Monitor for possible switch to Mac

[jimlevitt]

I'm a longtime Windows user, needing to replace a 5-year old PC, which is now slow runnign Lightoom, while perfectly fine for everything else. I have a heavy-duty PC spec'ed out from a local builder, but I'm still looking over the fence at Apple. The new PC, with a 5070Ti video card, i9 cpu, NVMe SSDs and a couple of spinning disks, will be both hotter and likely noisier than my silent five-year old machine. All of which seems "off" when compared to a Mac Studio. Besides the lengthy period I'll need to get used to the Apple approach, I'm now wondering if my current monitor will display well running off a Mac. I have an Eizo CS2731, rated very highly for color and for ease of calibration. It's a 27" 2.5K monitor (2560 x 1440). I read this discussion https://www.lightroomqueen.com/community/threads/27-inch-monitor-resolution-2k-or-4k.52921/ , so I know Cletus is a strong advocate of at least 4K. The Eizo's resolution, to my eyes, is quite pleasant at my usual working distance. It has a nice matte screen. When I bought it (five years ago), I thought text was too small on 4K screens. I wear eyeglasses with progressive lenses.

Will the Eizo CS2731 work well with the Retina resolution outputted by a Mac? Or do I need to factor in the cost of another monitor as I ponder making the change? If so, what are good candidates? 27" is as large as I can go in my current corner desk location. Besides the 27" Mac Studio, there's the Asus ProArt 5k, and some offerings from LG and maybe a few others.

 

[Johan Elzenga]

The Enzo will work just fine. MacOS does not output ‘retina resolution’ if you set the screen resolution to the native resolution of the Eizo monitor.

 

[clee01l]

Besides the lengthy period I'll need to get used to the Apple approach,

The period need not be lengthy. You are already familiar with Lightroom. It will work the same on either computer. If you have an iPhone you already know how to navigate an Apple device. If you have ever used a UNIX operating system like LINUX, you can be familiar "working under the hood" mounting volumes and tweaking machine settings. You can continue to use your email client and MS Office if you choose to install the MacOS versions. I am not a fan of Outlook or Apple Mail. I use a mail client from a company out of the Ukraine called Spark. I have it installed on my Mac, my iPhone and my iPad. While there are Mac versions of Microsoft products, I highly recommend learning to use the equivalents to office apps that come free with MacOS. They do have a learning curve. I still have a family subscription to MS Office since my wife prefers the MS Office products including Outlook And I still need OneNote to manage my documents and notes.

I have two 32" ASUS ProArt HDR monitors, and a 27" Sceptre SDR monitor the 32" HDR monitors are 4K3840X2160 I have the 27" SDR tuned to 3008X1692 to match the pixel pitch of the 32" monitors. For the ancients among us, the three finger tap quickly zooms text into an easily readable view.

 

[cesarbryann]

The news I've been waiting for for six months. Great!

 

[Gnits]

Speaking from experience...

If you are determined to grasp Mac usability... you will make a lot of progress in a determined week.

There are also lots of very very good YouTube 10 min videos which give super tips for Mac from Windows new users.

You may be in shock when you first launch Mac as it might take a little config to get you in a zone you are comfortable with.

Top tips.,,
1. config mouse click to give you similar functionality as windows right click
2. Be aware of and configure hot screen corners.
3. Get used to using Spotlight to launch apps (recent change)
4. Configure bottom launch tab to have your most used apps.
5. Understand that MacO/S likes to protects all folders on your hard drive above your UserFolder.
6. Decide if you want to use the default Pictures folders for Images and Catalog. I suggest you create a folder at root level within your UserFolder called something like MyLrCStuff, with subfolders for catalogs and your LrC master images folder. Also., keep separate folders for each catalog.

 

[clee01l]

Top tips.,,
1. config mouse click to give you similar functionality as windows right click

Apple Magic mouse and trackpad have right click capability built in. It is ancient history that Apple had a mouse with only one button. The advantages of the Apple magic mouse and track pad is that you have more than two buttons and a scroll wheel. I recently discovered the 3 finger tap to zoom my focus area to read tiny text better. There are also 4 finger gestures for zooming and all in all more capability than in a typical Windows mouse.

2. Be aware of and configure hot screen corners.
3. Get used to using Spotlight to launch apps (recent change)

You need to explain this. Spotlight is an anathema which I have configured to be the least intrusive as possible as it eats up CPU cycles and generally slows down the computer like the search and index feature in Windows.
I launch my favorite apps from the Dock which disappears out of the bottom of my screen when not needed.

4. Configure bottom launch tab to have your most used apps.

Also configure the Dock to hide when not needed, appearing only when the cursor is moved to the bottom of the screen

5. Understand that MacO/S likes to protects all folders on your hard drive above your UserFolder.
6. Decide if you want to use the default Pictures folders for Images and Catalog. I suggest you create a folder at root level within your UserFolder called something like MyLrCStuff, with subfolders for catalogs and your LrC master images folder. Also., keep separate folders for each catalog.

This protected access is standard practice for all UNIX based operating systems. Windows is sloppy in that regard. It is bad work practice to create folders on the primary volume in the root folder outside of the users Home folder. You can create a folder outside of the home system folders for Lightroom catalogs and images. This is just as efficient as creating one in the Root folder. Better, leave the Lightroom folder in the default location in the Picture folder but not under the influence of iCloud. Then get an external disk to store your images which will quickly grow to exceed the capacity of the primary volume

 

[Gnits]

Apple Magic mouse and trackpad have right click capability built in.

But I had to configure my MacAir so I could activate the mouse right click feature. …. and it was confusing to me until I discovered this. Perhaps not necessary on later versions of Mac o/s.

Also… new ex Windows users trip up over protection of folders above the User Folder… so just a heads up to get started ..

 

[clee01l]

Also… new ex Windows users trip up over protection of folders above the User Folder… so just a heads up to get started ..

This is also a recent addition to Apple's anti Malware efforts. If malicious apps don't get access by default, then less chance for a ransomware attack. This is something that Microsoft ought to implement.

 

[Gnits]

I agree completely with Cletus re load Spotlight might place on a system performance

Imagine importing 300 raw images, 300 jpgs, updating Catalog with all relative metadata, writing files to disk, writing previews to disk and updating all related database indices and tables.

Now imagine Spotlight reacting to all of these I/O operations, while it tried to index an increasingly massive amount of metadata.

On Windows I have Indexing turned off for everything except Outlook and OneNote and have excluded Catalogs, Previews and image libraries from anti virus.

Hopefully as CPU’s / GPU’s get more powerful, such precautions may not be needed.

I was not impressed when Apple recently degraded the App Dashboard and replaced it with a Spotlight equivalent.

 

[Conrad Chavez]

But I had to configure my MacAir so I could activate the mouse right click feature. …. and it was confusing to me until I discovered this.

Yes, that is an extremely important distinction. macOS and Apple hardware have supported secondary click for over 25 years, but in my experience that is not typically enabled in a default installation of macOS such as a new Mac out of the box, and is tied to the system settings on that Mac. For example, if you use right-click every day on a mouse and you bring that mouse to another Mac, you can’t assume right-click will work on that other Mac…you might have to make sure it’s enabled.

Anyone wanting to use secondary click with any input device on a Mac (MacBook Air trackpad, any brand of mouse, a stylus…) should be made aware that they probably have to turn on secondary click before it’s going to work.

When secondary click isn’t enabled for the current input device, a context menu can always be opened by Control-clicking.

And I’m calling it “secondary click” because so many devices now don’t use a literal “right-click” for context menus. For example, on a Mac trackpad you can set it up to trigger secondary click on two-finger click, or by clicking the bottom left or bottom right corner. On my Wacom stylus, secondary click is set to the front end of the side rocker switch.