Im saving up for an expensive mac (still not sure if I want a laptop or desktop) for production. I plan to use all Adobe products, Final Cut Studio, Garage Band, and other production software for it.

Now that being said, ill also use it for personal use too like browsing and listening to music. So, is there anything I should know before I start using it? Are there ANY good AV software for it or are they not so good (I am a tech geek so I know there are no major mac viruses yet, I just dont want to be unprotected when the day comes even though I never get viruses on windows)? What are your thought on getting a laptop or desktop? I plan to spend at least $4,000 or close to it regardless of the type, since I need all the power I can get. It will take me a while to get that money, so new versions will be out probably

The only problem is, I doubt I could run two high-powered desktops at the same time in my room (windows PC will be for programming and general use too) but I really could use the power of a desktop (especially for video production). I guess I could get parallels or something.

Anyway, let me know what you guys think and any advice you could give me, please do

Oh, is there a screen recorder on the Mac like Camtasia is on Windows?

For media production there is nothing better than a desktop (in both mac or windows based pcs) but the Macbook Pro its not too shaby either and it can be upgraded manually pretty easy to 4GBs of RAM, I mean, if you also would like some portability with your projects.

As far as I know McAfee has an OS X of its antivirus.

In your case i'd go with a MacBook Pro with 4GB of RAM, unless you feel you need a 24" screen, in that case get the iMac with 4GB

As for Viruses, seriously man, common sense will solve 99% of virus issues on all platforms. All Anti-Virus will do is slow down the machine big time, and norton and mcafee do more damage than good.

As for a screen recorder, IShowU is what I use, brilliant little application.

Your other general apps include, Safari, Mail, Adium, Skype (maybe), Transmission, Transmit. You can find all kinds of info on the Mac Software forum.

Depends of the projects. Most of my scanned films are over to 13,000 x 8,000 pixels. The bigger the screen the better.

How can you know if there is any 'good' mac antivirus software, if none of them have a chance to be tested yet.

It is best to save your money and go without antivirus software for your Mac right now.

When a virus does come, news will quickly spread around the Mac newswire. There will be 4 possible outcomes to it:
- Workarounds will be available to avoid it, and manual instructions will be available to remove it.
- Someone will release a freeware tool to protect/clean the virus
- Apple will release a freeware tool/Software Update to protect/clean the virus
- If an antivirus product is required, a clear favourite will emerge from the community as to which one should be used.

Yeah, I sometimes turn off auto protect on windows, even though windows users complain what I do I have never gotten a virus on Windows.

I was either thinking the Mac Pro or the MacBook Pro

As of right now (if I had the money) this is what I would get:

Mac Pro:
Two 3.0GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
4GB (4x1GB)
320GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 512MB

MacBook Pro
2.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM - 2x2GB
200GB Serial ATA @ 7200 rpm
SuperDrive 8X DVD+R DL/DVD+RW/CD-RW)
MacBook Pro 17-inch Hi-Resolution Glossy Widescreen Display

I think the Mac Pros are overpowered in all honesty. For what you're doing I dont see any need for a machine that expensive.

Future Proof: Mac Pro + Snow Leopard next year + CS5 suite in about three years = A monster machine sporting a very optimized OS running very optimized apps. A setup like this can last 5 years or even more.

Hell, my lowly MacBook Pro will fly with that combination of software.

BTW, Who rated this with one star? Dont be immature pricks and let the man choose. Talk about insecurity.

ScreenFlow.

Seriously? My current computer is WAYY too slow (Core 2 E6600, 4GB of ram, Photoshop CS3) Using photoshop with a large amount of layers and wallpaper size documents really slows my computer down.

Heavy video, audio, AND image production will require as much power as possible wont it?

A Core2 with 4GB of RAM running on a 64-bit operating system should fly along even using a ton of Photoshop layers, hell I used to work with PSDs with 50+ layers at a resolution of 20000x10000+ on a Pentium 4 with no major slowdowns.

I know this is a Mac section, but what OS and Anti-Virus do you have?

Sounds strange, thats not a bad system at all. Maybe you have some software or even some hardware problems.

As I said before, I work with images that are hundres of megs, even some psd files over 1gb and while its true its not a totally smooth experience its not way too slow.

I asked for help on this a few months ago here, and loads of other places and nobody could help me out. I tried all new hardware, formatting, different ram quantities, both 32-bit and 64-bit, and both XP and Vista. XP performs just as bad, and sometimes worse. Games/movies lag every few seconds (jumping occurring) sometimes. Yes I have tried doing these things on a clean boot, no AV on, and nothing running in the BG but I still experience problems.

Sometimes it takes 1 minute or so to open My Computer or a program.

Im hoping a mac would be better for design since im tired of spending loads of money to fix a problem like this

The way I see it is Windows users just don't understand how powerful hardware really is. These C2D's these days are amazing. Windows, in a way just builds up some stupid windows mentality among users that they need faster hardware, when in all honesty I just think they need a faster OS.

Now your spending $4000? You don't need to. For what you said, I would recommend a MBP, even the base spec. Or any of the iMacs. Whichever your choice make sure you get minimum 4GB RAM to start with, add more in later years if required. The difference RAM makes in OSX is by far the greatest in terms of overall system performance. Performance difference so large that I am confident that my 2.0GHz C2D could last me another 5 years if I wanted it to, so long as you got a nice amount of RAM.

Don't know why people come in here asking if they should get a laptop or desktop to be honest. I mean thats up to do, whether you need portability or not.

Either way a system running MacOS will fulfill your needs. Hell, Id be pretty sure you could even get away with a MB using a X1300 integrated. But im not sure how much graphics power Final Cut etc uses. Which is why I say any of the MBP's will do you nicely.

You must have some problem somewhere with your system, it should run everything (inc Photoshop) just fine. You should not experence any 'lagging' video nor should it take one minute for a new Explorer window to appear.

Even if I edit huge audio files of video files a laptop will be good enough? With my experience with my current E6600 has me worried.

With a desktop I could get 8GB of ram, 8 cores, and more space for around the same price range.



I tried everything possible, and spent months trying to solve it. Maybe I keep getting bad hardware While I am saving for a mac, im going to upgrade this computer one last time with a new motherboard and either an E8400 or a quad core

I wouldn't bother upgrading that other computer unless you used an OS on it that could actually use the hardware available to it. Say if you put some linux distro on it, it would be a very nice computer. But would probably lack all the commercial software that you require.

I say this because I got friends that run Vista and my brothers 900MHz eeePC (running Ubuntu) performs faster then their C2D rigs (general OS performance, not Photoshop or anything related).

On another note, I really dont know exactly how much processing power you require for the work you do. But non-the-less ridding yourself of this windows mentality concept should apply.

Remember though, with a MBP - The Genius's at  HQ have figured out a way to enable the GPU to execute instructions meant for the CPU. Effectively making the GPU another CPU. Amazing. Thats coming in Snow Leopard though, whenever that may be.

Perhaps goto an Apple Center and ask them there if you can try it out. Install your software there and then see if it is fast enough for you.

Yeah, try replacing the motherboard. Shouldn't run you more than $150 for a good one. Personally I'm skeptical of nForce based motherboards these days.

Not discouraging you from diving into Apple hardware, but your computer's far from 'slow.'

No matter what I do to this PC, ill get a mac. If im a true computer geek, its about time I learn OSX

Edit: Whats the best motherboard for the E8400/E8500 around $200?

Never buy RAM from Apple. They charge a ridiculous amount for it. I bought 4GB (2x2GB) of RAM from Macsales.com for $220, for a total of 6GB in my machine. Apple wants $500 just for 4GB.

And second of all, you don't need the eight core Mac Pro, considering that there are not many, if any, apps that will use all eight cores. Just get the fastest quad core you can, and use the extra money to get more RAM. The Mac Pro can hold up to 32GB, so I think you'll be set.

8GB should last me a while anyway

Congrats on your decision to purchase a Mac, I don't think you will regret it.

From what you are saying here, your problem is very easily resolved. If you are going to be doing that much work on the machine you will want the Mac Pro, notebooks are wonderful however for the type of work you are mentioning I would want redundancy in hard drives (RAID) to protect my data which is something that just can't be done on a Laptop.

The additional factor is that you could very easily kill off your Windows PC with a Mac Pro through the use of Boot Camp or a virtualization software such as Parallels Desktop for Mac. Both solutions provide you the ability to run your PC oriented software from a single machine at greater than native, or native, speeds depending upon the applications. Depending on which applications you use currently on your PC one solution or the other may be more suited, and if you cared to post those applications here I'm sure that someone or I can help you determine the best solution for you.

When viewing the Apple Refurbished Store, I was able to locate the following machine to give you an idea what you can get there for the approximate $4,000 budget you mentioned.

Refurbished Mac Pro 8-core 3.2GHz Intel Xeon
Two 3.2GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors
2GB (2 x 1GB) of 800MHz DDR2 ECC fully buffered DIMM
500GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s 7200-rpm hard drive
Two 16x SuperDrives (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 512MB (two dual-link DVI ports)

Your price: $4,099.00

Memory upgrades from Crucial can be found at http://www.crucial.com/store/listparts.asp...%20%288-core%29.

I feel that is a wonderful and powerful workstation for virtually any task you could throw at it.

Now, as for Anti-Virus... Don't waste your computing cycles with a program that has no purpose at this time. Antivirus for the Mac is, at current, a pointless endeavor. Should viruses start to become common place for the Mac, which I doubt will happen in the near future, you then can look into a product to take care of the problem. If you exercise caution in your day to day operations, such as not providing your Administrator Password to any applications you are not familiar with, you will be fine.

If I can help further with this, please don't hesitate to let me know.

So in 3 years, the machine will be very good, and can then last 5 years or more? Macs aren't made of magic hardware, it may "last" as in it won't break down but it won't be great in 7 years just because it's a mac.

Come on now, "symbiotic relationship", you sound like an Apple sales rep, i would bet there's more 7 year old PCs than there are 7 year old macs.

I would greatly disagree with that statement, when I get to work tomorrow I'll see if I can't find the Gartner article about Apple Lifecycles. (Unless someone can beat me to it.)

Actually, just had a thought, isn't Snow Leopard going to be incompatible with some older macs?

It is said to be, however until the final product is released it will be impossible to know for sure.

Great relative to what?

PC gaming has created a set of mind where its necessary to upgrade every year, but for other tasks that machine will be powerful enough for years to come. There are people that still use Amigas for video production for example, I know people that still use G5 or even G4 machines for music production that are very well equiped and can be even considered beast machines today. Everything depends of how well you use your equipment, for what tasks.

For example, a photographer who uses photoshop or any other photo manipulation software for just photo retouching and processing dont need an ultra machine or even the latest software. A top of the line Powermac G4 with Tiger and Photoshop CS or CS2 if you will its more than enough. In my opinion thinking otherwise its just another example of a consumer mindset.



Honestly Mac's lifecycle its way longer than PC's. Let me do a search for the articles and studies.

Also, that logic its a little flawed. Of course there are more 7 year pcs than macs, pcs are a lot more. The true number to consider would be percentage of pcs that reach that age vs percentage of macs tha reach that age.

Thanks for all the advice. People keep telling me 8 cores is overkill and nothing uses it, but if im running Vista/XP with parallels (maybe both), editing HD size videos and large music files, working with wallpaper sized photoshop docs with many layers, and anything else, will all 8 cores be used? Meaning will I notice a difference between 4 cores and 8 cores?

Very few things will use that many cores, correct. That being said I've had both a 4 core and 8 core Mac Pro on my desk at work at one point in time and I can feel the difference between the models, the 8 core is slightly faster and feels more powerful when pushing heavy multitasking at it... Yes, it could be mental since I know it's more powerful, but it does feel faster to me.

Nothing uses all the cores NOW but I always think about the future. And since it seems you are doing HD media edition I would get a powerful machine that will last me for years.

Does the mac come with free drive imaging software like Norton Ghost?

you can use Carbon Copy Cloner. Free

But then theres time machine which is even better

Grand Central in Snow Leopard may mean that yes, 8 cores will become more useful.

Well, as a lifelong (25 years+) wintel user, who recently switched to Mac, for me, the decision on what to buy was simple.
I bought a macbook laptop for my general laptop usage, like surfing in the family room, outside, and doing light word processing and other basic pc tasks, and for use when traveling.
Its small, lightweight, and relatively inexpensive.


for my "main" unit I bought a Mac Pro, 2.8, with 4 gigs of ram, and installed another 4 gigs myself for a total of 8 gigs.
I do video processing, editing, and all sorts of other things, and never EVER notice any sort of slowdown or bottleneck.
Eventually, software is coming that will use your 8 cores, so, don't worry about "overkill" at this point.

To me, a Desktop blows away anything a laptop can do, and, if you are gonna spend 4,000 bucks, you can get afford to get both..
The lappy is around 1200 bucks, and the desk top is around 2800....

the difference in performance between the 2.8 and the 3.06 processor was minimal, so I used some of the savings between those 2 to get the extra 4 gigs of ram.
Use any other brand of RAM except Apples, and you save around 150 bucks on 4 additional gigs.

And, I installed symantec AV on this machine, only because you never know what you might be downloading, or what junk some emails may have attached or embedded in them, so, contrary to what alot of folks say here, I suggest having some sort of AV on the machine, just in case.
Besides, with 8 gigs of ram, i never notice any sort of performance hits since installing it, and now a days, you can never be too "protected".

Where I don't agree with your stance on Antivirus on the Mac, I will say you are 100% correct on not buying the RAM from Apple, it just isn't worth the excessive premium that is put on Memory from the stores and online store.

Crucial is my poison of choice for a Mac Pro.

You made the right choice. Never listen to anyone who tells you not to have anti-virus software. It's quite short-sighted. If nothing else, it prevents your Mac from being a conduit for Windows viruses. I'd rather give up a few processor cycles running AV software than send something on to my family.

@Cara, you are entitiled to your opinion, and, even though there aren't many, if any Mac SPECIFIC virus threats at this point, we ALL get "stuff" via email and other ways from our "friends" using Windows machines, (USB drives, cd/DVD's, etc.) and you never know what they might have accidentally given to you...
Kinda like having sex with someone without protection...you MAY not have a problem, and the person MAY seem "clean as a whistle", but is it worth the risk, when a little protection will ensure your safety?

@Chad, not sure I am giving up any processor cycles that I can even notice, with 8 gigs of RAM in this bad boy!

BTW Cara, you are one AWESUM resource here for all things Mac...Thanks for helping so many folks out all the time!

Does OS X allow you to, is it "assign affinity" so that, say, program x is run by core 1, and program y is run by core 2? I think it can be done under Windows...

If that can be set up, even manually, then 8 cores might be more worthwhile before Snow Leopard.

Generally though, I go for what I *need* as hardware is always getting cheaper. Why pay more for more than you need (like an 8 core that is still expensive), when you could wait three years until you actually need that much power, and get the same for less (when those 8 cores will surely be far cheaper).

nope, it doesn't allow for that...and, I never heard of windows being capable of that either..

Creative analogy.

I suppose I deal mainly with file transfer between Apple users and rarely actually forward non-secure files onto anyone so I don't give a lot of thought to what I might pass along in an email or other. All of the Windows Environments I have on my systems are sand-boxed, no direct interaction with the Mac OS portions of my system so I suppose to each their own. I run a clean and tight ship on my computers and my personal networks and rely on the security of the corporate network at work to insure I have no large problems there.

With that being said, if someone wants to run an Antivirus, be my guest, however the offerings for Mac OS are actually quite pitiful in both performance and availability due to the lack of demand for them at this time.

As for being a resource here, that is my goal. I'm here to help where I can, thank you for the compliment.

Wont opening the case void the warranty though? if I get 2GB then buy all 8 of crucial, I will need to open the case.

Also, Windows can manually manage cores, mac cant?:


EDIT: Are the SAS drives worth it?
# 300GB 15,000-rpm SAS [Add $650.00]

Processor affinity is supported by 10.5, but I have no clue how to set it manually. Leopard by itself attempts to keep a thread running on the same core/processor.

Controlling cores can be done through the Processor prefpane.

Memory is a user-serviceable component and won't violate your warranty to add.

As for SAS...all I can say is Holy Speed Batman. SAS is typically used on Servers when speed is needed to the extreme, those things are amazingly fast. They are actually the same drives from the Xserve server line.

So you recommend getting 4GB from Apple, then buy another 4 from somewhere else?

Never buy RAM from Apple! Stick with whatever the computer comes with, then order more from Crucial, MacSales, etc.

Agreed, never buy RAM from Apple, you will overpay hundreds of dollars. Go with base config on memory and then head for Crucial.

Just curious; do you know which brand of RAM are used in today's Macs on the market?

(and another plus one for Crucial )