iMac

Todd would like to keep shooting photos on film, but he's having trouble finding labs that can provide quality prints. So he's forced himself to learn digital photography. Leo says the good thing about digital photography is that he can self edit on the fly and keep what works and what doesn't. Then he can print them.

Todd is also looking for a new Mac. Should he go with the Mac Pro? Leo says no. Leo thinks that the Mac Pro is filled with problems. He went around and bought a 5K iMac and says it's ideal for editing and showcasing photography, thanks to that 5K Retina screen.

Dennis has an old iMac from 2006 and he's having problems getting it to boot up. How can he move files from the old Mac to his new Mac? Leo says that there's a utility option called "Target Disk Mode." Press and hold "T" on startup and it'll put the Mac into Target Disk Mode. This means the Mac will appear as an external hard drive to the computer it's connected to.

Michael's iMac needs to be replaced and he was about to buy a refurbished Mac when he heard the price of the 5K iMac was dropped. Leo says that not everything Apple does gets a huge announcement. The 5K iMac is gorgeous, but he shouldn't consider the hard drive upgradable. Only the RAM can be boosted in that model. An iMac with 8GB of RAM is pretty good, and a 1TB fully spinning drive is good. Or he can go with a 256GB SSD and use an external hard drive for data. An SSD is the single best upgrade for most computers. It really does speed them up.

What computer should she get for video editing? Leo says an iMac is the way to go, but some say the Mac Pro is better. Leo disagrees. She'd still have to buy a monitor and other externals if she got the Mac Pro. The iMac is faster and she'll get that huge 5k display, making it easier to edit. She's not doing advanced rendering, so the 5K iMac is ideal. And she'll want more memory, at least 16GB. As far as the processor goes, the faster clock speed is more important than the number of cores. She won't need to get an upgraded video card either.

Troy has been trying out Windows 10 on his iMac and he really likes it. He's wondering if he can dump OS X completely and just run Windows through Boot Camp. Leo's been running it virtually and he says that's the best way to run it. Boot Camp just provides drivers to run Windows on the Mac. Troy could in theory delete the Mac partition, but Leo recommends keeping it because it'll update the drivers. He can make the partition smaller, though. If he's only going to get Windows, Leo suggests a Windows PC.

Jessica is looking to make "the switch" to a Mac Mini from her six year old Windows Machine. She's a photographer. Leo says that the Mac Mini is going to be faster and with the ability to use her current monitor and keyboard, it's going to be an easy switchover. Is it worth getting a Fusion Drive? Leo says to get a solid state drive (SSD). They're faster. And she should get as much RAM as she can afford. Since she's into Photoshop, Jessica should have at least 8GB of RAM.

Paul accidentally chose Chinese as his iMac's main language. He thought it would be easy to fix, but it actually got worse. Leo says that every Mac has a really great recovery solution. All he needs to do is reboot the Mac with CMD R and it will give him options to reinstall the OS from the Internet. Apple will then download and install the proper operating system. Some Macs may require OSX Lion to do it though. If he needs to do network recovery, Here's how - http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT4718

Steve is thinking about getting the 27" iMac with Retina 5K display, and he's wondering about the Fusion drive. Leo says he has one, and that screen is amazing. But the problem is storage. And there are only two choices -- the Fusion drive, a 3TB spinning drive that works in concert with an 128GB SSD drive, and an SSD.

Jim had one of the original iMacs and he heard a 'pop' and the display died. A Cinema display he had connected also went down. So he has to buy a new computer. He's wondering what the difference is between th i5 and i7 processor. Leo says about $300. They're very similar.

The i7 does multithreading, which is great for video editing. Multithreading allows each core to do two things at once. He can check out this site for more in depth comparisons - https://www.cpubenchmark.net/.

Earl has an old iMac and can't transfer his files to his new iMac. He wants to move the program from the old to the new, but he doesn't have any disks. Leo says that Microsoft Word for the Web, which is free, or Google Docs, would work great. He doesn't need new software. He can just backup his data with a USB key and then bring it to the new Mac and use Office for the Web or docs.google.com to open it.