GalaxyCat wrote:
I'm debating getting the 27 Inch Apple computer: iMac, or a possible (too expensive ?) high-pixel display PC.
Which one is best, and what do people do for a mouse: the track pad, mouse, or a drawing tablet?
Thanks.
With one exception, you will get equal service out of both platforms, but you will save money with a PC. I use both, mostly PC these days as I don't do video much anymore. Avid and Final Cut Pro are great on a Mac, slightly less so on a PC. LR and PS are identical on both. I also have many students using both platforms, and I tend to have the fewest user and hardware issues with Windows users. The issues that come up with Mac users are typically more fundamental in nature. This may not be a universal situation, but in my academic and professional circles it seems to be the case.
The one exception occurs if you are doing color-accurate work. The PC offers industry standard sRGB and wide gamut AdobeRGB for photo editing, but oddly enough, Apple's wide gamut color space is better suited for video production - DCI-P3.
Feature for feature, the PC platform will cost between 33% and 50% less than the comparable Apple platform. The 4k PC system will likely cost more than a 27" iMac.
A 27" iMac quad core i7 running at 4.2 ghz, with 32 gb ram and a 1 TB SSD SATA drive costs
$3600. You cannot expand the ram beyond 32 gb.
A system based on a
6 core i7-7800 4.0 ghz, with 32 gb ram and a 1 TB m.2 NVMe drive (4x faster than a SATA drive), would cost
$2392, and the system could be easily upgraded to 128gb ram, and you can add 2 more m.2 drives as well as three 2.5" drives and three 3.5" drives - all internally. You also have a wide choice of graphics cards to select from. Adding a Dell P2715Q 27" 4K display for $425 you'll end up spending
$2827. I have had great results purchasing Asus and MSI systems from Xoticpc.com, which offer a lifetime warranty on components and very competitive support plans with real specialists to speak with.
https://www.xoticpc.com/gx13-intruder-x299.html?startcustomization=1The sample configuration in the estimate above was based on this system.
I am fine with any form of input, but if you can get accustomed to a tablet, like a Wacom, you will get some really good performance out of it. I take advantage of the pressure sensitive feature to control flow or brush size in Photoshop. My second choice is the mouse, and last is the track pad.
BTW, here is the hype on the 27" 5K Retina display - bright, but scaled to use 2560x1440 resolution, which requires a third party application to unlock the full resolution of 5K. It is also brighter. Most of the time, most displays arrive way too bright, causing you to edit your images to your visual liking, and then you end up with dark prints. You will likely turn down the brightness to half in order to get decent, not-too-dark prints.
If you are like the majority of users, you can't go wrong with either platform - just be prepared to pay for things with a Mac that usually come free or at a lower cost with a PC, and understand that upgrading an iMac down the road will not be as easy as twisting a couple of screws and adding more memory, better graphics card or additional enterprise-quality hard drives. But at the present, your software will run equally well on either.