I had the opportunity to use a Macintosh computer many many years ago. I wasn’t really impressed with it at that time. I am a PC man from the word go. I have been building them and custom designing systems for over 20 years.

I decide to go to film school and guess what? The classes REQUIRE a Macintosh computer. Now, I haven’t really looked at a Mac at all. Luckily for me the University I attend had recommended systems for the classes I will be taking. I purchased a standard iMAC 2.66 Ghz system with 4Gb ram and 640GB hard drive. I should have opted for the full size keyboard. I also purchased Final Cut Pro Studio, which is the software we are learning at the university. I was surprised at how fast this dual core cpu was performing. I built a custom PC with quad-core cpu 5gb ram and 1.5 terabytes hard disk space, and doing a simple 30 second video render on the iMAC was nothing.  It took maybe a minute at most. The custom PC took bout 5 minutes maybe a tad less then that.

Either way the iMAC was showing me that with less HP on the CPU and less memory and hard disk space that it could do more, faster, then a built up PC that cost about $3,500 to build custom with liquid cooling. The iMAC in comparison was only $1,499.00

I know you can’t really compare the two but I found that if you are going to do any video or audio work, get a MAC. There is no doubt in my mind that MAC’s have the edge over PC’s in those two areas. And the video and film industry seems to favor the MAC. They may have PC’s all over their office but in the creative fields you will see them using MAC’s.

I am not sure if it is the hardware architecture or the operating system but the iMAC definitely has a big advantage of a Windows based PC. Sorry Microsoft but Macintosh wins the Video and Audio award. I am not quite ready to get rid of all of my PC’s yet but you never know.