Looking for new Apple Hardware

[michaelt77204655]

I hope I picked the correct Community.

I posted the following on a Facebook group and received one answer.  It was a valuable answer but I would like additional opinions to help weigh my decisions for new hardware.  

I am looking for opinions on Apple products in conjunction with Adobe CC. I currently utilize a 2013 iMac stock with 32G Ram and a 2018 MacBook Pro with same 32 GB RAM. The iMac may have seen its better days when considering the software’s current version or even back one. On the MacBook Pro Adobe eats through my battery like a Tasmanian Devil at lunch.

I am considering a Mac Mini with intel i7, 2 tb sad and 65 fab Ddr4 Ram. My question is: does anyone have experience with this set up and is it as good as going with a simililarky set up iMac? Going to a PC with Windows is not part of my options.

Thank you

[Nancy OShea]

IMO, you get a lot more bang for your buck with a good Win PC than you do from similarly powered Apple products. 

Please ensure your computer meets or exceeds the minimum system requirements to run Creative Cloud + OS + all other apps you use. Check each one.  And keep in mind that these are baseline requirements.  Your mileage will vary depending on which apps you use and how much heavy lifting you do with them.   Also pay attention to new GPU requirements. 
- https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/system-requirements.html

[Peru Bob]

Which CC apps will you be using?

[michaelt77204655]

I use Premier Pro, After Effects; and Photoshop.

[Peru Bob]

I'm moving this to the Video Hardware forum.

[Conrad_C · Accepted solution]

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@michaelt77204655 wrote:

I am considering a Mac Mini with intel i7, 2 tb sad and 65 fab Ddr4 Ram.

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Is there a reason you’re considering an Intel Core i7 Mac at a time when high performance Mac applications are getting the most benefit from the new M1 Apple Silicon processor? If a report just released is any indication, the version of Premiere Pro optimized for Apple Silicon would perform significantly better on an M1 Mac Mini, with lower power consumption, resulting in less heat and fan noise too, and much less thermal throttling, compared to the Intel version of Premiere Pro on a similarly configured Intel Mac Mini.

https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2021/06/08/premiere-pro-beta-on-apple-m1-the-results-are-in.html

The benchmarking report referred to in the Adobe document (Creative Cloud on Apple Silicon: Key Speed Measures), covering multiple applications including Premiere Pro and Photoshop, was commissioned by Adobe, so that should be kept in mind. But it is interesting to see that Adobe is choosing to showcase Apple M1 performance improvements over a similarly priced Intel configuration…more bang for the buck.

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@michaelt77204655 wrote:

On the MacBook Pro Adobe eats through my battery like a Tasmanian Devil at lunch.

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That’s probably going to happen with any Mac or Windows laptop. The “all-day” battery life in product specs is based on light duty workloads, video watching, and web browsing. If you start editing with a graphics or video application, you are now driving the CPU, GPU, and storage to their performance limits all at the same time, which requires a lot more power, so battery life will have to drop.

That said, the M1 Mac laptops are reported to have better battery life than Intel laptops, even under load, due to the higher performance per watt (same performance level uses less power) of the M1.

[michaelt77204655]

Thank you!

In addition to this forum and another where I posted this for advice & discussion, I have talked with others and I am waiting for the M1 (potential updated) release later this year...if my current iMac will hold on.  The consensus seems to be that the M1 Mac Mini with 16gb will be healthy enough to support my efforts; but if I can hold out for the rumored/anticipated release of a further updated chipset it may well be worth my wait.

[RjL190365]

I would like to elaborate further on Conrad C's answer.

The i7 Mac Mini is a serious weakling for such an extremely high $2900 price (as your original request is configured). It has only an 8th-Gen 6-core/12-thread i7-8700 or i7-8700B CPU and no discrete GPU whatsoever. It relies solely on its outdated integrated Intel UHD Graphics 630 for all GPU display and processing. The Mac Mini is a good value only if it costs no more than $1200 total. But why turn it into a nearly $3000 clunker by spending a whopping $1800 extra on upgrades? The cost of the upgrades alone is significantly more than the base cost of that Intel iMac! And that's not to mention that the Intel Mac Mini in question dates from way back in 2018!

In other words, what you were originally planning is exactly like putting lipstick on a pig. A colossal waste of money, IMHO.