I bought a MBP about 2 weeks ago after being a Windows user for many years. I have been building my own PCs for almost 10 years and my main use of them is for video editing. For the benefit of those in a similar situation, I'd like to share my experiences so far.
The hardware arrived in 9 days from order and it was in perfect condition. It came from Shaghai!
I bought 2 x 2 gig ram modules from Crucial and maxed the ram to 4 gigs myself and had no problems.
I was able to set up my mail and wireless broadband very easily with the computer doing most of the work invisibly.
I installed the apps that I use (FCPS2 and Master Collection CS3 and Office 2004)without any problems or crashes.
I downloaded all the software updates for the Mac and the apps I installed and except for asking my password, the computer did it all pretty much invisibly and without problems.
I was advised to run repair disk permissions regularly before and after changes, which I did, and never had any problems.
Is it possible to overdo using repair permissions? Coming from Windows, I am very experienced with regular maintenance routines like defrags, deleting temp files, etc., and although my Windows systems always ran well, I was used to periodic freezes and crashes but I knew how to fix them or avoid them.
I added two external drives, one for video on the firewire 800 and another for cloning the completed setup in case of serious errors later on on the firewire 400. I used Superduper to make the bootable clone image and it all worked flawlessly. My only mistake was that I didn't know which key is the option key and I couldn't get the computer to boot up so that it offered me the choice of which startup disk to use. I kept holding down the command key instead, but once I resolved this ignorance on my part it all works perfectly.
I can connect a dv camcorder or a dv vcr to my firewire port and capture video to the external drive on the firewire 800 port from either FCP or Premiere Pro CS3 perfectly and export he video back to tape as well.
In all, my experience has been delightful and much more stable than when running my Windows PCs.
My only negative comment is that I don't like having to wait for Apple to offer particular hardware options. I liked being able to buy and build exactly what I wanted in my PCs.
My MBP experience has been so nice that I am now considering getting a Mac Pro but I am having to wait until Apple decides to update its current models and I find this frustrating. On the PC side I could easily build myself a 4 or 8 core system with the motherboard, graphics and drives that I want now rather than waiting around for Apple. I did put one together on paper recently to compare prices with the current Mac Pro specs and it came out a bit cheaper on the PC side, but not much. There are a lot of inexpensive PCs available but their specs are not comparable to those on a Mac Pro.
Another thing that I haven't dealt with yet is setting up the built in webcam for video conferencing with friends around the world. I am still looking into the best approach to it. I used to use Yahoo Messenger on my PCs but I don't know if it is compatible with Macs. If I get a Mac Pro, I hope to use my current Logitech webcam and Maccam drivers to also have a webcam on that system. And I want to be able to connect my midi keyboard to the Mac Pro to create music but it's not a USB so I need to investigate what I can do.
For those wondering about going to the Mac platform, I can say that the whole experience has been very smooth and painless and I would recommend it. Learning Mac OS is taking a little time but it's an enjoyable experience too.
The hardware arrived in 9 days from order and it was in perfect condition. It came from Shaghai!
I bought 2 x 2 gig ram modules from Crucial and maxed the ram to 4 gigs myself and had no problems.
I was able to set up my mail and wireless broadband very easily with the computer doing most of the work invisibly.
I installed the apps that I use (FCPS2 and Master Collection CS3 and Office 2004)without any problems or crashes.
I downloaded all the software updates for the Mac and the apps I installed and except for asking my password, the computer did it all pretty much invisibly and without problems.
I was advised to run repair disk permissions regularly before and after changes, which I did, and never had any problems.
Is it possible to overdo using repair permissions? Coming from Windows, I am very experienced with regular maintenance routines like defrags, deleting temp files, etc., and although my Windows systems always ran well, I was used to periodic freezes and crashes but I knew how to fix them or avoid them.
I added two external drives, one for video on the firewire 800 and another for cloning the completed setup in case of serious errors later on on the firewire 400. I used Superduper to make the bootable clone image and it all worked flawlessly. My only mistake was that I didn't know which key is the option key and I couldn't get the computer to boot up so that it offered me the choice of which startup disk to use. I kept holding down the command key instead, but once I resolved this ignorance on my part it all works perfectly.
I can connect a dv camcorder or a dv vcr to my firewire port and capture video to the external drive on the firewire 800 port from either FCP or Premiere Pro CS3 perfectly and export he video back to tape as well.
In all, my experience has been delightful and much more stable than when running my Windows PCs.
My only negative comment is that I don't like having to wait for Apple to offer particular hardware options. I liked being able to buy and build exactly what I wanted in my PCs.
My MBP experience has been so nice that I am now considering getting a Mac Pro but I am having to wait until Apple decides to update its current models and I find this frustrating. On the PC side I could easily build myself a 4 or 8 core system with the motherboard, graphics and drives that I want now rather than waiting around for Apple. I did put one together on paper recently to compare prices with the current Mac Pro specs and it came out a bit cheaper on the PC side, but not much. There are a lot of inexpensive PCs available but their specs are not comparable to those on a Mac Pro.
Another thing that I haven't dealt with yet is setting up the built in webcam for video conferencing with friends around the world. I am still looking into the best approach to it. I used to use Yahoo Messenger on my PCs but I don't know if it is compatible with Macs. If I get a Mac Pro, I hope to use my current Logitech webcam and Maccam drivers to also have a webcam on that system. And I want to be able to connect my midi keyboard to the Mac Pro to create music but it's not a USB so I need to investigate what I can do.
For those wondering about going to the Mac platform, I can say that the whole experience has been very smooth and painless and I would recommend it. Learning Mac OS is taking a little time but it's an enjoyable experience too.
