2021 Apple MacBook Pro 16"

[geogphotos]

2021 Apple MacBook Pro 16", M1 Pro Processor, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD,

 

Anybody using this for stock either/or home/away?

 

Pros and cons please

 

This one from Jon Lewis comes with 1TB memory and gives no other option - I'd probably be happy with 500Gb.

 

It does include 2 years guarantee.

Edited March 15, 2022 by geogphotos

[Malcolm Park]

This doesn’t directly answer your question however I thought of buying this model purely for downloading while on location. Decided instead to get a (mint) used 13" 2020 model MacBook Pro (non-M1), 16gb ram, 512TB SSD with latest Monterey OS instead. Purchased from a very reliable UK reseller. Performance of the machine is perfect.

[geogphotos]

Thanks Malcolm - especially for the thumbs up on performance for these products. 

 

I have had excellent experience with Jon Lewis so most likely will stick with them.  I like them as a company - the way they look after both customers and staff, and so on

[NYCat]

Mine is pretty darn gorgeous but is truly brand new and I haven't enough experience on it to rate it but, so far, it is fabulous. I am slow to move forward but have read nothing but great things about it. This was my slow... process ... of getting ready for it. https://discussion.alamy.com/topic/15245-moving-from-lightroom-6-to-lightroom-classic-subscription-on-a-new-macbookpro/

 

Definitely nothing to complain about.

 

Paulette

 

[geogphotos]

Thanks Paulette.I was hoping that i could download my Adobe software onto the new machine  - I only use Photoshop. And my document/spreadsheet files are stored on ICloudDrive so that should make things easier.

[NYCat]

Sounds perfect.

 

Paulette

[MDM]

3 hours ago, geogphotos said:

2021 Apple MacBook Pro 16", M1 Pro Processor, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD,

 

Anybody using this for stock either/or home/away?

 

Pros and cons please

 

This one from Jon Lewis comes with 1TB memory and gives no other option - I'd probably be happy with 500Gb.

 

It does include 2 years guarantee.

 

 

Breaking with my usual principle of avoiding conversations with Ian, I do know a lot about these MacBook Pros having spent quite some time investigating before I purchased a 14" myself and he (or others?) might benefit from this knowledge. Take it or leave it but here is my advice.

 

1. I would suggest not buying anything other than an M1 Mac as the older Intel Macs will become redundant at some point down the line so to future proof get M1 for sure. All the important software at the moment can run natively on both types of Mac but that won't continue indefinitely.

 

2. The M1 Macs are a lot faster than the Intel Macs.

 

3. 16GB of RAM is fine for now but again it won't be at some point in the future. Think 32GB - there will come a time when that is the limit for Adobe software so again this is future proofing. These Macs cannot be upgraded so you need to get the specs right from the beginning.

 

4. 500GB of storage might be fine for you right now but again think down the line - not as important as getting more RAM as you can use external SSDs which are very fast. The 1TB option is best I think as Apple are charging an awful lot more to go up to 2TB.

 

5. The advantage of buying from John Lewis is that two year warranty but unless you can order the Mac you need rather than what they have in stock then that is a big disadvantage. There are several different versions of these new Macs and it is a lot easier to get the specs you want on the Apple Store. I decided to go for the Apple 3 year extended warranty which is something I don't normally do but I did this time, given that almost nothing in these Macs can be replaced by anyone other than Apple. If something goes then repair would be very expensive. This is worth considering here I think.

 

 

 

 

Edited March 15, 2022 by MDM

[geogphotos]

2 hours ago, NYCat said:

Sounds perfect.

 

Paulette

 

 

I think that it will meet my needs.

 

Definitely a big leap forward from my current Chromebook!

 

Thanks for your comments.

[AndrewP]

There's a YouTube channel called Art Is Right that has lots of Photoshop/Lightroom/Capture One specific reviews of the latest MacBook Pros with various configurations. His videos currently listed as 4 months old are the ones to watch. His recommendation is the base M1 pro with 1tb SSD and 32gb ram.

[geogphotos]

59 minutes ago, AndrewP said:

There's a YouTube channel called Art Is Right that has lots of Photoshop/Lightroom/Capture One specific reviews of the latest MacBook Pros with various configurations. His videos currently listed as 4 months old are the ones to watch. His recommendation is the base M1 pro with 1tb SSD and 32gb ram.

 

Thanks. I am aware of this channel from links posted here.

 

I did watch another video - though don't know how reputable it is - of a practical demonstration comparing the performance of two of these identical apart from one having 32 gb Ram and the other 16 gb. It was based on a series of memory intensive tasks using Photoshop, Lightroom and a whole raft of other simultaneous tasks and activities.

 

The conclusion of that is that you pay an extra £400 for very marginal time improvements.

Edited March 15, 2022 by geogphotos

[geogphotos]

This was the comparison video that I referred to. I see that there are others with a less excitable presenter but the idea is the same and this one has less intrusive adverts. 

 

I only watched the first 5 minutes. 

 

I will be opening one image at a time in Photoshop - no multitasking, gaming, 3D modelling etc.

 

 

Edited March 16, 2022 by geogphotos

[Phil Crean]

13 hours ago, geogphotos said:

I did watch another video - though don't know how reputable it is - of a practical demonstration comparing the performance of two of these identical apart from one having 32 gb Ram and the other 16 gb. It was based on a series of memory intensive tasks using Photoshop, Lightroom and a whole raft of other simultaneous tasks and activities.

 

The conclusion of that is that you pay an extra £400 for very marginal time improvements.

I think the more important aspect of 32GB over 16GB is future proofing...

Phil

[wiskerke]

5 hours ago, geogphotos said:

This was the comparison video that I referred to. I see that there are others with a less excitable presenter but the idea is the same and this one has less intrusive adverts. 

 

I only watched the first 5 minutes. 

 

I will be opening one image at a time in Photoshop - no multitasking, gaming, 3D modelling etc.

 

 

 

Let him try a 120 layer image stack doing the median filter.

That's 4 seconds of images from my RX100M6 doing a painting at 6400 ISO. A common thing for me.

 

wim

 

wim

[MDM]

17 minutes ago, wiskerke said:

 

Let him try a 120 layer image stack doing the median filter.

That's 4 seconds of images from my RX100M6 doing a painting at 6400 ISO. A common thing for me.

 

wim

 

wim

 

I do watch stuff from that channel but take it with a pinch of the proverbial salt as these tests are often not based on real world scenarios. As far as I remember, the Lightroom test they do is based on exporting a load of files which is not something that even registers for me when assessing a computer's performance. Importing and generating previews yes but not exporting which is usually something I do when it's time for a nap or a coffee. The thing to keep in mind with these new Macs is that everything is on the unified chip (RAM, GPU and CPU) and they can't be upgraded.  How memory is handled is different to anything that has ever come before according to the techie guys and compared to Intel machines the RAM requirements are not as high apparently. But 16GB is the baseline with these machines so 32GB provides comfort down the line. Video performance with Apple's own software is out of this world.

[geogphotos]

34 minutes ago, wiskerke said:

 

Let him try a 120 layer image stack doing the median filter.

That's 4 seconds of images from my RX100M6 doing a painting at 6400 ISO. A common thing for me.

 

wim

 

wim

 

But I wouldn't be buying it for you Wim😄

 

What set up do you use?

 

 

 

 

Edited March 16, 2022 by geogphotos

[wiskerke]

1 minute ago, geogphotos said:

But I wouldn't be buying it for you Wim😄

Haha!

The point is one has no idea what you will be doing next. The thing with the paintings at 6400 ISO also started as just an experiment. And I wouldn't have tried if it took all day.

I would be genuinely interested if these sort of things make any difference with the M1 btw. And not a whole lot of people have a duplicate setup.

 

wim

[geogphotos]

24 minutes ago, wiskerke said:

Haha!

The point is one has no idea what you will be doing next. The thing with the paintings at 6400 ISO also started as just an experiment. And I wouldn't have tried if it took all day.

I would be genuinely interested if these sort of things make any difference with the M1 btw. And not a whole lot of people have a duplicate setup.

 

wim

 

 

I'm fairly sure that I will be doing the same as I do now. One image at a time in Photoshop. 🙂

 

I don't do video or anything complicated. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 16, 2022 by geogphotos

[MDM]

1 hour ago, wiskerke said:

Haha!

The point is one has no idea what you will be doing next. The thing with the paintings at 6400 ISO also started as just an experiment. And I wouldn't have tried if it took all day.

I would be genuinely interested if these sort of things make any difference with the M1 btw. And not a whole lot of people have a duplicate setup.

 

wim

 

If you have a big file(s) and an action(s) you would like me to run and time, then I am happy to do that to give you a direct comparison.

 

[wiskerke]

2 hours ago, geogphotos said:

What set up do you use?

 

Windows i7-8700K - 32Gb and a Quadro 10bits with 8Gb plus 2 Eizos. (Plus an SSD for the OS and 30 Gb on 3 disks.)

 

Despite the K in the 8700K it's not overclocked.

I sometimes get a hiccup where my Photoshop will freeze, but it lets me save my file, so it's just the display. However a new Quadro or equivalent will cost me north of 2000,- so maybe not. Besides normal video cards nowadays can do 10 bit as well. It could very well be a memory timing problem that can be solved in some settings somewhere. So I do keep an eye out.

A buffer problem is also possible and that would have something to do with the pen I'm using. However it only happens in Photoshop. It could also be a Photoshop glitch, because I haven't seen it in a while. However yesterday I had a complete freeze with even a couple of minutes lost and I haven't had that in years. Now that surely points at a Photoshop glitch. Of which there are more than you would think.

 

wim

[wiskerke]

1 hour ago, MDM said:

If you have a big file(s) and an action(s) you would like me to run and time, then I am happy to do that to give you a direct comparison.

 

Thank you for the offer. It's merely out of curiosity what the M1 is capable of and how the different components are of influence. That's the only reason why these videos with 2 almost identical machines are interesting.

For the moment I'm not planning to go back or switch to Apple for any machine, but as with everything, that may well change. My main gripe with IOS is the lack of real file management.

Plus the premium pricing which I hate as a marketing concept when I'm the consumer. Not as a producer of course.

 

wim

[MDM]

6 minutes ago, wiskerke said:

 

Thank you for the offer. It's merely out of curiosity what the M1 is capable of and how the different components are of influence. That's the only reason why these videos with 2 almost identical machines are interesting.

For the moment I'm not planning to go back or switch to Apple for any machine, but as with everything, that may well change. My main gripe with IOS is the lack of real file management.

Plus the premium pricing which I hate as a marketing concept when I'm the consumer. Not as a producer of course.

 

wim

 

Yes I was watching a lot of these comparison videos when I was buying. Of course these guys are milking it for all its worth comparing anything to everything to get views for their channels but there is a lot of interesting stuff there.

 

These new MacBook Pros are extremely powerful and advanced laptops although the real world differences may not be significant for stills processing in Photoshop or Lightroom. They are certainly very fast but how fast in comparison to a fast Windows machine I have no idea. They also have very low power consumption related to the design of the chip.

 

As I said above, the real advantages are mainly with video (e.g. the screens are mini LED which can be used to edit and display HDR video). They gobble up raw video in Final Cut Pro. They have various video codecs built into the hardware which result in dramatic speed increases. Even the original M1 MacBook Pros and Airs are extremely fast for video (and stills) but they don't have the mini LED screens. If one was just doing basic processing one file at a time then these are more than adequate but the screens max out at 13". 

 

As you said above "The point is one has no idea what you will be doing next. " That certainly applies to me. Two years ago almost to the day I realised that I had developed Covid. It was nasty and it was early days when nobody knew very much about it. Once I came through that I decided to do something I had always wanted to do and never gotten around to doing - video. One just never knows what one will be doing next week or year or maybe one does.

 

[M.Chapman]

19 hours ago, geogphotos said:

 

Thanks. I am aware of this channel from links posted here.

 

I did watch another video - though don't know how reputable it is - of a practical demonstration comparing the performance of two of these identical apart from one having 32 gb Ram and the other 16 gb. It was based on a series of memory intensive tasks using Photoshop, Lightroom and a whole raft of other simultaneous tasks and activities.

 

The conclusion of that is that you pay an extra £400 for very marginal time improvements.

 

Another factor worth mentioning is that the (NVME?) SSD hard-disk inside M1 Macs is also really fast. Therefore, temporarily running out of RAM is far less of an issue as MacOS can exceedingly quickly move some data out to a swap file on the SSD. So, the consequences of occasionally and temporarily running out of RAM on an M1 Mac will be nowhere near as severe as they were on a computer with spinning mechanical HDD.

 

Mark

Edited March 16, 2022 by M.Chapman

[MDM]

11 minutes ago, M.Chapman said:

 

Another factor worth mentioning is that the (NVME?) SSD hard-disk inside M1 Macs is also really fast. Therefore, temporarily running out of RAM is far less of an issue as MacOS can simply (and exceedingly quickly) move some data out to a swap file on the SSD. So, the consequences of occasionally and temporarily running out of RAM on an M1 Mac will be nowhere near as severe as they were on a computer with spinning mechanical HDD.

 

Mark

 

Sure. I think if you know that you are only ever going to work on one file at a time in with few or no extra layers and you are only going to use Photoshop and nothing else then you are probably safe enough for many years with 16GB of RAM. If there is a chance you might want to do something more demanding at some point before Adobe minimum specs go above 16GB, then the safer bet is to get 32GB given that upgrades are not possible.

[M.Chapman]

1 minute ago, MDM said:

 

Sure. I think if you know that you are only ever going to work on one file at a time in with few or no extra layers and you are only going to use Photoshop and nothing else then you are probably safe enough for many years with 16GB of RAM. If there is a chance you might want to do something more demanding at some point before Adobe minimum specs go above 16GB, then the safer bet is to get 32GB given that upgrades are not possible.

I agree, I'd definitely go for 32GB. But if I really couldn't afford it, I wouldn't loose too much sleep over restricting myself to 16GB. I'd probably even choose an M1 Mac with 16GB over an Intel based machine with 32GB.

 

Mark

[Marianne]

I'd recommend 32GB RAM - the speed compared to 16GB is fabulous. My late 2018 Intel-based MacBook Pro (purchased in early 2019) is super-fast thanks to all that RAM and handles multiple Chrome windows, huge PS files and my giant Lightroom catalog along with various Pages and Numbers docs open all at once. So on an M1 you'll really be happy with the speed.

 

Macbooks don't last the way that iMacs do - my 2011 iMac is still working fine but I've been very happy I had the 3-year extended warranty on all my MacBook Pros since I needed it on all three of mine since 2009. The latest one less than two months before the warranty ended.

 

Future-proof your MacBook Pro. I had to replace my 2015 MacBook Pro because I hadn't future-proofed although it was still working fine (only had to replace the keyboard - under warranty).  LR and especially Photoshop just became too slow. 16GB RAM means you'll see it slow down and wish you'd gotten a more powerful machine. 

 

 

[geogphotos]

Thanks for all the comments.