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Help!! My church has gone to the dark side!!

A.Nonymous

A.Nonymous

Extreme Android User
So, my church has been putting in a new sound system/multimedia system. The guy installing the sound has everyone all gung ho about Apple and Apple products to point where everyone involved with them is being pressured to buy them. We had a Windows computer running the overhead projector before. No one had any complaints about it. It just worked. This guy came in and told the music director that we need to purchase a mac because "it's better."

How is it better I asked? It just is. But the one we had worked just fine and no one had any complaints about it. The Mac is better. Why is it better? Because it does the job better. Macs are better at multimedia. How so? Examples please? It's just better. It just works. Umm, our Windows computer just works and it's only a year or so old. We've had no problems with it. The Mac is better.

Then came the iPad pitch. Everyone needs an iPad. They're only $400. You can link them together so they all display the song lyrics. Can't everyone see the song lyrics on the screen you've put 6 feet away from them? The iPad is a better multimedia experience and worth the money. How so? It just is. Everyone must buy one. Why would you not? It's the best tablet on the market anyway. Why do you say that? It just is.

I don't know if I'm more irritated at the people pushing products on us that we don't need (Seriously, we have no one in our church who knows how to support a Mac. If that thing breaks once this guy leaves, we're up a creek. No one cares.) or the fact that these people have no clue about the products they're pushing. I don't see the logic in replacing a system that has worked fine for years. We wore out one computer, replaced it with another one, that was a year or so ago and the current computer runs with no issues. Yet we're replacing for something that is some undefined version of "better". Ugh. Lord have mercy on our souls.
 
A.Nonymous said:
So, my church has been putting in a new sound system/multimedia system. The guy installing the sound has everyone all gung ho about Apple and Apple products to point where everyone involved with them is being pressured to buy them. We had a Windows computer running the overhead projector before. No one had any complaints about it. It just worked. This guy came in and told the music director that we need to purchase a mac because "it's better."

How is it better I asked? It just is. But the one we had worked just fine and no one had any complaints about it. The Mac is better. Why is it better? Because it does the job better. Macs are better at multimedia. How so? Examples please? It's just better. It just works. Umm, our Windows computer just works and it's only a year or so old. We've had no problems with it. The Mac is better.

Then came the iPad pitch. Everyone needs an iPad. They're only $400. You can link them together so they all display the song lyrics. Can't everyone see the song lyrics on the screen you've put 6 feet away from them? The iPad is a better multimedia experience and worth the money. How so? It just is. Everyone must buy one. Why would you not? It's the best tablet on the market anyway. Why do you say that? It just is.

I don't know if I'm more irritated at the people pushing products on us that we don't need (Seriously, we have no one in our church who knows how to support a Mac. If that thing breaks once this guy leaves, we're up a creek. No one cares.) or the fact that these people have no clue about the products they're pushing. I don't see the logic in replacing a system that has worked fine for years. We wore out one computer, replaced it with another one, that was a year or so ago and the current computer runs with no issues. Yet we're replacing for something that is some undefined version of "better". Ugh. Lord have mercy on our souls.
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I feel your pain brother.
 
Maybe you should look in to ones self of why you have so much hate towards apple? Are you not suppose to have love and forgiveness in your heart? Beings you go to church?

You have the choice to find another church if your not happy with the current one.

Do you really think they will go apple once they see how much all that apple product costs. I doubt they will go through with it.

You can always pray to god to intervene :rolleyes:
 
Dark Jedi said:
Maybe you should look in to ones self of why you have so much hate towards apple? Are you not suppose to have love and forgiveness in your heart? Beings you go to church?

You have the choice to find another church if your not happy with the current one.

Do you really think they will go apple once they see how much all that apple product costs. I doubt they will go through with it.

You can always pray to god to intervene :rolleyes:
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They already bought the iMac. We've gone from a nice desktop with dual monitors to this big clunky iMac with one ginormous monitor. Personally, I'd rather have dual monitors for projection work than one ginormous monitor, but what do I know? And I know that I will get tasked with trying to make this thing work. They're already encouraging people to buy the $400 iPad. They want me to get one. I've got an NC and I'm thrilled with it. Does everything I could want in a tablet. I don't need GPS or BT and neither do these other people who largely not technically inclined.

Open systems FTW!! Fight the power!!!
 
A.Nonymous said:
Then came the iPad pitch. Everyone needs an iPad. They're only $400. You can link them together so they all display the song lyrics. Can't everyone see the song lyrics on the screen you've put 6 feet away from them? The iPad is a better multimedia experience and worth the money. How so? It just is. Everyone must buy one. Why would you not? It's the best tablet on the market anyway. Why do you say that? It just is.
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Screens, multimedia, iPads?! :confused: Whatever happened to Hymns Ancient and Modern and The Book of Common Prayer? The place sounds more like a KTV bar than a church.
 
Mike get with the age, most church uses screens to project hymns because the older folks sight is going bad, and it's a fresh new way of doing things.
 
mikedt said:
Screens, multimedia, iPads?! :confused: Whatever happened to Hymns Ancient and Modern and The Book of Common Prayer? The place sounds more like a KTV bar than a church.
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lol, get with the times. I went to a Lent group last night and at the end we said 'Compline' from The Book of Common Prayer (well a print out, we don't actually have books of common prayer lying around). Wow! I really struggled to get the words out with all the thee, thy, thou, thumb.
 
EarlyMon said:
A.N, sounds like a tough fix. :(

Best luck, and if you are stuck for maintaining the thing, reach out here.

Hate it when people fix what isn't broken, especially on church funds.
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Fixing what isn't broken is my big peeve. My other peeve is that I'm supposed to be the unofficial tech support guy in the church, but they don't even consult my opinion before they deploy a brand new projection system that is completely unproven and that they know absolutely nothing about. Their reasoning was that support is expiring on our current software package and it would cost $150 to renew it. If they had asked me, I would've told them that a) spending $150 to renew support is a lot cheaper than spending $1500 + the cost of brand new software on a Mac and b) if the current system is working with no issues, there's really no need to extend support if money is a cost factor. We can always re-institute support in the future. I'm an IT consultant for a living. Clients consult me about these things all the time, pay me for it and feel like they're getting quality help, yet my church won't ask my advice when I'll give it to them free of charge.

All I know is sooner or later this new system is going to break as all systems inevitably do. When it does, people will look to me to fix it and I will have no idea how since I know nothing about Macs. Apple refuses to let people run their software virtually and I can't/won't pay $1500 for a system just to play around with it and see if I like it.
 
mikedt said:
Screens, multimedia, iPads?! :confused: Whatever happened to Hymns Ancient and Modern and The Book of Common Prayer? The place sounds more like a KTV bar than a church.
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You'd be surprised how many people come to church without a Bible and don't know the words to any of the songs whether they're modern or classics. Putting the lyrics on a screen helps guests follow along with what's going on and get more of the service. That's the goal anyway.
 
Yup, that is sheer stupidity, as it would be to do it the other way around(and I know you would say the same if it were the other way around).

"I want the iPhone 4" :)
 
I would simply make it clear that you won't be able to support the system, and walk away. When they come to you for support, then direct them to Apple's Genius Bar.
 
EarlyMon said:
My friend, the issue there isn't the computer system - you just told me the issue they have is control.
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You're probably right. I'm not asking to dictate IT policy. I just figured I'd be consulted. I give people advice all the time that they don't take. (Fools!!) Sometimes it works out for them and sometimes it doesn't. Just put me in the loop is all. Maybe they knew I would tell them they were better off with the Windows machine and didn't want to hear it so they didn't ask. Who knows.
 
Well, you went there for fellowship, so no need to make it one dimensional.

I agree with byteware - walk away from the issue and contribute and participate in other ways. There's more to you than your IT hat.

Or - accept the burden of learning to support the new system and you do that, do it whole-heartedly.

Either way presents a growth opportunity and I think that's a big part of fellowship.
 
Some of these churches can get very fancy. I work in a very high-tech industry and get to see all the latest set-ups and gadgets. However, I was in for a surprise when I went and visited a friend of mine in the midwest.

He is the creative director for this church and their system puts to shame some of the multimedia presentation systems I've seen in Silicon Valley. High tech lighting, computer assisted smoke, 4000p projection system and $40,000 pro-tool audio set-ups. I felt very humbled seeing it. I dont know what the deal is, it seems to be more of a rock-concert type set-up then your typical parish. I'm not going to mention his parish but they have youtube videos and the masses are as epic as a Justin Bieber concert.
 
While I'm not sure which is "better", but a church I know for the longest time was using Cakewalk on a Mac to run the music accompaniment for the chorus, and a studio app (Don't remember which) to record and produce the sermon recordings.

I do know most musicians use Macs. I'll hazard most video editing and stage production groups do as well (Like people use like).
 
I have no idea what program they're planning to buy for the Mac. We don't do anything overly technical. We display the lyrics of our songs and the scriptures of the sermon. We put up announcments after service on the projector as well. We can easily do all of this with the computer we've got and we can build/edit slides with no problems. It's not a complex system and it just works.

We record to a computer, but we don't do any post-production work or anything on the recordings. We simply record it, burn to a cd and distribute. We don't do anything technically complex as most of the people in the church aren't hugely technically inclined. We try to keep things simple.

Our music is all live and the instruments are all wired into the sound. It's my job (and the job of the other sound techs) to mix that properly. That's probably the most technical part of the job.
 
It would seem to me the only place where a Mac might be more suitable is at the mixing center. Again, that's just periphery to me, since I'm not a sound engineer type person, I just know people who tend to do that sort of thing lean towards Macs.

I chock that up to people who know their stuff, know what to use, that's all. The rest of it seems to be a simple LibreOffice Impress type job :)
 
PSkeptic said:
It would seem to me the only place where a Mac might be more suitable is at the mixing center. Again, that's just periphery to me, since I'm not a sound engineer type person, I just know people who tend to do that sort of thing lean towards Macs.

I chock that up to people who know their stuff, know what to use, that's all. The rest of it seems to be a simple LibreOffice Impress type job :)
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I'm not really a sound engineer type either. Personally, I'd rather not have the job, but sometimes we get pressed into service whether we like it or not. We have a large sound board that we can use to mix in real time. I could see a computer possibly replacing that, but I really like being able to turn real knobs.

I think part of my frustration is no one can tell me why the Mac is better and no one but me seems to question that it is (even though it is still in it's box and has not been set up yet). That is what kills me.

"You need to replace this Windows computer. Mac is better for a projection system"
"Why?"
"It's a better multimedia computer."
"How so?"
"It gives a richer experience."
"Meaning what?"
"Apple is just better for media."
"What does it offer that the Windows computer doesn't? What is worth paying the extra money?"
"It's a Mac. It's better for media."

Then I walk out before I punch someone.
 
A.Nonymous said:
"Why?"
"It's a better multimedia computer."
"How so?"
"It gives a richer experience."
"Meaning what?"
"Apple is just better for media."
"What does it offer that the Windows computer doesn't? What is worth paying the extra money?"
"It's a Mac. It's better for media."

Then I walk out before I punch someone.
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I went through this whole debate when I participated in my school reunion.

We had a bunch of Windows guys and a few mac guys/girls.
The person in charged with the slideshows and music projector took forever to do the slides. He wanted it do it with with a bunch of different apps that weren't really working out.

I came in (at the call of my friend for assistance) and did the whole thing in 20 minutes using iPhotos on my Macbook.

I dropped the whole drive of photos. Randomized. I picked a slick themed and output the video in 1080p mp4 format.

We burned it to DVD, made mobile and youtube versions and the whole thing was saved. I even dumped out a PDF photo iBOOK. It turned out better than the keepsake books that we paid a professional photographer to do. This was all done on the buit in apps of a new mac.


That experience change the opinion of many people. I didn't think nothing of it. To me, it is normal stuff I do with my own photos. But to over a dozen people, they were "awed and oooohhh"

We even made quick slideshows using Keynote (the app used by Steve Jobs during his conference presentations).

We then plugged the mac to the projector and I controlled the whole slide show from my remote/phone while enjoying myself during the event.

I'm not saying macs are not the answer. I'm certain it can be done in Windows but the fact it was done so effortlessly was very compelling for many, many joe-six pack type non-computer literate people.

Like I said, there are Windows apps that do this stuff but the themes, presets and built in styles that Apple gives makes everything looks so slick and professional. The templates are that good.
 
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