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Author Topic: Buying a new Mac  (Read 1977 times)

Michael Hoth

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Buying a new Mac
« on: January 31, 2014, 05:11:39 pm »

I have an old iMac Late 2009 which i will use as a desktop computer for my studio.

For photoshop at home I want to buy a new machine where i can use an Eizo Monitor.
A Laptop would be great because of mobility. Otherwise a Mac mini will be faster than a Mac Book Pro(is it right?).

Is a new MacBook Pro with an external Monitor fast enough for using Photoshop CC ( 1GB-1,5GB files)?

Which system do you prefer?

Best Michael


David Anderson

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Re: Buying a new Mac
« Reply #1 on: February 01, 2014, 03:09:53 am »

I don't know about the external monitors, but I've just got a MacBook Pro 15" wight he Retina screen and I'm very impressed.
It's very fast compared to my current laptops  and much thinner and lighter.
Also, the battery life is very good.

The Retina display itself is beautiful and because it's so sharp and bright editing is a much faster process than it used to be.

I'm thinking of adding an external monitor calibrated to my printer as well.


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John S C

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Re: Buying a new Mac
« Reply #2 on: February 01, 2014, 06:14:09 am »

I have both a late 2009 iMac and a 2012 Retina MBP. The rMBP has an i7 processor but the iMac has only an i5. and although the processor on the iMac is slightly faster, I find the MBP a faster computer. So I would say that if you find the iMac fast enough then rMBP should be fine for you.

I also ran an older MBP via an external monitor. It worked fine. The only problem was an ergonomic one. the screen of the laptop got in the way of the monitor. If I was to do this again I think I would opt for adding an external keyboard and mouse and keep the laptop to the side or in a docking unit.
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Wayne Fox

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Re: Buying a new Mac
« Reply #3 on: February 01, 2014, 04:37:32 pm »

The top  MacBook Pro will be faster than the top Mac mini for a few reasons, PCIe based flash storage vs a traditional hard drive, 2.6 vs 2.5Ghz processor speed and for PS the  NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M
with 2GB GDDR5 memory, which is also helpful for external display. My MacBook Pro launches PS in under 2 seconds. I think even the 2.3 MacBook Pro may beat the top mini because of the graphics card.

But the Mac mini would perform very well. I have two mac minis connected to eizos in my shop and they were a definite upgrade to the 2008 mac pros that they replaced.
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Michael Hoth

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Re: Buying a new Mac
« Reply #4 on: February 02, 2014, 02:30:25 am »

thanks for help.... i will go for the macbook pro.

best Michael

tongelsing

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Re: Buying a new Mac
« Reply #5 on: February 02, 2014, 05:03:51 am »

I bought a late 2013 rMBP and I'm very fond of it.
A long battery life and very fast. Tethered shooting with LR and a Nikon D800 ( compressed raw) is a breeze. It takes only 3 seconds before the image appears on the screen.
I have calibrated the display in comparison with the Eizo CG245 monitor and I got very close to it. This is very comfortable for me and my clients when I'm doing location portrait shooting.

Ton
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Benny Profane

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Re: Buying a new Mac
« Reply #6 on: February 03, 2014, 08:24:23 am »

Buy the 21 inch IMac, but hot rod it with the most memory and best cards, and plug the Eizo in as a second monitor, but, make it the primary monitor and use the IMac monitor for palettes and other stuff.
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Garnick

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Re: Buying a new Mac
« Reply #7 on: February 03, 2014, 11:08:00 am »

Hi Michael,

Sounds as though you have settled on the rMBP, but perhaps another approach you could think about is a 2009/10 Mac Pro.  I have two Mac Pro models at work, both bought as refurbs from Apple and they are workhorses.  I have 5 HHDs in each with 32GB RAM, "FAST".  I have no interest in the "Garbage Can" 2013 Mac Pro model but wanted another MP for home use, so I'd been following a couple of machines for a while on Kijiji.  One in particular in Toronto, and after tracking it for about three weeks I got in touch with the owner and made a deal.  That's my first experience with buying any sort of computer equipment on Kijiji, but it worked out very well.  For $700 I have exactly what I wanted(2009) and will now add more RAM and a couple of HDDs as well.  Now I can take work home and have exactly the same setup there by cloning the HDD on my work MP.  I don't know if you are at all interested in a tower, but you would definitely get more bang for your buck in my opinion, as well as greater expandability.  Hope I haven't muddied the waters further Michael, just trying to add to the list of possibilities.

Gary         
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Gary N.
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Craig Lamson

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Re: Buying a new Mac
« Reply #8 on: February 03, 2014, 11:51:37 am »

I have two late 2012 mini's along with a pile of MBP's and a couple of hackintoshes.  

The Minis are a great solution for a small footprint desktop and even stock they are very close to the rMBP in Geekbench scores.

The best course of action to make them even better is to add the drive doubler from Other Word Computing.  I just did one last week, adding a Samsung 840 Evo ssd s the boot drive and moving the 1 tb drive to position two. I also upgraded to 16gb of Crucial memory.   Total cost - $1130.  I have this one connected to a NEC 2690.  My other drives a NEC 271.

I should mention I had a MBP in a Henge Dock for quite some time but I find Mini a much better solution.  Mine are in vertical stand and they hide nicely behind the monitor.

They are a great option fro a desktop Mac.

Added on edit:

Disk speed via Blackmagic Design tester:

Early 2013 rMPB 13  Write 426mb/s  Read 452mb/s

Late 2012 mini with Samsung Evo  Write 483mb/s  Read 503mb/s

« Last Edit: February 03, 2014, 12:27:40 pm by Craig Lamson »
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Wayne Fox

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Re: Buying a new Mac
« Reply #9 on: February 03, 2014, 05:17:33 pm »

Hi Michael,

Sounds as though you have settled on the rMBP, but perhaps another approach you could think about is a 2009/10 Mac Pro.  I have two Mac Pro models at work, both bought as refurbs from Apple and they are workhorses.  I have 5 HHDs in each with 32GB RAM, "FAST".  I have no interest in the "Garbage Can" 2013 Mac Pro model but wanted another MP for home use, so I'd been following a couple of machines for a while on Kijiji.  One in particular in Toronto, and after tracking it for about three weeks I got in touch with the owner and made a deal.  That's my first experience with buying any sort of computer equipment on Kijiji, but it worked out very well.  For $700 I have exactly what I wanted(2009) and will now add more RAM and a couple of HDDs as well.  Now I can take work home and have exactly the same setup there by cloning the HDD on my work MP.  I don't know if you are at all interested in a tower, but you would definitely get more bang for your buck in my opinion, as well as greater expandability.  Hope I haven't muddied the waters further Michael, just trying to add to the list of possibilities.

Gary        
You know everything can look like something else. So it’s round and has a recessed top, it is also TINY and wouldn’t hold more than a few pieces of wadded up paper.  To me it looks like a little jet engine, or a mini cray.  Bottom line it is basically silent, generates very little warm air, and it is crazy fast (launches Photoshop in under 2 seconds, internal SSD write speed is 975 MP/s, getting 700 MB/s from a LaCie Big5TB set up as a raid 0 (TB 1, a TB 2 cabinet will probably be faster), and over 500 MB/s with two 4 drive raid 5's set up using LaCie Thunderbolt->eSata connection.  I tried 4 different eSata cards in my 2010 Mac Pro and all were completely flakey, ended up stuck with FW800.  In 2 weeks not a hiccup with eSata this way.  The great part is they are 10 feet away from my computer and I can't even hear them spinning.  The new Mac Pro is incredibly sweet and blows my decked out 2010 12 core mac Pro away ( 64gigs,  PCI based SSD start up drive and 4 7200 rpm raid 0) . saving my very large image files used to take 10 - 20 seconds, now takes less than half that, and reading them in when launching is more like 1/4th the old time ... (sry, getting off topic and I stay away from the computer section on websites to avoid getting into conversations like this. I apologize ... back to the topic.)

And you are right,  there is plenty of mileage to be had from older Mac Pro's especially if you can invest a little into them. The OP is interested in a second machine, and while a second tower may work well for you at home, I don't think the speed benefits you may be able to eak out of it out way the other benefits.  A brand new Mac mini is probably cheaper than a used 2009 Mac Pro, base specs are only slightly slower.  A MacBook Pro specs out faster, and both of those accept thunderbolt storage with is faster than the internal based sata of the old tower.  The only reason to put hard drives inside the box are for access speed, now that is no longer necessary keeping all main storage on secondary TB or eSata cabinets is a much better way to go. Your storage is now no longer computer specific.

The 2009 (or better yet 2010) Mac Pro option is certainly worth considering if having the portability or needing the small size at home isn't critical. The main advantage would be you can put in up to 64gb of RAM(although not cheap), you can even run a PCI based SSD drive in there and boot from that.  While this isn’t as fast as the speed of the MacBook Pro or Mac Pro built in SSD, it’s faster the  a 4 drive raid 0 internal to the Mac Pro. (As far as overall storage, internal drive storage isn’t a plus for the tower because the external TB raid is faster than you can get inside the tower).  By the time you buy a used Mac Pro, add 32 or more gigs of RAM, add 4 hard drives and setup a high speed raid ... hmm, maybe the Mac Mini even though theoretically a little bit slower is suddenly much more economical.

In my case I know "bench marks" show the 2010 Mac Pro to be faster than my "early" 2013 Macbook Pro, but when I'm running LR and PS using external TB storage my MacBook Pro is more responsive than my decked out 2010 Mac Pro.  I assume it's mainly about the amazingly fast integrated SSD storage.  I would have ditched the Mac Pro last year except I have 2 30" displays ...
« Last Edit: February 04, 2014, 01:49:13 pm by Wayne Fox »
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