32 ms·

My wife is a photographer and works with large RAW files. Her year-and-a-bit-old MacBook Pro is a bit of a dog and she needs something more powerful. She was c

My wife is a photographer and works with large RAW files. Her year-and-a-bit-old MacBook Pro is a bit of a dog and she needs something more powerful. She was considering a Mac Pro but I guess that's out the door now. For those of you in a similar situation, what do you do? Does an iMac cut it, or have you moved over to Windows?

dman 14y ago
Get the HP Z820 or Dell T7600 / T5600. Theyre both very well engineered. I bought a Dell T5600 and I am amazed how quiet it is given that it has two eight core xeons and a graphics card. That being said the HP is available with liquid cooling and would be just as quiet.
wooster 14y ago
I have the previous gen iMac with the best graphics card config and Aperture flies compared to on any of my other machines. It's definitely up to the task.
Osmium 14y ago
The new iMacs have gorgeous screens with great colour reproduction, so I imagine that's what's most important to a photographer. Specs are fine: up to 3.4GHz i7, 32 GB RAM, SSD/HDD Fusion drives, 2GB 680MX, and even with a custom config would still be cheaper than Mac Pro (though, naturally, much more expensive than building your own). The new MacBook Retinas are great for photography too and plenty beefy enough, though will probably need a supplementary external monitor. On the subject of the Mac Pros themselves, speculation here: http://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/17mzf5/apple_to_discontinue_mac_pro_in_europe_in_march/c871b96 http://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/17mzf5/apple_to_disco... is that it's because they draw too much power when switched off but still plugged in. As for those worrying Apple's discontinuing Mac Pros they're on record as saying there are new ones coming, so this just means they're probably coming sooner rather than later: http://www.macrumors.com/2012/06/12/apple-spokesperson-confirms-new-mac-pro-and-imac-designs-likely-coming-in-2013/ http://www.macrumors.com/2012/06/12/apple-spokesperson-confi...
- potatolicious 14y ago
  > "The new iMacs have gorgeous screens with great colour reproduction" IMO not good enough for professional image work. The LED backlighting gives the panel more consistent, longer life, but also means a pretty dramatic reduction in color gamut. Even the Dell UltraSharp series will soundly beat out the 27" iMac display in every color accuracy measure, and those are on the lowest end of the professional scale - Eizo, NEC, and others have even more exacting panels. The issue isn't performance - I agree a top-line iMac will trounce practically any image you throw at it (short of, say, the 100MP images coming out of a Phase One back), but the monitor is a big problem. Professionals frequently invest multiple thousands in a monitor that will last a long time - they aren't interested in throwing it out every time they need to upgrade the CPU.
  - Osmium 14y ago
    > Professionals frequently invest multiple thousands in a monitor that will last a long time - they aren't interested in throwing it out every time they need to upgrade the CPU. Definitely agreed with that -- the iMac screen certainly isn't suitable for a lot of pros, but it ultimately depends on what you're doing and what your budget is. The iMac screens are still much better than a lot of what's out there, and price-wise is actually a good deal when you consider how much just the monitor would cost separately. I actually thought they used the same panels as the Dell UltraSharps? but I must be mistaken about that. Edit: from The Verge's review "...on the 27-inch behemoth, you get a 2560 x 1440 panel that's matched only by the Dell XPS 27." "The IPS panels are the same as in last year’s iMacs, but they’re better integrated now — Apple says that by laminating the display to the glass it reduced reflections up to 70 percent, and indeed the glare problems that beset so many displays are much less present here, though there's still some reflection and glare. The improved manufacturing also makes whatever’s on the screen feel closer to you, almost like things are jumping out of the panel. The display's glossy bezel, which houses its HD FaceTime camera, is actually the most reflective part of the whole machine now. I have to say, I was really surprised to see how much better the screen could be without a single change to the actual technology — but hey, I guess plastic surgery can work wonders. Both screens have fantastic color reproduction, are remarkably (like, blindingly) bright, and have near-180-degree viewing angles." http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/30/3709120/apple-imac-mac-mini-review http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/30/3709120/apple-imac-mac-mi...
masklinn 14y ago
> She was considering a Mac Pro but I guess that's out the door now. The Pro line will very likely (finally) be revamped this year, Cook pretty much stated so last year: http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/06/12/tim_cook_confirms_updated_mac_pro_coming_in_2013 http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/06/12/tim_cook_confirms_...
- astrodust 14y ago
  The regulations stipulate they can't ship any more of these to retailers after the next few months. If the stores already have stock, though, that's fine. Apple will probably just jam the channels with a four month inventory so there's no issues.
potatolicious 14y ago
I have a year-and-bit MacBook Pro that's still churning through large RAW files like a champ. I find that HDD I/O is the greatest bottleneck in that use case - are you running a SSD or a hard drive? Bear in mind also that mine is the i7 + maxed out RAM, which helps also.

dman 14y ago

Get the HP Z820 or Dell T7600 / T5600. Theyre both very well engineered. I bought a Dell T5600 and I am amazed how quiet it is given that it has two eight core xeons and a graphics card. That being said the HP is available with liquid cooling and would be just as quiet.

wooster 14y ago

I have the previous gen iMac with the best graphics card config and Aperture flies compared to on any of my other machines. It's definitely up to the task.

Osmium 14y ago

The new iMacs have gorgeous screens with great colour reproduction, so I imagine that's what's most important to a photographer. Specs are fine: up to 3.4GHz i7, 32 GB RAM, SSD/HDD Fusion drives, 2GB 680MX, and even with a custom config would still be cheaper than Mac Pro (though, naturally, much more expensive than building your own). The new MacBook Retinas are great for photography too and plenty beefy enough, though will probably need a supplementary external monitor. On the subject of the Mac Pros themselves, speculation here: http://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/17mzf5/apple_to_discontinue_mac_pro_in_europe_in_march/c871b96 http://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/17mzf5/apple_to_disco... is that it's because they draw too much power when switched off but still plugged in. As for those worrying Apple's discontinuing Mac Pros they're on record as saying there are new ones coming, so this just means they're probably coming sooner rather than later: http://www.macrumors.com/2012/06/12/apple-spokesperson-confirms-new-mac-pro-and-imac-designs-likely-coming-in-2013/ http://www.macrumors.com/2012/06/12/apple-spokesperson-confi...

potatolicious 14y ago
> "The new iMacs have gorgeous screens with great colour reproduction" IMO not good enough for professional image work. The LED backlighting gives the panel more consistent, longer life, but also means a pretty dramatic reduction in color gamut. Even the Dell UltraSharp series will soundly beat out the 27" iMac display in every color accuracy measure, and those are on the lowest end of the professional scale - Eizo, NEC, and others have even more exacting panels. The issue isn't performance - I agree a top-line iMac will trounce practically any image you throw at it (short of, say, the 100MP images coming out of a Phase One back), but the monitor is a big problem. Professionals frequently invest multiple thousands in a monitor that will last a long time - they aren't interested in throwing it out every time they need to upgrade the CPU.
- Osmium 14y ago
  > Professionals frequently invest multiple thousands in a monitor that will last a long time - they aren't interested in throwing it out every time they need to upgrade the CPU. Definitely agreed with that -- the iMac screen certainly isn't suitable for a lot of pros, but it ultimately depends on what you're doing and what your budget is. The iMac screens are still much better than a lot of what's out there, and price-wise is actually a good deal when you consider how much just the monitor would cost separately. I actually thought they used the same panels as the Dell UltraSharps? but I must be mistaken about that. Edit: from The Verge's review "...on the 27-inch behemoth, you get a 2560 x 1440 panel that's matched only by the Dell XPS 27." "The IPS panels are the same as in last year’s iMacs, but they’re better integrated now — Apple says that by laminating the display to the glass it reduced reflections up to 70 percent, and indeed the glare problems that beset so many displays are much less present here, though there's still some reflection and glare. The improved manufacturing also makes whatever’s on the screen feel closer to you, almost like things are jumping out of the panel. The display's glossy bezel, which houses its HD FaceTime camera, is actually the most reflective part of the whole machine now. I have to say, I was really surprised to see how much better the screen could be without a single change to the actual technology — but hey, I guess plastic surgery can work wonders. Both screens have fantastic color reproduction, are remarkably (like, blindingly) bright, and have near-180-degree viewing angles." http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/30/3709120/apple-imac-mac-mini-review http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/30/3709120/apple-imac-mac-mi...

masklinn 14y ago

> She was considering a Mac Pro but I guess that's out the door now. The Pro line will very likely (finally) be revamped this year, Cook pretty much stated so last year: http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/06/12/tim_cook_confirms_updated_mac_pro_coming_in_2013 http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/06/12/tim_cook_confirms_...

astrodust 14y ago
The regulations stipulate they can't ship any more of these to retailers after the next few months. If the stores already have stock, though, that's fine. Apple will probably just jam the channels with a four month inventory so there's no issues.

potatolicious 14y ago

I have a year-and-bit MacBook Pro that's still churning through large RAW files like a champ. I find that HDD I/O is the greatest bottleneck in that use case - are you running a SSD or a hard drive? Bear in mind also that mine is the i7 + maxed out RAM, which helps also.