New art student, what kind of Mac?


Recommended Posts

I will be going back to college soon and I was wondering what kind of mac I should get. I am a windows user as of right now, but I've been swayed to the Mac side. I really just don't know what the performance difference is like between an iMac and a Power Mac. Really all I want to be able to do is run Office(or Office-like apps) and Adobe Photoshop well. I'm sure, it being an art college, I may end up doing video stuff at some point. Price does and doesn't matter too much. I mean I can hold off and save forever to get the hottest Powermac out, or I could just buy what is needed to do what I want right now. So what exactly would be the right kind of mac for me?

Link to comment
https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/223644-new-art-student-what-kind-of-mac/
Share on other sites

Consider also buying the PowerBook as it can handle Photoshop well, and gives you the added portability you might need while attending college. If you go with either the 12" or 15" (to a lesser extent) you can just hook it up to an external screen at home if additional screen real estate is needed.

Consider also buying the PowerBook as it can handle Photoshop well, and gives you the added portability you might need while attending college. If you go with either the 12" or 15" (to a lesser extent) you can just hook it up to an external screen at home if additional screen real estate is needed.

Yep. :yes:

I'm going into Graphic Design next year. Now I don't know about their stance on using your own computer for the work, I'm sure they'd rather you learn on systems that they've pre-configured with all the tools you'd need, but if you want to go the desktop route, I'd get a new iMac. They're really fast (and I only used the 17" 1.6GHz version) and have a great display giving a lot of working space. Plus, they start out cheaper than a 15 or 17" PowerBook.

If you want to get a portable, the PowerBook is still a great tool and plenty fast for Photoshop and such, and looks great when presenting client work (I have experience in this already... they fell in love with it). My 15" has a good amount of working space that really helps out in those late night design and code sessions where I can see all my work. Widescreen displays are definitely a plus!

If you want to max the RAM on those, they can take 2GB, I STRONGLY ADVISE that you do NOT order your RAM from Apple. They charge DOUBLE for what you can get online through a site like Newegg or through DealRAM. I can't believe people would pay that much...

Anyways, it's all up to you. I'd advise checking out your local Apple Store and trying out all the machines and get a feel for them since they have all the Adobe, Macromedia, and Apple applications installed on them, along with a lot more third party ones.

thanks for the tip on buying ram, that'll be a great money saver. do macs use the same type of ram pc's use? if so, what kind? i will definately have to find an apple store around here. i really need to try out one more extensively. Also, what happens with the warranty and all if i add my own ram? I am used to doing with a pc and never worried about the warranty when i worked with them cause i could always go out and get the parts i needed. But with a mac, i dunno if thats gonna be a viable solution, so I'm a little worried about voiding the warranty.

Also, whats the deal with using a twobutton scroll wheel mouse on a mac? If i use one, what would the right click work like? I really dunno if I'd need one, I'm just used to using one as a windows user all these years. And my wacom tablet should work just fine on a mac?

edit: i just saw wht type of ram it uses on the mac site...

You can get a Two-Button Mouse with scroll if you like. Mac OS X has contextual menu's just like Windows, the difference is that unlike Windows, you don't necessarily HAVE to access these menu's to achieve results. You'll probably come to realize you don't need to right click an awful light - if at all if you really wanted to! This is why Apple continues to ship one button mice, and personally i prefer it.

I have a Graphire2 mate, and its no problem. You will also come to see 'Inkwell' which is a handwriting recognition technology embedded into the OS. Think something like what's probably on Windows XP Tablet Edition. Pretty cool stuff.

RAM? If you're unsure, when the time comes, if you go through Crucial.com, you pick your computer manufacturer and then the model and specs, so in truth, you wouldn't even NEED to KNOW the spec of RAM, Crucials' database would have you covered - as long as you know you have an iMac, and not a PowerBook for example! :p :laugh:

Installing RAM won't void your warranty.

http://www.apple.com/retail is your best bet for finding local Apple Retail Locations.

You can use a two-button mouse with OS X if you like. I use a Microsoft Wireless Intellimouse Explorer 2.0 with mine and it has 4 buttons. I only use 3 though (left, right, and back... forward is configured too but I don't use it).

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Posts

    • My comment was intended to be humorous. Since I believe scientists already knew it since, as scientists, they understand relatively.
    • Surprise Execs are dumb. I hope the rehired engineers said were not coming back until we get 2x our salary.
    • Ford execs say they made a mistake when they replaced human engineers with AI by David Uzondu Ford recently announced that over the last three years, it's had to rehire about 350 "gray beard" engineers to mentor younger staff and reprogram diagnostic systems and AI tools that were failing to meet up to quality expectations. The company's VP of vehicle hardware engineering, Charles **** said that leaders overlooked the deep experience of veterans who survived many product cycles. **** admitted that simply replacing them with AI was a huge mistake, and that while AI is "a fantastic tool," it remains "only as good as the information you use to train it." The rehired engineers now run mandatory meetings to troubleshoot vehicles and reprogram automated engineering software and AI tools to prevent glitches before production. These technical specialists hunt for failure points before parts ever reach the plant floor, helping prevent the massive recalls and defects that previously cost the company billions as it aims to cut one billion dollars in expenses this year. In last year's JD Power Quality Survey, an annual study that measures the quality of a car during the first three months of ownership, Ford finished 10th among mainstream brands and scored below the industry average. But this year, JD Power ranked the automaker as the top mainstream brand, placing it above the likes of Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co. Ford attributed this massive improvement directly to the expertise of these returned engineers. Ford's realization that AI cannot magically design and test quality vehicles without senior human oversight is just the tip of the iceberg. When Careerminds looked at companies that conducted AI-driven layoffs, researchers found out that 35.6% of those companies had to rehire more than half of the employees they previously fired. Another 32.7% had to rehire between 25% and 50% of them. In 2024, Sebastian Siemiatkowski, CEO of Klarna, proudly announced that its new chatbot was doing the work of 700 full-time customer service agents. As a result, the fintech company froze hiring and cut hundreds of positions. But by mid 2025, and into 2026, Klarna was scrambling to recruit human agents again because customer satisfaction had plummeted. It turns out, while AI is very good at answering basic questions like how to check an account balance, when faced with complex customer issues that require nuance, the thing usually resorts to the unhelpful, robotic corporate jargon we all know and love.
    • Free AI in IDEs is shifting to paid models Or you know, you could just learn to actually design and code apps, use frameworks to handle the repetitive parts and not use AI at all - and voila... free for life!
    • In a sane world US antitrust laws wouldn't even allow these companies to be in the position to be subjected to EU directives. As you say, better than oligarch nothing.
  • Recent Achievements

    • Week One Done
      xvvxcvv earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • One Month Later
      xvvxcvv earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Enthusiast
      Xonos went up a rank
      Enthusiast
    • Conversation Starter
      Admir earned a badge
      Conversation Starter
    • First Post
      The_Focal_Point earned a badge
      First Post
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      405
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      169
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      129
    4. 4
      neufuse
      69
    5. 5
      Xenon
      68
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!