[Leica] Tina, time to go Mac!

[spencer at aotera.org (Spencer Cheng)]

Tina,

Let me state upfront that I prefer Macs but that is not a religion. I've 
used Windows, Linux, Mac and many others computers as my primary computing 
platform over the last 35 years.

In your place, the decision point for me would be a) who will sell me an 
appropriate box/cylinder that works out of the box and b) who will provide 
support to the level I would need as professional photographer.

With regards my recommendation to buy a pre-buil box, my most recent Linux 
box I built by ordering all the parts myself. It was way more hassle than I 
expected since various things like BIOS's had to be modified. It took me 2 
weeks to get the system to be stable enough that I can do multiple video 
encoding simultaneously. The fact that I had help from a real geek and it 
still took as long as it did is disturbing. It's not even a bleeding edge PC 
like a gaming PC. So I don't recommend building a PC for non-masochists. You 
might get lucky and have it work the first time (or not).

with regards to support, people who uses computers for a living needs very 
quick turn around. Apple Store works for me since there is one locally and I 
can take a sick Mac in and have it given back to me the next day unless 
something is really wrong. My worst case situation was my laptop got 
strangely sick. It took the local Apple store a week of iteratively 
replacing just about everything inside before they admitted they can't fix 
it and gave me a new one. Apple provides better support than any other 
manufacturer right now though it is far from perfect. 

A long time ago, companies like Dell use to provide this level of support 
but no more. 

Make sure you can get local support from a competent source for the computer 
you buy. When it breaks, and it will break at the most inconvenient time, 
someone need to be able to fix it quickly. I don't believe in keeping the 
original packaging for the next 2 years just so I can send a broken computer 
back in original packaging to get warranty service. That is just the bean 
counters trying to figure out how to deter customers from requesting 
warranty service.

It doesn't matter how sexy the website description is (and Apple has 
industrial engineering down to a science and there are some pretty nice 
looking Windows boxes out there), if I can't get local support, I wouldn't 
buy it if I were you.

Regards,
Spencer

On Jun 11, 2013, at 13:19, Tina Manley <images at comporium.net> wrote:

> The reason I'm tempted by the new MacPro is that the work is already done.
> It is a package specifically designed for photographers (or videographers)
> with speed and photo processing of prime importance.  If there were a PC
> already put together with the same attention to photographic needs, I would
> go with that.  There are just too many confusing choices to make any one of
> which could hamper performance if I made the wrong choice.  Even the
> experts can't agree!  I just want something that works when I turn it on
> and doesn't have to be upgraded every 6 months.  Right now, I'm waiting to
> see what's coming up in the near future on both platforms.