I would like your opinion Please

In which case could I suggest that you visit an Apple store?

For a start you don't get the sales pitch, just honest advice really (at least in the UK this has been true!) and if you are lucky, one of the staff should be a keen photographer. Being able to have a chat for an hour with someone who was a keen photographer and designer, and being shown how it all works and get advice at the same time was invaluable before we took the plunge with the Mac Pro. It took months of dithering before we bought it, that one hour chat sealed the deal and was very informative.

Apple do fill their stores with part time staff from all walks of creative life, so it is a fantastic place to take your time and have a good play before you make any decisions. You may not want a Mac, that's fine, but the experience you get in one of their stores, really should help you with your decision making. At the very least, every machine on display has photo editing software and photo samples on them, which you will certainly need to make informed decisions!

Good idea if you dont mind paying three times as much for a machine that does nothing more than a standard pc!

That's constructive advice. Instead of standing on the sidelines and denigrating all the mac users on this forum, why don't you offer some evidence to back your claims up?

Let me guess - when you bought your PC you went for the cheapest option available?

Do you also drive the cheapest car available? All cars do the same thing, right?

You probably also got the cheapest stereo, DVD player, cooker, fridge, washing machine and microwave. If you didn't I must question why not - the cheap ones all do the same things. Is that not correct?

And how many PC shops do have staff who are knowledgeable about their products ?

Oh I don't mean just how the PC works - I mean how other programmes integrate with it .

Apple do offer teaching sessions and workshops staffed by folk who actually DO things - compose music using the programmes , take photographs of high quality using the Apple Software .

Most workshops are FREE - that wonderful word

Sigh, here we go again.

Yes it is a good idea, no, it's not 3x the price, yes it does do more than a standard PC, it can run Mac software as well as Windows (and before another argument about that starts, I am talking about doing it legally).

Does giving good advice always have to end up with this kind of response, it's childish and silly. Let the OP try and make his own mind up please.

After all I did say this :-


And by that, if you didn't get it, was good advice because the original post was asking about considering a laptop for photo editing instead of a desktop.

Where else do you suggest he goes to find the following to try out:-

A laptop with a glossy screen and high resolution
A laptop with a matte screen and high resolution
A laptop with a glossy screen with a lower resolution
A laptop with a matte screen with a lower resolution
An all in one desktop with a glossy screen
A desktop machine with a 30" matte screen with very high resolution.
A... I think you might get the idea now, and there are other options as well.

Now, presuming that you have managed to find a store that sells all of those options, and has them all on display, and has them all open for you to use (not with password protected screen savers so you can't even try them out!!!), and has an internet connection on all of them, and has knowledgeable staff that can show and train you how to use them properly, the other thing you might need to be able to work out if you can happily edit away on a laptop would be some software and some photo examples.

In every Apple store, every machine has installed:-

The latest version of iPhoto with example photo albums
The latest version of Aperture with example photo albums
The latest version of Photoshop, you can use the example photos available on all machines including RAW and JPEG files.

So, if you can tell me what else compares to that, and how it is bad advice, I would really really (no, honestly I really would) like to know.

Add to that Staff who are enthusiastic about the stuff they sell

I hate to be a spoil sport, but if Steven really does live in Wyoming, visiting an Apple store will have to be a holiday of a few days, since the closest one is at least 500 miles away. link Thus he may have to rely on what is local or the internet.

The Photomonk

Sorry Unlocker, I am not having a dig at any members here, just at Apple.

My point was and still is if you buy Apple, then you are paying a premium just for the name.

Apple are the only people that make Apple computers and therefore set thier prices as they wish.

The second side to my point is that you can anything a mac can do on a pc.

Also if you earlier in the thread i did offer some advice.

I found it again,

check out the w700 series on the lenovo website

It also has retractable 10" second screen. Very innovative, i have not seen either of these features anywhere else (including apple (dont shout at me))

Ah yes and no.
It's super that Apple now use Intel and Nvidia.
If you know what to get and are a bit handy you could buy a laptop and install Mac on it, now don't say it's against the rules.
It's true you go against the user agreements off Apple but Apple didn't provide you those agreements when/before buying so they are invalid in Europe.

As for prices link

And?

If you buy Pentax lenses (and i'm thinking specifically tokina co-designed ones), then you are paying a premium just for a name as well:-

For example the 12-24mm in Pentax at Warehouse Express is £965, the same specification lens in Canon fit is £430, more than double the price. (and before anyone points out the small, yet subtle differences, I am using this example for the flawed 'well it does the same bloody thing and is twice the price' argument!)

If I was to use your kind of flawed argument, then my Renault has to be better than an Aston Martin, because its cheaper and does the same thing.

Apple sell their computers as premium products, so yes they are more expensive. So is that lens, but we're both still on a Pentax forum.

Different products sell at different prices and appeal to different people with different criteria. If you took a Dell and slapped an Apple badge on it and charged more, then yes, you are paying a premium for a name.

If it's a different product, with a different operating system, with different design and a different user experience, then you are paying a premium for a product.

I'm sorry, but I still don't get your point.

I was just pointing out the price difference for a machine that does the same task. You seem to be very agressive towards me for making this point. Is it because you feel some sort of buyers remorse and feel like you have to defend your decision to buy Apple?

Look, if the OP wants an Apple and understands the difference (including the price) then i`m not going to tell him he made a bad choice. At the end of the day you can edit phots on a mac, and you can edit photos on a pc. Neither will do it faster or better than the other. On the other hand an Aston Martin will go faster, and do things that your Renault cannot.

Don't try and turn things around now. It was you who started this.

And you still haven't answered my question about whether you always buy the cheapest product. Got something to hide, have we? Bought a branded telly instead of a Goodmans? Not driving a Hyundai? Watching DVDs on your Sony player instead of a £15 Argos one?

But Tim do you think the Apple computers are worth the price when looking at the hardware?
You can easily compare them now since they use the same hardware as PC do.

If you could easily install Mac on a PC just like Windows or Linux, would you still buy a Apple computer then and do you think Apple could still sell them at those prices as they do now?