Hello all, as with many of us, I've been anxiously awaiting the release of the '21 MBP. I'm an artist primarily working in photography and interested in how these various specs may translate over to my uses. I've seen a lot of discussion regarding use for basic computing or uses that are on other extreme (heavy video editing, etc) but not so much for those of us in between.
I've considered the 14" with 500GB drive but I'm really torn on the need to upgrade beyond 16GB RAM and how much the upgraded 10-core processor will help my tasks. I know that PS and LR tend to be pretty CPU intensive tasks. I've been using Activity Monitor to gauge my usage and I don't feel like I currently bog it down too much but it's honestly greek to me. The 14" 500GB, 10-core w/ 32gb on the education pricing is right at the top (probably over) my absolute highest budget ($2400USD). I'd love to keep the machine 5+ years but honestly if it's a great investment for the next 3 years of my graduate program I'll be very grateful and make a plan post graduation.
I primarily works in Lightroom and Photoshop simultaneously. I don't do commercial work generally so the volume of large files is hardly ever an issue but I do often work with multiple larger tiff files to stitch together scans from 4x5" film negatives. The files can get pretty heavy. Additionally when shooting digitally I'm primarily working with 24mp files which are small by today's standards but do occasionally work with files double that size and I anticipate that will become more frequent the next 1-3 years.
Currently running a '18 Mini with 16GB, 3.0Ghz 6-core i5, and 250gb ssd. It's been a remarkably great machine for the price but I'm at the point where I need the mobility of a notebook. It handles 95% of my tasks really well but it would be nice to have a machine that rarely if ever gets bogged down. I don't feel the need to 'future proof' as some people do as that's nearly impossible to do as an artist to predict what tool I'll be needing for a given project though I do want a machine capable of working efficiently.
At home I'll almost exclusively use this with an external monitor for photo editing. Other than that I primarily use the main drive for my startup disk and apps and nothing else. Currently I run off a larger external drive for all my photographic files and that hasn't been an issue.
I've considered the 14" with 500GB drive but I'm really torn on the need to upgrade beyond 16GB RAM and how much the upgraded 10-core processor will help my tasks. I know that PS and LR tend to be pretty CPU intensive tasks. I've been using Activity Monitor to gauge my usage and I don't feel like I currently bog it down too much but it's honestly greek to me. The 14" 500GB, 10-core w/ 32gb on the education pricing is right at the top (probably over) my absolute highest budget ($2400USD). I'd love to keep the machine 5+ years but honestly if it's a great investment for the next 3 years of my graduate program I'll be very grateful and make a plan post graduation.
I primarily works in Lightroom and Photoshop simultaneously. I don't do commercial work generally so the volume of large files is hardly ever an issue but I do often work with multiple larger tiff files to stitch together scans from 4x5" film negatives. The files can get pretty heavy. Additionally when shooting digitally I'm primarily working with 24mp files which are small by today's standards but do occasionally work with files double that size and I anticipate that will become more frequent the next 1-3 years.
Currently running a '18 Mini with 16GB, 3.0Ghz 6-core i5, and 250gb ssd. It's been a remarkably great machine for the price but I'm at the point where I need the mobility of a notebook. It handles 95% of my tasks really well but it would be nice to have a machine that rarely if ever gets bogged down. I don't feel the need to 'future proof' as some people do as that's nearly impossible to do as an artist to predict what tool I'll be needing for a given project though I do want a machine capable of working efficiently.
At home I'll almost exclusively use this with an external monitor for photo editing. Other than that I primarily use the main drive for my startup disk and apps and nothing else. Currently I run off a larger external drive for all my photographic files and that hasn't been an issue.