A Facebook thread has got me thinking about my choice to build a PC and do a cross upgrade of my Photoshop suite. I have owned and loved the build quality and reliability of various Macs over the last 8 years. I still own 5 of them and use two heavily at my photography studio. When it came time to upgrade to a new Mac Pro, I just could not justify it any longer. The price vs processing power felt like a compromise. I felt like I was paying a large premium for a slightly aged hardware compared to what I could buy and build with a PC. In the meantime, I ended up buying a pre-LED dual core iMac to do some video editing on. I found that it screamed compared to the Power Mac and moved to that for all my Photoshop. I had to connect and edit on a secondary display because the iMac’s display, even at its lowest setting was too bright and left me with dark looking photographic prints.

This worked for a while, but I jumped at the chance to buy a Quad-core i7 with the large LED display. It was a major upgrade in terms of speed and I now had a large, calibrated LED display I could edit with. I still use this machine today. But I found that when it came time to edit video, its built in video card was not capable of real time displaying of HD video from Adobe Premiere’s timeline. If I needed to color correct or do even the most basic edit to a video clip, I had to preview small pixelated image. I never really knew what my video looked like till I rendered and burned a DVD.

I don’t do a ton of video business, but I have a few things I do each spring that left me wanting the Mac Pro with an Nvidia card. -I just couldn’t pull the trigger. I might be into my PC about $1200 with a Quad Core 8 thread Intel Extreme. -Nowhere near what I would have to have paid for a Mac with similar features. Nothing is overclocked for reliability, but I could do that if I wanted to tinker. I simply filled my PC with RAM and a couple of SSD drives. I have a couple of working external drives connect via firewire (Drobo), USB 3 (Seagate 4TB External) and eSata. I now have realtime previewing of DSLR and HDV video when I need it. Windows 7 64 bit boots in seconds and my programs load quickly off the SSD’s. I made a compromise by getting a smaller display then my iMac, but have gotten used to working with it. Prints to my Epson 3880 look great and Lightroom just screams.

I am not going to be an Apple basher here. I recently purchased an Mac Mini for the studio’s customer viewing station that’s connected to a HDTV. There is not a PC in that form factor that does what it does that well. Many customers are wowed by the slick looking keyboard and mouse. The never see the hidden Mini, even though they probably should. It’s like a work of art! My concern is Apple is seems to be moving away from it’s industry professional customer base to the masses. I think the move from Final Cut Pro to Final Cut Pro X is a trend that will continue. The video professional experienced a step backward and felt like the new Final Cut was more like a more advanced version of iMovie, then the upgrade they hoped for. This sent many professionals to Adobe’s Premiere Pro that already had features that they were waiting for from Apple’s upgrade. I was not sure what Final Cut Pro X was really supposed to accomplish at first. It alienated professionals but expanded to a market of hobbyist? -Not really making a product that the soccer mom or a video professional could use. With broadcast quality video in the range of an advanced amateur, I guess Apple is seeing this as a customer it wants to grow rather then continue to make products that only cater to a few. Developing iMovie and Final Cut Pro X is probably money better spent on their bottom line. This has me wondering about the potential demise of the Power Mac from Apple’s lineup…

So there you go! Profit and the bottom line. My guess is Apple is doing this for the reasons that all companies do things like this, and that is to make money. In order to continue to grow profits and stock price, they need to sell computers. With all the great iOS products, Apple is now poised to sell Macs to people who previously owned a PC. I think this is great for the general consumer who wants things that just work. With all the connectivity and digital media in the masses Apple is poised to make a killing selling Mac’s to view, store and share their lives in pictures and video. While I don’t follow industry sales figures, my guess is they already are.

Getting back to my point of why I built a PC. My opinion above about Apple slowly leeching its professional base is just an opinion, but the price vs performance is real and can be bench marked. New motherboards and processors come out on what seems like almost daily intervals. Apple will roll this into it’s line 6 months or a year down the road. The PC was and always has been able to meet the needs of the masses and with a little work, industry professionals. While Apple may introduce a product or range of products that will reverse this trend, I believe that my investment was wise and am a pretty happy PC owner. I am sure there might be some cost of ownership figures that might might negate some of what I said, I just have not experienced them yet with my current setup. And while I can run out and get the latest and greatest motherboard/processor combo, I will stick with what I have until the upgrade will have some sort of usable, meaningful user experience improvement.

One real positive thing to say about the Mac is that it does work well for families, students and moms. Friends that have asked what to buy have purchased and love them. They no longer have issues with spyware, malware and viruses. iTunes works great with their iPod, iPads and iPhones. They can download pictures from digital cameras and share them with built in programs like iPhoto. Garage Band is a great way to start learning about and playing music. Apple has done a great job of making its Unix core very usable for someone like my mom or a person who just wants to be able to boot the computer, do the above things, and check their email.  While the Mac is not a closed system like the iDevices, it kind of is by obscurity. To someone who does not program or install many programs, it can be a little daunting. The Mac App Store seems to be one more move in the direction to fix this while also bluring the lines between the Mac and the rest of iOS. I think that this is great for Apples ever expanding customer base, but might be the writing on the wall for video and photographic professionals.

Let me know if you have any thoughts on this. Have a safe and wonderful holiday!