ShapeshiftingFish

omasou said:

Other than parents. Do people really use inkjet printers to print photographs? Unless time is an issue seem like this is a very, very, very expensive way to generate a picture, especially anything larger than 4x6.

I never really understood inkjets vs. lasers. Yes lasers are/were more expensive than inkjets though my latest HP Color LaserJet wasn't. Consumer inkjets didn't do what "I" needed very well. Printing 4x6 pictures were horrible and easier to just send to Walmart (again not pro quality) and shipping labels had to be covered w/packing tape to protect them from bleeding and fading during shipping.

To each their own.

First of all, you can get decent results with any inkjet printer, much better than laser, but only on specially coated photo paper. Unlike laser, where toner / ink sets on top of paper surface, plain paper inkjet prints will look pale and washed out because ink gets absorbed INTO the paper. Inkjet photo papers have a sticky, dense surface coating that traps the ink droplets and allows for great color reproduction. But, consumer inkjet printers use dye-based inks, water soluble on top of that. They give you nice colors, but are not very resistant. Even if you handle the print properly (frame it under glass or put in an album), it will fade relatively quickly as the dyes degrade and evaporate and if the print gets wet, it will likely smudge. Pro photo printers on the other hand use solid pigment-based inks; if you use them in conjunction with special high quality papers (you still can’t use plain paper), you will get a color reproduction other printers can’t touch (especially laser prints that are very contrasty), with fade resistance for decades. It is crucial if you’re going to sell your prints as fine art and expect to build a reputation for a long time. You are most definitely not going to buy a pro inkjet printer and use it to print labels and such…

Beats said:

I highly disagree with adding an SD card when they could have added an extra USB port. Why please 2% of your users when you can have pleased 98%? This is Apple
going backwards post-Jony.

You can always find a USB-C to SD adapter but try to find an SD Card to USB-C Cable.

You are talking about the Pro. Air doesn’t have the SD slot.

Well, the eGPU support has been a hellish crap for me ever since Catalina. And I use a new-ish 2019 13" MB Pro, in an Apple recommended combo (Sonnet box + RX580). The MacBook won't even boot if the GPU is connected, I have to switch it off first, then once it's on, things freeze relatively often. Before Catalina, everything was smooth, so it's not a hardware issue. Apple is good as long as you don't try any kind of hack, even if it's officially supported.

I work in photography and graphic design. I used to use exclusively 27” iMacs since that size became available (it’s very hard to beat the display quality for the price), but last year I decided on a laptop + external monitor since I started traveling very often. I decided that 27” 5K standalone monitors are too expensive, so I got a 32” 4K LG IPS monitor. Wonderful size. For anyone wondering, MacBook’s scaling function works just fine on it, no bothersome artifacts (native 4K is too big for my taste, so I do one scale down and it’s perfect). The monitor calibrates OK, offers adequate gamut. I love the fact that I can regulate the height, I like my display pushed way down and angled slightly up, greatly reduces the neck strain (I feel the 27” iMac is to high for me, and I am 6’1”). The biggest gripe? Quality control. Display panel started fading around the edges in less than 4 months and now it’s really bad, but I can’t send it for repair since I can’t afford to be without large display for more than couple of days. Apparently it was a frequent and known issue with that series of LG monitors that I somehow missed while researching online. 

dysamoria said:

I’ve been saving tax rebates to buy a new Mac Pro to replace both my old Macs and my old PC, and then Apple went and changed the introductory price of the Mac Pro to frelling $6000, twice what it used to start at, and all non-plutocrats who can’t afford an overkill machine are expected to keep using storage & RAM-unupgradable & thermally deficient all-in-one laptops, iMacs, or similarly stupidly compact & unupgradable Mac Mini (while also suffering whatever display incompatibilities there are with third party displays because Apple only makes a $5000 display now).

If you really need a Mac Pro, you can afford it. Otherwise, you can produce a whole album or a feature film score on almost any Apple machine. Logic doesn't need uber-hardware to run smoothly. If you look at the videos or photos from most music producer's setups, it's mostly a MacBook or an iMac of some kind running the DAW. Unless you're Deadmau5 and need to render videos in real time while running a truckload of equipment, then sure, get a Mac Pro and cover the cost in one show. Same goes for video, unless you're Marques Brownlee and shoot 8K RED RAW daily, any MacBook Pro or higher-spec iMac will do the job for a 4K workflow, not to mention full HD. I do both audio and video and my current machine is a 13" MacBook Pro with an eGPU, but I also actively use a 2015 27" i5 iMac. I yet have to see either machine reach 100% CPU usage in Logic or Ableton. Plus, you can upgrade an iMac's RAM or add a Thunderbolt 3 SSD and eGPU to any modern MacBook.

As for the iOS 13 on 1st gen iPad Pro, I'm using the combo and it still flies with any regular task.