24" M1 iMac - because my 2011 was.. I do a lot of photo (Lightroom and Photoshop) editing as well as video processing and my 2011-iMac has been long in the tooth for a while now (it...

Basil Loc: New Mexico

I do a lot of photo (Lightroom and Photoshop) editing as well as video processing and my 2011-iMac has been long in the tooth for a while now (it won't even run any OS newer than High Sierra) so today I pulled the trigger on the new 24" iMac which I highly suspect will be a huge improvement for my photography and video editing tasks.

My main complaint is that RAM is not user-upgradable (probably because it's all on the same chip with the processor and the max memory you can order is 16GB. I ordered the Max memory and the max SSD size (2TB).

There are not really a lot of options other than whether you want a mouse AND a track pad, or just the mouse and whether you want the keyboard to have the numeric pad on the side or not.

Has anyone else here ordered or planning to order the new M1 iMac?

Linda From Maine Loc: Yakima, Washington

I just purchased the M1 Macbook Air 13-inch. 16 gb ram, only because I didn't want to wait for whenever the limited numbers of 8 gb would be shipped. Not much SSD space, but I plan to be much more selective in what photos and PSD files I keep, as well as store some files elsewhere.

First Apple product ever for me! I am very impressed with the clarity, brightness and colors. I bought a little hub for SD card, wireless mouse connection, the older USB devices, and charging. I can even edit pics (I'm using Affinity now) while sitting in my recliner. Life is good

flyguy Loc: Las Cruces, New Mexico

Basil wrote:

I do a lot of photo (Lightroom and Photoshop) edit... (show quote)

You might want to check this out:

Don’t Upgrade The RAM In Your New Apple iMac, Do This Instead

https://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykarcz/2021/04/21/dont-upgrade-the-ram-in-your-new-apple-imac-do-this-instead/?sh=7221e011762d

Basil Loc: New Mexico

flyguy wrote:

You might want to check this out:

Don’t Upgrade The RAM In Your New Apple iMac, Do This Instead

https://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykarcz/2021/04/21/dont-upgrade-the-ram-in-your-new-apple-imac-do-this-instead/?sh=7221e011762d

Thanks, I was aware of the efficiency of the unified RAM and if I was concerned about the cost I probably would have upgraded the SSD in lieu of more memory. However, I felt the cost wasn't prohibitive to do both. It only cost me $180 to go from 8GB to 16GB (normally it's $200 but I get the 10% veteran's discount).

From the article:

Quote:

However, if you're editing large 4K videos or doing other extremely intensive tasks, you might benefit from additional unified memory in your system. You can upgrade to 16GB for a measly $200.

As it happnes I will be doing a good bit of 4k editing and so I opted to go ahead and spend the $180 and "future. proof" the box. I also decided to go for 2TB even though most of my photos and videos are kept on a Thunderbolt RAID.

That said, if someone is on a budget and it's a choice between upgrading memory or upgrading SSD, then yes, I'd also recommend the SSD. This M1 chip with everything unified on one piece of silicon is simply a game changer and I'm super excited to get my hands on it.

ecobin Loc: Paoli, PA

Processing photos can use lots of ram. I have the M1 MacBook Pro with 16gb ram and no issues. But I do get close to maxing out the ram occasionally so my suggestion to photographers who shoot in raw is to get a minimum of 16gb ram.

BrHawkeye

I got the M1 iMac with 16 gigabytes of ram and 1 terabyte of memory. I'll be using it with a 4 terabyte external drive. I've also purchased a dongle that has additional ports including a port for an SD card, something the new iMac doesn't have.

elliott937 Loc: St. Louis

When I had multiple PC's in the past, I learned that Adobe and PC do not play well together. Blue Screen of Death viewed regularly, plus more. Hence, 15 years ago, I bought my first iMac, and I never look back. Perfect? No,, not quite, but pretty close. Major problem? System upgrades, since I've lost a printer or a scanner when upgrading the OS. Solution? Don't do that any more. Now, about that memory space. Solution? I have three external HDs. So I do not store any images on the computer itself. That saves a lot of memory space. So, I'm living very happy with my 28" iMac. Oh, by the way, iMac's have an extremely long life too.

tcthome Loc: NJ

Linda From Maine wrote:

I just purchased the M1 Macbook Air 13-inch. 16 gb... (show quote)

I'll probably do the same & hook up to an external monitor for editing.

tcthome Loc: NJ

Ram should be good with the M1. The interface with the intergrated cpu/gpu , & ram work quite well according to reviewers doing photo & video processing. For that unit, 512gb or higher for storage while storing all edited or entire catalog on a external device.

Ednsb Loc: Santa Barbara

flyguy wrote:

You might want to check this out:

Don’t Upgrade The RAM In Your New Apple iMac, Do This Instead

https://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykarcz/2021/04/21/dont-upgrade-the-ram-in-your-new-apple-imac-do-this-instead/?sh=7221e011762d

That's an interesting idea. For $200 get 8GB more ram or double your storage which works as ram for both the CPU and GPU as needed. Too late for me as I bought an M1 Mac Mini about 2 weeks ago with 16GB and a 512GB SSD. I love it. Runs everything so much faster. I'm always going to have external drives as my iMac (2011 mid 27 inch) ran off an external SSD with a 4TB internal HD and 22TB of external SSDs and HDD mostly thunderbolt 1.

As an example yesterday, I processed a 16 image (26 Mb avg) in Affinity Photo as a pano in 27 secs. Or Topaz Sharpen which took over 7 MINUTES to process an image with the 2011 takes 37 secs with the Mini.

With an Apple education discount (wife a teacher), buying a Dell 27’’ monitor recommended by Hudson Henry, I spent significantly less than buying the lowest-priced 24” M1 iMac.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

elliott937 wrote:

When I had multiple PC's in the past, I learned that Adobe and PC do not play well together. Blue Screen of Death viewed regularly, plus more...

Adobe products and PCs work fine together as I and tens of millions of others can testify. If you prefer Macs, fine, but yours was an individual problem, not a universal one.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

flyguy wrote:

You might want to check this out:

Don’t Upgrade The RAM In Your New Apple iMac, Do This Instead

https://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykarcz/2021/04/21/dont-upgrade-the-ram-in-your-new-apple-imac-do-this-instead/?sh=7221e011762d

Not so sure this is good advice. You can always add SSD (although it is external and likely slower than the internal SSD), but you can’t add more RAM, and SSD is no substitute for RAM. DRAM access times are in the 50 nano second range, while SSDs, as fast as they are, are in the 50-100 microsecond range - 1000x slower, and one of the biggest performance killers for any computer is paging to disk, even SSDs. I’m sure 8GB is fine for general applications, even when running multiple applications simultaneously, but for images (and maybe video), I think it’s very marginal, no matter how tightly coupled it is to the CPU. Remember, SW (which is resident in memory when loaded) and images/video are getting larger with every new camera and application, and if you’re paying the $ for a Mac, you’re probably planning on keeping it for awhile.

Picture Taker Loc: Michigan Thumb

I have a newer version now and don't remember the older Mac, but on my new one I purchases extra ram and it has a door in the back to install the ram. It took less then 10 min. Turned off, unplugged, laid it on the screen(with a toe to protect screen) opened the door installed 4 cards, closed it and started it use it.

Basil Loc: New Mexico

Picture Taker wrote:

I have a newer version now and don't remember the older Mac, but on my new one I purchases extra ram and it has a door in the back to install the ram. It took less then 10 min. Turned off, unplugged, laid it on the screen(with a toe to protect screen) opened the door installed 4 cards, closed it and started it use it.

The current 27” iMac is the last iMac that users can upgrade memory. That’s one of my biggest disappointments with the M1 I just ordered - no ability for users to upgrade RAM. I’d rather pay the extra $200 for additional RAM and not need it than to not get it and discover I needed it.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Basil wrote:

I do a lot of photo (Lightroom and Photoshop) edit... (show quote)

You will not be sorry! My son has the M1 MacBook Air with 8GB RAM and 512GB internal storage. It is a speed demon. He runs lots of high-end apps like Photoshop, Lightroom Classic, Blender, After Effects, Final Cut Pro, DaVinci Resolve, Premiere Pro, MS Office 365, and Parallels Desktop with Windows 10 for ARM.

The new iMac has the same processor. With 16GB and 2TB, you should be ready for anything short of a professional video editing booth!