|
Seeing where the industry is going, I'm thinking more and more of having "one computer per purpose" rather than trying to have "one computer to rule them all" (and in the darkness bind them, ahem, sorry, I digress ^^). To explain a bit more, I do writing, development, photo editing, video editing, music production.
Nowadays, my sole computer (besides multiple Raspberry Pi) is a gaming laptop running Windows. It can handle all of these tasks. Before that, I had a 2012 MBP, but when I wanted to upgrade to an other mac with 32GB RAM, a good graphic card and Thunderbolt 3 in the end of 2015/beginning of 2016, the option of that much RAM and a good video card just wasn't there at the time, and so I switched to the Windows world again. I've been able to upgrade the gaming computer over the years to 32 GB RAM, I now have 3 (!) SSD in the computer, and it runs what I want quickly enough (except for Lightroom, but that's an other story ;)). But for development, the feeling just isn't there, even with WSL/WSL2, it's just not as straightforward as macOS with homebrew or macports, not to talk about Debian or Archlinux which are even better, so for me, it always feel like "death by a thousand cut" to develop on Windows platform. For video, ProresRAW is only available on Apple, and I want to futureproof my future cameras in that aspect too. Or maybe I could go the BlackmagicRAW path to be able to do it in the Windows or Linux world, or converting to Prores4444, but ProresRAW and BlackmagicRAW don't seem to like each others, and in video, I don't want to spend my time fighting the computers and the codecs. So I'll probably have to switch to Mac in the long run for that. For the sound part, in my point of view, there is still nothing coming close to Mac with CoreAudio, even if Linux is good (with Jack & cie), macOS is miles ahead when it comes for example to plugin or DAW support. And in Windows, it's still not as good as mac for Audio, at least in my perspective. For the photography part, Darktable is getting good and faster than Lightroom, but still not as efficient in workflow than Lightroom or Capture One. Buuut it's getting close. So I think more and more of buying one laptop just for Linux & development (or even stripping a Chromebook of Chrome OS and installing Linux on it ?).
Use my iPad for writing, because it's the most enjoyable "sit on a couch and write" experience.
And maybe buy a M1 (or M2) Mac for Audio, Video, Photo. There still remain the question of buying a beefy workstation with for example 128GB RAM and beefy graphic card and 10GBe and RAID, to handle the big audio/video/photo project. I wanted to go the Hackintosh route, but now with ARM, I don't know if it's a futureproof purchase... |