Good place to look at Macs?

Went to an open-house at my desired college just the other day, and apparently my desired course (Traditional Animation) makes heavy use of Mac computers due to software available regarding said course.

Anyways, I somewhat know jack about Macs because I've never really handled one extensively since back in the days the 386/33mhz was king, is there a good place to look at that explains specifics (and possibly hardware performance differences between WinXP/OSX), and pricage and what not?

Odds are I'll be grabbing me one (when I get accepted, which after visiting said open house, I feel I got a damned good chance of getting in) just so I can do my work at home, something for app usage with a fair bit of RAM and CPU.


Already got a PC for gaming though, so that's not much a worry, although I may consider spending a little more on something with a GFX card for the day I purchase BMax, code on the Mac, game on the PC and all that stuff.


Probably going to stroll around my local FutureShop this week and see what stuff they got available, as it appears there's about 500 freaking versions of Mac computers out...I mean, my college, for instance, has 24" (guesstimate) wide-screen Macs that have the computer built right in to the bottom portion of the monitor.

Was looking at the MacMini, but I figured it may not have the power I require for the thing, although it's still a damn good price-point for a Mac system for general purpose use it appears.

Apple.com

Apple makes all macs (since they killed off the clones many many years ago), so they have all the info. However you can usualy find a better price (i.e. same price, but with free shipping, no tax and a printer or some free ram) somewhere else when you decide to buy. Click on the store and browse around. There are really only a few product lines. Generaly speaking there are "i" macs and "pro" macs. and of course laptop or desktop. the mini is an odd ball starter computer (very nice deal IMO, and if you're just starting and only have "student" type fundage probably a good place to look)

"i" macs (iBook = laptop, iMac = desktop) are your genral purpose mac. great value for money imo, has everything you need in 1 friendly box.

"pro" macs (MacBook Pro = laptop, Mac Pro = desktop) are more like what you may be used to when shopping for a PC. More a-la carte` in your choices of hardware and upgrade options. Also more powerfull and more expensive.

Since you don't need top O the line I would just stear clear of the "pro"s. The mini is a budget portable system. It's wicked cheep and amazingly good considering that (especialyt since apple prices are always a bit high). But it is the bottom of the line. You've gotta provide the monitor (any monitor will do) and the only upgrade you can do to it is add a little extra ram, anything past that requires replacing stuff (i.e. the HD...)

One thing to keep in mind when buying a mac. Chances are, you arn't going to upgrade the video card even if it's possible. Even on a Mac Pro. 2 reasons. First they just don't make many cards at the moment that are mac compatable. and second as a result of not making many, those that they do make are more expensive than the exact same thing for a PC. That being said, you can bear in mind that since almost no one upgrades their video card, it's not the same sort of video arms race that it is on the PC. You don't need a $2,000 video card to make the newest version of OS X look pretty (god I hate you vista).

Ram and hard drives are the same as they are on PCs. You don't need to buy apple specific stuff (which genraly costs a lot more and is the exact same thing). so as long as you've upgraded a PC before you'll be fine with that.

Once you give in to the joy of the apple it's really hard to take a windows based machine seriously any more. Sure it's the only place to really play games, but that just makes it a really big game console. I won't bore you with an apple fanboy rant or anything but I will say that for 2 years (till I could afford an upgrade) I used a 400mhz g3 laptop for ALL of my work (including photoshop) over a dual processor 2.2 ghz dual display PC because it's that much easier to use and that much more reliable. I have only ever lost 1 hard drive on a mac (and it was a cheepo plugged in through a cheepo addon controler card) and I don't have enough fingers and toes to keep track of how many my various PCs have eaten over the years.

Just out of curiosity, what software are they using. There are a number of 2D animation packages available for different OS's. Maybe what they're using is also available on Windows. ToonBoom, TVPaint, Animo, Anime Studio and others comes to mind that are cross platform.