How I Lost My Apple-ginity, Photo

How I Lost My Apple-ginity

Filed under: Wisdom on 2/26/2010

You know the feeling. That special iFeeling. You walk into the Apple Store and immediately have the joy. Oooh. Aaah. “How cool would it be to have one of those? Just think how my photography experience would improve with THAT! I know I could be twice as productive with that phone!” My kids love the Apple Store too. “iDad, can I have one of these? I really need it for school!” My wallet climbs out of my pocket and prostrates itself across the “genius bar” before I notice and yank it back. I have an Apple Store a few minutes from my house. It’s my happy place. My car knows the way blindfolded. However, in spite of the fact that I have worked with personal computers since 1984 (yup, the PC-XT), I’ve been a dyed-in-the-wool PC/Windows guy for reasons related to the tech I practice, and have resisted owning an Apple (other than our many iPods, 7 or 8 I think, I’ve lost count).

27" iMac Quad Core Gorgeous Screen

Well, I am officially no longer an iVirgin. I am swooning and smitten, shining with that lovely glow that only one’s first iMac can produce. I just picked up a beautiful quad-core iMac 27″. I decided that, given the 30,000 images and hours of video I shot on my recent trip, and the limited time I have to get the images edited and prepped, I should at least have a fun new toy to make the process fun and go quickly. I’m also starting to switch some of my workflow to Lightroom. (I am using Lightroom 3 beta at the moment. It seems more stable on the iMac than on Windows.). Given that Lightroom runs beautifully on a Mac, and the fact that the 27″ iMac monitor is so so sweet, I broke down and bought one. And guess what? Now I’m a hero with my iKids too! My girls have totally taken over the thing until the wee hours of the night when I kick them off and get down to work of editing my images, reliving the places I saw and the animals I met in glorious 27″ iReality.

Oooooooooh, sweeeeeeeet.

The monitor problem that everyone is reporting? Well, from the comments on the internet it is a real issue. My monitor may have the very faintest yellow tinge to it, it is hard to say. I tried this test: http://imac.squeaked.com/test.php and found no dead or stuck pixels (good thing), and depending on the angle of view there may be a bit of a yellow tinge to the lower portion of the monitor. So I guess I’ll have it checked soon.

Apple says they have fixed the problem. So at least they recognize there is a problem and those who are affected may get some satisfaction.

I’m moving forward with it. I was able to calibrate the monitor and get down to work with it, and am happy with the results. The screen is so large, with so many pixels, that working in Lightroom is a breeze even with all the panes opened up.

So, as long as this gushing love story remains on my blog, you can assume I am happy with my iMac. But, like the fickle females that share my house, I may change my mind! And if I do, you’ll see a rant here and I’ll go back to my old CaptureOne software running on a Windows machine.

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9 Comments »

So cool! I hope that your workflow is not only more productive, but more enjoyable.

Comment by Jon Cornforth — 2/26/2010 @ 3:53 pm
Congrats to losing your Apple-ginity! Have fun and enjoy the computer. I’d love to hear your thoughts if you end up moving back to the PC. Something tells me that won’t stick LOL Enjoy!

Comment by Jim Goldstein — 2/26/2010 @ 4:05 pm
Thanks guys, so far so good. One of my main motivations for going to an iMac was for processing Canon 5D Mark II video. Being a neophyte dSLR videographer, I considered advice from others recently about the particulars of processing Canon 5D Mark II video and came to the conclusion the Apple route is probably better suited. I’ll post my thoughts on the video thing in a month or two once I have some impressions.

Comment by Phil — 2/26/2010 @ 4:11 pm
Oooh. So ipretty. iWant one too.

Congrats on the switch Phil! I’ve been using Macs for almost 10 years and couldn’t be happier. I made the switch because of tech reasons related to work.

Cheers,
Greg

Comment by Greg Russell — 2/26/2010 @ 5:22 pm
Hey Phil

The 27″ is sweet, eh?

That penguin shot rocks.

I spoke with apple about the yellowish tint, and they told me, as late as tuesday this week, they have not got a fix on the problem. I’m on my 2nd, and they have said they won’t offer a guarantee that a replacement for this one will not have the same problem.
I hope yours works a bit better. I did go to a Mac reseller here in Anchorage (no apple store here) and looked at a couple that seem much better .. but both the ones I’ve been sent are yellow. We’re still in the middle of resolving it.

Cheers

Carl

Comment by Carl D — 3/5/2010 @ 8:48 pm
You’re not the only one, Carl. Sorry the tint is plaguing yours. I have not had an issue with it — yet — and am crossing my fingers I got lucky. So far it is a great machine, everything on this Mac just seems to work and easy to figure out too.

Comment by Phil — 3/5/2010 @ 9:44 pm
That is a nice screen, Phil. Wish I had one. I’m running my Mac Pro on a 17 inch Dell Monitor…

Comment by Richard Wong — 3/5/2010 @ 10:09 pm
Richard, it was the monitor that really made me want to get one of these things, it a beaut. Oh, and the fact that it has not crashed, or frozen, or had any problems so far…

Comment by Phil — 3/5/2010 @ 11:48 pm
Hey Phil

Just a fyi - the best way I’ve found to notice the tinting is to open a file in PS, fill it with white, and make it full screen in size - it’s definitely more noticeable with white than anything else, to my eye. I found that better than doing the online test.

What totally sucks is the machine is so awesome other than that. If the monitor was 100%, I’d be as happy as, well, as happy as you are. :)

Cheers

Carl

Comment by Carl D — 3/6/2010 @ 12:12 pm

How I Lost My Apple-ginity, Natural History Photography Blog

How I Lost My Apple-ginity

9 Comments »