Thinking of switching to Macs (at least for one of my machines)....

kman

kman

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Long time die hard PC user here running W7 desktops and a laptop. The laptop is a bit weak powered for my needs (Intel i5 1.4 with 4GB RAM) and im going to be doing more location based tethered shoots next year I think so thats my main upgrade need at the moment.

My desktop (a bit old but fairly powerful) is where I run most of my work from though but Windows 8 upgrade just seems a bit pants to me - willing to try OS X. Data is stored on a RAID NAS, another single NAS and external drive mostly and wanted to see if I buy a Macbook Pro will there be any problems switching data access between PC desktop and the Macbook Pro? For instance, copying over lightroom catalogues that are worked on the PC then onto the Mac? My other option is to run just a macbook to replace everything, and hook up the macbook to my current monitor (or get a thunderbolt display eventually) when at home.

Any advice from anyone sort of in between or happily using both systems, some advice would be great!
 
You need to write 2 lists about your current setup......

What don't you like


What does it do poorly or doesn't do

Then a third list.....

What do I want to do.


Are you choosing mac hardware over PC manufacturers or are you choosing OSX?

If you go to OSX, you will need to repurchase all your Adobe software.
 
As far as I'm aware Adobe CC accounts can be installed on both macs and pc's (2 licenses) so thats not a problem.

What i don't like about my setup currently:

1. its getting old now and is due an upgrade (components are old, wary of HD failure etc)
2. video editing is a little slow which im doing a bit more of lately
3. also doing much more intense processing in LR/PS (some of my PS files are potentially 30+ layers of 36MP RAW/tiff files) and the PC struggles a little (despite 12GB of RAM).
4. the laptop is way too sluggish for p.3 above and im starting to use it more now on shoots as well

what id like is a machine thats ready to handle everything i could potentially throw at it over the next 2-3 years - dealing with intense PS work e.g. handling large medium format RAW files etc, 4k video editing which my current setup won't handle.
 
To be honest from what you've put down there as wants either going Mac or sticking with PC your going to be looking at fairly beefy system...I've got no issues with doing all of the above on my beast of a PC I'm fairly sure it would handle all of it with little issue...but it's a custom build bit of kit that I've sunk getting on for £3000 into to make sure I'm good spec wise for what ever I can chuck at it, in the next few weeks it will go from 16gb RAM to 32gb which actually was my original intention but I picked up the wrong pack of RAM :bang:
 
Decide on whether you want a PC or a mac based on the user interface. The underlying hardware they run on is the same. You can get more powerful (and configurable/expandable) PCs than you can Macs and you can tailor them for particular apps more easily (adding multiple SSDs/changing graphics cards etc). PCs tend to not be as "all in one" as Macs and you may see that as a good thing or bad depending on your point of view. What I would say is don't buy a mac because people tell you it is better. Try one out for a bit at PC World before you buy. You can also get MacBook like PCs these days (at MB prices) so you don't need to compromise there either.

Also, whilst PCs and Macs are compatible, they are not always directly compatible - e.g. to get a Mac to read & write an NTFS formatted disk requires an additional program (or at least you certainly used to). Not a biggie, but there are incompatibilities you will have to work around if you want a mixed network that works seamlessly.
 
Basically you have no reason to buy a mac. A PC upgrade will fix the issues you have. OSX is a different conversation.

What peripherals do you have? Will they work with a mac?

Play with OSX, then decide.
 
Why not put add more RAM & a SSD.
This is the easiest & cheapest bang for your buck.

I'm making an assumption that you are running a 64 bit windows..
 
I'm sure that others on here can offer far more detailed advice on PC or MAC configuration but as a comparison with the sort of cash you would spend on a MacBook you can get something along these lines.

http://www.chillblast.com/Photo-Systems/

I've got the OC Lite with a couple of mods and am very pleased with it.
 
Thanks for the link those systems do look well priced. Pete my old machine has gone through several iterations of ram, gfx, hdd (+sdd) upgrades. But i think its got to a point now to really take it a big step up it needs pretty much everything overhauled (mobos, cooling etc) - so thats why id rather look at a new system altogether. I'm going to pop down to pc world and have a play with the OS X and W8 UI's a bit more I think.

I've done a bit of research and so far apparently the NAS boxes I have can dual share (read/write) data between both pc and mac platforms at the same time. The question is things like lightroom catalogue files whether I can interchange without issue?
 
kman said:
Yes you can, you just cannot open them in LR when they are on the network drive.
Click to expand...
But the way I read Neil's point is that you can't host the catalogue on the NAS which is right.

You can host the catalogue on say your Mac then back up to your NAS or copy to your Windows PC but this isn't a small file and is very clunky.

In LR5 you can keep the catalogue on one of your machines and when you want to work on any files export as smart previews onto your other machine then bring them back in when completed. Again, a bit of a clunky solution but better than the above option IMO.
 
I understand that buck and thats kind if how i work when needing to switch machines without interrupting my workflow. But a lot of my old lr4 catalogues are stored on nas and copied in whenever needed hence the need to be able to read/write to nas. Im not opening and running catalogues from the nas which i know you cant do.
 
Sorry I don't mean to be pedantic if that's how you thought I came across. I don't see why one should make assumptions about my reasons for putting an LR catalogue onto a networked drive or assume I don't know how LR works with catalogue files. As stated its to share data between platforms not run the catalogues themselves from the drive.
 
That makes more sense. Having the raw files stored on a Nas and the cat local will work. You'll have to run two catalogues (one for each machine) and export/import as catalogues to get the changes to show up on the other.

It has potential to get very messy very quickly though. Unfortunately Lightroom always has and will be an application designed for single machine use.
 
Yeh the good thing is I wouldn't be working on the same catalogue on both machines at the same time. I may start on the laptop, then once done copy over to NAS, and from then on all my work with that catalogue will be on the desktop so I can just keep a local copy.
 
Unomelodica said:
Khalid trust your well ....

I use both platforms , my mac book pro seems to fly through the tasks I throw at it. I made the jump about
2 years ago never looked back .

whilst the questions being addressed re lr catalogues I too work through a synology nas - a bit
clunky but hey..

G
Click to expand...

I'm well thanks Gurdip, hope you're well too!

Thanks for your experience, I use a QNAP 4 bay drive NAS and i think it should be ok from the documentation i've read. Still considering a macbook pro/mac pro set up.
 
It mainly comes down to the OS.

I've used Macs for over 6 years now, and I don't think I could go back, tried to use a W8 Laptop, had no idea what I was doing, it all just felt so alien and unnecessary, compared to OS X which feels logical and useful.

It's personal preference though, you may hate it.

Trying them in a shop won't be a good enough experience to tell.
 
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