Mac Vs. PC FILM Editing contest

[ElfinHilon10]

So I'm currently in school to do become a Director of film, and/or writer, hopefully both, and a lot of the computers we use (if not all)are Macs. So my question is why do we use Macs? The same options exist for PC's as for Macs (with the exception of Film Cut and Motion) and are far cheaper for workstations. So my question is, "Why buy a Mac computer for film editing?" I honestly do want one, but I'm not sure why, and I think those reason are extremely dumb reasons. Honestly, the only reason I'd ever buy a Mac is to get both OS's in one computer. Would be nice, but I'm not sure about the price.

[glo]

There was a time when Macs were superior at those things due to said software having much better compatibility with Macs.

However, that time has long passed, yet people still embrace the stereotype for no real reason. It's actually quite the opposite now considering Macs use dated hardware by design. The top performing film editing machines will have top of the line processor / video card options, which are unavailable for Macs.

You can't buy SB-E processors from Apple, nor good video cards. The video card portion is the worst, seeing as the best you can get are 6870s in their Mac Pro line.

[Meleti]

So my question is, "Why buy a Mac computer for film editing?"

A very large percentage of the industry uses Mac OS X. You should try to learn whatever is industry standard first, and go from there.

People arguing that one platform or the other is better are missing the point entirely.

[DarkXale]

Once upon a time FCP was a quite popular piece of software, a Mac OS exclusive. Lack of updates however resulted in said piece of software beeing severely out of date and slow. The update, while better for consumers and simpler work like blogs or other news outlets - has many flaws for studio work. Nowadays, its being abandoned en-masse, for software which happens to be cross-platform based.

[vesseblah]

So my question is, "Why buy a Mac computer for film editing?"

If you like the cheap and low-cost versions of the movie editing tools that comes with the OS. That's the only reason. Or you could buy full version of Sony Vegas for $500 which makes up for the price difference between comparable Mac and PC, and get better software too.

One important thing to keep in mind is that neither directors nor writers are usually doing the editing, so it matters very little for you professionally.

A very large percentage of the industry uses Mac OS X. You should try to learn whatever is industry standard first, and go from there.

Hollywood has always used Avid workstations that run on Windows, not FinalCutPro. FCP is mostly a thing of HDTV, not movies aimed at big screen.

FCP and Apples have been used for professional video work only for a very short time slowly gaining popularity from the indie scene who thinks Macbooks are hip, but the latest major version of FCP angered most of those who had gotten used to it.