10/15/2021 0 Comments Is The Mac Mini Good For Photoshop
That means the software no longer needs to use the Rosetta emulation software, potentially significantly speeding up performance. Adobe described these gains and explained some other changes to Photoshop recently.If you need a Mac for video editing or a laptop for streaming Twitch, get a device with at least 8GB of RAM (16GB is required for 4K editing, 3D work, and 360 video editing). The speed and capacity of the internal drive will provide instant access to the material.
![]() Is The Mini Good For Photoshop Software No LongerJason Row PhotographyNow, however after CPU, graphics, and memory upgrades, and with Apple not supporting their latest OS on the 2009 Mac Pro, it was time to change. My venerable 2009 Mac Pro has paid for itself many times over. It was an investment that paid off many times. Neither of which I could justify, financially. Powerful Macs came down to expensive iMacs, and even more expensive Mac Pros. For my video needs, I required a powerful Mac. Download vpn for mac 107Apple Minimalism is just fine with me. This suited me fine, I have all the peripherals that I need, a wireless keyboard, mouse, and two decent monitors. The box literally contained the Mac, a power cable, and the usually regulatory pamphlet. So it was with the unboxing of my Mac Mini. Mac Mini, My First ImpressionsOne of the things I like most about Apple products is their minimalist design. It's truly a plug and play machine. The only concession to minimalism on the front is a small led light to show that the computer is on. The Mini remains a low profile, metal box with rounded corners. The only major changes from the last Intel-based models are a return to the light aluminum color from space grey and the reduction of thunderbolt ports on the back by two. Setting The Mac UpAs is to be expected, the setting up of the Mac Mini was a flawless and pain-free experience, with one caveat. The Neural Engine enables machine learning on repetitive tasks. The specs of the M1 Arm processor are 8 processing cores, an 8 core GPU, and a 16 core Neural Engine. I did not want to struggle with hard drive space.Once up and running, I transferred all the data over from my aging Mac Pro. I had opted to pay the Apple tax for the larger SSD due to the number of large apps that I use. The actual boot time is ridiculously fast courtesy of the SSD built-in, 512Gb SSD. With these plugged in, the time from booting to being fully set up was less than 10 minutes. I had anticipated this and already had a wired Apple keyboard and Magic Mouse to hand. The move to Arm-based chips from Intel was always going to be risky – pardon the pun. By Jason Row Photography So Is It Fast?Yes, it is, the hype is real and the results are, for the price of the machine, astounding. Up, running and all data transferred in less than an hour. Some 30 minutes later, all my documents, applications, and data had been moved from old to new. I simply plugged in my external hard drive with Time Machine backup and let Apple do its thing. Scrolling through the images on an Intel Mac, and even high-end PC, it would stutter like hell. Rosetta 2 will only be a temporary stop-gap in the road to a full Arm-based lineup, but for now, it works well if needed.So what of that fabled power? My Lightroom catalog runs to around 80,000 images. Despite going through an emulation to run, many apps are actually running faster on the M1 chip than on their native Intel processors. Apps designed to run on Intel chips are converted on the fly to run on the new M1 processor. The 2006 version was notoriously flakey, many PowerPC apps refused to run on the new Intel chips.Rosetta 2 however is seamless. This means that an app written for Intel processors will not run on Arm chips.Apple however reintroduced an emulation app first seen when they moved over from PowerPC processors to Intel in 2006. Multi-layered images not taxi the processor in the slightest.When it comes to video editing, my nemesis is 4k H.265 footage. Again the performance is sublime. Bear in mind that Lightroom is currently running through Rosetta and hence nowhere near its peak performance yet.Adobe has already moved Photoshop over to the Arm architecture in the form of a beta. Any slider movement in the Develop module is utterly smooth, the image changes in real-time even if there are already multiple edits such as masks and filters. By Jason Row PhotographyThe same is true of editing. I can free scroll through my Lightroom library with no stutters. I no longer need to transcode footage in order to work with it. Both these apps have been updated to the Arm chip. On the Mini, it is buttery smooth at the highest resolution on Final Cut Pro and DaVinci Resolve. Any Downsides?The lack of ports is an issue. It does contain a fan but for the work I do, it has not once really put any load on the processor. By Jason Row PhotographyAnother factor in editing is that the Mac Mini is completely silent. H.265 4K Footage edits silky smooth without the need to transcode. However, the way the Apple Silicon chips are designed means that memory and GPU work much more efficiently as they are built directly into to processor. Neither the drive, memory, or GPU can be upgraded. In the future, I may invest in a Thunderbolt-based SSD drive.The lack of expandability may be an issue for some. My external drives, including an SSD, run through that hub and are still fast enough to deal with 4k video editing. I have a USB C hub which enables me to expand the second Thunderbolt port albeit with USB 3.1 speeds.The two USB 3.1 ports are not a limitation to me as my Dell monitor has a 5 port hub built-in. Macs and PCs running Intel cost significantly more to get similar performance especially in the video and photography fields.In 2007, Steve Jobs revealed the iPhone. I took the model with an 8GB RAM and the 512GB SSD which retails at $899.00.That in itself is relatively inexpensive but when you factor in the performance abilities, editing 8k footage, buttery smooth Lightroom, and Photoshop editing, it starts to look like an absolute bargain. That gives you the M1 processor with 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. However, the base M1 Mac Mini retails at $699.00. Apple products are notoriously expensive compared to similar PC products. It works very differently and 8GB of Ram on an M1 machine is not the equivalent of 8GB of ram on an Intel machine.There is one thing I have not mentioned in this look at the M1 Mac Mini, the price. For the average photographer or video editor, these tiny powerhouses are about as close to perfect you can get in a computer at this moment in time. I am legitimately blown away by it. Over the next 18 months, we will see the entire Mac lineup moved to Apple Silicon with new even faster M1X chips being announced.As for my Mac Mini. M1 is Genesis, it is the slowest chip Apple will ever produce. I am not the only one to suggest that the M1, Apple Silicon chips are going to change the face of computing.
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