Macbook 1.3 for Typography and Photoshop

[entedankfest]

I'm fascinated by - not to say - in love with this new Macbook and actually already ordered it twice – to cancel the order a few days later. I'm just not sure if it's the right Mac for me.

I'm a typographer and the software I use most are Indesign, Photoshop and Illustrator, why I'd be opting for the 1.3 Ghz version. Do you think this configuration would be powerful enough for my needs? Of course, I wouldn't handle 300-page documents or 500MB Photoshop files.

Right now I own an i7 1.7GHz Macbook Air 2014 and use it as my primary computer with an external monitor. Im more than happy with the performance, but sick of the screen (I use the computer on the road as well). For heavier tasks I also got a 15" rMBp but I don't use it that much because of it's weight.

Shall I stick with my Macbook Air? The idea of it makes me crazy I really wish I could switch to the new Macbook. Thanks for your help!

 

[ctyrider]

I'd say - anything you can do on your Air - can also be done on rMB. I used to have an i7 MBA. Switched to rMB 1.3Ghz and loving it.

 

[squirrrl]

I'm fascinated by - not to say - in love with this new Macbook and actually already ordered it twice – to cancel the order a few days later. I'm just not sure if it's the right Mac for me.

I'm a typographer and the software I use most are Indesign, Photoshop and Illustrator, why I'd be opting for the 1.3 Ghz version. Do you think this configuration would be powerful enough for my needs? Of course, I wouldn't handle 300-page documents or 500MB Photoshop files.

Right now I own an i7 1.7GHz Macbook Air 2014 and use it as my primary computer with an external monitor. Im more than happy with the performance, but sick of the screen (I use the computer on the road as well). For heavier tasks I also got a 15" rMBp but I don't use it that much because of it's weight.

Shall I stick with my Macbook Air? The idea of it makes me crazy I really wish I could switch to the new Macbook. Thanks for your help!

I would say hold out... you have a more than capable computer and the next gen will likely have some nice improvements. The computer I replaced was 7 years old and I needed a new one. If you do most of your work with an external monitor, I would hold out until next year.

 

[Skylitfly]

I'm fascinated by - not to say - in love with this new Macbook and actually already ordered it twice – to cancel the order a few days later. I'm just not sure if it's the right Mac for me.

I'm a typographer and the software I use most are Indesign, Photoshop and Illustrator, why I'd be opting for the 1.3 Ghz version. Do you think this configuration would be powerful enough for my needs? Of course, I wouldn't handle 300-page documents or 500MB Photoshop files.

Right now I own an i7 1.7GHz Macbook Air 2014 and use it as my primary computer with an external monitor. Im more than happy with the performance, but sick of the screen (I use the computer on the road as well). For heavier tasks I also got a 15" rMBp but I don't use it that much because of it's weight.

Shall I stick with my Macbook Air? The idea of it makes me crazy I really wish I could switch to the new Macbook. Thanks for your help!

I think you'll be fine.

15" rMBP is a huge overkill for Photoshop and Illustrator work unless you really need that screen space.

Photoshop isn't CPU or GPU intensive at all and mainly benefits from RAM and fast SSD. Photoshop lags/stutters/crashes usually only if you run out of RAM. And for 99,5% 8GB of RAM will be just fine.

As far as I'm aware Illustrator is a bit heavier for the system than Photoshop but I bet you'll be fine.

I think it's common misconception these days to think that Photoshop and Illustrator need top of the line CPU and GPU to run acceptably. When in reality even Core M can run them completely fine.

 

[johngordon]

Others will know more about it than I do, as I only make light use of PS and AI. But my understanding has always been that you only really need the grunt if you are doing things like batch processing a lot of images or applying lots of filters.

If you mostly use it to add typography to single images at a time, I would have thought it would be fine.

 

[entedankfest]

Thank you very much for your replies. Since I'm using my Mac quite often with an external monitor: Do you think this would have an effect on the performance when using the new MacBook with a 1440 screen?