The King Is Dead…
My loathing of forced upgrades
The king is dead, long live the king! The king I speak of is my beloved 2013 MacPro, you know the one everyone calls the trashcan Mac. I may be a very small subset of users but that machine was tailor made for my desires. Quiet, tons of RAM, adequate processing power, and best of all allowed me to jam a ton amount of internal SSD into it as prices declined, as I needed it, rather than paying premium prices at initial purchase.
The new king well, that would be a Mac Studio with 64G RAM and a 2TB internal SSD. That is a story I’ll be glad to address if anyone cares. Why so much RAM and why 2TB? The real story is not the new king, it’s the new prince or new queen, wherever it falls in the line of succession. That would be the M4 Mac mini... what a wonderful new machine. Yes, two forced upgrades at the exact same time with two completely different decisions. I believe that the M4 Mac mini was the better value of the two and truly a consideration for most people.
The Culprit
Yes, both machines needed to be upgraded about 2 weeks ago at the exact same time. The aging Mac Pro serves as my personal do-everything machine. I won’t go into all the reasons but that machine needs a crap ton of fast internal storage and a crap ton of RAM. I also use an even bigger amount of external, slower storage. I know that OS updates stopped many years ago. I don’t care. It still worked seamlessly within my Apple ecosystem. All of my 3rd party apps still supported the old OS. The performance was indistinguishable from the brand new Macs and caused me no issues, no hold-ups, and no pain. Yes, Lightroom, Final Cut, and many other apps produced similar feeling results as much newer Macs with M1 Pro/M1 Max processors.
I do normal stuff. I don’t shoot RAW video or use codecs that aren’t accelerated. More over, I mostly process photos in ways that don’t benefit from all of the new oomph.I swear my decade old Mac Pro was exactly the same in dealing with 50 megapixel RAW files for my normal workflows. Final Cut was fine for my limited H264 video. The massive RAM and other things were fine for all of my dev/ops stuff.
The forced upgrade was entirely due to Adobe cutting off support for Mac OS Big Sur and Monterey. Yep, Lightroom Classic v14.x was released. Do I want or need v14? Nope, but… We host a lot of workshops and work with a lot of photographers and clients who auto-upgrade their Adobe apps. It is not feasible for a dozen reasons for us not to be capable of reading the latest Lightroom catalogs.
The Studio vs The Mini
The Mac Studio with the configuration I needed was less expensive than a similar Mac Mini configured the same way. What’s more is I have no experience with running the Mac Mini high-end config full out for hours on end. I speculated that the highest end could be thermally limited if run full out. We’ll see. The deal I got on the Studio was less money anyway.
The star of the show is that M4 Mac mini with the new 16G RAM in the base model and far more reasonable price points for minor internal storage upgrades. The base model Mac Mini at $599 is a perfect replacement and better in every way for the need the old Mac filled. Here’s the break down on why that is…
Limited application. The Adobe Photographer’s Suite of apps
Zero need for internal SSD storage. It always, always, always works on external storage.
Support for plenty of 4K monitors without breathing hard.
16G RAM runs Lightroom Classic beautifully (99% of it’s use)
Plenty of super-fast or just plenty-fast connectivity
I would say the new M4 Mac Mini is perfectly capable of dealing with most photographer’s needs, even if you do a ton of video. The key to navigating the M4 Mac Mini vs Mac Studio options is understanding two factors. How much memory you actually need. The second being how much internal storage do you actually need, especially with USB4/TB4 and soon TB5 flash storage becoming the norm. That is for most people, in some cases (few but important) the Max/Ultra CPU count and decoder count make such a HUGE difference it’s well worth it to go with a Mac Studio.
In many cases it can be as little as a reasonable cache of recently used iCould drive files and comfortable room to install all the apps you actually use (these can be huge with various extra stuff for audio/video). 16G is workable, even pleasant with most apps along as you don’t have to run multiple apps doing heavy duty work all the time. There are a few edge cases in LR and Photoshop that benefit significantly from more RAM, ask and I’ll let you know what they are. The point being is how often you do those things. Remember, unified memory is great... all your RAM is as fast as VRAM... ooops some applications need or perform way better with a lot of VRAM, like 16G of VRAM, so you can kill a lot of potential performance by not accounting that your RAM is split between RAM and VRAM needs.
The Bottom Line
Yes, we already have experience with Apple silicon Macs, even a high-end M1 MAX with 32G RAM. The M2 chips were not compelling and our intel machines were doing their jobs fine. The M4 Mac Mini is no joke and for desktop photographic use should be a serious consideration. I would not even consider defaulting to the Mac Studio any longer unless there was a justification that was measurable and known in every day use. I can say right now that the base level M4 Mac Mini is absolutely the lowest priced computer we’ve ever bought that will fill the role needed with no compromise. It is filling the role of one of our print workstations for use in workshops. Of course, it needed a suitable monitor. It rests beside our GTI viewing booth connected to a glorious new BenQ Adobe RGB monitor. We’ll have a full review on that monitor coming up but I can say it may be my favorite overall monitor for photography on the market right now.
If you are having trouble deciding what you need in the current Mac lineup due to similar forced upgrades please feel free leave a comment. I’ll tell you what we’ve seen, what matters, and what doesn’t. If we can’t I am sure there are subscribers that can.
Introduction To Fine Art Printing workshop update: For those readers that were considering attending our January 18th 2025 edition, I am sorry to say it filled up last week. We’ll be scheduling more as we flesh out our 2025 workshop schedule. Stay tuned, we told you spots fill quickly.
Commiserating with you cus my 2013 Mac Pro also conked out this year 😩 But idk why. It just won’t boot up, only the lights go on but nothing of it is actually powered on. I inherited it, and it worked beautifully for the copywork I was doing in my studio. I’m often switching between Windows and Mac systems day to day, but the Mac Mini is a serious contender of a replacement for what I need in that portion of my studio. Thanks for your insights about this!
I too said a sad farewell to Mac of 2015, mostly triggered due to LR updates. I was in the middle of printing for an exhibit and LR suddenly did not accept the 17 x 22 inch print size. Writing, calling Adobe and even Tim Grey had no explanation but tried to explain how to print as as if I never printed before. Then LR admitted it (that paper size) was part of an unpublished update that would not be fixed for months. The nightmare lifted LR fixed (maybe after too many hours on the phone and getting top managers) that it was fixed. Soon after the new LR upgrade come so did trip to B&H and a new computer, oops two new computers. I fed the economy. Upgrades need downgrades.