The new mini is almost $1,400 US. How many MAC users here contemplating buying one?
Until CorelDRAW is recompiled for native ARM CPU operation, and until Corel changes some of its licensing arrangements to less onerous terms, any Mac is a strict "no sale" for me. IMHO, if you have a CorelDRAW subscription or an active "upgrade protection" setup you should be able to download and use any installer you prefer, be it for Windows or for Mac OSX. That's how it works for Adobe Creative Cloud; the platform does not matter. Corel needs to do the same thing and allow existing users to use whatever OS they want to use. The current arrangement is a travesty.
I agree you pay a fee and should be able to use whichever you need. I see many sign shops with multiple systems, we have several PC's and an old MAC.
The new MAC is really expensive with 8 GB RAM and shared video memory, for that price I can get an i9, 32GB of RAM a dedicated NVidia graphics card and 256 GB SSD,
If people were willing to pay for PC laptops what they pay for the low end MAC systems they life would be a great deal easier.
I still would never use a laptop for daily work.
Macs are still badly over-priced for what you get. Some high end notebook PCs have been waltzing into that area as well. The thing I hate even more about Macs, the notebooks in particular, is so many parts are not upgradeable. Things like RAM modules are soldered into the motherboard. By contrast, many Windows-based notebooks can be upgraded with after-market parts, such as SSDs and RAM. It's easy to save hundreds of dollars doing those upgrades after purchase.In regards to doing work on notebooks, I used to be strictly a desktop-only user. You get a lot more bang for the buck in a desktop tower than a notebook. The price value difference still holds true today. But here is the GIANT problem: I work all day in my day job at a desk, using a desktop computer. When I go home I absolutely do not feel like sitting at another computer desk. There is value in portability. Lots of newer notebooks are more than powerful enough to run mainstream graphics applications such as CorelDRAW efficiently.
When I buy laptops I never figure on upgrading. I buy for an estimated 5 year need and trash them when they get funky. Yes they're a bit more expensive up front but I usually get 5 + years before they annoy me and they are given to a family member or they annoy me to the point where they have an accident.
I never have seen a laptop at any cost and I've had $4,000 systems, that could perform to my daily requirements or be color calibrated to my color needs. Running 1.5GB + files on a laptop of any power is SLOW! All the low end work that possibly could be done on laptops is done by employees on desktops. Laptops are used only for client meetings or administrative functions.
Web surfing is tablet/phone based.
Your use case does not apply to everyone else. If I have to work from home or work after hours I'm doing so on a notebook. I'm not chaining my leg to another computer desk.
Most of my sign projects can be done just fine on a decently equipped notebook. Even vehicle wraps or billboard designs. I recently upgraded a 9 year old Dell notebook with a new SSD and doubled the amount of RAM while I was at it, all for less than $200. The upgrade was prompted when the original hard disc finally quit. You can't do those kinds of upgrades with a Mac notebook with all the parts soldered into it.
The upgrades I mention when buying a notebook new is buying one with a more modest original configuration and then paying a lot less to upgrade RAM, SSDs or whatever with after market parts. I can do that easily with something like a Dell XPS 17 for instance. Crack it open, put 64GB of RAM in it for far less than what Dell will charge. Same for the SSDs. For good measure, you take out the factory SSD that came with all sorts of bloat-ware on it and put a higher capacity SSD with an unadulterated version of Windows 10 on it. The machine ends up running better.
Newer notebooks in the mid-tier and higher end are far more powerful than high end notebooks from just a couple or so years ago. They can run external monitors, keyboards and other peripherals pretty easily if they need to be placed on a regular desk.
I have a few charity clients but very few, their work could be handled by a laptop. All my work is image editing and large files now way a laptop would survive interacting with me on those jobs.
I'm curious – how large of a file are we talking here?
I regularly work on 1.5 to 2 GB CorelDRAW files. Editing is smooth with little to no delay. If I'm working on a complex item 12,000 to 18,000 objects a redraw can take a few seconds.
My donor walls are usually done at 150 or 200 DPI for images and effects. High resolution press print is all done at 400 DPI for images and effects.
The creation process for walls starts with a working file which can be physically large. Over 100' x 15' and be as many as 20 pages. Until final when only what's needed is placed into an output file.
Same for press work except page size rarely exceeds 26" x 40".
My image work generally is with APS-C, Full and Medium format images that range from 24MB to 50 MB as RAW files. Once converted to 16 bit RGB images they easily get to 60 MB as flattened TIF files. I may have 15 or 20 open at a time in Photo-PAINT and 80 in a CorelDRAW document at 200 DPI.
The last banner I did was 35' x 10' at 100 DPI.
The tests I can find for the new MAC are all done using video editors and I have little experiance with the software that they're testing.