Building a Mac for my sis. Need input.

[spentar]

OK so my sister just finished high school and will be attending the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in NYC in august😀. Shes going to major in Digital Photography. She already has a very nice camera (Cannon something. $1500 camera setup though, with tons and tons of lens's and crap). She's been a photography hobbyist for the past 5 years. She needs a computer for college speaking she will need to store photos, edit, render, etc. She is bent out on getting a mac though i keep on the push towards a PC. So here i am, she doesn't know this yet but I'm going to buy on and do a "little "Personal" work if you know what i mean! I hate apple but if its for sis ill do it. So whats the best fit laptop to start with? i need something of decent screen size, good processor for all the rendering and CPU intensive editing programs she will be using i assume. I believe she was talking about a 17" screen or 15" but whatever will be easier to mod a little bit. I need a list of things i can do to these things. So far my plan is to load it down with ssd's and a nice big hard drive. Plenty of ram for those programs, and put a protective skin on it. If there's anything else to trick this thing out please let me know asap. Now one more thing, i wanna know what i can do about making this thing safe too, because shes in NYC i wanna have a setup where i could possibly track, and or find the laptop if it was stolen. I also want to make the thing impossible to get in if it was stolen. Sorry for the long paragraph but there's a lot i need to cover within this thread. Help is definitely needed haha.

 

[Astralv]

In the mac section of this forum were couple of threads about building a ma desktop and they had nice links to systems configs. I would search internet- there dedicated sites for it- my links are on another computer Favorites, but there is site that keeps updated hardware requirements lists.

 

[unksol]

If she wants a MAC OS laptop she needs to buy a MAC. Period.

Hackintoshes are based on desktops and for technical people who know what they are doing, and can deal with the fact they are running software on unsupported hardware, and will have to fix and deal with it themselves. There will be no help from ANYONE. Especially school IT. In otherwords not the kinds of people who want Macs for fashion/photography.

And you're completely overlooking this, but someone going to a fashion institute in NYC who wants a MAC is likely going to be EXTREMELY disappointed with a hackintosh simply because it doesn't look like a MAC or say apple on it. People buy MACs for looks/support/OS etc. but it's never about the hardware.

 

[spentar]

No No you got me all wrong hehe. I have the Intention of getting her a Macbook pro, then doing come custom work with that like a ssd, ram upgrade, skin, and stuff like that lol. I was looking at the Macbook pro 15.4" i7 2.7ghz with the Nvidia 650m. I own a Hackintosh and build my own pc's. By no means am i a pro or even very good with computers but i know enough that she needs an apple computer not a custom rig. She needs a laptop not a desktop. Im sorry but im tired from work and i worded the original post wrong XD.

 

[Aristotelian]

No No you got me all wrong hehe. I have the Intention of getting her a Macbook pro, then doing come custom work with that like a ssd, ram upgrade, skn, and stuff like that lol. I was looking at the Macbook pro 15.4" i7 2.7ghz with the Nvidia 650m. I own a Hackintosh and build my own pc's. By no means am i a pro or even very good with computers but i know enough that she needs an apple computer not a custom rig. She needs a laptop not a desktop. Im sorry but im tired from work and i worded the original post wrong XD.

Not only did you word it incorrectly, you posted it on the wrong board. This is a board for people who are building their own PCs.

Regardless, perhaps this was also misstated, but I don't think you can put both SSD and HDD in a single Mac laptop. It's an either/or deal, and you must buy one, so if you want to swap in a custom drive you are going to have to pay double.

If you want both storage and performance in a single laptop, you might check out a hybrid SSD/HDD such as this one:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=22-178-340&Tpk=22-178-340

Also you will need to be very careful. Any visible sign that you have tinkered with the machine could cause Apple to void her warranty.

In other words, this is a bad idea. She will not notice any difference for your efforts and it could actually create some problems for her. You should just buy her a Mac and tinker with your own machine.