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Incremental Switch from Mac To PC


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I'd like to hear people's experience with working in mixed Mac and PC offices, specifically because I'm considering suggesting to my firm that we changeover to PCs because we can get equivalently powerful hardware for approximately $1000 less.  I know that in the past there were some issues with cross platform project sharing, but I haven't seen anything like that mentioned in the forums in a while.  I also have first hand experience with VW being less stable on Windows but am willing to put up with it in order to have actually capable hardware.

 

We're a 4 station office with a server (all Mac right now), and would likely upgrade one station at a time over a couple years.

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I think for VW itself it doesn't matter if Mac or PC.

And for working with the OS I meanwhile find Windows even more attractive.

 

But I am still concerned a bit about the security and privacy, the quality and look

of all secondary little software needed and most I am afraid that could not keep

me from tinkering on hardware and Windows and waste time instead of working,

like I did in the past. So I am still waiting ;)

 

I personally "feel" network problems in a mixed environment with Project Sharing

from forum posts. Not only because not ideal to mix AFP with SMB.

I think abandoned AFP does no more usable and their Samba is far from being

Apple perfect too.

So for me it looks like Project Sharing which totally relies on perfect networking

works better in a true Windows environment.

 

So if Project Sharing works well for you today on macOS, you are blessed and

I would not give that up :)

 

Opposed to the years before, since a few weeks there is finally useful Mac Hardware

available for CAD and moderate rendering for professional users for the first time.

So if you had had an urgent need to switch to Windows, it should have been a few

years ago. Not at that moment.

I would at least wait until we know how the coming Mac Pro look like and than decide

if there is no more future in Apple serving that professional market anymore.

(Which is not totally unlikely)

Until then, if needed, I would update a few of your Monitors with iMacswithout or

with Pro.

 

 

Edited by zoomer
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I'm not 100% sure I'd say project sharing works WELL in Mac only, but it does seem to work.  I think we disabled AFP completely and are running it only over SMB locally, and our principal occasionally uses AFP to connect remotely.

 

We've historically used Mac Minis (see my sig, I've successfully run 2018 with multi-view panes to at least test on my current config), but we've long since moved into a 3d workflow and are leveraging BIM and rendering more and more, and do use project sharing on many of our larger projects.  If we upgrade to iMacs, we'd be looking at ~$2500 for the minimum spec I would want for our current and near future needs.  If we switch to PC, I can get the same hardware for $1500, and we can upgrade the video cards in a few year if needed.  The iMac pro is just silly, in my not so humble opinion: for that amount of money I can buy a custom built liquid cooled PC with twice the RAM, more hard drive space and dual video cards (and not be stuck with AMD hardware, so I can have some CUDA cores for personal side projects).

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I struggle myself for some years if I should finally switch back to Windows.

xD Why did Apple do that to me.

 

So if you want the freedom back - do it.

If switching, I would do it completely and leave the whole ecosystem including

iOS stuff, bootcamping the legacy Macs and such.

I am a bit concerned about people using project sharing and a partly switch with

a mixed environment in between.

But maybe everything is golden with SP3 and VW more tolerant to network issues.

 

An iMac Pro (I don't need or even want a vertical screen) or potentially a new Mac Pro

would probably be my last CPU upgrade and for the GPU there may be eGPUs.

Potential 128 GB and SSD speed should be sufficient for a while too.

So the price would be for a long period, not just 3 years.

(Plus I personally think one should add some more maintenance costs or time for Windows

like watching disc defragmentation screen, virus scanner download bars, peripheral Software

updates and such things)

Edited by zoomer
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