M1-iMacs – what’s next for us?
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Re: M1-iMacs – what’s next for us?Reply #1 on: April 22, 2021 at 11:12 am
My long-time Canadian Mac supplier MacDoc recently sent their April promo email.
It might suggest you look closely at the 2019 i9 iMac with upgradeable RAM & drive. Apparently outpowers any M1 mac for now.I attach an excerpt from the flyer below. Prices are in C$
Re: M1-iMacs – what’s next for us?Reply #4 on: April 23, 2021 at 5:33 pmI have an M1 Mac Mini 16/1tb. It is fine for stills photography, imho, and runs Adobe CC without issue even under emulation. It runs cool and silent. Memory doesn’t seem much of an issue. My understanding is that the M1 series don’t use it in the same way as Intel systems. More ports would be better for sure and eventually it will seem too basic and limited but then eventually everything does. However by that time there should be new and more powerful M series Macs available assuming that Apple meant what they said about transitioning their whole line-up to M processors. That remains to be seen of course. In the meantime the current M series are a cheap and cheerful entry to the ecosystem for a year or two and they are much more capable than MS Office type units.
Anyway, just saying that in my experience the new Macs are fine for editing images, unless needs are very demanding in which case holding off would likely be the better way. But one does need to invest in external disks/SSDs, etc.
Re: M1-iMacs – what’s next for us?Reply #6 on: April 25, 2021 at 11:27 amI have once again taken a closer look at the experiences with the new M1 computers and Lightroom Classic on the internet. Unfortunately, there is no clear vote: some have real problems (e.g. https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic/lr-classic-on-m1-macbook-air-is-glacial/m-p/11619637), others do not have the problem, sometimes it is faster, sometimes slower… Overall, however, I think the positive reports outweigh the negative. Considering that this is not yet the native version but emulated with Rosetta2, this speaks in favour of the M1.
To go one step further, I tried to objectify this and checked Geekbench. My current Mac achieves the following result:
iMac late-2013, i7, 32MB RAM
971 Single-Core Score
3703 multi-core scoreInterestingly, my much newer laptop is not much better:
MacbookPro mid-2018, i7, 16MB
1052 Single-Core Score
3973 Multi-Core ScoreLet’s move on to the transitional iMac:
iMac early-2019, i9, 64GB
1368 Single-Core Score
8596 Multi-Core ScoreThat’s already a clear increase. Now let’s take a look at the M1:
Mac Mini 2020, M1, 16MB
1750 Single-Core Score
7653 Multi-Core ScoreThat’s faster than my previous hardware in every respect, and faster than the i9 in the single-core range (sure – it’s a RISC processor. Who still remembers the Acorn Archimedes?).
Altogether:
iMac 2013 i7 MBP 2018 i7 iMac 2019 i9 MacMini 2020 M1 Single-Core 971 100% 1.052 108% 1.368 141% 1.750 180% Multi-Core 3.703 100% 3.973 107% 8.596 232% 7.653 207% Of course, you can’t read off overall system performance from CPU benchmarks. But I don’t think that, for example, the data throughput on the SSD is worse on the M1, on the contrary. So for me, I first considered the following:
- The M1 has enormous potential
- 16GB RAM in the ARM architecture is apparently not comparable with 16MB in the Intel.
- Compared to my iMac, the M1 should already be faster today.
- With the native ARM version, the lead over Intel Macs will continue to grow.
- I suspect that further development at Adobe will concentrate more and more on the ARM versions in the future.
With this in mind, I decided against an iMac with an i9 processor. I think it will be swallowed up by the ARM machines in terms of performance within the next 12 months. For 2-3,000 EUR the i9 would still be an acceptable transitional solution, but 4-5,000 EUR is simply too much money. I might invest in an M1 MacMini with an LG display instead. That would be more like 2,500 EUR for a – let’s say – experimental solution… But that’s another story.
Re: M1-iMacs – what’s next for us?Reply #10 on: April 26, 2021 at 6:44 pmInteresting thread. I bought an M1 Mac Mini in January, coming from an old 2013-era Windows machine. Nearly anything would be faster. However, I had also had enough of the horrifying thermal and power requirements of current Intel processors, not to mention all the whirring fans. It seemed inappropriate and woefully out of date in 2021. The M1 Macs are pretty capable but they do strike me as a stopping place on the road to somewhere else. When/if Apple come out with a second, more powerful generation of ARM processors, with more memory, better graphics and more lanes for ports, then I will trade up perhaps in the second half of next year. In the meantime, my Mac Mini 16/1tb has proved perfectly adequate for my needs. My camera produces 20 mpx RAWs. My keepers end up as very much larger .psd or .tiff files worked on in Photoshop, Silver Efex or Exposure 6. Maybe I’m lucky but I’ve not had any real issues (er, yet). Adobe In Design also works OK, albeit a tad slow, and this is important to me too. Once Adobe get around to putting all of CC native on ARM, things will improve. At present I think only Photoshop and Premiere Pro run natively. The rest run under Rosetta emulation.
To answer an earlier question: my Lightroom catalogue contains north of 100,000 images but this is housed on spinners – hard disks. It is speed-limited by the disks not by LR on M1 Mac so far as I can tell. It works a little slowly but so far cleanly. I keep the catalogue on a fast SSD which makes a difference. However, last year I grew tired of LR’s behemothic tendencies and started to split my LR catalogue into separate projects. My current project has about 5,000 images and everything is on SSD. It runs just fine. When eventually done with, I will transfer it to hard disks for longer-term storage. My medium-term plan is to move away from LR either to DxO PhotoLab or Capture One.
To anyone thinking of getting an M1 Mac, I must stress that this is just my experience and my needs are fairly modest by many standards. Do plenty of research and canvas a broad range of opinions! In the meantime, I am reminded of what I am (not) missing whenever I fire up my Dell i7 13″ laptop. You could almost cook on it.
Re: M1-iMacs – what’s next for us?Reply #11 on: April 27, 2021 at 2:03 pmMany thanks for your contributions! In a situation like this, it’s hard to make decisions and it feels good when your thoughts are confirmed. Yes, my 2013 iMac is OLD, but we’ll get along for a few more months. I think there will be an M1 moving in here soon for testing though (as a MacMini, I think).
Kevin, the German magazine Mac&I tested an external SSD from G-Data with 2.216 MByte/s write and 2.585 MByte/s read. This was the fastest so far in their renowned tests (https://shop.westerndigital.com/products/portable-drives/g-technology-g-drive-mobile-pro-thunderbolt-3-ssd#0G10311-1).
Concerning Acorn Archimedes:
ARM (Advanced RISC Machines Ltd.) was formed in 1989 when the processor division was spun off from Acorn. Therefore ARM was originally called Acorn RISC Machines Ltd. Acorn retained a 43% share in the new company and Apple held a further 43% (!). The company was sold later and is now owned by Softbank (Japan). Nvidia is currently trying to take over ARM, but the antitrust authorities have not yet given their approval. And about Silicon Valley: 100% of Apple’s cores will have British roots in the future 🙂 I think this is an exciting piece of computer and economic history!
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