I do not want to get in to a religious war of what platform is better than the other. If you’re an adult, a freelancer, a college student or in an apprenticeship to switch careers and you’re an AFOL, you may want to know what platform to use.

I am going to start to tell you what apps work on what platforms it can run on. I’ll start with ones that are cross platform:

• Adobe’s Premiere
• Avid’s Media Composer

On the Mac-only there’s

• Apple’s Final Cut Pro or should I just say “Final Cut ‘Pro'” in Name only
• Apple’s iMovie

For PC-only there’s

• Grass Valley’s Edius
• Sony (now “Magix”) Vegas

(as of this writing, I am blanking on half a dozen more branded products, but these are the major biggies)

In the defense of Macs:

Macs are not as dependent on the Internet the way Windows 10 and later is. You do not need the latest Mac hardware to use. Also if you have a legit copy of Windows, and your Mac has an Intel chip, you can dual boot with the magic of Boot Camp. Any Mac made after 2012 can be really sufficient if you are doing 1080p, which is the common newsgathering format, since my audience is really for the ENG and not the cinema. Apple has developed the QuickTime format, and Macs can read it natively, even the more outdated versions because the Non Linear Editing or NLE systems still export to Apple’s now legacy standards. Macs are well known for drag and dropping files across Mac OS’ file shell, the Finder and it’s applications. Macs can run for days if not weeks or even months without a need to properly “shut down”. Mac OS systems are very resilient for networking and anything “host” related often is self-healing. Only if a third party application likes to control the host’s operating system, would you need to reboot.

In the defense of Windows

Windows, for better or for worse, is the default operating system for enterprise software, such as NLE applications. Windows 10 is PITA to use, it requires constant Internet connectivity and updates are mandatory, and if you do not have an advanced Windows server environment to get the updates downloaded once and pushed across your computers, you’re kinda screwed. It’s not just NLE apps in the Windows environment that matters, for ones who want to learn how to use an NRCS plugin, which is often worked hand and glove, there is no NRCS that works for Macs, without opening a browser and get a handicapped version in the web browser.

Not to mention that QuickTime Player for Windows has been unsupported by Apple for more than 6 years, and vendors should’ve moved to another format after (better than before 2016), and leaving users to use VLC player or some other tool to view outdated formats. Apple never published QT X for Windows, and QuickTime X is really just a glorified standards-based media player with an ol standard as the brand name since like 2012 or something like that…

If you do not want to pay a so called “Apple tax’, you can save yourself some money and if you are tolerant of the “features” (as I say “bugs”) in Windows, then I say go for it. Windows is a diva. It always likes to shut down and not like to be restarted after patching. Windows tries to understand networks in a physical level, but that can get really screwy, not to mention the over sensitive Windows Firewall. I am not sure if I gave a good defense to Windows other than the fact it’s a necessary for newsgathering.