After Effects on a Mac

[Laurie Turner]

I use a Mac and it’s fine. It is mostly a personal preference. What machine do you feel more comfortable with?

[Kevin Camp]

yep, ae is really pretty equal on both platforms. it really comes down to what you are comfortable with and what other software you want to use. you mentioned motion, so if you want to try motion or fcp out, then you’ll need a mac, if you wanted something like 3d studio max, you’d need a pc.

another consideration might be hardware from another system… say you had hardware like a video capture board that was for pc, then it won’t work on a mac. so you’d have to buy a mac version or live without it.

there is a lot of hardware on the market for pcs, much more than for mac. so you may find that somethings are cheaper for pc, or you have more to choose from. video cards a great example, there are numerous companies that manufacture video cards for pcs, but only two that make them for mac. so you can often find cheaper cards with similar specs for pc than mac. however, since mac only has two companies, and most of the cards are actually made by apple (with specs from ati and nvidia) there is a better congruency between the os and hardware drivers. so an update to the os, rarely breaks a driver.

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Clara Gordon]

Thanks!
I do have a mac, and work with Final Cut and Motion. But I’d like to try also After Effects, it seems a good program too! Well, I’ll try it!