IMac vs Mac Pro
smugger
Registered Users Posts: 40 Big grins
Hi,
Feel free to link to another discussion if this has been mentioned before....
I have a Powerbook G? from 2003 that gets pretty slow when I multi-task with PS up.
I would like to upgrade to a desktop that has more space, is faster, and has the ability deal with dual screens should I decide to go that route.
here is what I mostly do with my computer at the same time:
1) PS
and then sometimes in the background I might be:
2) Emailing & Internet
3) Listening to music
4) Chatting
I don't do videos nor do I plan on in the near future doing anything intensive with videos. I'll be mostly working on photos which I think is slowing down my comp the most. I WANT SPEED. And a bigger screen of course. If it wouldn't crash my computer a lot, I would also prefer the capability of using Windows on it for Excel. Of course the more expensive option seems the best (Mac Pro) but maybe I don't need all that power and an IMAC would do just fine?
My issue with the IMAC though is that it is all in that one display or so it seems; the hard drive, display, every component. So if one thing gets broken, you have to replace the entire thing. Do people find that downside a big deterrent?
Also, would one be able to configure an IMAC to work with another screen so I could have dual screen capabilities?
Any thoughts on the issue are welcome.
Thanks
Feel free to link to another discussion if this has been mentioned before....
I have a Powerbook G? from 2003 that gets pretty slow when I multi-task with PS up.
I would like to upgrade to a desktop that has more space, is faster, and has the ability deal with dual screens should I decide to go that route.
here is what I mostly do with my computer at the same time:
1) PS
and then sometimes in the background I might be:
2) Emailing & Internet
3) Listening to music
4) Chatting
I don't do videos nor do I plan on in the near future doing anything intensive with videos. I'll be mostly working on photos which I think is slowing down my comp the most. I WANT SPEED. And a bigger screen of course. If it wouldn't crash my computer a lot, I would also prefer the capability of using Windows on it for Excel. Of course the more expensive option seems the best (Mac Pro) but maybe I don't need all that power and an IMAC would do just fine?
My issue with the IMAC though is that it is all in that one display or so it seems; the hard drive, display, every component. So if one thing gets broken, you have to replace the entire thing. Do people find that downside a big deterrent?
Also, would one be able to configure an IMAC to work with another screen so I could have dual screen capabilities?
Any thoughts on the issue are welcome.
Thanks
~smugger
0
Comments
The big difference to me is expansion. RAM, cards, disks. RAM being the biggest concern, especially if you're going to be running windows and osx on your mac.
Excel runs great on Mac, you don't need windows for that.
You can run dual monitors on the iMac.
Check out the tech specs for the machines on apple.com.
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Right now, the iMac is extremely fast, even for video editing. For this, I take the word of an editor I work with, who has an iMac at home and uses Final Cut Pro.
Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam
http://www.mcneel.com/users/jb/foghorn/ill_shut_up.au
Which means he's cutting with Firewire drives. And as good as they are, they're NOT supported by Apple for use with FCP. On a MacPro he could install internal or external SATA drives.
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I just upgraded from an eMac (2004) to my new 24" iMac, and this thing is a beauty!!! I got the 2.16 Ghz Processor with 2 GB of Ram and this baby flies!!! I use the whole CS Suite and Aperture (which by the way is pretty cool) and I usually have a window (or two or three) open for e-mail and my smugmug site
I was torn between the iMac and the Mac Pro too, but when I talked to the guys at Apple, they said that iMac would be fine for what I do (which is all photo editing). I'm sure Mac Pro would have been great for me, but cost was an issue, and I knew the iMac would be just fine. After all, they created The Lord of the Rings on a Mac Pro, didn't they??? I'm for sure not going to be creating any epics anytime soon!
Good luck with your choice...but I just wanted to put my 2 cents in...iMac Rocks!!!
Robyn
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Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam
http://www.mcneel.com/users/jb/foghorn/ill_shut_up.au
The others have covered a lot of the iMac vs MacPro questions pretty well, but eveyone seems to have left this one so I'll hit on it.
If Excel is really the only reason you would be using windows, then don't even bother going to windows for it. You can get a native Mac version of Office, including Excel. Alternately, there are places that still have the OLDER version of office, "v. X", which is actually more stable in my experience.
There are also some Excel compatible native spread sheets, like Mesa, NeoOffice or OpenOffice (upon which NeoOffice is based).
Alternately, there is now a native OS/X spreadsheet package in the tradition of Apple's iWork called Tables.
There is also a rumour, that the '07 version of iWork, Apple's flagship productivity app suite, will add a spreadsheet to compete with Excel. If this is correct, then I expect it will be at the same quality level as Pages and Keynote (well, ok, at least by it's second version in '08... both of those apps hit their stride in their second incarnations.) which means it will support MS's formats, and be better at them than Office. (My favorite example is powerpoint: export a slide deck to pdf from powerpoint on a mac and you get a HUGE file, with bitmaps of each slide that are kinda mediocre resolution. Open the same .ppt file in Keynote and export to PDF, and you get a small, compact pdf with actual text and vectors where appropriate.)
http://wall-art.smugmug.com/
Punkybeth, thanks so much for telling me about your decision. I am leaning towards getting an iMac then if you are satisfied with the speed because that is what I will mostly use it for too. And DavidTO is right, I may want to upgrade in a few years anyway. I am sure the iMac then will suit my purposes until I want to upgrade.
Cabbey, yes, excel is my main reason I wanted to use windows. It's driven by my frustration using excel on mac's platform and the shortcuts that I am used to at work (on a PC) not working. I am aware of some shortcuts for the Mac's version of excel, but others don't seem to exist (i.e. paste special). Therefore, I find it very slow to use excel on a Mac...
???
Sid, it's trivial to add RAM to an iMac. Same with changing the internal HD. I could throw a 750 in there, for example, easy peezy.
The thing you CANNOT change in the iMac is the video card. I got a 24" as a freebie award through work -- but it has the 7300 GT graphics card and not the 7600 GT which means it's "just okay" for Aperture. Ah well, I'm using it as my Windoze box anyway.
Well you're the expert, David, given you make a living off working in FCP. But what does "not supported" really mean anyway? Sure, if you drop frames scrubbing from an external firewire HD, Apple will say "sorry, dude," but are you really going to drop frames on a firewire HD if you're doing DV25 with 2 or 3 streams? The real issue is what the limits are for the drives and your format. Of course you can't work with SDI or uncompressed HD over firewire... but then again you can't *really* do that in any supported way on a Mac Pro or G5 either -- you need to get a RAID to do that (on the Mac Pro you have 4 drives so a 3-drive RAID 0 can probably do HD).
Easy to add, but limited in amount. Plus those 2GB sticks that will get you up to the max 3GB are spensive.
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His response:
"Yes, I’m using a LaCie drive for my video. It’s firewire 400, but the 24 inch iMac also has a firewire 800, which has a higher transfer speed and is recommended if you are going to be cutting HD."
Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam
http://www.mcneel.com/users/jb/foghorn/ill_shut_up.au
Correct, see David above for RAM limit. Right now, not a biggie. But I worry about future apps. My thing is that I'd want the thing to be somewhat future proof. The Mac Pro is moreso than the iMac, but at a premium price, of course.
My bad re: hard drive.
I'm not knocking the iMac, it sounds great. As I said, I worry about future-proofing. It's great that machines keep getting faster. But it doesn't seem to take long for greedy apps to gobble up all of that speed, and more. For example, I don't think RAW files will be getting smaller over time.
Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam
http://www.mcneel.com/users/jb/foghorn/ill_shut_up.au
I'm glad you mentioned it. Until now, I'd been under the impression that only graphics (gamers) and video needed a graphics card upgrade.
Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam
http://www.mcneel.com/users/jb/foghorn/ill_shut_up.au
That's because he uses Aperture, which relies heavily on the graphics card. Its achilles heel, IMO.
Dgrin FAQ | Me | Workshops
I forgot to ask, do you use RAW files? If so, then the speed is ok using the larger format files in post processing?
Correct. Aperture is the only application I am currently aware of that makes such heavy use of the graphics card -- specifically it uses Core Image to do the processing and effects in real time. This has a number of benefits, but on hardware that is not quite "state of the art" it can result in, how do you say, suboptimal performance.
;-)
3 GB of RAM is quite a bit. Now in 10 years it won't be a lot, but in 2-3 years it will still be reasonable. And in 2 years bumping from 2 GB to 3 GB will be dirt cheap ;-)
Hmm... I just asked a friend to check paste special on their windows box, she says it has no keystroke for her. Perhaps you mapped one specially on windows? In any case, you can do that on the mac too... tools->customize->customize keyboard..., then assign a keystroke to it. You can also in here remap things to your hearts content. Though I notice the *defaults* in the 2004 version of Office for mac are to have both the windows style keys and the traditional mac keys bound. So Edit->Copy for example is bound to: control+ins, control+C, F3, Control-Help (physically on a mac keyboard, help sits where insert would on a PC keyboard), command+Ins, command+Help, command+C. Plus, even unbound, the usual apple command keys are working, so apple+C is also copy. That's 8 different keystrokes to do copy. Seems to me like they're trying to cover all bases here so that every possible mental mapping of keystrokes can be used.
http://wall-art.smugmug.com/
paste special = alt + e and then 's' then a table comes up where you can either click on paste values or formulas, or press the key that is underlined in the command on the menu that you want to do (in windows). Thanks for letting me know about the customization. I think I just never got that far in trying to figure it out. Although if I invest in a new computer I will make damn sure to maximize all the functions I want to use so I get my money's worth. This tip will be helpful in that endeavor, thanks!
Ah, I get it now. Not so much a keystroke assigned to paste special, but keyboard menu access. alt-e to get edit menu, s to select Paste _S_pecial.
Hmm... that brings up a good question... what is the mac keystroke to get to the menu?
A bit of digging says it's ctrl-f2 to move focus to the menu. This is adjustable in system preferences, on the keyboard and mouse panel, in the keyboard shortcuts tab. You might need to enable full keyboard access (ctrl-f1 by default) to get this to work. This will also get keyboard access to other places. Very handy.
http://wall-art.smugmug.com/
Thanks Cabbey, that IS helpful!