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Should I be planning on a switch from Mac to PC


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Currently I have a competent, but somewhat elderly iMac. I’m stuck with the OS I have because upgrading would lose me Photoshop CS3 and the proper function of Aperture, which has to be replaced soon anyway. It’s already a bit twitchy and Apple is no longer maintaining it. I don’t game and I do use my computer for lots of other things, but mostly for a photography library.

 

I recently saw some youTube videos about Apple’s tendency to punish customers who break their internal rules even when they don’t know about them — the so called right of repair issue. In this YouTuber’s case, he is a channel that disassembles equipment and analyzes and tests it. They damaged their screen and CPU board and Apple refused to even allow their Apple stores (or anyone else) to sell them the part or to fix it for them (they weren’t wanting warranty service, they were just trying to buy the repair). That scares me frankly because having a multi thousand dollar computer that the manufacturer refuses to repair (even at normal prices) is a big risk for regular people.

 

So, I’m thinking that even though it will be a big job to even replace Aperture on my current computer with say Capture One, maybe it’s not that much more work to buy a PC and begin the job of transferring the files over an extended period of time to Capture One or something similar on that new PC, maybe onto a RAID array. I don’t have THAT many files, maybe 300-400GB, so a lot but not terabytes. Lots of files, but I can pare those down too before I transfer them. My understanding is that Capture One lets you create your own file structure which should be easier to do the next migration when it comes, and the sooner I start the process, the quicker it will go since I’m always adding new files. Note before I retired I was a software engineer working on PCs, so I know what Windows is like. I prefer MacOS, but I’m not religious about it.

 

Has anyone made this transition, and if so, can anyone offer any useful advice on the sort of PC to buy (or the kind of monitor) and the issues they might have run into? If I do make this transition, I might also go from iPad to Surface Pro somewhere along the line and maybe even to an Android phone. We’re really talking about a 5 year span or so for the total transition, if I do it.

 

So what do you think? Would a PC be just as good a platform for photography work? Would Capture One be a good program on PC? Note I’m reluctant to sign on to Adobe because I don’t like the subscription model. Before that I spent a LOT of money on Photoshop and Illustrator, but I always felt like I could control when I updated the programs depending on whether I thought the new product was worthwhile. Creative Live would give me no choice.

 

Thanks!

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Apple has a "preview" application that evaluates programs for the next OS (I think it's called migration assistant), and Photoshop PS3 came up on the list of applications that wouldn't work with the latest OS (and you can't "upgrade" to later versions of the OS earlier than the current latest one. So even though I'm running El Capitan, I can't upgrade to anything but the most recent and that wouldn't technically break Aperture but I asked around and I was told that it would work erratically --where CS3 wouldn't run at all). So sometimes in the next 2-3 years I will need a new computer and it either has to be a PC with a new photo management tool or I need to commit to a new Apple AND a new photo management tool anyway. So if I'm going to do that, I figure I might as well buy one that I can be sure I can be guaranteed to be able to repair. And maybe I WILL decide to play a few games, if that is possible on the new machine.

 

Besides which, Apple is pretty high handed in deciding what your needs are regardless of what you want -- floppy disks, CDs, DVDs, SCSI, headphone jacks, etc. And in the last decade, my Macs and IOS devices have gotten buggier and buggier. Maybe it's time for a change. Granted it's going to be a brutally hard change but maybe I'd be better off when it was done. I used to be able to update my Macs with memory and new hard drives and even new processors now and then, but these days you can't do ANYTHING without bringing it to the Apple Store and even then, very few upgrades can be purchased. It's pretty much just RAM these days. I took my old iMac into the Apple store to replace the DVD drive but they professed to not be able to get the part. It's only a little older than my current iMac.

 

Now on the positive side, Apple hardware tends to be nicely engineered and it tends to last quite a while in service. But those videos hit me hard because I had always believed that the reason I was using Macs was that I knew I could always bring them into the Apple store and get them fixed, no matter what. If that's not true, why am I spending more for Apple?

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I’ve always been a Mac person and swear by their products. While I had bugs in the early years (I’m talking the 80s), I haven’t experienced that sort of thing in more recent decades. CS3 debuted about 8-1/2 years ago, which is a long time in today’s digital world. I don’t get too much into the politics of Apple’s controls on fixing or replacing its hardware, so I won’t speak to that. If you’re going to change, I’d think it would be easier to stick with Mac and upgrade software as needed than to move to a PC, but of course that will be a personal decision. You’ll find the learning curve to go from CS3 to a more current version not so bad. There will be many more bells and whistles available, but you likely won’t care about most of them and won’t have to learn about them.
There’s always something new under the sun.
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I don't have the option of just buying a new copy of photoshop (Adobe won't sell me one). And I don't have the option of updating Aperture (they discontinued it). And despite being a PC programmer, I bought a mac in 1984 and have had them since. The only way to keep photoshop is to never upgrade my computer. And the truth is that I use the sophisticated part of photoshop pretty seldom these days. I do sometimes create layered documents unrelated to photography in Photoshop because it has layers. And I clone out dust (film) or artifacts sometimes (digital). It's a puzzle, but I am not, as an amateur, going to buy the Adobe subscription service. That decision is made.

 

The question is now where to go from there. I may indeed need an illustration program not made by Adobe in addition to a photo editor/management tool like Aperture has. Besides which, I'm not a deft hand with heavy editing in photoshop anyway. So I can adapt to Capture One or whatever program I end up with, as long as it has a fair range of options for light photo retouching. I just need the usual stuff -- reading raws, exposure, saturation, light retouching/clone stamp, curves/levels, etc. I'm pretty sure any photo management tool has that stuff these days.

 

Now upgrading to a PC won't be painless. I may have been a Visual Studio programmer, but I didn't have to MAINTAIN the computers. The corporation did all that. So doubtless there will be issues. I guess what I'm saying is that I figure that transitioning to a new iMac or a new PC is going to be pretty much the same amount of work because it's going to be transitioning the photo library to a new app which is going to take up 90% of the time and effort and there's nothing I can do about that. So this is a unique opportunity to shift, if I want to do so. Given my age, once I make this transition (no matter what I transition to) I may be using it for a LONG time.

 

My last two serious apple bugs were with my phone and iPad. The phone suddenly decided it would crash to the desktop every time you tried to listen to a podcast. This was annoying as it's 70% of what I use the phone for. It was about a week before there was another update that fixed the error ... I think, I also did a full restore on the phone at the same time. One of those, or a combination of the two fixed the problem. The other was that the iPad would reboot frequently and without any apparent pattern. It may have had a connection to the apple cover/keyboard but I could never figure out the pattern. Once again I did a full backup and then did a full restore. This meant I had to reenter all my passwords, but once that was done (and it was close because the connection with the cord seemed to have another bug -- it took me quite a while to get it in there so that it would have a stable connection), it seemed to work properly again. And the cable was reliable again too, I'm guessing that was a bug that was fixed by the restore as well.

 

Hardware has been a bit of an issue as well with the iPad keyboard. I'm on my 2nd one and I got the 2nd one free because I was getting weird intermittent errors which seemed to make the keyboard stop working. This was a known error, but Apple was only fixing them free if you knew the error existed and knew about the free replacement program which they were keeping very quiet about. I happened across it and brought in a printed screenshot of the apple site and the Forbes article on the problem. They replaced mine, and I appreciated them doing it. However that same day, a couple asked me in the mall (where the apple store was) food court about it and said they had just replaced theirs with the same issue. I told them about the replacement program. They didn't know about it and Apple had charged them full price for the replacement. I don't know about you, but that bothers me. It doesn't strike me as ethical behavior.

 

These days I wait a while before taking any OS update to see if there is a catastrophic problem associated with it and I try to research any problem before I talk to Apple. It saved me $200 last time. Plus unless I really need the new IOS features (which usually I don't) I just never upgrade to the next OS. Sorry if I sound wound up but I don't like this sort of thing from Apple OR Adobe. Sometimes I can do something about it and sometimes I can't but it factors into my decisions, and I think it should.

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I don't have the option of just buying a new copy of photoshop (Adobe won't sell me one). And I don't have the option of updating Aperture (they discontinued it).

 

The question is now where to go from there.

Don't do anything, stick with what you've got. Now keeping yourself safe from 'virus' and the like, (rare but still possible on the Mac) without OS updates alone might be an issue but practice safe computing on-line (maybe with a VPN). Hardware dies? You'll have backups and buying older Mac equipment on say Ebay is easy and the costs will continue to fall. There are enormous numbers of older Mac hardware for sale, I've done this just to run old and expensive software under OS9.

OR bite the bullet and upgrade. That means a replacement for Photoshop and Aperture. But you don't have to do this.

Author “Color Management for Photographers" & "Photoshop CC Color Management" (pluralsight.com)

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I do take non-OS upgrades, and Apple are still doing those sorts of updates. I'm just not taking updates that update me to a new OS generation. I just can't take Mojave. I probably have a few years at least before that becomes an issue. Realistically I have another decade and a half before my photography hobby becomes too physically strenuous. I am getting old and despite my attempts to maintain some level of fitness, I'm losing ground. Some of you might be older, but you're probably healthier.

 

As an added bonus, I would like to be able to make photo books and calendars as I used to from Aperture (before they cut that capability out of the software). I suspect I can do that online, and I need a good way to do that this year if I can.

 

You're also right that virus software would be a must with a PC. I have had home PCs before too, but it's been some time. I don't have a lot of room to maintain old machines. If I did an upgrade, I'd recycle my old iMac (the one that is currently serving as a YouTube box) and replace it with my current iMac and then put the new computer on my desk where my current iMac is. Realistically my current 4 year old iMac has another 2-3 years before it's too old to really be useable. My old iMac is now approaching 10 years old and it's really too old to do anything much. Also running El Capitan, it's so slow it's almost comical. The truth is that even if I didn't have the Photoshop CS3 issue, it's a mistake to take new Apple OSs beyond a certain point because what happens is that the new OS runs so slowly on the old machine that you'd have been much better off not upgrading. The hard part is deciding when to stop. I would probably have stopped soon anyway. Not this soon, but soon.

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I used PCs since the mid-80's, switching to Mac two years ago, and I'm not going back. The freedom you get with a PC with regard to software and hardware is freedom to really screw things up. Ever heard of DLL Hell? Since Apple keeps a close rein on hardware and software, there aren't many problems of that sort.

 

You can subscribe to Photoshop and Lightroom bundle for $10/month, and can install it on any platform you wish. You have two installs, and one can be for PC and the other MAC. Lightroom is the principal reason Aperture was discontinued.

 

I use an Apple Smart Pad for everything, in lieu of a mouse - audio, video and photography. I haven't seen anything like it for a PC, and I wouldn't do without it. You also have one contact list and one calendar for everything, not a separate for each program in a PC. That alone saves a lot of time and effort.

 

The down side is high initial cost and lack of flexibility. Buy the most memory, largest hard drive, fastest processor and bet graphics card you can afford. Other than memory, there aren't exchanges or upgrades later on. That said, an external drive with a Thunderbolt interface might as well be tucked inside the chassis. The integration is nearly perfect.

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Carbo_Dragon, I purchased a hand built Velocity Micro PC with a first generation i7 processor a few years back in 2009 and at the same time an i7 Mac. Both with 27 inch monitors. Both had 16 G of RAM They work equally well. I am currently looking at building a new PC since I use the PC as my primary photo editing platform and have added solid state hard drives to both my PC work station and my PC lap top. My present PC system will not allow me to upgrade to a super fast M.2 PCIe NVMe solid state drive and I have a need for speed since my current files are larger than the storage of my first computer. I think my MAC system, that I use extensively for office work and internet, is really fine but is no more reliable than my PC and has locked up much more often than the PC when over loaded. I like being able to look behind the curtains from time to time and Mac has evolved to allow that to some extent and as well the PC has developed a more elegant interface and better memory manegment with Windows versions 7, 8 and now 10. There are certainly benefits to going with the Mac. Price is not one of them and since I am a long time PC/Photoshop user I plan to stick with what brung me but I will also replace my Mac some day as well. I would start using Photoshop and or Light Room. I don't like subscriptions but I do have one for PS and Light Room Classic. If you get Light Room you will gain some nice sharpening and noise reduction tools as well as corrections for your lenses but at the same time will be obligating yourself to the Light Room file system with a hard drive that you will not be able to move around after the images have been edited. Good hunting
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The only Apple devices I own and use are Ipads and my iPhone. I was forced to buy a new iPad recently in that the Apple store in Houston where i live told me that the charging port on my old ipad could not be fixed and that my only alternative was to buy a new iPad. That kind of approach rules out their Mac products, either the desktop or laptops, for me.

 

In the past when I have been in the market for a new laptop pr desktop, their offerings were always at least $1000 more than windows based equivalents. I have always bought the windows based product and have never had any of the issues with widows that I read about all the time. That being said, my approach to buying any windows based desktop is to have it custom built so I know exactly what motherboard, etc is in it and that the software loaded is ONLY what I need and want. My laptops are from good reliable brands.

 

My desktops have been built by the local MicroCenter store here in Houston or other such store. For a digital photo desktop, I add extra fans to keep everything as cool as possible as heat is one of the killers of hard drives. I make sure it has all of the ports needed. If such a store is not in your city, check out the offerings at Puget Systems.

Customize a Photo Editing Computer - Puget Systems

 

You can use the info at their website to help you configure your own build. I use a NEC 32 inch monitor with SpectraView for calibration. With a desktop I would have a large SSD for operating programs, maybe a second SSD for a scratch drive and plenty of traditional internal drives for storage. And then external drives for backup.

 

I know of other photographers who were "Adobe experts" who have left the Adobe product family for Capture One Pro and love it. Others have gone to ON1 but at this time it does not support dual monitors. I am still using the Nikon software products but am searching for a different RAW processor. I am looking at Bridge and ACR and PS but they can be so cumbersome compared to what I am used to using and know how to use.

 

Check out the website of EJ Peiker and his newsletters as he knows 10x what I know.

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What is ON1?

 

I suspect that the power port is not fixable because these days they don't make LRU's (line replaceable units, military term) smaller than the board, where they used to take a soldering iron to the board to replace individual components. That said, I suspect lots of other maintenance shops would take a crack at actually fixing it, IF they weren't threatened with "excommunication" by Apple and cut off from the ability to order parts. Plus, theoretically a maintenance tech could order the whole CPU board for the iPad and end up charging you much less than the price of the whole device, if Apple would sell it to them. According to that YouTube channel, anyone who talks about Apple's policies gets banned from ordering parts. Anyone who orders parts that Apple decides they shouldn't have ordered, doesn't get the part but instead gets fined by Apple. I don't know that this is true, but it certainly sounds like Apple, and I've been buying Apple computers since 1984 and I have 6 apple devices right now. If this is true, it bothers me.

 

It's funny, Apple isn't a monopoly because PCs exist, yet they have essentially created a sort of monopoly out of a captive segment of the market. Yes I can buy a PC (and am considering doing so) but doing so is very expensive and time consuming. I have to rebuy programs (though I don't use that many these days) and apps and spend a bunch of work moving files over, figuring out what applications I need, and so on. The only thing that makes it more viable now (should I decide to do it) is that so much of the effort is going to be needed EVEN if I were to stay with Apple and simply select a new photography management tool. As far as I know, there is no Lightroom or Capture One command to dig into an Aperture library and import everything into the new tool. That said, the other stuff about buying a few programs (most of which are pretty cheap, not Adobe of course) and the effort to go through my files and move the important stuff over is in the noise. Note I also need a new backup strategy, but again because Apple has discontinued the Time capsule I have to do that all over again anyway too.

 

Usually staying with Apple is the far easier solution, but this time they're both hard. Though most of my work experience with PCs involved XP and Windows 7, I don't think learning Windows 10 would be a problem for me, and I might get the chance to play a couple of games on the PC instead of consoles and that might be fun, so there might even be fringe benefits. I'm still not looking forward to that massive migration of photographs though, even if I stay with the Mac.

 

Apple often makes it easy to stay within the Apple ecosystem and they also make it as hard as possible to leave.

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ON1 is a RAW processor. More info about their RAW processor is here: ON1 Photo RAW 2019 - Photo Editor and Lightroom Alternative

 

And training videos: Product Training – ON1

 

General info: ON1 – Photo Editing Apps Designed by Photographers

 

Right now I have one Sony Vaio 15 inch laptop running win 10. It has a 1 TB SSD. It is the best laptop I have ever owned and that includes two Dell XPS laptops. Unfortunately Vaio does not make a 15 in version of it anymore. And I have two desktops both running win 7. One is for general purposes and the other is for photo work. Both were custom built by Micro Center.

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So stop listening to some "youtube channel"

The Internet is such an incredible resource as long as one maintains a very healthy degree of skepticism and checks multiple sources before reaching conclusions. Specific sites and Youtube videos are much more effectively seen as a beginning and not an end.

There’s always something new under the sun.
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Somehow my time dealing with Apple in stores and over the phone doesn't make me think you're right.

 

And it was certainly true LAST time, when rather than Jobs dying, they kicked him out and tried to run Apple by themselves. They only avoided bankruptcy by the narrowest of margins. THAT time, things actually got better for a short time as they kicked some of Jobs strange ideas (like his no color idea and his idea that macs shouldn't have slots, etc.) to the curb. But once they had to actually decide what direction to go and what products to build, things fell apart. They finally came to a head when they tried to do a next generation MacOS and totally failed.

 

Maybe they're better prepared now, don't know. They are raising prices pretty fast and pretty consistently. That might have a pretty negative long term effect, we'll see. Raising prices because you can is dangerous. On the other hand it seems to be the direction Adobe is taking as well.

 

One problem with Apple is that for non professionals, the only real option for a desktop is an iMac. There is a Mac Pro but a) it's super expensive and b) it's kind of weird (and totally obsolete at this point). They're making an IMac Pro and I've seen it. It's a particularly big iMac but the price is $5K plus (and my pockets don't go that deep). I'd kind of like a desktop tower honestly with a larger screen, and though 27" is pretty good, having 30 or 35" would be even better but that isn't really an option. You can buy an iMac and ADD a monitor but I'm not sure I have enough desk space for that. See Apple knows what you want and isn't interested in what YOU think about the subject. You're just there to provide money to Apple. You're not allowed to actually decide what you want. It's one of those situations that if you want to buy Apple products, either you have to let them decide, or hope they are making products that sorta kinda approximate what you want. Sometimes that is true, sometimes not so much.

 

And yes you could also buy a macbook, and some are reasonably powerful and add a monitor, but I don't need the portability (and I already have a notebook). Don't know, still thinking.

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So what are you going to do about that, my dear Fred?

I have no plans to do much of anything about it. I was actually agreeing with your assessment. What brought out the rage this time, I'm not sure and don't want to know. I thought I was making a relatively benign comment. I think you just look for any excuse to go into a political tirade and rage. And you do it quite adeptly.

There’s always something new under the sun.
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Steve Jobs was an asshole who happened to be a visionary.

 

So was Richard Wagner -- there is a significant chance that talented people will have difficult and troublesome personalities.

 

Of course, lots of no-talents also are difficult...

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And cost. That Mercedes will probably want you to pay more than the Chevy.

for some of us, it's worth every penny. In fact Apple does make a number of items that are not "premium" priced, especially when you consider what comes built in.

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I never owned a Mac. I had to use some at work and survived, although a lot of things felt weird to me.

As far as gaming is concerned, ask yourself the question: "How willing are you to take a PC apart and blow dust out?" A posh CPU's TDP is usually in the 70 maybe 90W range and as long as you aren't batch converting RAW files it will most likely twiddle it's thumbs instead of "sweating" anything. A capable GPU has a TDP in the 250W range. Both devices are cooled by blowing, in the GPU's case lots of air through their metal parts. - Unfortunately a CPU custom cooler can be really big and that way provide you almost no long term hassle. GPU coolers OTOH have to stay comparably small and weren't designed by Dyson. You end with 9x the dust gathering capacity there and that does mean "trouble" in the foreseeable future.

I have opened office & printshop PCs that gave a decade of service and seen critical amounts of dust build up in my gaming GPUs within a year. - Yours might last 5 years unopened but I'd check it before it breaks.

 

I wouldn't worry much about transferring the few files you have. - It shouldn't take more than one night. I'd call restoring them from your DVD / CD backup (mentioned in another thread) a nightmare.

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for some of us, it's worth every penny. In fact Apple does make a number of items that are not "premium" priced, especially when you consider what comes built in.

 

Apple has changed a LOT over the years. To start with, ironically, there wasn't much you could upgrade about the 128K Mac. You had to bring it in to Apple to have it converted to the Fat Mac and/or the Mac Plus. Plus it had a tendency to catch fire without a lot of extra cooling (I saw it happen, though it was at work, not at home thankfully). I bought a fan for mine immediately. Eventually, you could upgrade your Mac somewhat and there was the flirtation with Mac clones. The Power Computing macs were truly outstanding machines, far better than the Apple Macs of that time -- they were fast, well made, and expandable. I bought one and even after the clones were all shut down, I kept that Mac for years because it was still faster than Apple's best machines for some time after. Not not every product is premium priced, but most are (the "Apple Tax"). The premium varies over time and with different products. I think we'd have a lot better Macs if Apple still had clones and was forced to compete in it's own "ecosystem." But Apple wouldn't be as wealthy certainly.

 

I've been using Apple products for about 35 years, though I only worked on Macs as a job once in the Apple II days. I certainly got the opportunity to see both sides being a windows programmer professionally while owning a Mac at home. Both have their pluses. I was lucky to use Microsoft's Visual Studio, which was the best development environment I've ever experienced, a truly great piece of software. But certainly during most of that time Windows usability trailed the Mac by a considerable margin in usability. But any company is only as good as their next product. Apple learned that when they almost went bankrupt.

 

The only reason you don't blow dust out of Apple computers is you can't open them. Doesn't mean they don't have dust in there, and their cooling solutions are usually not great. I bet I wouldn't like what I found in my iMacs if I could open them (which I can't). And my MacBookAir is pretty inexplicable sometimes in terms of when it turns it's fans on (and when it does it sounds like an airliner :eek:). I suspect my ancient youTube tasked iMac is dusty as heck inside. I might prefer being able to open them and clean them, maybe change the dust filters, if there are any.

 

Anyway, I know Apple pretty well and they do a lot of things well. They are probably the best industrial designers in the world. But that doesn't make them perfect, not by a long shot. And I think they're a bit less perfect today. It is no longer the case that Apples have less problems and bugs than Windows. That hasn't been true for a long time. Apple tends to try to hide it's errors and deny them (hence the secret replacement program for the iMac Keyboard that they don't tell you about unless you already know). Apple often doesn't fix a problem until they have no choice because it becomes a scandal. We're very lucky that Macs aren't targeted for viruses more. It's because there are so many more PCs, not because they're bulletproof. I've enjoyed my Apple devices over the years (in general) but I'm not blind to their faults, and I'm not blind to the faults of Windows machines either, and there are plenty.

 

Thanks, and Keep the thoughts coming. I wouldn't mind hearing what problems you have had with your windows boxes and what you might recommend for configuration if I do go that way. What type of configuration should I be looking for? Are there monitors better for photo editing? With Macs you tend not to have much choice unless you want a second monitor. Are GPUs useful for photo editing, and if so which ones? Do you use multiple monitors? If so do you have multiple of the same type to make the color the same on both or can you calibrate them? Does a gaming type PC work well for photo editing too (note I don't do video editing)?

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The only reason you don't blow dust out of Apple computers is you can't open them.

????

Apparently your Mac must have been the old "Fat Mac" (the Macintosh 512K), and even that could be opened with a simple, easily obtainable spread tool.

or maybe only iBooks or laptop Airs?

 

I've opened all of my Macs except the Air.

 

I've been using Macs since 1984. I worked on Windows and the Office for five years, and the Macs at home.

 

As for Windows, I foolishly let them upgrade automatically. At the end of five years all the non Microsoft programs were limping or dead. MS said it was the software programmers' fault, and guess what they said. I folded my tent and slipped gratefully back to my Macs.

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