Start a Media Department #3 – Buy a Mac at 3:15 PM

Listen, this is serious. I know you think this is a Mac vs. PC shameless attack, but take it from someone who's lived with, edited with, and designed with both platforms. In my earlier designing and editing years, I used a PC. I've been sitting here thinking about those days. I can't even begin to explain to you the headaches and frustrating "PC mumbo-jumbo" I had to go through.

I always felt like I needed to add to Windows so that I could do what I thought to be something everyone should be able to do on their computer. Then, I had to hope that this Frankenstein machine was going to actually save my design and all my hard work. Hope that it would burn a DVD. Hope I wouldn't getting annoying viruses. Hope that it would burn that CD. Hope that it wouldn't crash or lockup while I was showing a client a design or video.

I asked co-church planter, Sam Mahlstadt's thoughts about using a Mac for church plant marketing:

"We knew that we wanted to be very mobile and very online from the beginning, so for us, a Mac was important. It provides us a way to produce our own media, which will pay for itself quite quickly. If we needed to pay someone every time we needed a graphic or video, we would never get ideas off the ground."

Point #1 - "They're Too Expensive!"
I hear this all the time, and I get it, I really do! Ministry is not the money-maker of all career paths. Most churches don't have money trees in the conference room, which is why I need you to hear me out. PC's are able to be cheap due to outsourcing. They go with the lowest bid from a RAM manufacturer in China, some company in India gives them a good deal on processors, motherboards from Japan, blah, blah, blah... You can buy a laptop for $300 dollars, but I guarantee you will not have piece of mind, and you will want to throw it against the wall in 4 months.

Apple makes everything specifically for their computers. Everything in a Mac is "Apple Certified." All the hardware and software "play nice" with each other. They cost more because they are better machines. I work on five Macs and I own one, and I almost never have issues. In fact, I've only had to call Apple Care once a year ago. (How many times do you have to call your IT guy?) You need something that you know is going to work, and has everything you need up front. It pays for itself in the long-run...

Point #2 - Macs Don't Have Viruses
I love breakfast food, don't you? Think of waffles and pancakes. When you pour syrup on pancakes, it spreads all over the pancake with no boundaries. On a waffle, it has to fill up on square at a time. PC's are pancakes, and Mac's are waffles (except the syrup doesn't spread to the next square). Viruses have free-reign in PC's, while Mac's worry about other, more important things, like you.

Point #3 - They Just Work
The best and fastest example of this happens when someone wants to show a video in our multipurpose room. There's a projector mounted with a VGA (Monitor) Cable run to it. When I have to hook up a PC to it, I have to plug it in, go to "Control Panel," select the "Displays" icon, then select "Arrangement," then select the proper arrangement, then hope it works. When I hook up my Mac, I have to plug it in ... that's it. The Mac senses the VGA was plugged in, takes 3 seconds and resets to allow this and it's there. No hoping, just knowing. This intuitiveness is plastered all over Mac's products. If I could propose a slogan for Mac, it would be "They Just Work."

Point #4 - They Have All You Need
I mentioned before that I felt like I always had to add software or hardware to my PC so I could do most things I thought should be "no-brainers." Every Mac comes with all the software you would need to start marketing for your church. Of course you can upgrade to more advanced equipment, but we're just starting a media department here, right? Look at it this way, you can pay a little more, have everything you need, and know it's all going to work for you. It's kinda like this...




And would you relax already! There is Microsoft Office for Mac's, Parallels so you can run Windows on your Mac (I don't let Windows within 10feet of my Macs), other software, and the Apple Store will give you free lessons on your new Mac to get you started!

Step #4...