Mac or Custom build for video/photo editing and just casual use

[Kagthul]

they both use the same parts, that intel chip is the same as any other intel chip,

Actually, Apple gets first pick and only the top binned CPUs. Been that way since they transitioned.

So, generally speaking, your MacBook Pro will have a slightly better CPU in it than the competition most times.

Macs -are- still more expensive than their PC counterparts, but the "Apple Tax" of the past is by and large quite a bit smaller. It used to be youd pay 300-400+ or more for a Mac specced similarly to a PC

These days its 100-200 at most, for spec-equivalent and quality-equivalent PCs. When you look at an iMac, you have to consider the price of the display; when you consider that Apple uses top-end displays for the most part, its hard to find a spec-equivalent PC + a monitor of the same caliber for much cheaper.

That being said, particularly in laptops, you CAN get PCs that are quite powerful for less than a MBP - it wont be as light, have as good of a display, or be of the same build quality, but it will still be powerful.

If you want a completely spec-equivalent machine, though, you can expect to pay almost as much as the MBP.

Macs have two advantages to me (and is why i still use one for my daily driver despite having a powerful gaming PC sitting right next to it)

the first is OSX - its a very secure, stable, and easy to use operating system. Its also extremely powerful and versatile if you are a tech geek because it is, at its heart, fully-fledged UNIX and the command line can be a powerful tool. Also, because Apple only has to code OSX to run on their own hardware, its almost always more reliable, and faster, than Windows on equivalent hardware.

the second is the fact that a Mac can still boot Windows (and Linux) or run it (extremely capably) in a VM. Most PCs (unless they use very specific hardware and can be Hackintoshed, which comes with its own share of issues) cannot do the same.

For a "casual use" and photo editing/creative use, i'd recommend the Mac, particularly in a laptop. The quality is high, ease of use is high.

[Deleted]

Its still the same part, binning or not, that just means it meets a thermal envelope more and still the same quality and process on the chip.

You will still get the same reliability and pretty much the same performance, theres no real quality difference here, binning does not make a difference in this matter and first pick means nothing if we are again talking about quality.

Intel make good chips, feel free to try get any real tangible difference here between chips of the exact same one, if I now had to recommend a laptop, its the microsoft surface book, pretty good specs and considering how well made the surface pros are, this will be either on par with macbooks or better in build quality, my money is better, that construction material is just miles better then aluminium.

[lloose]

If we are talking about laptops, I peronsally think Macbook Pros are the best on the market. I own a 2014 MBP retina and a 2015 Dell M3800 with every single thing upgraded (4k touchscreen IPS display, 16gb DDR3, 512gb SSD, Intel i7 4712HQ, and Nvidia discrete graphics). Even with the i5 and 8gb, the experience on the MBP is better overall than the M3800.

[Kagthul]

<nonsense snipped> that construction material is just miles better then aluminium.

...which is an opinion shared by... You.

Giventhe rest of the ninsense you posted... Enjoy ignore.

[GarlicGuy]

Hackintosh

exactly....