Mac - a good idea?

Quincy T

True story: I am selling an older laptop of mine for $550, and I will need to replace it with a small, portable laptop of some kind. After being very pleased with other Apple products, I am interested in a Macbook. However, my main computing device and photo processing device, (complete with Lightroom and CS4) will still be a PC, at least for the next three or four years.

How much hassle is involved when transferring these Mac photo files to the PC for processing? I would basically use the Mac in the field, and when I return home (two or three weeks later) would unload the data on the PC by LAN cable or some other method.

Is this Mac venture even worth it, or should I just invest in a good quality netbook and save myself the trouble?

Feel free to PM me. Thanks!

colourbox

There should be no hassle with the files themselves. JPEG, TIFF, and Raw formats are read by the all the necessary software on both platforms, especially when the same software exists on both platforms (Photoshop, Picasa, Lightroom...)

As long as you are good at networking Macs and PCs, it oughta be pretty smooth. If you are using Lightroom you should search for articles on exporting catalogs between computers along with the images so you can take any edits that you made in the field and consolidate them with your main catalog and not lose work.

pathfinder

I think it will be interesting to hear your assessment of this, a year from now, after you have worked with both operating systems.
You should be able to easily connect your Mac laptop to your home wireless network.

Actually what I do when travelling, is carry two small USB hard drives and my MBP with LR. All files are stored on the external USB drives ( 2 for redundancy - you may only choose to use one if you are brave ). I do not do any significant editing on my laptop, so I don't have to worry about transferring LR edits back to my main desktop computer.

When I get home, I just hood up the USB drives to my main computer and upload the new files. My Home computer is also a mac, but it might as well be a PC. You will want you drives formatted for Windows, rather than Mac I suspect.

Richard

Well, here's the thing: what you are describing is certainly possible, but you will need a little patience to figure it all out. I have a mixed Mac and (mostly) Windows environment in my house, and it didn't "just work." But once I got it configured right and understood all the gotchas, it has been stable. What I still find annoying are the pesky, though minor, differences in the conventions (is the OK button on the right or left of a modal popup box?) and user interface, which slow me down from time to time. I think you can buy a pretty decent netbook for quite a bit less than the cheapest Macbook. If your long term plan is to migrate to Mac, then it might make sense, but if not, I think you should ask yourself what you hope to gain in the short term.

ziggy53

Richard wrote: »

Well, here's the thing: what you are describing is certainly possible, but you will need a little patience to figure it all out. I have a mixed Mac and (mostly) Windows environment in my house, and it didn't "just work." But once I got it configured right and understood all the gotchas, it has been stable. What I still find annoying are the pesky, though minor, differences in the conventions (is the OK button on the right or left of a modal popup box?) and user interface, which slow me down from time to time. I think you can buy a pretty decent netbook for quite a bit less than the cheapest Macbook. If your long term plan is to migrate to Mac, then it might make sense, but if not, I think you should ask yourself what you hope to gain in the short term.

with Richard. A mixed computer environment is never a blessing. It is only a benefit if you "need" a particular platform to run a particular application. If you don't need a Mac for anything other than Apple brand loyalty, that's probably not going to be rewarding.

I currently have a Windows only grouping of computers but I had to work in a mixed environment of Win and Mac at my previous employer. Whenever there was a network issue between computers that needed to connect between the Mac OS and the Win OS, there was always a lot of finger pointing as to who was doing what to whom. Unless you intend to support your network yourself, you will likely run into these same issues. (It's had to find network troubleshooters that don't have a Win/Mac bias of some sort.)

If you want to go Macintosh and OS X then I suggest an all Mac environment.

RobSylvan

I use a Windows 7 desktop and a MBP laptop, plus my wife's Win 7 laptop, and it works fine for us. There are always issues with any system. They all use the same wireless printer, and while they are connected on the network I find I use dropbox to share files between machines more often than not, or an NTFS formatted external drive (I have Paragon's NTFS for Mac installed on the MBP so it can read/write to NTFS formatted drives) when I have a lot of data to move. I love the MBP and would get another in the future when the time comes to replace this one, but when it came time to replace my desktop last Jan I went with Win 7 and have been very happy with it as well.

The biggest problem may be more about having to purchase duplicate versions of software.

T. Bombadil

It can work.

Sword and Scales wrote: »

How much hassle is involved when transferring these Mac photo files to the PC for processing? I would basically use the Mac in the field, and when I return home (two or three weeks later) would unload the data on the PC by LAN cable or some other method.

Is this Mac venture even worth it, or should I just invest in a good quality netbook and save myself the trouble?

Others have given good advice. I will only add my own experience as a data point. Networking Windows PCs and Macs has never been a problem for me. My home network supports 3 macs and 1 pc (and the occasional pc guest), and they all share a networked printer and file storage.

The suggestion to use USB hard drives is a good one. If you wanted to avoid networking altogether, using a USB drive to move files from one machine to another would work just fine (and you'll want those files on the USB drives anyway, as has already been mentioned).

Apple portables are nice to work with. Can you find Mac versions of all the software you wish to travel with? If so, then I say that simple preference of user interface / hardware is sufficient to choose a mac (or vice versa, if you leaned the other way).

In my view, MS Office and Intuit Quicken do not have a satisfactory Mac equivalent. For virtually everything else, I prefer to work on a Mac. For those simple reasons I have maintained both operating systems. The mixed environment has never caused an issue.

One piece of advice: avoid the temptation to set yourself up to be able to "do anything from any machine". If you decide what you really need on each particular machine, you will eliminate a lot of time spent sync'ing data and managing software tools.

wave01

I have been a windows person for 30 years and last month I bought a new imac 21.5 inch. I plugged in turned it on and set it up in less than 15minutes. I had no problems moving files around most of them stored on nas hard dive. Now after a month I cant think why i didn't do it years ago. I think if you do it then you will switch everything very soon. Good luck

pathfinder

My wife uses an HP win XP laptop, and MacBookPro with Parallels with Win 7, on our network at home with OS 10 desktop units. She is required to use Win for work, and she connects and prints wirelessly with our Airport (router ) without any difficulties. It works fine.

She prefers OS X, but works in Win all day long.

Quincy T

Thanks for all the advice everyone. To answer a couple of questions: my main purpose for looking at the Macbook is to replace a smaller laptop I used to carry with me which has been sold. I sold it for a variety of reasons, but I felt the time was right. I have Photoshop CS4, which I assume works on both Windows and Mac, or am I wrong? Lightroom I have as well, and that is most likely what I would put on the Macbook, as this isn't really meant to be my main computer for editing. I have never used a Mac, but it seems to be the choice for most creative professionals, and I'm very pleased with the user friendliness of my iPhone, which I can imagine is reflected in other Apple products.

So, is it really as simple as moving the RAW files or JPEGs from the Mac onto the PC by using one USB external, or is there a more complex process? Everywhere I look it seems like it's a pretty advanced procedure to get things from one device to the other.

ziggy53

Sword and Scales wrote: »

Thanks for all the advice everyone. To answer a couple of questions: my main purpose for looking at the Macbook is to replace a smaller laptop I used to carry with me which has been sold. I sold it for a variety of reasons, but I felt the time was right. I have Photoshop CS4, which I assume works on both Windows and Mac, or am I wrong? Lightroom I have as well, and that is most likely what I would put on the Macbook, as this isn't really meant to be my main computer for editing. I have never used a Mac, but it seems to be the choice for most creative professionals, and I'm very pleased with the user friendliness of my iPhone, which I can imagine is reflected in other Apple products.

So, is it really as simple as moving the RAW files or JPEGs from the Mac onto the PC by using one USB external, or is there a more complex process? Everywhere I look it seems like it's a pretty advanced procedure to get things from one device to the other.

Windows machines and Macintosh machines use different operating systems and require different versions of the software, unless you use an emulator which some folks do on the Mac machines (Parallels, etc.) and some folks do with Windows machines (I think mostly using VMWare).

I believe that you can use a current license to download the proper version without additional cost, assuming you have deleted the old version first. I have not done that myself so you would be best to check with Adobe first.

RAW files and JPG files are not, in themselves, limited to a particular machine's OS, but TIF/TIFF files may be (byte order difference). I think that many other intermediate files are pretty transportable between platforms too.

Richard

Sword and Scales wrote: »

I have Photoshop CS4, which I assume works on both Windows and Mac, or am I wrong? Lightroom I have as well, and that is most likely what I would put on the Macbook, as this isn't really meant to be my main computer for editing.

Check with Adobe regarding CS4. Their policy used to be that you can only change platforms on the current version (CS5) without paying for an upgrade. As I understand it, LR should not be a problem.

So, is it really as simple as moving the RAW files or JPEGs from the Mac onto the PC by using one USB external, or is there a more complex process? Everywhere I look it seems like it's a pretty advanced procedure to get things from one device to the other.

Well, it should be simpler than it is, but it is possible. The main portability issue is that (last time I checked) OS-X cannot write to NTFS file systems, which is what most Windows users prefer for their disk drives, and with good reason. There are third party products that will do so as will virtual machines on Macs. As long as you aren't doing video, you can probably get by with a little FAT formatted USB pen drive, which Apple can write to. As I said in my earlier post, a mixed environment is doable, but it will require more effort than pure OS-X or Windows.

Richard

ziggy53 wrote: »

\
RAW files and JPG files are not, in themselves, limited to a particular machine's OS, but TIF/TIFF files may be (byte order difference).

This doesn't sound right to me. Endian differences matter to compiler writers and assembly language programmers, but a file spec should be properly interpreted by all competent software. Have you encountered real-world problems?

JenLens

I recently bought a MAC and still use my HP laptop. The Apple manager who helped me make my purchase of their 27" iMac told me that you can call Adobe and ask for the MAC version of the Adobe product that you need. As long as you are not upgrading a version (ie: going from CS4 to CS5) than Adobe should be able to help you set up the Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator software that you need - depending on what you have! Good luck!!!!

colourbox

ziggy53 wrote: »

RAW files and JPG files are not, in themselves, limited to a particular machine's OS, but TIF/TIFF files may be (byte order difference).

Adobe engineers have answered this on their user forums.
http://forums.adobe.com/message/2996185
http://forums.adobe.com/message/2611244

All properly written image apps on all platforms can read either PC/IBM/Intel or Mac/PPC/Motorola byte order, and besides, since Mac went Intel they're now using the same byte order as PCs but again it does not matter one bit (no pun intended) since software reads it in either direction. TIFFs are perfectly cross platform at this point.

Quincy T

Update: Today I struck gold, and whether I wanted a Mac for certain or not, I could not resist the opportunity. Now, before you make any comments regarding the quality of the product purchased, I will preface this post with the fact that I'm a pretty tech savvy dude, being that it is my job, and while I don't know a great deal about Macs, I'm not an idiot. So here's my story.

I'm currently in the town of Jacksonville, NC for a professional military education school. I'm a sergeant in the Marine Corps. Anyway, I was browsing some thrift stores with my mom for fun, because she is here for my graduation this week and we enjoy doing this. I suggest we go to a store where Marines who are leaving the Corps or just need money regularly sell some pretty decent things to make a quick buck. Keep in mind, I have been searching for a good laptop replacement/iPad/Macbook/something or another, for a little while now. We walk in the store, and I walk over to the little laptop shelf. Hidden among rows and rows of Toshibas, Dells, Asus, Acer and everything under the sun, nestled in its own little spot, is a 13" Macbook Pro. I stop. Blink a few times. Confirm. This is a brand new Macbook Pro I am looking at. My eyes check out the price tag: $700. This is right in my price range. Surely something must be amiss. No.

It is a 2010 Macbook 2.4 Ghz w/ a 250 GB HDD and OS X 10.5.6...I think that's it. Anyway, this thing is in nearly pristine condition. There was no damage other than a couple scratches on the bottom, it worked perfectly, CD/DVD player, USB hubs, etc. Apparently, the poor Marine had just turned it over to make a quick dollar, probably not very much, and the shop was selling it for what they thought they could get in a town filled with Marines, who, when trying a Mac were probably more likely to bust out a nice credit plan for the $1200 brand spanking new model at Best Buy.

Well, I bought this bad boy, and it is sitting right next to me on my bed as we speak. Granted, I don't know everything about it and I was pretty thorough in my search, but I figure that even if there is a problem, it won't be $500 to fix it. Now, I have CS4 on a disc, and I have a TOTALLY LEGITIMATE VERSION of Lightroom on this computer. I will have to wait to get back home to Tampa to put CS4 on it...but needless to say, I am very excited.

What do you think? Good decision?

Also, holy crap, OS X is like $30? That's awesome.

ziggy53

Sword and Scales wrote: »

... I'm a sergeant in the Marine Corps. Anyway, I was browsing some thrift stores with my mom for fun, because she is here for my graduation this week ...

Congratulations on your new computer, but more importantly, congratulations on your graduation.

Thank you for your service to our country. (Proud father of a US Marine.)

aquaticvideographer

Sword and Scales wrote: »

What do you think? Good decision?

Also, holy crap, OS X is like $30? That's awesome.

I think you made the right decision. You'll be very pleased with your recent purchase, I predict.

FYI typically new versions of OS X have been a little bit more expensive than Snow Leopard (10.6), but still very reasonable. I'm wagering that you've got Snow Leopard on your Macbook, as to my knowledge they aren't selling new machines with Leopard (10.5) anymore.

Enjoy your new Mac!

Blackwood

Congrats.

FWIW, my main workstation is a Windows 7 desktop, and I use it interchangeably with a macbook. Lightroom on each.

T. Bombadil

Congratulations

Sword and Scales wrote: »

What do you think? Good decision?

Also, holy crap, OS X is like $30? That's awesome.

Congratulations on your graduation, and on your purchase. I think you will not be disappointed - but I have so much respect for your service to us as a marine that I wouldn't be second-guessing any decision you made.

Thank you for what you do.

With a licensed copy of Lightroom on the Mac, do you still have a licensed copy on your PC? I don't know how the licensing works for Lightroom. Apple's Aperture can be loaded on multiple machines, but only run on one at a time - consistent with being owned by one user. If Adobe permits that, you could have it on both machines (provided you are only using it on one at a time). The software itself can be downloaded (if your disc(s) are Mac only) - the only issue is whether your license permits this use (and the license numbers will activate a PC).

The reason that might be nice is that you can probably move images back and forth, in various stages of completion. I only use Aperture, so maybe this isn't true for Lightroom (though I suspect it is, so I'm suggesting you investigate) - but anyway, what you can do with Aperture is sync your "Library" (all images and their edits, or just all edits - depending on where you store your originals) between two machines.

That's better than editing a RAW file on one machine, then exporting a JPG or TIFF with those changes and moving that JPG or TIFF to the other machine and editing some more. Better because edits that get "baked into" a JPG or TIFF can't be undone (without going back to the original, on the original machine), and some image quality loss is possible if JPG is your intermediate step.

Just a little nicer workflow.

Aperture also has a mechanism for moving a "Project" (group of images and their edits) from one machine to another - if you didn't want to have all photos on both machines. Here again, I'm not certain that Lightroom has an analogy to this, but I suspect it does.

Another thought: Maybe you don't need to put the images on your PC at all. The MacBook Pro is plenty powerful enough to process images. It has a video-out port for connecting to an external monitor (so you can hook it up to a big screen when at home). Maybe there is no need to move files around at all.

Hope you enjoy your new machine.

Foques

I have been a windows person for my entire life.. until, last year, I got me a mac..
It has been the best decision i've ever made, and least troublesome set up i've ever encountered.

I am in love with apple.

arodney

RAW files and JPG files are not, in themselves, limited to a particular machine's OS, but TIF/TIFF files may be (byte order difference).

Byte Order: Mac or PC? Well that’s a debate that will continue on, but in this case, pick PC since the Mac will have no issues with this Byte order but the ancient PC software may.

CatOne

arodney wrote: »

Byte Order: Mac or PC? Well that’s a debate that will continue on, but in this case, pick PC since the Mac will have no issues with this Byte order but the ancient PC software may.

Can't see how this would even be relevant as there hasn't been a Mac sold in 4 1/2 years that had a PowerPC chip in it. They've been 100% Intel since August 2006.

arodney

CatOne wrote: »

Can't see how this would even be relevant as there hasn't been a Mac sold in 4 1/2 years that had a PowerPC chip in it. They've been 100% Intel since August 2006.

You are missing the point. It has zero to do with PPC. It has to do with older WINDOWS software. Mac’s have never had a byte order issue. Even PPC chips and OS9. Windows, that’s another story.

Seefutlung

Congrats Marine (on both graduation and the Mac).

I have an iMac, Sony laptop and my g/f uses a Macbook. I interchange files between the three rather seamlessly via usb external hard drives. Just format the drive in FAT 32 and all will be fine. All my Microsoft Office files, Adobe files and photo files are successfully and easily manipulated on both platforms without emulation programs. I am planning to replace my Sony with a Macbook soon and presently switching to Aperture for RAW file conversion and processing.

Gary