking and screaming into the fray and have been chasing apples products and interface ever since. Funny how with all its shortcoming , i have been able to design and produce annal reports and retouch images for pro photographers in Philadelphia and NYC continuously on macs, along with every other professional I know for the last 20 years… But then I get into my Audi, and expect NOT to have to climb underneath that, nor know about all the crap that it is built with, expect it to get me to work every day either.

A computer that lasts 7 or more years, is able to work with and be accessed by brand new macs and new OS's. My 10.9 can still go through the hard drives and access files on my Sys 9 machine that I keep around to run a very expensive and still running umax scanner and a few old software titles to access Freehand etc vector logos I have archived since the early 90's. My 9500 was on every day for 10 years, now as needed, increasingly rarely- but still fires up and shows up in the network. .… This sort of guarantees them to last 3 or 4 years without incident- which is all you expect your machines to be viable… I expect someday soon, i will throw it away, still working, as I have all my other macs.

Think of an apple like a mars rover, they last way longer then the warrantee, and that isn't by accident. But then I make a living off of my computers in my day job, then again late into the night in free-lance… ( I have three in college!) So I sort of need to depend on them not to fail. They cost more, i make that in the first project in week one, I do not have to deal with them again, and when I have had to delve into the interior, I need no help from anybody to fix them…. they owe me absolutely nothing.

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Jan 16, 2015 22:57:56   #
Bike guy Loc: Atlanta
 
LONG ANSWER
Been a Mac User for years. Bought an HP Desk Top about 6 years ago and it was terrible.
I had a Mac Book Pro through work and Loved it. Then bought a new desktop IMac. Unfortunately, I only bought 4 gb of memory to go along with the 550 gb hard drive. This was before I got back into photography in a serious manner.
I have not been satisfied with the IMac. It runs slow, I am constantly having to clear the memory just to run Mail and some browsers. Loading Lightroom brings it to a crawl. I went to the Apple store to purchase more memory only to find out that my 3 year old IMac can't be upgraded. Apple doesn't carry the memory and I would to find it through a third party.
The latest OS update (Yosemite) has been giving me problems as well.
On the other hand I now have a Mac Air that runs well but the flash drive being so small I need to keep almost everything in the air. I also have an IPad and IPhone. They seem to run well for what they do. (I have had some issues with ICloud synchronization, but I don't bother with it. )
I also own a Lenovo Lap top which is about 3 years old. Bought it because I was teaching and the software I needed to use at the time was Windows based only.

I had been using the Lenovo as a second computer as a back up. Last night it was attacked my Malware and it was shut down. I have Norton security on it; didn't work. Reinstalled the OS today again.

I will stay with Apple products on all future purchases. They have their problems; no computer doesn't, but they are pretty resistant to virus and malware attacks.
I

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Jan 17, 2015 10:25:01   #
Thombar Loc: Hominy, OK
 
Hi Richie,
You mentioned a company called: Clevo/Sager. Is there a web site for them??

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Jan 17, 2015 20:13:50   #
Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.
 
Bike guy wrote:
LONG ANSWER
Been a Mac User for years. Bought an HP Desk Top about 6 years ago and it was terrible.
I had a Mac Book Pro through work and Loved it. Then bought a new desktop IMac. Unfortunately, I only bought 4 gb of memory to go along with the 550 gb hard drive. This was before I got back into photography in a serious manner.
I have not been satisfied with the IMac. It runs slow, I am constantly having to clear the memory just to run Mail and some browsers. Loading Lightroom brings it to a crawl. I went to the Apple store to purchase more memory only to find out that my 3 year old IMac can't be upgraded. Apple doesn't carry the memory and I would to find it through a third party.
The latest OS update (Yosemite) has been giving me problems as well.
On the other hand I now have a Mac Air that runs well but the flash drive being so small I need to keep almost everything in the air. I also have an IPad and IPhone. They seem to run well for what they do. (I have had some issues with ICloud synchronization, but I don't bother with it. )
I also own a Lenovo Lap top which is about 3 years old. Bought it because I was teaching and the software I needed to use at the time was Windows based only.

I had been using the Lenovo as a second computer as a back up. Last night it was attacked my Malware and it was shut down. I have Norton security on it; didn't work. Reinstalled the OS today again.

I will stay with Apple products on all future purchases. They have their problems; no computer doesn't, but they are pretty resistant to virus and malware attacks.
I
LONG ANSWER br Been a Mac User for years. Bought a... (show quote)


Other World Computing for Mac memory - way better than Apple's prices for the same ram.

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Jan 18, 2015 12:41:33   #
Pixelbum Loc: FIRST in flight, Ohio
 
To Mr. B'Holder and RedBirdMan...

Eloquently and well-stated from both! A good summation of the finer points of 'Mac'ology! I have an older 17" desktop Intel Duo(the first to use Intel chips?) that to date still does everything I want it to. Has been sitting on my desktop since 2005 (or '06?) and I virtually never turn it off...just put it to sleep as needed. I run the free SOPHOS (or, it runs itself in the background) Anti-Virus software as recco'd by Kim Kommando and have it scan the computer HD's on an irregular basis. It does not slow the HD down at all and have never had to do a diskdefrag on this machine compared to the tedious routine that I perform with my Acer laptop running Win V7.0. I tend to stay off the I-net with the Win machine and just use it for CS 6.0 and Portrait Pro editing (am a commercial photog) thus eliminating many heartaches of you-know-what. The Mac is still humming along and I almost do not see any reason to replace it with one of the newer Mac's (21-27"? Wow!) other than for a little more fidelity and speed. We'll see... have ALREADY had the Acer in the shop once for a software cleaning !! ;o

As I've stated before MAC has a very fluid OS and is pretty GUI for photo editing programs such as PS and LR...everything- just-makes-intuitive-sense! Period. Windows machines can be very tedious when it come to this. I've always thought the extra $$ is well worth the lesser frustration, nervous breakdowns, and hair- rippings, at least as concerns me after spending my first 10 yrs. with DOS and early Win machines before giving up and going over to the "other" side. Haven't looked back since...
BUT...is almost like comparing Canon's to Nikon's(my fav)...

Canon's are notorious for being menu-driven vs. the ergonomic settings for Nikon's...thus they(Canon) were(are) a bit slower in the selection of "settings" before you are able to get the shot you want whereas the Nikons have all their important "settings" that you need externally which is less frustrating and MUCH faster!
>>>>> Hey, you wouldn't want to be fiddling around with a camera while trying to get that world's first true shot of a flying saucer
or Yeti, would you? <<<<< With most Nikons you can easily switch them to any important setting you need almost instantly and get the shot you need. I will admit though that Canon finally answered this complaint with the advent of the 7D a few yrs. ago, etc., but Canons still have their little quirks that you'd better have memorized...or pay the price!

All this being said...go with what you are most comfortable with "regardless" of the cost ... and use it for what it is...merely a tool. Apples and oranges...I love 'em both (but more the "Apples" ) ;} ~PB

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Jan 19, 2015 19:25:55   #
countryman60951 Loc: Bourbonnais, Il
 
wingnut1956 wrote:
Hi Fellow 'Hoggers..This is probably going to be another "Ford vs. Chevy" or "Nikon vs. Canon" type of argument, but I'm looking for a photographers opinion. ...
I'm thinking about getting a new laptop that I can take with on vacations,etc. so I can work with my photos. I've been looking around a bit and I have to say I was VERY impressed with the Apple macbook pro,even though it was only 13 inches. The retina display is really incedible, but like all things made by Apple it comes at a price. It's at the very least, twice the price of an HP or something else comparable. For me to get that laptop, with the larger flash drive, the larger ram,and some software for photos and whatever, it's pushing the $2,000.00 window. I've never owned an Apple product and have looked at them before,but again,I got my HP desktop for less than half the cost of the Apple and I still wonder if I should have just gotten the Apple anyway.
Hi Fellow 'Hoggers..This is probably going to be a... (show quote)


A year ago I had purchased my 1st Apple product in the form of a Macbook Pro. Have not had 1 minutes worth a problem since I got it. Cost more money yes, but the issues I've had with window machines more than makes up for it. By far longer battery life, than any of my previous laptops. Contrary to one who wrote they run hotter but I don't find that true with mine but that could be because I have solid state drive. I am the happiest I've ever been with this laptop. I should say I also have a windows 7 desktop and I use it only for my CAD software and as soon as I learn the new CAD program on my Mac, it will go by the wayside.

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Jan 19, 2015 22:48:10   #
cjc2 Loc: Hellertown PA
 
countryman60951 wrote:
A year ago I had purchased my 1st Apple product in the form of a Macbook Pro. Have not had 1 minutes worth a problem since I got it. Cost more money yes, but the issues I've had with window machines more than makes up for it. By far longer battery life, than any of my previous laptops. Contrary to one who wrote they run hotter but I don't find that true with mine but that could be because I have solid state drive. I am the happiest I've ever been with this laptop. I should say I also have a windows 7 desktop and I use it only for my CAD software and as soon as I learn the new CAD program on my Mac, it will go by the wayside.
A year ago I had purchased my 1st Apple product in... (show quote)


This is my experience as well.
:thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:

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