Drbobcameraguy Loc: Eaton Ohio

You do realize that Intel's new chip is twice as fast as the M1 and less than a third of the cost. I understand that certain people need Mac for certain programs. My son happens to be one. I also understand that people like what they like. I'm a shear functionality person. If you are not a Mac junkie investigate the new Intel as compared to the M1. Alder lake is available now and has benchmarked with the M1 as 1.5 times faster.

Davethehiker Loc: South West Pennsylvania

It's not as bad as you make it sound. It's only slow when I'm interfacing with the Internet. Everything else goes very fast.

As for RAID back up disks:
My new MacBook has 8TB SSM. My RAID has two "spinning" 8TB HDs mirroring each other. I'm covered pretty, well.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Alder = old.

Why do they call their new chip OLD?

The real issue with an Alderlake in a laptop is that it has about 1/3 the power per Watt efficiency of the M1 series. To tap into all its power, you have to plug the damned thing in. Otherwise, it can't get enough juice to catch up with the M1 Max... or the battery life isn't squat. Besides, when a chip dissipates as much power as Alderlake, it takes big, screaming loud fans to cool it. There's more power wasted and the noise can be a problem.

It's good to see the competition continues. Every leap forward teaches the competitor how to do something new, no matter who it is.

The one thing I hear from a lot of Mac users is that they don't give a damn what's under the hood. They care about getting work done. Many content creators on YouTube say the same thing. They just want to dump their footage into Final Cut, edit it, and post it.

Here's a young musician reacting to her new M1 Max 16" MacBook Pro by making a music video with it: https://youtu.be/H3BGFWoqA9E

Ask a recording engineer or musician why they use a Mac and they'll tell you it is because it does not get in the way of their process. Many of them held out for a year before taking the plunge into M1 world. They had to let their plug-in providers catch up. Audio was the slowest of the communities to do so.

Drbobcameraguy Loc: Eaton Ohio

Silly rabbit. As most humans you do not comprehend the entire paragraph read. I stated people who have a specific need for Mac like my son. Who also is very well known in the music business. As in teaches most all very very famous people how to use and keep their voice. Every pop star you can name plus many if the oldies. Starting 20 years ago. Yes he has a need. You processing photos have no need and I'll bet you whatever you choose that an Alder lake will outperform any Mac you can buy today. Who gives a crap about 5 dollars of electricity a year? We are talking performance. Google every benchmark test between the 2. Actually my personally built desktop will process photos faster than the M1 and if you like to travel we can make a bet to make it worth my while. Google Aaron Hagan just so you know my son needs Mac. Lol

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

For five of my 33 years in a photography/printing company, I ran a digital portrait photofinishing lab. We used 39 Macs and 77 PCs. We had just over four times the support calls from the PC users as we had from the Mac users, as a proportion of the machines in service. I supported all the Macs. The two folks in IT supported the PCs, with help from me when needed. But I was also writing databases on a Mac, deployed on Macs and PCs. I was managing six production departments. I was training employees...

I don't hate Windows. I just prefer MacOS. It's an OS that gets out of the way of the task. That's the real difference. It also integrates all my devices together seamlessly.

In my world, performance is a nice to have. Coordinated functionality and portability are more important, though. Power efficiency is very important to me, since I edit on the go. Extended battery life with a processor that never slows down on battery is important when editing on a plane or in a car or van. Decent sound and color accurate monitoring are important, too. And the ability to connect peripherals at 40 Gbps is critical.

The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. I was a systems manager for part of my career. One of the cardinal rules of designing systems is that a system is only as fast as the slowest part in it, so maximizing performance of any one part is silly unless you maximize performance of everything else. BALANCED efficiency is what we look for.

The new Macs are EXPENSIVE. Apple gets bashed for that. But those of us who use them and rely on them find value in that balance of power, features, quality, convenience, and coordinated functionality.

Macs get knocked for the "walled garden, closed system, soldered RAM, non-upgradeable mentality." That's okay. It's hard for some to understand what they haven't tried and lived with. Sometimes rules are good. Sometimes limits set you free. Sometimes you give up something ultimate to get something balanced that is more important. Sometimes you dig a little deeper to learn what they gained by sealing the box.

I had a Mac and a PC on my desk from 1986 to 2001. Then I had a PC in my Mac for the next 20 years, using virtualization tools. That was the best of both worlds. It let me travel with both operating systems and the apps I needed to run on both of them.

The M1 isn't the fastest processor around. It IS fast. The M1 Pro is faster than M1, and the M1 Max is faster than the M1 Pro. But there are still faster chips. There aren't, however, any chips that are as power efficient and cool-running in today's laptops. So that's a huge part of why the new Macs are remarkable. The new Macs themselves are slick machines, with great keyboards, trackpads, monitors, speakers, and webcams. They are really hard to dislike.

I was in Best Buy today. There were half a dozen folks banging on the Macs. A big sign on the MacBook Air display said that they were out of them and didn't expect more for several weeks. A sales guy in a Geek Squad shirt was patiently explaining to a crying grandma why her son wasn't going to get an Air for Christmas.

The Air's been out for a year. It's old news. But it's still their top seller. Go figure. There must be a reason why I'm typing this on one. Maybe it's because it has no fan, but it doesn't get hot on my lap. Maybe it's because I can watch videos on a 5-hour cross-country flight and still get the rest of the day's work done on the remaining charge. Maybe it's because a 2.8 lb. computer can edit 4K videos in a tent in the woods. Maybe it's because it can edit 90 tracks of audio with three audio processor plugins on each, without breaking a sweat, and since I rarely need more than 10 or 12, I trust it. Maybe it's just because FaceTime is about the coolest video calling tool ever. Maybe it's because anything I do on my iPhone shows up on my Mac a few minutes later, so I can continue working on it there. Apparently, for these and many other reasons, it is now the most popular laptop and the most highly rated by TechRadar.

https://www.techradar.com/news/mobile-computing/laptops/best-laptops-1304361

If I have a 400 HP engine in a "daily driver" car I use every day in rush hour traffic at 15 to 45 MPH, I'm just wasting gas. If I have a hybrid or an electric vehicle, I have a quieter, less costly to operate vehicle that gets me "there" just as quickly, because I can go only as fast as the cars in front of me. Why do I need a drag racer when all I want to do is get to work? I don't have insecurities a muscle car could help. Oh, I can still burn rubber in a Prius. But why would I?

Y'all have a nice day. It's that time of year, and we all need one. Be safe.

Davethehiker Loc: South West Pennsylvania

I'm not near the power user you are. Nor do I have all the computer experience that you have had. I did work for IBM as an employee for 25 and half years and after a forced retirement (Golden Parachute). I worked for them as consultant for another 12 years. While working at IBM I was privy to some inside information that IBM was going enter the small computer market. I was an early adaptor to the IBM-PC world. I have done some programming.

After I retired I was visiting my son and saw his Mac desk top computer. I was impressed by the big beautiful screen so I bought one as gift for my soon to be 2nd wife. She was an art teacher. I then made the jump from the IBM-PC to Apple and never looked back. My grand son is a "gammer" and needs the speed that he tells me is only available on PC computers.

I'm fully retired now and Photograph is a hobby. I like being able to carry my MacBook Pro(s) into the Apple store and getting competent support. Apple also provides good phone support. They are able to take control of my computer from a remote location and quickly help me. Adobe links me to India where a very fast speaking hard to understand man downloaded and installed the latest versions of LR and PS. The man in India took over complete control of my computer and did things why faster than I could have done it. I was watching him to make sure he did not access my person information.

$6000 plus is a lot of money for some people. I'm old and recently beat a deadly cancer and decided, "Why not, I can't take it with me when I die. I'm happy with my purchase, in spite of the title of this thread.

I still say importing a large number of photo images into LR and "manually" rebuilding the index is hard slow process and I'm spending more time than I thought I would waiting for the computer to build it's index when I import new images in bulk. I was warned by kind folks here on UHH that it would be difficult. I'm going to give myself a break for Christmas but I estimate that I only have about ten more hours of work to do. It's been a learning experience and I'm learning how to use some of the power built into LR. The good news is that I'm discovering some old good photos that I thought were lost forever.

I have yet to hear the fan turn on in this computer. I hope the fan works?!

Please let's not turn this into pointless PC vs Mac debate!

Davethehiker Loc: South West Pennsylvania

All my digital photos have been moved into my new computer and indexed. I'm sure I made a few mistakes, but I will correct them in time. I have no complaints about LrC speed now!

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