Quantus5

The advantage on the Windows side isn't just about being able to select all your components, but it is also about being able to replace one of them if one goes bad if you use a Desktop PC. A hard drive goes bad -- , motherboard goes bad, power supply goes bad, fan goes bad, etc... -- easy and inexpensive to replace. Last year I fixed my Dad's desktop PC (that was off warranty). His hard drive failed. -- For about $80 (the price of a 250GB ssd) I easily fixed his system -- and it took only about an hour. I don't even want to think what that would cost on an off warranty Mac.

Also with a Desktop PC you can get an Nvidia Titan X or a Nvidia 1080Ti graphics card, etc... If you want top notch gpu hardware -- i.e. graphics processing -- the only real route is a Desktop PC, because of its modularity.

I have a hobby where I do a lot of 3D rendering -- and the software I use -- uses a technology called IRay that was developed by NVidia that does hardware based 3D rendering (i.e. can use NVidia's CUDA cores to accelerate 3D rendering) -- with the Nvidia 1080 card I have -- rendering is 5 to 10 times faster than a Core i7 based Windows PC or a core i7 based Mac. In other words -- a Mac is not even really an option for my 3D rendering hobby -- because you can't use them with NVidia's fastest GPUs.

cjc2 Loc: Hellertown PA

I'm happy and ok that you like pcs. I prefer Mac's now, and my reasons, and opinion has not changed. Happy computing.

blackest Loc: Ireland

When you compare a pc desktop system with a laptop or an imac you are not comparing like with like. it's like saying a van is better than a car because it has a bigger load space. really the desktop system as far as macs go that apple provides is the mac pro which is upgradable although I don't think many people were that impressed with the trashcan mac pro. Someone at apple missed the point of having a system like the mac pro "as fast as you can make it please". The new mac pro due next year is intended to address the issue.

One of the things you might not have noticed is the eGPU the usb c connections the latest Macs have are pretty amazing when it comes down to it.
with thunderbolt 3 support this allows the use of eGPU's

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N85lwLlzPdk

Now they estimate a 10% loss on max power on thunderbolt 3 but you are getting around 3x the GPU power of the internal card. The problem for a laptop is they are designed to be portable and with a card like that running the internal display you would have a battery life of around 5 minutes.

now lets pick up your desktop and take that on the road ... yes its not happening is it.

The biggest processing tasks these days are gpu based and in the old days you needed a desktop machine to run those tasks and a laptop too. Now you have best of both worlds. Thats pretty awesome isn't it.

I have to admit that one of apples choices the integration of the ssd and the ram on to the mainboard isn't something that appeals to me. But look at it logically with time machine your constantly backed up anyway. So getting up and running again isn't quite the major disaster it might be otherwise. Even the ram you usually have 2 slots for ram and probably a hard limit of 16GB although some of the latest CPU and board designs can handle 32GB.

those ram slots are a weak point, its usually not the ram that dies but the modules need reseating, not anymore. Another fairly common problem has been with hard drive cables. So yes your losing on flexibility but to be fair reliability is improved. Your more likely to fry your mainboard with a drink rather than the ram or ssd failing. Maybe this is a better way , just i'm too much of a dinosaur to recognise it yet.

The new macbook pro's are pretty decent when it comes down to it if you want portability and a powerful work station.

Actually just posting this made me realise something I have 2 options when i go to work later I can use my iMac at work as an external display for my macbook pro or I can set my my macbook pro in target disk mode and boot the imac from that. hmm so rather than working on photos at home on one version of lightroom and having a duplicate catalog at work I can go home working with the same photos :) This could be fun.
And save on duplicated work and not having the files i want on the right machine :)

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

You get it! There are reasons for everything to exist. Whether a particular device is "inferior" is only relative to your needs, your circumstances, your desires. That's why research into the current state of the market is so important before making a major commitment to any system. There are hidden traps, costs, risks, and possibilities in every choice.

Will my purchase meet my needs now, AND down the road?

What is the TOTAL cost of my platform choice... NOT just the hardware, but the software, maintenance, training, repair, down time, frustration, weight, size, bulk, risk of the company changing course or going out of business... There are lots of factors to consider, rather than just whether something looks cool, or strokes your ego, or makes your accountant happy, or lets you "fit in." If you have three young kids, and you want to buy a Corvette, you better buy the wife a minivan or an SUV or sedan first! Otherwise, you look like a complete ass.

Sometimes you HAVE to make a "stupid" choice because it enables something bigger. The portrait company I worked for needed to scan film for a few years before digital cameras matured. We were printing all products digitally, so we bought 20, $50,000 Bremson HR500 scanners to put in four labs, along with network switches, PCs, servers, etc. I had nine of them in my scanning department. We used one in 2001, four in 2002, nine in 2003, seven in 2004, four in 2005, two in 2006, and "mothballed" all but one of them in 2007 when we ripped out all the film processors.

What I know from my days as a systems manager is that optimizing a single piece of gear is pointless unless the rest of the system is in balance with it. Who cares if your computer runs 15 GHz and has 32TB RAM and 512 Petabytes of SSD storage, if you can't use all that power for anything practical? In some contexts (such as a production line), optimizing one machine choice or process just creates downstream bottlenecks, wastes money that could be used to improve those bottlenecks, and does not improve the output by as much as balancing all factors could. If your primary business is photographing items to sell on eBay, buying a Nikon D850 is overkill. Almost any adjustable digital camera under $300 would work, and no one would know the difference. Better to spend money on lights, backgrounds, props, and other resources, than to optimize the camera.

When I was doing training for the portrait company, I used a MacBook Pro with Parallels Desktop and Windows. I had a 750GB drive in it, with 100GB of that used for a Windows XP virtual disk. I quite literally ran Windows on the Mac, while running Mac software. I could switch back and forth, cut and paste from one environment to the other, use the Mac to record videos and stills of screen actions in Windows, run a process in the background on one OS while doing something else on the other... I COULD have had a real PC and the Mac on my desk, but switching back and forth and moving files via the network or flash drives would have slowed me down considerably. That setup was NOT the fastest PC or Mac I could have had, but it optimized my EXPERIENCE and allowed me to work anywhere.

tomcat

What is the "trashintosh" debacle you are talking about? And do you have numbers on those "lots of people moving back"? Not intending to argue with you, but this is a fact----the choice of a computer IS indeed subjective and I chose Apple after using both platforms for many years. I don't have to worry about incompatible software or 3rd party conflicts. I have had my current iMac for 6 years and no problems. The AirMac is 3 years old and it has no problem. When and if they do, I will always have AppleCare or the genius bar to correct any problems. My subjectivity and Apple choice has created a lot of peace in my family and my business because I have removed computer problems from the other problems that we have. I don't need computer issues that keep us off-line or unable to perform our jobs. So it is the peace of mind that I have with Apple that makes them so attractive. Money is not an issue, but productivity is.

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

Quantus5

Thanks for this post. I actually learned something new about eGPU enclosures. I did a ton of reading on them after seeing your post. The problem right now is what you say is the 10% performance hit, which if you go out and do more reading is more like a 10% to 30% performance hit on Thunderbolt depending on how fast your graphics card(s) are. The faster your cards the more of a performance hit you will take over a Desktop solution. i.e. Thunderbolt is fast, but is still much slower than the motherboard bus speeds.

So unfortunately, this eGPU enclosure solution is not the best of both worlds. :-( I think it's a great solution if you have a laptop, but the Desktop is still the King if you're interested in performance.

I'll stick to my Desktop. 10% to 30% won't kill me -- but it's still a huge performance difference.

Quantus5

Just look up the term "Trashintosh" on the Internet and you'll see what I mean. Surprised you're not familiar with the term.

Essentially, the Trashcan Mac Pro was a disaster, hence the name Trashintosh.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

It wasn't any sort of disaster. It just wasn't what people wanted after the first year.

A lot of us would definitely be happy to see Apple build a modular Mac that looks like the old Macintosh G3, G4, and G5, and the MacPro before the current model. That was a box with a lid you could take off. You could change or upgrade many parts of it with ease.

Alas, Apple wants a machine you'll replace in three to five years. Users want machines that can be upgraded and used for a over decade, like my old G4. I added RAM, an accelerator card (faster processor), faster graphics card, SCSI port, USB II ports, high speed networking, larger power supply, two faster SATA drives... It was in daily use from 1999 to 2013. It still works... But we don't use it.

I think they will surprise us this year with a beast that makes many in the creative crowd happy again.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Functionally they are identical. But be prepared to spend at least another 50% over the cost of a PC if you buy a Macbook Pro with comparable specs. I like MSI and Sager laptops, as do many gamers and high-end engineering workstation users. I don't think Apple makes anything close to what you can get in a high end PC laptop, if you pull out all the stops.

tomcat

And the debate starts again...... A Mac is not all things to all people. A "high-end" PC designed for gamers is not comparable to a Mac designed for photographers---they are two different machines just like a Porsche is not designed to be the same as a Honda. I like the dependability of the Apple system and the fact that I have AppleCare to cover my back if problems arise. I don't have to worry about disputes between Microsoft, the PC vendor, the printer drivers, and the virus software companies all claiming that it is not their fault because my programs crash and won't work. One of the reasons that I went back to Apple many years ago was due to a dispute between McAfee, Microsoft, and HP as to who was the culprit for my computer crashing. Each of them said their systems were designed without flaws and performed up to design specs. I will never change from Apple to a PC simply because I don't understand them nor do I have the time or the dime to deal with malfunctioning or non-working computers.

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

I certainly understand why you may have changed platforms years ago. But Windows 10 is an extremely mature and stable operating system. I have it on 5 machines and never have a problem on any of them. I'm not going to get into a PC versus MAC debate, or try to convert you, but after reading your post I just wanted to add my thoughts. The main reason I prefer Windows products over Apple is the same reason I prefer Android phones over iPhones. One of the ways that Apple provides such a stable environment is that they control things to a degree that I don't like. I like to configure my computer and my phone to the way I work and to use the software I want to use. Apple products do not allow me to do that. As a result Apple systems are very easy to use, but very inflexible in my experience.

blackest Loc: Ireland

Unfortunately things may have changed with meltdown and spectre with the mitigations for the branch speculation code it seems the solution is not to use it. This is going to make applications require more cpu time. writing this reply my cpu may be 20% busy and with the mitigations it might be 50% busy lets say, thats the typical user work load, on the other hand when you are doing something processor intensive you haven't got spare cycles to fall back on and there will be a real slowdown.

On the plus side a lot of graphically processing is done on the gpu these days not the cpu, so perhaps it might not be that bad for us after all.

I'm still wondering what the actual risk is for a home user. most banking where transfering money uses 2 factor authentication i have to put a debit card into a reader to generate a code. Paypal perhaps could be dangerous to use as generally its authorised to be funded from a bank account. Maybe we need a second limited account so there is a maximum that paypal can access...

Arm cortex processors are effected but only the cortex series unfortunately thats iphones and ipads , some android phones and tablets too I think just the snapdragon 845 is affected. This year is a major mess.

tomcat

That's all well and good now, but when the day comes that you have a problem, you will have to deal with 2 or more suspect parties. With Apple, I only have 1 person to call. An individual like me also reaches the age when all those buttons and options are confusing. I really enjoy the simplicity and architecture of Apple products and how the features on one device are similarly designed on another device. One of the reasons that I switched to an iPhone back in 2007 was the simplicity of entering a person's phone number and address--just one screen instead of having submenus and sublevels on my old flip-phone to get to to enter the data. I had to carry a cheat sheet around with me whenever I wanted to update or enter a contact on that old flip-phone---lol

tomcat

Can you translate what you just said into English?