Will new MacBook Pro work with Photoshop & Lightroom

[Tina5EA4]

Looking to purchase new MacBook Pro 16. I am a photographer and I live in Lightroom and Photoshop on a daily basis. Currently have a 2014 MacBook Pro using LR Classic and Photoshop 2019. I have some issues but learned to live with them. I've read about PS and LR not working well with Catalina OS. So if I buy a new MacBook with Catalina, will I be able to use LR Classic and Photoshop with out issues??? Should I consider a Dell instead? 

[Guest]

"So if I buy a new MacBook with Catalina, will I be able to use LR Classic and Photoshop with out issues???"

I doubt it, a lot of people are having issues with Photoshop 2020 and Catalina, not so much with Windows.

I don't use a MAC mainly because they are way over priced, as well as that MAC OS Catalina does not support 32bit applications, so if you have older software it won't run on Catalina, at least with Windows that's not an issue.

[D Fosse]

As far as laptops are concerned, I think MBP is probably the safest bet. Dell put so much junkware into their laptops that you can't even find the operating system anymore. You're bound to get in trouble.

But really: Photoshop runs best on a high-powered desktop computer, and in that segment Windows is the way to go. You'll want a lean, stripped down system with only a basic Windows installation, lots of fast disks and a reliable video card like a Quadro.

I think about 80-90 % of the problems people come here with, are on laptops. Too much junk interfering with Photoshop (and usually way too little disk space).

[Guest]

Dell maybe full of junkware but isn't that the case for all prebuilt PC's, Dell actually have some good systems available with some good specs and are far cheaper than Apple and no I don't have a Dell PC/Laptop

Whenever I buy a new system it's a format straight away, I currently have a very old PC which I bought in 2013 and it's still running like new.

Upgraded the RAM to 32 GB, installed a new 500 GB SSD for the system drive and another 250 GB SSD for the scratch disk, a new RXT 2060 Super GPU and 2 * 4 TB drives for storage and backups, 2 * 27 inch displays and have no problem running any applications, having said that Photoshop 2020 is buggy, I acually prefer to use 2019, I wish Adobe would stop introducing new features for a while and concentrate on fixing the issues with the current version. We're not far away from another Photoshop release and Photoshop 2020 has some serious issues especially for MAC users with Catalina.

[D Fosse]

Yes, I agree with everything you say. And apparently Catalina is the most disruptive OS released by Apple to date. Budget with all new software and applications; the old ones may no longer work. Heck, even your old external disks may no longer work, if they're not APFS formatted.

But the main point was that with laptops you don't have a choice. It's off the shelf and you have to take what you get, you can't even reformat and reconfigure the way you want because there are too many custom modifications to the OS. And of course there's nothing you can do about the hardware later, except maybe increase RAM.

The only thing you can do with a laptop is make sure you pick one with a sensible hardware configuration, and a minimum of junk pre-installed. That's not easy, but the macbooks probably come closest.

[Guest]

"you can't even reformat and reconfigure the way you want because there are too many custom modifications to the OS"

I'm not sure I agree with that, I have never found any issues formatting any laptop to my custom configuration, I work in IT and have to do that on a regular basis, we have to build images for laptops and have to customise the laptops/pc's for various environments

Even the laptop that I'm replying from was a clean install of windows and I was able to customise it to my liking