Comments on: PC or Mac?

By: Tom Smith

Tom Smith — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 13:36:20 +0000

We’re all PC’s, and I believe Mac is simply a great marketing company, not a superior computer. That said, I don’t buy into the “X platform is superior to Y platform” A shame people do.

For video editing after much research we settled on Sony Vegas. Everything I’ve seen and read led us to believe it is as good as FCP. After using it for several years and continuing to read the blogs and forums I believe the choice was an outstanding one.

I’ve upgraded to Vista on my personal computer, and frankly miss XP Pro, but it works ok. For the church whoever I don’t forsee a major upgrade anytime soon.

By: CindyK

CindyK — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:33:12 +0000

Right now we only have PC’s owned by the Church, but I have written into our new APC IT Best Practices Document that we /will/ be considering Mac’s for the Production and music folks on a case by case basis.

Right now our Video Production genius is using his own Mac, although he does have the best computer in the house for his production needs, and while he uses that on occasion, the Mac is just so much better at doing what he requires that he uses that much more than his PC.

Being as Unix was my first love, Mac’s no longer frighten me. I was weened on a NeXT machine, and I miss it. *sniff*

By: Mike Sessler

Mike Sessler — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 00:58:03 +0000

We have a funny mix. Officially, our parent church (CPC) is all PC. And so Upper Room should be all PC. However, 9 of our 11 staffers own or use Macs. As Upper Room is growing into it’s own, we’re in the process of leaving the CPC IT infrastructure and setting up our own.

We’ll be putting in an XServe and moving everyone to Macs. I still run Windows via Fusion for the things I need to (Studio Manager and the odd system control app). I edit on a MacPro using Final Cut Pro (which I greatly prefer over Vegas–and I used that daily for 15 months–sorry Jason!)

Even at CPC change is afoot. More and more staffers are buying Macs and brining them in to work (to use when their PCs crash). I suspect we’ll be 50/50 in a year as a total ministry, though Upper Room will be all Mac in 6 months or less (I hope!)

By: Jason Pamblanco

Jason Pamblanco — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 14:39:27 +0000

We are transitioning into an all Mac system here. Currently 3 out of 6 ministerial staff have macs and VERY soon 4 out of 6 will. Every new purchase we make is a mac. With iChat SCREEN SHARING for Leopard, I can now be more effective at computer administration for all those “little things” that come up. Sharing is a sanp and backup on our time capsules is a breeze. PLUS they’re macs. Need I say more? haha

By: James Higginbotham

James Higginbotham — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 13:30:33 +0000

My church has been a hybrid of PCs (volunteers and check-in stations) and Macs (all staff) since at least 2001. We setup a Linux-based server for accounts and file shares so that everything would play nice together, prior to OS X’s better Windows support.

The toughest thing we battled was finding enough people that were experienced enough with Macs to support them. Before we found enough volunteers, we decided to use a local Mac support shop. They did the OS upgrades, hardware fixes/warranty issues, and setup printers and other drivers. Otherwise, they were the same as having PCs on the network.

By: Jarrod Skeggs

Jarrod Skeggs — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 19:51:41 +0000

Our church is in the process of phasing out the Windows PC’s and replacing them with Macs. We recently pulled the plug on MediaShout, (Thank God), and began utilizing ProPresenter. That Mac was the first one. Our Associate Pastor recently moved to using a MacBook. We’re a small church of about 400 members and I think that its even more important for us to utilize the Macintosh platform due to the value proposition that it brings. One of the best parts that I think so many churches overlook is the virus immunity. Also, for those of you utilizing MS Publisher you should consider making the transition to Apple’s iWork Suite. This Suite of Apps runs circles around MS Publisher and believe it or not, the learning curve is really not bad. If you can drag an object and drop it somewhere on a page you can use a Mac and iWork. You can always run Windows on your Mac if you must, but do you really think you will need the archived MS Publisher files? Since we’ve began our migration we haven’t even used MS Publisher. That’s been over 6 months now.

By: Greg Atkinson

Greg Atkinson — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 18:29:58 +0000

Rudy, EasyWorship will soon have a Mac version. FYI.

By: Brendon

Brendon — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 17:52:38 +0000

Our church has been PC for years. But two years ago we updated all of our creative arts PC’s to Mac ( about 6 computers) and I must say I never been a PC that renders or opens programs as fast as My mac does.

By: Derek

Derek — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 15:52:54 +0000

We are approaching the 50/50 mark. All but one office computer in the worship dept is mac. We use ProPresenter in 3 different worship spaces, and those are all mac too. Graphic design and one of the youth guys are on macs too. All of the other office computers are PCs though. We have our common drives mapped on our macs, and we’re using Entourage without hickups too.

By: Matt Johnson

Matt Johnson — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 14:41:12 +0000

My church is another casualty to the evil known as Microsoft Publisher. We also use ACS software, which isn’t Mac friendly (you can do online ACS, which can work with macs).

My department (worship), is exclusively Mac from start to finish, thanks to Pro Presenter, Final Cut, and a director who thinks progressively.