iMac or PC for Lightroom

[YaBe]

Sure, buy a PC is that works for you, but word of caution in building one:

I was headed that route until a well known and highly knowledgable tech who works for a *very* famous fashion photographer told me of his experience last year. He was tired of waiting for a new version of a Mac Pro to come out and went this route. It took him not days but almost two weeks to get bugs worked out of all the hardware and get the thing to run right. Then, 3 months later he had a couple of component failures dog him, thankfully this was his personal machine, not hardware he uses at work.

Basically he told me that since my living depends on it to not even take the chance, just sit tight and get new hardware from Apple when the specs look right. I did and I am now sailing along with my new iMac Pro.

Sometimes piece of mind is worth more than piece of hardware.

So to get this straight, it tooks weeks to install an os and drivers (wich would take 2 hours at most) he had a failing component (wich can happen to any manufacturer) he had the chance to swap faulty parts (thing that you cannot do on a mac).

Seems to me the issue here is the user not the machine, Mac or PC they fail (just check the list of issue you can see around on both machines), I can understand preferring an os to another, but nowadays if you buy from reputable manufacturer you get pretty solid experience on the PC as well.

Windows or Mac OS, this is about the only "major" difference, the HW works the same, but cost a fraction on the PC wolrd.

If we were talking about PPC then the story would be very different.

 

[Macshroomer]

So to get this straight, it tooks weeks to install an os and drivers (wich would take 2 hours at most) he had a failing component (wich can happen to any manufacturer) he had the chance to swap faulty parts (thing that you cannot do on a mac).

Seems to me the issue here is the user not the machine, Mac or PC they fail (just check the list of issue you can see around on both machines), I can understand preferring an os to another, but nowadays if you buy from reputable manufacturer you get pretty solid experience on the PC as well.

Windows or Mac OS, this is about the only "major" difference, the HW works the same, but cost a fraction on the PC wolrd.

If we were talking about PPC then the story would be very different.

Mmmm, no, you don’t have it straight. The guy this happened to is a tech geek, loves tinkering with this stuff and is still running the PC for his personal work, not his job as a photographer’s tech. He knows me very well and knows that I need to be out with my cameras making images. Out on ski runs, in canyons, climbing peaks, in high pressure political environs, magazine assignments, weeks long missions in remote areas to create new work....not stuck in front of a computer.

What I need now more than ever is a fast and stable machine and for the most part, Macs have done that for me since I first started using them in 1992. I have learned how to deal with all of it but at this stage of my career, I need them to get the job done in the language I speak in terms of OS and apps and then get the hell out of the way. My iMac Pro is doing the tasks I hand it exponentially better than any hardware I have ever used so that is a win for me.

I’m not like my friend who lives for tinkering with this stuff, I am a photographer who gets it right in camera, gets it in and out of the computer ASAP and then gets on with living life.

Period.

 

[Strider64]

Here's my perspective on the two platforms. First a little history of myself. I started off on the PC side and that lasted about 30+ years (early 1980s), before I ever owned an Apple computer. I started building my own computers around 2001 or 2002 and even became certified as a PC technician. Then around 2008 I was let go from my job as a color matcher (shader) from an automotive paint manufacturer and decided to go back to college to get a degree in Computer Graphics. In 2010 or 2011 I started getting the itch to go to OSx but waited until 2014 to finally take the plunge. I was getting tired of always "upgrading" my PC and found myself tinkering around doing that instead of actually using the computer. Yeah the initial start up is higher on the Apple side, but I find myself being more productive using my iMac. I'm not knocking either side PC or iMac, for both will do what you want it to do. I personally am a tech geek always wanting the latest gadget or "best" pc component and I find that Apple stops me from indulging on that expensive habit.

My opinion a lot of people who are tech geeks (including myself) forgot that a computer is only a tool and just like almost any tool it's only as good as the person wielding it.