Lightroom Mac vs PC Speed Test-PC Wins Big
PC’s are more capable than some think. My feeling is that Apple offer 50% more for twice the price. That’s not scientific, just IMHO. It used to be the software cost of switching put me off Apple from PC’s. Since I bought into the Creative Suite it’s the same cost at $50 a month. When I built my last PC in a spec to edit 4k UHD video I did also price Apple. Lots more money to get to my specs.
Now we see one instance of a PC of the same cost, and in this instance, with this version of Lightroom it’s a lot faster.
Processing and rendering have been an issue for me in Premiere, but never ever Lightroom. So this may be moot even for most of my fellow editor/small film makers. Interesting and it flies in the face of much public perception.
Performance Conclusion
While we really appreciate Apple’s approach to their hardware quality and design, we can’t justify the price to performance difference at this time.
Speaking conservatively, a 25% difference in performance would turn an 8 hour wedding edit into 10 hours. Spread across 30 weddings a year (for a typical studio), this is a 60 hour time difference in the time spent editing weddings. For a studio like ours shooting nearly 400+ weddings, a 25% difference would require 800 more hours of editing or nearly 20 weeks of productivity.
In this Mac vs. PC test, our results showed that the Apple iMac was behind by 35% or more across the board, making the PC the clear victor.