Our goals are as always to maximize performance while creating reliable systems.

We not only need powerful machines, but we are finding that building and servicing those machines is becoming quite costly.

For a studio processing millions of images each year, image-to-image speed is absolutely paramount, so we optimize to suit.

This speed and chip set configuration has been tested for long-term stability.

Higher clock speeds are possible, but at the sacrifice of the system stability.

Lightrooms primary needbottleneck is clock speed, hence faster clock speed faster Lightroom.

All image settings were held equal between machines for control, and all tests were run 2-3 times to ensure accuracy.

Custom PC 12.51 Seconds Apple iMac 26.81 Seconds RESULTS: CUSTOM PC approx.

Apple iMac.

Custom PC 19 Minutes 22 Seconds Apple iMAC 26 Minutes 01 Seconds RESULTS: CUSTOM PC approx.

This test measured the amount of time it took to scroll through 114 RAW images within the Develop Module as we wait for each image to fully load on screen.

Custom PC 114 Images in 1 Minute and 10.3 Seconds Apple iMac 114 Images in 1 Minute and 58.1 Seconds RESULTS: Custom PC approx.

HDR Natural Color, then merged into a single panorama DNG directly from Lightroom.

Custom PC 12 Seconds to Preview, 59.32 Seconds to complete the merged DNG Apple iMac 28.5 Seconds to Preview, 1 Minute 31 Seconds to complete the merged DNG PREVIEW RESULTS: Custom PC approx.

Apple iMAC MERGE RESULTS: Custom PC approx.

Spread across 30 weddings a year (for a typical studio), this is a 60 hour time difference in the time spent editing weddings.

For a studio like ours shooting nearly 400 weddings, a 25 difference would require 800 more hours of editing or nearly 20 weeks of productivity.

They were innovative, their products screamed quality, and they were a step ahead of the game.

Apple is simply adding new products and updating product lines often times without much thought it seems.

This can be seen in the horrid pen solution found in the iPad Pro where charging it requires you to have a spear sticking out of your iPad.

For singlesmall photographer studios who are not processing large volumes of images Apple is still the best solution.

I will most likely do another test with a Mac Pro against my same machine.

I can guess that the Mac Pro will fair much better, but it will do it at 2x the price.

Stop downloading freeware, crap files, torrents, movies, software, porn and any other illegal content and much of your problems will disappear.

I will continue publishing results for anyone that is interested.

Mac Or Pc Desktop For Lightroom Editing