My Advise When Buying An Apple Computer Is To Go For The Fastest Processor Speed You Can Afford At The Time - Memory, Hard Disc And Even Optical Drives Can Be Upgraded Anytime Later, But Not The Processor Speed.
Final Cut Will Work With Even 1.5 Gigs Installed.
As Everyone Else Agrees Here, A Dual Display Setup Is Defiantly Recommended ( But Once Again, Not Essential If You Are Just Starting Out ).
I Run An ACD 30 inch As My Main Display For The Viewer, Canvas, Toolbox And Audio Meters. I Have A Secondary 23 inch For The Timeline And Browser.
This Setup Is Mainly For Convenience And I Find It Quicker To Use, But I Can Also Use FCP On A 13inch MacBook Too - So Screen Size Is Not Critical, But It Defiantly Helps.
For Actual Editing, A Graphics Tablet Is Not Essential, But If You Plan To Use Things Like Photoshop, Shake And Indeed Motion, A Pen System Really Makes A Difference - But If You Haven't Used One Before It Will Seem A bit Clumsy At First.
Wireless Keyboard? I Find This A Must If Like Me You Constantly Have Clipboards, Paper Piles, Tapes, Etc Cluttering Up Your Desk. The New Apple Wireless keyboard Has No Numerical Keypad, So If You Can, Try And Get One Of The Older Apple Pro Keyboards ( If You Want To Stick With Apple, That Is ).
Wireless Mouse? I Find That There Is A Certain Miniscule Lag Between The Time When You First Move The Mouse And The Time It Takes For The Pointer To Move. Its Amazing How This TINY Fraction Of A Second Can Get Annoying Though...
Speaking Of Human-Interface Devices, If You Are Serious About Editing, Get Yourself A ContourDesign Shuttle Pro II, Believe Me, This IS Essential, And Should Not Be Left Out Of A Startup Editors Shopping List.
Let Me Make One Thing Clear, As An Editor You Will NEVER Have Enough Hard Drive Space, So Splashing Out On Stacks Of Hard Drives To Start Off With Is Pointless. Fill Your Internal Bays First. The SATA Standards As Of Yet Have No Limit To The Hard Disc Size So You Can Confidently Buy Any Size And Know It Will Work In Your Machine. Once You Are Out Of Internal Space, Get Yourself An eSATA Card And An Ejectable External Enclosure. An Ejectable External Enclosure Allows You To Put Different Drives Inside The Same Enclosure ( But Not At The Same Time ). When You Need Data On A Different Drive, Eject The Current Drive And Pop The Respective Drive Into The Enclosure. My Favourite Enclosure Is The IcyBox. Check it Out.
You Can Also Buy A BluRay Burner To Archive Your Raw Rushes Too, If Space Is So Sacred.
So Unless You Have Cash To Splash On An Xerve RAID And Fiber Channel System, These Should Do You Well.
Memory Is Like Lucozade, The More You Have The Better You Perform, But As A Startup, You Don't Need To Buy It All At Once. I Find That 2 - 4 Gigs Is COMFORTABLE, Obviously If You Have The Funding, Get More. I Find Performance Increases In Steps. Step 1 is After 512MB And 2 Gig. Step 2 Is After 2 to 4 Gigs, Step 3, 4-8 Gigs. I Haven't Really Noticed Much Of An Increase Above 8 Gig ( Unless You Use Shake, Maya Or A Big Motion Scene ). So Any Upgrade Between Steps, eg Upgrading from 4gig to 6gig yields very LITTLE Noticeable Performance.
I See You Also Live In The UK Tom, So The Best Place I Find For Memory And Hard Drives Is Dabs.com.
Hope This Helps, And Good Luck Turning Pro.
Barney
KB doesnt have numpad... just letting you know in case you dont.
