The new mini is almost $1,400 US. How many MAC users here contemplating buying one?
I don't think Apple is trying to sell computers to workers in production environments. I think their efforts are focused more on selling products as status symbols for fashion conscious consumers with douchebag tendencies. Some people like to display an image of being successful, whether they have money or not. So they'll spend over $550 on a pair of Air Pod Max headphones even though there are other cans in the marketplace that cost over $200 less that are just as good. I wouldn't expect to see a Mac Pro tower in the graphics department of a sign company. But it wouldn't surprise me seeing one on some real estate broker's desk. The coffee shop kids will blow $1000 on a minimally configured Mac Book Air, but they're still showing off that Apple logo.
With that being said, the M1 chip is a pretty big development. Its efficiency in terms of performance per watt totally slays anything from Intel. And what Apple has in the works for 2021-22 poses a potentially much bigger threat. No one knows how Apple will price this stuff (probably ridiculously high). If the performance gains live up to the advance hype it will spell even more trouble for Intel. Businesses will take a closer look at those products as well as weigh the advances AMD continues to make with its Ryzen line. nVidia is getting in hot water lately. So that's an added wrinkle. Right now it's a pretty terrible time to consider buying a new computer.
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 agree, it's a crappy time for buying but an interesting time to watch development. Microsoft OS development is migrating toward marketing and may be taking a back seat to their military contract.
Ryzen is still suffering from configuration issues but once you resolve it they run well. They're punching Intel in the nose regularly.
Apple is doing what they always do but their tested performance is interesting as it does well as long as it's limited. It fails on heavier tasks ant it remains to be seen if extra RAM and a different processor will make it competitive with the future PC's. Right now the MAC is a non starter for heavy lifting.
$1,400 + shipping better get me more than what the MAC can do right now.
The douchebag factor is what made me stop servicing MAC clients. Even without the MAC they were still douchebags.
Which is ok, I have a rule, as long as I really don't have to take my pants off you can be a pain in my butt in direct proportion to the level of profitability of your work. Which leaves MAC people out.
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.