Anyone else frustrated with Apple/Mac?

[Scott Brady]

The Koolaid is wearing off-

Nearly every quarter, we are encountering some frustration with Apple and our (mostly) Mac environment. It has been developing steadily.

Here are a few of the grumblings. We have over a dozen Mac computers in our office.

1. Aperture: Updates are coming too slow. They do not even support RAW images from the Canon 1DC and others took forever to implement, like the Fuji X10.
2. Monitor: Only one size of monitor is available. What about some choice? A 30" (they used to have one), a 20" for our laptop users?
3. Mac Pro: We are a creative-based business and we need powerful, robust and up-to-date edit suites for design, images and video. The Mac Pro is an embarrassment. Years without a significant update. We need to buy at least one new tower and there is nothing projected from Apple.
4. Final Cut Pro: Another embarrassment. X is ok for quick edits, but professional support is gone.
5. iPad: No peripheral support. Would make for great field units, but they cannot consume or manage our images.
6. iPhone 5: This new connector has me paranoid. All of my in-vehicle charging and playing options are now obsolete or require a $40 adapter. They need to standardize with the rest of the world.
7. USB 3.0 - finally available, otherwise we suffered with slow image transfers.
8. Thunderbolt peripherals- How about a CF card reader?
9. Lagging Quickbooks support and updates. They started off quickly with upgrades but now it has stalled. Shockingly, there are real problems with export and our CPA reading the mac output.
10. The cost - with all of the frustration, the additional investment is just not adding up.

I just bought our first PC in nearly a decade last week. Our accountant finally had enough and we made the migration. It was a Dell and only cost $300. The fancy aluminum monitor plugged right in. . .

Anyone else feeling this way? Finding a good solution? Suggestions?

With billions of dollars in cash, Apple needs to start solving these problems and pay attention to the creative-based customers. Their future is more than iPads and iPhones.

 

[MrGrimm]

It does seem like they have slowed on the new/innovative products. Every time I go to work on our windows computers, I am glad I have my mac at home.

 

[evilfij]

The new connector is much better than the old. iPhone 5 is flawless. Air book has no real competitors. I know no one who actually springs for Mac monitors.

For those of us who need lightweight, durable, reliable, and don't care so much about paying a premium or having the fastest/newest, apple is perfect.

 

[Scott Brady]

For those of us who need lightweight, durable, reliable, and don't care so much about paying a premium or having the fastest/newest, apple is perfect.

I don't really disagree, particularly with the laptops. I really love my Macbook Air. It is the professional units and associated software that is frustrating.

 

[Buckstopper]

I don't really disagree, particularly with the laptops. I really love my Macbook Air.

X2

 

[Dave Bennett]

I'm actually moving away from all things PC and into the Mac camp. Every PC I've owned has slowly slid into the oblivion of virus/slow/crash/etc/etc. My experience with Apple products has been very impressive. I may feel different once I get a little deeper down the rabbit hole of image processing software etc but for now I've yet to own an Apple product that I did not love.

 

[mike r]

apple might have missed a few beats but not as much as the rest

 

[grimbo]

I haven't noticed any real dramas with Macs of late in any if the studios I work in (freelancing at the moment) none of the studios are going to PCs

I am noticing though a lot more non Mac screens being used, especially in dual monitor setups

 

[cchoc]

You could switch from Aperture to Lightroom. Adobe has said LR will continue to be available standalone as well as a part of the creative cloud. Lightroom plus the Nik Collection is and extremely powerful photo editing and organizing system.

 

[theksmith]

funny you posted this, i just bought my first MacBook Pro in December. before that i was always a PC guy, with linux in a VM... i wanted to get into mobile development for iOS and it's a lot simpler to run Mac hardware with OS X and still have Windows (via Parallels) than it is to run OS X in a virtual machine on PC hardware. i now really like OS X because it's giving me the best of both worlds - there's the shiny GUI but i can drop down to a terminal prompt and do just about anything if i need to get "power user". on windows, batch files, script-host and such have always been a PITA and limited. i haven't even needed a Linux VM yet since OS X is built on top of a *nix style core.

despite my praise of OS X, i really am not impressed with the hardware. sure it *used* to be the only game in town for a really polished piece of hardware. but now HP, Sony, Acer, Asus all offer premium laptops with style and guts. Mac hardware is overpriced for what you get. i've had friends with Macs for years and i've not seen any better reliability from their systems than a *good* PC system (i'm not talking budget PC crap, i mean a quality name-brand top end system that costs closer to what Mac does). when i got my MacBook Pro, it really pained me that i could have bought nearly double the specs on a Dell workstation-level laptop for the same price.

i've never been a fanboi for MS and i'm not going to become one for Apple. for me the current best tool happens to be a Mac, but that could change at any time. as far as mobile, i really hate iOS and do not see myself leaving the Android platform for an iOS product anytime soon. i do think however that we'll all be using some variation of iOS and Android as our primary operating systems, even on desktops, within 5 years. MS will continue to compete for enterprise systems.

as far as monitors, Dell seems to really get that segment lately - lots of size offerings with good specs (wide gamut, pre-calibrated, various inputs, etc).

 

[nwoods]

Scott, those are good observations, and you are NOT alone. The list of folks lamenting to obselesnce of Aperature is almost a long as those who detest what Final Cut has become. Although, at least Final Cut is still getting updated now and then.

I think your going to see new monitors in a few months, but why pay 2x for it? Just buy a nice HDMI monitor now and call it done.

Apple seems to assume that pro's only use MBP laptops these days, or suped up PC's?

I run Parallels on my rMBP, and its fantastic. The PDF edition software called Bluebeam is mission critical for my office, and there isn't a Mac version, but it runs sweet on Parallels. You can right click any file on Finder, and open them in Windows. They are really quite seamlessly merged

 

[expedition4x4]

Apple has put more focus on IOS products as of late and is even trying the walled garden approach to software development in mac osx now.

 

[LR Max]

Interesting because I'm considering the jump from Android to IOS.

My work phone is a 4S and except for on screen widgets and bluetooth file transfer, it whoops the crap out of my android phone. I think the important thing for me is that it works EXTREMELY well as a phone and the battery actually lasts. if the 4S had 4G on it, then it would be perfect. Later this week I plan on fully wiping my android phone in hopes that solves the constant freezing and crappy battery life. Beyond that, the iphone 5 is looking like a very good option.

If my company ever gets a CRM, then a ipad will be heavily considered.

As for actual computers, laptops seem to be throw aways these days and PC towers and be had/built to be awesome for under $1k. The mac units seem to be extremely overpriced with this in mind.

 

[goodtimes]

Even with all the "problems" that Mac has - they are still better than a PC.

I was a late Mac convert (bought my first apple product about 3 years ago), and I'm still not a devout fan. The iMac has been virtually flawless, the iPhone 5 is the same (although some of the apps are less than robust - but I can't blame that on the phone).

Before you jump ship, wait a while and see how that $300 Dull [SIC] laptop works with any photo or video software. For that matter, see how it runs with anything 2 years from now. I use PCs during the day, and even with an IT department with dozens of people working to keep everything running, we have our share of problems.

 

[ZMagic97]

I have given the Apple/Mac products a look but never can justify it personally. About a year ago I used a friends Mac laptop and commented on how it seemed nice and smooth, easy to use, etc. He, being a die hard fan boy recommend I go buy one. I went home that night and looked at buying one online. I remember my jaw dropping at the ~$800 for a basic laptop. I instead never got one and later bought a Nook HD for basic internet use and watching movies. He was disappointed I didn't get an iPad or iPad mini. I told him the Nook was an easy choice after doing about a month of shopping around. It worked with Google products which I enjoy, has the N2A (Nook to Android) card available for ~$30 (makes the Nook into an Android OS with just a memory card; does not void warranty or ease Nook data), has a much higher screen resolution and pixel density, more internal storage in relation to price, upgradable storage, free Wifi and Nook book reading in all B&N stores (not a big plus, but is nice), faster processor, slightly better battery life in most cases, and the Nook costs 40% less than the iPad mini. Not trying to say the iPad or Apple/Mac is bad, but I see a lot of other products with the same or better specs at much cheaper prices. In my personal opinion, the higher price tag is for the Apple logo on the items. I also have been using Windows products for years with 0 issues, but keep in mind these have been on PCs that I have built myself.