Torn between 13" and 15" MBP

[samcraig]

Ok -

I'm replacing my 2009 iMac which is dogging right now. I'm less concerned about screen size since I can hook it up to an external monitor whenever I need to.

But I'm more "concerned" with performance. IE the 13" dual core vs 15" quad core.

The "labor intensive" software I use are:

Photoshop - for retouching photos. Nothing heavy. Not a professional - a hobbyist.
Aperture - Organizing photos/collections (at least for now - no desire to switch to iPhoto.. might consider lightroom. I have thousands of photos on an external drive
FCPX - mostly editing short videos - not too complicated - from my cell phone, Canon T3i or Ricoh Theta S
Microsoft Office - word and not-too-complicated presentations
iTunes - I have ~800 movies and 14K tracks that I have on a small external drive and use it to power Apple TV when I want to watch something from my collection

Keeping in mind that my iMac is from 2009 and has 4gb memory.. I'm thinking that performance is going to be exponentially better regardless - but was looking for thoughts and insights...

thanks!

 

[RobinInOR]

Nothing technical to add, but I'm doing the *exact* same thing. Have a late 2009 iMac, and use it basically as you do. It's actually working just fine, but since I can't upgrade it anymore it's stuck on Snow Leopard and and old Safari that doesn't work with a lot of websites I visit (and it doesn't work with the web version of PLEX)
I just bought the 13" 16G memory, 1T drive (which I didn't need since I've just moved my movies to a NAS), i7 processor. I think performance will be fine with the 13". My movies aren't high def, and I've never ripped to a full .mkv, so that will be my first test. I'll be using my ipad Pro as my external monitor.
Only reason I didn't go with the 15" was, strangely enough, I hated the proportions of it. It just looked 'wrong' to me.

 

[samcraig]

Nothing technical to add, but I'm doing the *exact* same thing. Have a late 2009 iMac, and use it basically as you do. It's actually working just fine, but since I can't upgrade it anymore it's stuck on Snow Leopard and and old Safari that doesn't work with a lot of websites I visit (and it doesn't work with the web version of PLEX)
I just bought the 13" 16G memory, 1T drive (which I didn't need since I've just moved my movies to a NAS), i7 processor. I think performance will be fine with the 13". My movies aren't high def, and I've never ripped to a full .mkv, so that will be my first test. I'll be using my ipad Pro as my external monitor.
Only reason I didn't go with the 15" was, strangely enough, I hated the proportions of it. It just looked 'wrong' to me.

Good to know

Yeah - I'm curious what people say in regards to cores and also the difference in graphic chips