Considering Switching from PC to Mac - Huge Photo Library to import

[ryannel2003]

I've been using OS X since version 10.3 "Panther" way back in 2004 and I haven't encountered half the problems people have in this thread. Having been a member here for nearly 11 years and I can remember way back people were complaining about annoying bugs in OS X Panther and Tiger and how Apple was on a downward spiral as they continued to grow. Dramatics. I've personally owned 20 different Macs since 2004 (I have issues) and none of them had any major hardware of software problems. In fact in that time I've owned several PC's as well and I spent more time trying to find lost files and fixing bugs than I did with Mac.

Though I don't know much about larger photo libraries iCloud manages mine just fine and everything syncs as it should. I have a small, yet growing library of 6GB and it has no issues whatsoever. My iMac is the best photo editing machine I've ever owned. You get more for your money with a PC, but the experience IMO isn't as rich when you combine the hardware and software.

 

[whodatrr]

Hedge your bets...

Primarily a Mac user cinco the early 90's, and somewhat locked in. Seen Apple go up and I've certainly seen them go down. But photos, music and some of the built in apps is what keeps me around. I'm not a pro, but Apple's stuff is so easy it makes me feel like one.

My photo/video library is a bit smaller than yours (~600GB), and it lives on the Mac. heck, since I've gone digital it;s always lived on the Mac, because it's just simpler and easier to do things. The Apple apps are integrated, ubiquitous, and free, which makes me happy. But a few things:

1. Trust, but verify, with the Cloud - I recently had iCloud take a serious poop on my iPhone backups. Fortunately, since I occasionally backup locally, I only lost about two weeks' worth of data. Still, I will always hedge those bets.
2. Keep copies of your Raw files both local and on the Cloud - Microsoft gives a free TB, per user, for Home Office subscribers. Use that and set it to synch your raw data. A cloud option is nice to have, in case there's a fire of flood. Heck, nowadays I value my digitals assets as much or more than my physical ones (I'm also a parent).
3. Maintain metadata across both platforms - It may sound tedious, but it'll be worth your time. If the Apple experiment doesn't work out, this will make it easier to go back.

I love what Microsoft is doing, and my Surface Pro 3 is greta. Having said all of that, I still rely upon Macs for most of my professional and personal life, because they just make things easy. So jump, and have fun, but verify.

One more word of caution, regarding iCloud and photo stream. Do be careful of the content that's on there, and how it's shared. If left unchecked, everything will just be visible to all devices, including stuff that you tried to delete or move out of the library. This can sometimes make things awkward, like kids browsing pics on the Apple TV and accidentally finding "intimate" pics of mommy and daddy together, that they casually snapped on their phone.... look out for that... LOL