Creek (or any other experts on Macbooks).. convince me..

[VinnieVOL]

Wife needs a new machine for her craft design.  Not sure if any of you or your wives have this "Cricut" contraption but that's my wife's obsession at the moment.

The only time I've ever used a Mac is when I was at UT, they had computer labs for PC and Mac.. and the PC lab was always full so a couple of times I fumbled my way around on a Mac to check my email.  But I've always heard Macs are superior for things like image editing... so explain it to me like the noob I am... I'm assuming they have usb ports, yes?  Any preference over macbook over the iMac, aside from portability?

[Creek Walker]

I'm far from an expert, but I think the old standard of Mac-for-design vs. PC-for-business isn't as clear-cut as it once was. By the same token, software availability isn't as big a drawback for Mac as it used to be. The lines have all been blurred.

The primary reason I love Mac is the user-friendliness of the OS. I hate Windows, have always hated Windows. I understand why people who prefer a hands-on approach to their OS would prefer Windows, but I don't look to get into the nuts and bolts of the thing; I just want it to do what I need it to do, without freezing or crashing or other issues -- and OSX does it beautifully. I think that's the advantage to a Mac -- user-friendliness, and integration. (Application-to-application integration, primarily, but that's even more of an advantage if you use other Apple products...my phone is an iPhone and my tablet is an iPad so life would be more difficult for me if my computer wasn't a Mac.)

Given the pricing of the various models, if portability isn't an issue I would go with an iMac simply because you're going to get a lot more bang for your buck. (I say that as I'm sitting in my office looking at a top-of-the-line 27" iMac that is used for nothing except a display for my MacBook Pro...but portability is a huge issue for me.) If you do consider a laptop...I'm not sure how robust the software needed for CriCut is, but if it eats up a lot of resources definitely spend the extra money to get a MacBook Pro instead of an entry-level MacBook Air. The price tag is hard to swallow but if you use a MacBook Air for anything other than word processing, spreadsheets, email, web browsing, etc., it'll be a frustrating experience in the long run.

[Black Diamond Vol]

I think Apple has missed the mark in a lot of areas in recent years, but I'm still a big proponent of Macs. I have an entry-level 27" iMac (though I've upgraded the RAM to 32G) that I use mainly for music, and a Macbook Air for day to day stuff.

I would pretty much echo what Creek said- I'm not sure of the minimum requirements for CriCut, but if it's resource-intensive at all, she'll need either a Macbook Pro or an iMac. One thing to keep in mind- none of the current Macbooks (Pro or Air) have USB ports. You can still make it work, but you'll need lightning adapters. That's one big advantage of the iMac.

[VinnieVOL]

Good stuff, thx fellas..

[volsboy]

Bang for the buck Mac will never beat a PC. If it did, Mac would not be outsold by 10 times. That is just my figures, not sure if PC's outsell Macs by 10x. The new solid state hard drives are hard to beat.

[FLVOL]

Wife needs a new machine for her craft design.  Not sure if any of you or your wives have this "Cricut" contraption but that's my wife's obsession at the moment.

The only time I've ever used a Mac is when I was at UT, they had computer labs for PC and Mac.. and the PC lab was always full so a couple of times I fumbled my way around on a Mac to check my email.  But I've always heard Macs are superior for things like image editing... so explain it to me like the noob I am... I'm assuming they have usb ports, yes?  Any preference over macbook over the iMac, aside from portability?

My wife uses her cricut almost daily, and it can be an expensive habit, so good luck 

the cricut software can can be ran on Mac IIRC, but even if not, you can install Bootcamp on a mac, and then install windows 10, which would make it a dual boot setup. You could then install cricut for sure.

As for the superior image editing thing, it won't matter when discussing cricut, as neither Mac or a PC would have any influence on 3rd party software