Apple set-ups to suit everyone « The BEST Apple Hardware and Software Reviews

Written By Editor October 17th, 2009

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We thought we’d help new mac users out, and suggest possible set-ups (with prices) to suit any industry or job. That is, any job that you actually get to pick your own equipment and so mostly this post is targeted at freelancers, unless your a lucky graphic designer with a boss who has a constantly open chequebook

iMac

Suits:

• Designers (good screen quality, if a little glossy and great performance)
• Developers (works well for iPhone development)
• Writers
• Bloggers
• Marketers
• (pretty much anyone as a good all round machine and have a good bit of desk space)

The iMac all in one suits anyone who needs memory, and processing power. As a designer myself, I often find me testing my mac beyond what most consumers would. I regularly need to run 5 or 6 apps as well as 2 operating systems at once in order to carry my work out. So, for that I need a decent machine to work off. My personal choice is an iMac, with 4GB Ram. Works a treat. Here’s a few line-ups you may want to consider

The iMac combines great looks and performance, and is reasonably priced. An important part of any designers workstation is a good screen and plenty of it. So fortunately the iMac comes in 20 and 24 inch sizes respectively.

For serious, serious workers, you may consider grabbing an Apple Cinema screen or similar. Personally, my 2008 iMac wasn’t compatible with the new screens, so I had to either purchase an older style model or pick from the vast alternatives. I decided upon a $450 24″ Dell screen, which suits me fine. Having this screen is brilliant, when designing you can pull up inspiration or work of specifications whilst building out a site. You’ll notice the increase in productivity almost immediately, once you get used to having 40+ inch of screen real estate.

Pricing

Here’s Apple’s current pricing and specs for the iMac. The 20″ model is perfectly fine (I own this one) although you’ll want to up your RAM to 4GB. Consider using a company like crucial.com to avoid Apple premium on branded ram.

Having a dedicated graphics card really boosts performance, so you may wish to stump up the extra dollars for that. For the record I have a 2008 spec 2.4 GhZ Aluminum iMac with 4GB ram and this suits me fine. I never get lag when running Photoshop, Parralels (XP and Vista). Dreamweaver, Firefox, Safari and of course OSX. Having the extra Cpu power and GPU will make sure your more ready for future software demands, so spending extra now could save you having to replace your mac in the future.

Macbook Pro (+ Screen)

Suits:

• Designers (good screen quality, if a little glossy and great performance – but might need an add-on screen to use this for day-to-day working)
• Developers (works well for iPhone development and coding)
• Writers – (trendy and powerful, looks great at starbucks and offers up a superb keyboard for typing. The track pads pretty nifty too)
• Bloggers (as above)
• Marketers
• Only downside for the MBP is price compared to other laptops.

If your a little short of space, then a laptop may be the only way to go. And there’s really only one laptop for the job. The 15″ Macbook Pro. The 15″ is just about small enough to easily transport it, whilst been big enough to offer decent screen space. The MBP in terms of performance is comparable to the iMac, with some models running 2 graphics cards for extra power. The battery will last up to 7 hours, and prices start from $1199 for the 13″ 2.26ghz model to $2499 for the huge 17″, 2.8gHz dual graphics card model.

If your going to be running the MBP as a desktop, you may wish to purchase a mouse, keyboard and screen. The screen gives you additional space to positions apps in (or you can just run the screen on its own). The Macbook Pro’s keyboard is great, but for typing at desk, an Apple USB keyboard will offer up better comfort, and these are available for $79 (wireless model) or more reasonable $49 (wired usb model). These keyboards are possibly the best keyboards I have personally used. They offer supreme comfort and a fantastic feel to the touch.

The MBP and screen is pretty pricey. But if your looking for the power to handle anything you can throw at it and the ability to still be able to run presentations at client meetings the Macbook Pro is the machine for you.

Prices