Is a 2019 iMac too old for Adobe Programs such as Photoshop

[Stefanie5E38]

I noticed with the 2024 Adobe Creative Suite (in photoshop) the spinning wheel appears more than usual and loads slower. I'm wondering if that would be an issue with my current work computer being 5 years old already. (macOS is updated to Sonoma) 

[Lumigraphics · Accepted solution]

You are mostly constrained by available RAM, drive space, and video card. I use a 2019 MacBook Pro w/Radeon 5300M at work and it still performs pretty well. I expect to need a replacement in the next 1-2 years.

[Conrad_C · Accepted solution]

Technically, a 2019 iMac isn’t too old, because as long as it has enough memory and storage, it still meets the macOS compatibility requirements for Creative Cloud apps. However, at 5 years old it is starting to reach the typical period where a computer can start to feel sluggish because new software tends to be written for the capabilities of newer hardware.

There is one different thing about the last 5 years on the Mac. In 2020, Apple started releasing Apple Silicon Macs, starting with the M1. Those perform so much better that they rapidly made the Intel Macs look a lot worse and less efficient. So during this transition, Intel Macs can seem slower sooner than they would have traditionally.

If the slower performance starts to bother you a lot, and you can’t afford a new computer soon, one way you might restore performance is to roll back Creative Cloud apps to a version where you were happy with the speed. Mac software developers started writing new versions to take advantage the higher capabilities of the much more appealing Apple Silicon Macs, so for example many newer features that benefit from multi-core processing, GPU acceleration, and AI tend to work much better and faster on an Apple Silicon Mac. Running these types of features on an Intel Mac can be disappointing.

Just be aware that the Creative Cloud installer provides only the last two major versions for installation.

[frazzlesnap]

Illustrator and InDesign are still primarily single-threaded. The main benefit from Apple Silicon is the increased IPC relative to the older Intel chips, not necessarily overall multi-threaded capability. My 2018 Threadripper 2950x is still adequate for multi-threaded applications, but it is severely hindered in single-threaded use by its low IPC. My 2020 3955wx is better, but still a far cry from the IPC of a newer i7 or i9, both of which are better for IPC and mult-threading than an M3. The primary benefit of the Apple Silicon versus current AMD and Intel offerings is the incredible efficiency of the chip. The built-in GPU definitely can't compete with a current high-end video card for photo and video editing. All that said, yes, the slow performance in InDesign is due to software optimization failure, rather than any hardware faults.

[Conrad_C]

Illustrator and InDesign are still primarily single-threaded. The main benefit from Apple Silicon is the increased IPC relative to the older Intel chips, not necessarily overall multi-threaded capability.

By @frazzlesnap

The other widely recognized major advantage of Apple Silicon is performance per watt, which is why many low-end x86 laptops still have trouble competing with the fanless MacBook Air, especially on battery. Lower wattage for comparable performance has numerous side benefits, such as extending battery life. The thermal advantage of lower wattage also leads to less throttling (more able to maintain claimed maximum performance), lower fan noise in laptops that have them, and longer overall battery longevity (maintaining a useful charge for more years), because one of the major enemies of battery longevity is heat.

The built-in GPU definitely can't compete with a current high-end video card for photo and video editing. All that said, yes, the slow performance in InDesign is due to software optimization failure, rather than any hardware faults.

By @frazzlesnap

The competitiveness of the Apple Silicon GPU varies with the task. For the 20th century Creative Cloud apps (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign), there isn’t much to be gained from a powerhouse Nvidia card over the Apple GPU, largely having to do with the software optimization issues you mentioned.

High end video cards clearly outperform Apple Silicon GPUs for certain tasks such as 3D rendering and some types of video editing/rendering. But the Apple hardware is quite competitive in other areas. For example, AI is the new vanguard and the Apple Silicon GPUs perform sufficiently well on Photoshop and Lightroom AI tasks. (On laptops, the Apple GPU consumes far less power to achieve performance in the range of x86 discrete laptop GPUs.)

AI Denoise in Lightroom/Camera Raw is one of the most demanding tasks that Adobe photo software have to perform today. Already, the most powerful “integrated” Apple Silicon GPUs were turning in processing times not that far behind large dedicated high wattage graphics cards. (People have crowdsourced AI Denoise performance tables online that you can find.)

One factor here is that AI performance is no longer dependent mostly on the GPU. AI accelerator hardware is similiar to how video codec accelerator hardware can sometimes make more of a difference in performance than the GPU alone. This week’s release of Lightroom Classic 13.3 on macOS enables the Apple Neural Engine coprocessor, and reports are that the Neural Engine now brings Mac AI Denoise processing times down by another 15% to 50% depending on the Mac, which really gets them down into the processing time range of an Nvidia 30x0/40x0 (10 to 20 seconds per image)…and that’s even for the power-sipping battery-powered portables.

Intel and Snapdragon are advancing their own AI coprocessors and more efficient CPU/GPUs, but they are generally not shipping yet.

[frazzlesnap]

All your points are valid. I should have mentioned that the efficiency of the Apple Silicon means that the performance can potentially be scaled far more than an equivalent AMD or Intel cpu. I realized last night that I was actually wrong about the GPU versus Apple Silicon-integrated graphics argument, as you pointed out. I keep thinking that it is similar to the integrated graphics of AMD and Intel, whereas it is a totally different system, and much higher-performance. I apologize for my incorrect statements. As much as I lust after the Threadripper Pro 7995wx, and the latest Ada RTX cards, I have to be realistic here, and admit that the Apple Silicon ecosystem has many inherent advantages that are only beginning to be realized. If I needed a laptop, I wouldn't consider anything other than a Macbook Pro at this point. For a desktop, I'm not constrained by power so much, so using up to 1200 Watts isn't as much of an issue. Still, my solar panels can only cover so much, and every bit of efficiency helps!

[Conrad_C]

Yeah, we’re pretty much in agreement. If someone’s priority is getting a lot of creative media work done on battery, or a compact quiet desktop, then I tell them to consider a Mac. But if you want the highest possible performance and you have power, cooling, and space all taken care of, no Mac is going to beat a tower PC with the latest graphics card in it.

(Some of this may change soon, depending on how well ARM Windows works out on the Snapdragon-based laptops announced this week by many OEMs.)

[Lumigraphics]

A $20,000 machine from Puget Systems will be very, very fast but at a cost in $ and in power usage. Many of us can't afford that.

[frazzlesnap]

I always build my own to save money. Back in 2020 when I built my most current system, I saved about $3000 over what Puget Systems wanted, and I got better/more NVME drives, plus longer warranties on parts and three years of free file recovery on my RAID10. I couldn't have afforded to pay what they wanted. I would never buy a Windows or Linux machine pre-built, unless I won the lottery!

[daveb75792932]

I bought a brand new Apple Macbook Pro with M3 chip, loads of RAM and I am STILL getting the spinning wheel in InDesign! Very frustrating. Seems to be an Adobe issue rather than hardware