This is a tough thing to admit, but I’m seriously considering a move from Mac to Windows.  Tough, because I’ve been a Mac user ever since I bought my first computer in 1991, a Mac Classic.

Why am I doing this? Well, Apple used to be the front runner when it came to computers for production and design professionals. Graphic designers and photo artists, and those of us in TV production have been Apple’s target audience for, well, a long time.  Everyone else could get a PC, but if you wanted ease of use, and a powerful machine for graphics, you would look to Apple and the Macintosh.

But now that’s all changing. PCs have been powerhouses for a long time now, something driven no doubt by the gaming world.  And many productions…especially visual effects artists…have been using PCs for years.  Apple? It’s focus has shifted from the professional production world to a more profitable one…the consumer market and iPhones and iPads and smaller, thinner computers.  It’s a bigger market, and more money can be made…so who can blame a business for chasing that?  But in doing this they are falling behind in the high end production world…their MacPro hasn’t been updated for 3 years, and the last one, IMHO, was a pretty lackluster one. Very expensive with little to show for it. Smaller, sleeker, but expandability was sacrificed, as was the ability to customize the machine. And the D700 graphics cards had issues and a recall was made to repair these.  And now their top of the line machine is the iMac….also lacking in customization.

Those were all the reasons that I build my Hackintosh, as I laid out here and here.  Figured that I’d build a better machine than Apple does, but still use their OS.  The drawback to this is that making it was a task, and required a bit of tech knowhow, any updates have to be very carefully done.  But I knew the OS very well, and felt comfortable sticking with it.

But then I looked at what software I used…Avid Media Composer, Davinci Resolve, Adobe Premiere Pro, Photoshop, After Effects. All software that has PC versions.  So why not look at installing Windows on the Hack and get all that software running on that as well?  Get to know the OS.  After all, I don’t really need to know it TOO well…I am just going to be running the same software that I know on it. And updates will be easier to manage, I can upgrade the hardware later to ones that I don’t need to make sure work on the MacOS.

So I did it…I plunked down $199 and got Windows 10 and installed it…pretty darn easy.  And then I installed all the software I use.  So, I’m just waiting for a job to come in for me to use my home system and I’ll jump right in!  Oh, except that lately all the work I’m doing on it is with Resolve, and the final output needs to be ProRes files, as that is what the networks demand…so I’ll be sticking with that on the Mac for now.  Although I am noticing that Resolve on Mac, when I do final deliver renders, peg my processor hard and make it really hot, which then can cause the system to restart. Whereas the Windows version keeps the temp at a manageable level.  That’s one big reason I want to move to Windows. Just not worth the double encoding time to do it.

But, it’s a step…my second step into the Windows world.  The first being the REALLY cheap PC I made so that I could play a video game with a friend of mine in Portland. Totally worth it at the time. Great game.