Clapperboard

I had a Mac. It was plastic and translucent but it kept me dry.

dcampbell52 Loc: Clearwater Fl

My personal preference is Microsoft. I used to sell Apple and it was and is a pain. Back in the day, Apple users were only able to purchase "Apple" software from Apple. Now, everyone and their dog have software for both Apple and Microsoft. For a time, Apple was the favorite for graphics artists and other "artistic" endeavors. Windows was a favorite for business and general computing. Also Windows was a favorite for large networks and for connecting to Unix and other large servers as well as main frames... Apple didn't play well with large networks because (at the time) Apple was almost totally Apple Talk networking where Windows and Unix were easily adaptable to Token Ring, Ethernet, and Arcnet. Typically, large corporations would have huge Token Ring and Ethernet networks but Apple Talk would be limited to small networks in the Art/comercial design groups that specialized in making pamphlets, brochures and publications. Generally an Apple Talk user would have a second (non-Apple) computer nearby to do the non-artsie work. Hartford Insurance was setup this way during the late 80's. Yes, Apple has become mainstream but mainly becasue Apple corporate quit trying to keep everything in house and started allowing major software companies like Adobe, and other to develop for their platform.
Now it seems that Apple is more interested in their laptops than their desktops (I'm stating this as an Electrical Engineer/ computer design degree and have used both. Personnally, I am more comforable with the upgradeablilty of my computer because I can purchase the motherboard that I want with the processor that I want, the memory that I want, and graphics accellerator, hard drives etc... and have it networked with my OLD Novell server, my Unix server, my wife's computer, the outside world and other peripherals using ethernet. Here is an article by another guy that moved from Apple (Mac) to windows. http://char.gd/blog/2017/why-i-left-mac-for-windows-apple-has-given-up
I started computers with Apple II, Atari 400/800, and moved to Apple III and Lisa... I was one of the first authorized Lisa technicians. I then got a Macintosh. and it was okay but I also had a Windows machine that had far more software available. My point is that, while Macintosh does some things well, Microsoft is my choice as an all around machine... Yes Mac is adding and opening developer options but, even though Apple is a huge corporation, the Macintosh is a very small footprint in that group... they are more pointed at their Apple Phones, watches, Siri, etc. and less concerned about their computer. I'm not saying that Apple/Mac is a bad computer, I'm just saying that they were too restrictive for too long and have a lot of catching up todo in general computing... Their graphics are surpurb, but I can do similar things with my PC for less.

sumo Loc: Houston suburb

22 year PC user.... after a crash a year or more....I decided to try MAC....been with MAC for 10+ years...... never would return to a PC

dsmeltz Loc: Philadelphia

It is a simple myth. Not a simple truth. It really depends on the individual. I know a lot of people who find Apple products the opposite of intuitive.

Earnest Botello Loc: Hockley, Texas

WOW, I can't believe some of the crap that I am reading, if you remove the cover off a Mac, what do you have, you have a PC inside. Mac is about 10% of the market, so hackers don't bother with them, they are just as easy to infect or hack as PCs. I build my own computers, so I will match speed and quality with any Mac out there, my computer never locks up, it does all the MS upgrades without a problem. By the way, I had a Mac G4 once, I gave it away, never again.
As for laptops I will match my Alien Ware R4 against any Mac laptop out there.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

I used both Macs and PCs daily from 1986 to 2012 in a pro photo lab environment. While I ran production departments in the lab, we transitioned from film to digital production using Kodak KPIS on Macs, and then from Macs to Kodak DP2 on Windows 2000 and then XP. After extensive FileMaker Pro database solutions development on Macs, with deployment of same on mostly Windows PCs, I prefer the Mac. I set up a large-format printing department, using wide-format Epsons with Macs and Photoshop. Like most businesses, our marketing department was mostly Mac. Our on-demand production printing department was all Mac at first, using PageMaker and various electrostatic printers. It was all Windows later, when we used DP2 to drive large Canon and Konica-Minolta color copier/printers through a high speed raster image processor.

After that, I created many training videos on the Mac, including lots of screen captures (stills and video) from Windows running ON a MacBook Pro.

I still run Windows 10, ON my iMac, using Parallels Desktop. That way, I can run all mainstream (non-linux) software. I'm sure I could run Linux, also, using Parallels Desktop, but I have no need for it. Remembering two operating systems is enough!

Now I run Lightroom Classic CC 2018 and Photoshop CC 2018 on my Late 2013 iMac, using Mac OS High Sierra 10.13.6. I also run Microsoft Office 365 (Mac)... and a slew of utilities. My 2010 Mac Mini also runs the same things, although now that my twins are out of the house and my wife uses a Windows laptop and the iMac, I use it less and less. It is at the end of its support life, and will not run the next version of Mac OS. It is still surprisingly snappy, though, and runs MUCH BETTER on Mac OS 10.13.6 than it did on OS X 10.6.8, which it came with.

Apple's Mac-only video editing program, Final Cut Pro X, runs faster on Macs for equivalent tasks than Adobe Premiere runs on "equivalent" PC hardware, according to several recent tests shown on YouTube. It's also one hell of a lot easier to learn and use, and about equally powerful! Mac OS is a big reason why I dropped Premiere and downloaded Final Cut Pro X. (That, and my son, who is at Western Carolina in the stage and screen program there, told me they greatly prefer Final Cut Pro X to Premiere Pro.)

In fact, it is the very tight integration of Mac OS with Mac hardware that keeps me loyal to Apple. I think about TASK, not TOOL. I think about MESSAGE, not MEDIUM. That integration extends to iPhones and iPads, too. Mac users can move seamlessly from one to the other, without having to download and upload files (that happens in the background, via iCloud).

When it comes to printing and color management, I give a slight nod to Mac OS for ease of use, simply because they had a jump on Microsoft in implementing end-to-end ICC color control via ColorSync. However, I can print from either platform through an Epson driver. So long as I use the correct settings and the correct profiles, my prints are identical.

Microsoft has a history of foisting problematic operating systems on us. Windows ME, XT, the original XP release, Windows Vista, and Windows 8 were all frustrating, especially in a corporate environment. Win 95, Win 2000, Win XP Service Pack 3, Win 7, and Win 10 were all, well, wins! So if you are a Windows user, keep your eyes on the IT trade press and avoid new releases until you know they're stable. At the lab, we never did install Vista or Win 8. Win 2000 and XP SP2 and XP SP3 were our favorites.

About that "cost" thing. When you buy any technology, it is important to consider the TOTAL COST OF OPERATION. That includes the original purchase price, plus add-ons, training, support, repair, maintenance, and other costs. Windows PCs are less costly to start. Macs are less costly over time. IBM and GE report that their support costs for (tens of thousands of) Macs are about 1/5 what they are for Windows.

My experience tells me that this is about right. I kept my PCs at work for an average of three years, but kept my Macs for an average of five years. Some Macs were still playing minor roles after ten years.

Because the PC industry has been a "race to the bottom" to see who could sell the cheapest hardware, the quality has been driven out of the product by many brands. At one point, we were Gateway users. We bought 50 of them in 1999. After all 50 hard drives had to be replaced due to a 60% failure rate (!), and a dozen of them had bad power supplies, we switched to Dell.

A few years later, we had an IT guy who thought FOR SURE he could build high performance PCs and servers for less money than we could buy them. After those "high performance" PC motherboards started MELTING and CATCHING FIRE under 90% processor loads during image rendering, we switched to equivalent Dells that could handle the thermal requirements. After the servers failed and destroyed 40 GB of scanned film image data, we fired that guy and bought HP servers with a maintenance contract. Problem solved, budget blown... Customers disappointed with late delivery.

Moral of the story: Do your homework and buy a reputable manufacturer's hardware, especially if you are going to work it very hard rendering images for printing. In our environment, our Macs and PCs processed images 24 hours a day, seven days a week, non-stop, from late August through early December. Macs and Dells could handle it. HP servers could handle it. Gateways and home-brews couldn't. Navigate the jungle carefully...

AndyH Loc: Massachusetts and New Hampshire

Or, to put it another way, I have current technology instead of seven year old tech, with a faster processor, larger hard drive, and faster graphics than I would have in ANY seven year old computer, in a body and case that is smaller and lighter weight than the MacBook I looked at seven years ago. The Sony Vaio I bought first served me well until an unfortunate accident ended its life prematurely. I replaced that with a slightly bigger and heavier HP Pavilion, and replaced that with an ASUS to get the 64 bit processor and dedicated graphics card I need for AutoCAD,LightRoom, and other post processing software I use these days. One of my student interns this summer was a total computer geek, and like all the cool kidz, he had a MacBook. When I was considering my latest purchase, he advised me to stick with Windows, as any "gap" between the two hardware systems had narrowed so much in the past couple of years so as to not be worth the price premium.

I'm no techie, by any stretch of the imagination, but this new ASUS will serve my needs for 3-4 years, I think, and I'll upgrade when I need features that it doesn't support. At $800, it was about one third the price of a MacBook similarly equipped.

At least that's how I look at it, recognizing that the Mac system has many great features. I will say that the support I've received from Apple on my other products (we have two iPhones and an iPad in the house) has been less than stellar. On more than one occasion I've had to travel quite a distance to an Apple store to find a "Genius", and the "Genius" did not, in the least, live up to the name. Nevertheless, I prefer Apple for the smaller products and will continue to buy them.

Just my opinion, of course, and YMMV!

Andy

elliott937 Loc: St. Louis

Just for the record, I used PCs until 2005, then had to stop. Why? I had to replace them about every two years. Once two years old, a weekly Blue Screen of Death became a visitor. In 2005 I purchased my first iMac G5. I bought a second one in 2012(?) when Adobe decided to respond to the Intel chip. So, to keep using Photoshop, I had to buy a new iMac with the Intel chip. That computer continues to work to this day.

Oh, the G5 I bought in 2005? Still works. That is the reason why I switched to iMac. They keep working.

dandekarv Loc: Lake Forest, Ca, US

I was told Mac is good for photo processing so I got Macbook air. Now I am switching back to windows. Realized very tough learning curve. System is totally different. Minimum three hours to connect Apple Tech support.

If you use Mac from the beginning then you are good to use Mac. In my opinion if you are planning to switch from Windows then prepare to spend great deal of time to learn the new system.

Vasant

cuckoobob

Different strokes for different folks! An acquaintance who is a professional photographer and also a musician prefers his Mac for Lightroom/photographic use, but prefers PC for MIDI/music!

mkiegold86 Loc: New York, NY. U.S.A.

When I first started to make the transition from film to digital I work on a PC. for a couple of reasons; 1) It's what I had; 2) I learned from Adobe back in the late 90's that that their programs including Photoshop were developed on PC's. Once the product was brought to market that they then created a Mac version. That was good enough for me and it worked for quite a while.
AS time went on, the programs got more powerful. Cameras became more sophisticated with larger sensors and file size, PC's were simply not keeping up. Apple on the other hand started building machines that were much more powerful with an operating system that was much easier then anything Microsoft had. I switched to Mac in 2008 and never looked back. Its true Macs ae more expensive but you get what you pay for. The AppleCare alone makes it worth it.
I resently bought the latest MacBook Pro, I added the all inclusive drops and spills policy which covers everything including accidental damage. About six-weeks after I got the machine I was out on a job, I accidentally spilt a glass of water right on the keyboard. The computer went dark. I took it into the Apple Store handed them my soaked unit, paid the $300 deductible and got a new machine. I replaced a $1,700 computer for $300.
My life was saved. I dont know if PC's have similar programs but I know that when it comes to power, reliability and support I am devoted to Apple.
I am sure you all have your own stories to tell. I would love to hear about your experiences...

russelray Loc: La Mesa CA

I'm a very easy-going person so I give people and companies three strikes before calling them out. Once they get three strikes, though, I'm not using them in the remainder of this lifetime or the next. Apple got about 60 strikes in 30 days back in 1983. The only reason why they got so many strikes is because all of them were related to the same purchase of 25 computers with newly released hard drives. Not a single one worked. After 30 days of screwing around with the store owner, the regional VP, the national VP, and even Steve Jobs (yes, I got a personal letter from him telling me to contact the store owner.........smh), I put a stop payment on my check (those were the days!). The store owner called and said he would have to come by and get the computers if I did not make good on the payment. Finally! Resolution.

Nothing Apple has done has encouraged me to return to the fold. "Your iPhone drops calls if you hold it a certain way? Well, don't hold it that way!" "Your iPad burns your thighs if you put it on your lap? Don't put it on your lap!"

My businesses have always depended on computers, and I do consider myself a power user. Apple computers have never been able to do anything that I can't do with a PC, and usually for hundreds of dollars less per computer, thousands of dollars less when I was buying multiple computers.

aubreybogle Loc: Albuquerque, NM

Thank you for this thoughtful, succinct and accurate analysis of the issues behind the hardware. This is a meaningful contribution to this discussion.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

It's the specs more than the OS that really matters.

NCMtnMan Loc: N. Fork New River, Ashe Co., NC

30+ years in IT and dealing with both, I could not have said it better!