Sit tight for the Core 2 Duo. I know it's tough to wait once you've made the decision to switch but then you won't be sorry later that you didn't wait.
I'm wishing I had postponed by decision to buy a G4 Powerbook rather than waiting for the new Intel chip version. You know what it is like...you gotta have the latest and greatest but then I needed a laptop ASAP and wanted to dip my toe in Mac waters to see what it is like.
ChrisN...as a self-professed computer geek, tell us why the switch from PC to Mac has been so great...at least from a digital photography point of view. I am keenly interested as now I am thinking of switching my top end PC stuff for the best G5 system I can afford.
Cheers,
John
Its hard to pinpoint the differences, I have been using Mac for over 5 yrs now, my first purchase was a G4 titanium, I read into the hype of how macs were faster. I soon found that not to be so true, but once I started using the Mac and purchased a G4 desktop I soon found I would never use the Pc unless the Mac was busy, I think I would liken it to A Ferrari vs Corvette, both are fast and beautiful and either one will do the job but when it comes to sheer pleasure and quality the Ferrari would be the choice With OSX there isnt much of a learning curve.
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
ChrisN..I have a copy of Aperture coming for my G5 and I am also going to be adding a Macbook Pro in the coming months...my question is..knowing that Aperture likes a beefy video card, what has been your experience with the video card/Aperture combination? I know they say it can run with even the standard one that ships in the macbook but I am willing to spend extra IF it means significantly faster workflow.
Aperture runs great on both my MacBook Pro 17" (2.16 GHz) and PowerMac G5 2.7. (In terms of the graphics card, I have an ATI Radeon X800 XT installed in the latter.) I have not performed any in-depth performance comparisons, but I generally cannot distinguish between my laptop and desktop in terms of Aperture performance.
As to your question re: MacBook Pro graphics...while the "base" 15" model has 128 MB of video memory, vs. 256 MB in the "upgraded" model, both use the same graphics processor (the ATI Radeon X1600). Given that the graphics processor is the same, my expectation is that Aperture will perform similarly. But if you can afford the upgraded model, I would recommend going for it. (Anyone else have an opinion?)
On a related note, I performed a quick Google search, and found a few discussions relative to this topic. The first two are specifically related to Aperture and video memory. The second two are more general, but -- assuming you disregard the superfluous material -- may help your decision as well.
Core duo, quad core duo, tri-core triplex,....bah. Nobody ever regretted postponing a tech toy purchase until the last possible moment.
I needed to replace my desktop Mac and monitor. I nearly pulled the trigger on the latest and greatest G5 but decided to sleep on it. Bingo. Two days later the MacPro systems were announced and the 30" Cinema displays dropped $500. (I was one of the poor early adopters who paid $4000 for the first 22" Cinema display.)
I have convinced myself (anybody else ever done this?) That I am going to make my first Apple/Mac purchase of a Mac Book Pro, but decided to wait on the Core 2 Duo chip. Now several weeks later, still no mention of the Core 2 Duo machines. I realize a response would be based on pure speculation, but being new to the Apple/Mac world I don't know if I am going to be waiting days, weeks or months. I was hoping some announcements would be made at Photokina but no such luck.
Thanks,
J. Paul
One critical issue must be made clear: serious photoshop work is severely hampered by the 2GB maximum memory of the MacBook Pro; Photoshop will eat up all the memory and the virtual memory system will thrash (lots of disk activity, things slow to a crawl).
This is the #1 reason that a MacBook Pro might not be a good choice as a main machine for some users. Were it to include up to 4GB, it could be a viable replacement for a desktop machine even for Photoshop jockeys. Dumb, dumb, dumb choice by Apple. But I think it's true in the PC world too (not sure though).
These remarks are in the context of opening multiple 16-bit Canon 5D or Nikon Dx files, maybe with a few layers. Opening 1 or 2 such files will be just fine.
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White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
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