Diving into the world of Apple in the next few months. I hope I can swim.

Hello, residents of Apple-land. I will be one of you soon.

I have a $1000 gift card to the Apple Store. On top of that, I have a $250 check which I am going to cash once I finish a data-entry job, hopefully within the next week or two. (I know, $1250 doesn't seem like much, but I can always do other jobs after I have that. Hoping not to do too many, though - this one was miserable!) Sometime after that, depending on the response I get from this post, I am diving into the great big world of Apple without really knowing how to swim once I get there. I

I have been assessing my situation, and I think I an iMac would be best considering my budget and performance needs. I asked someone at my local Apple store, and she agreed. But beyond that, I have no idea what I'm doing - I am a resident of the world of Linux! My Apple store has three or four different iMacs for sale, but I don't know which to get because you can never get a staff member to sit still and help there; they are very understaffed.

The iMac I buy should be able to handle HD video editing; the AVCHD files I will be working with are from a Sony HDR-CX110. Is iMovie at all similar, capability-wise, to Adobe Premiere Elements 8, or should I get FCP? I know nothing about either iMovie or FCP, but back when I was running Windows (shudder!) a few years ago, I was using Premiere Elements 8 reasonably happily. However, I'm not going back to those dark days - only Mac and Linux for me from now on!

I'm sorry for this long, incomprehensible post, but I don't really have any idea what I'm doing and yet am very excited at the same time.

Thanks,

#6c86ff

#6c86ff said:

Hello, residents of Apple-land. I will be one of you soon.

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Welcome, I'm sure you will enjoy it, though it will be very different from Linux.

The iMac I buy should be able to handle HD video editing; the AVCHD files I will be working with are from a Sony HDR-CX110. Is iMovie at all similar, capability-wise, to Adobe Premiere Elements 8, or should I get FCP?

Click to expand...

If you're doing straight movie editing (ie one video track, no more than two audio tracks), then iMovie should be fine. Adobe Premiere Elements is also available for the Mac (you may be able to get a cross-license for the normal cost of upgrading) if you are adept at it. Final Cut Pro is pretty awesome now (after a bit of a rough start), and pretty cheap for world-class editing software, if you are planning on running with the big dogs I'd go that route.

As you may know, you can run more than one OS on the Mac, and in fact the Mac is the only computer I'm aware of that can run virtually ANY OS ever released in the computer age. You might check into VirtualBox, a free virtualiser that should let you run whatever Linux you like on your Mac as well, but my advice would be to avoid relying on it as a "crutch" as you learn the Mac. See my essay (link below) for more tips.

I am going to look into FCP, mainly for its multicamera editing facility, as well as the opportunity to further my editing capabilities in the future.

I have read your post, and find it to be very useful. Thank you!