burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Adobe Lightroom Classic and Photoshop, and Apple's Final Cut Pro, have all run very smoothly on my 2020 M1 MacBook Air. (8/8/16 cores, 16 GB memory, 1TB internal storage). I have ZERO complaints. All my other apps run flawlessly as well. I AM using the latest Apple Silicon versions that will run under Ventura 13.6.1. I will upgrade to Sonoma 14.2 when that is available. (14.1.1 came out today, along with 13.6.2, so it won't be long).

flathead27ford Loc: Colorado, North of Greeley

Thanks!

BebuLamar

For now but in few years you would need a lot more.

MrBob Loc: lookout Mtn. NE Alabama

I bit the bullitt Bill and ordered a iMac 24 with the M3 chip.... My 27" took a dump and being really amazed at My wife's iMac24 with M1 I decided to bite... The only options I added were to bump memory to 16 and add an Ethernet port and a numeric keypad. I am a single user and ONLY work on one thing at a time with the most demanding being Photoshop, and as slow as I think and operate, that is NOT going to be a problem. These machines seem to be REALLY fast and I look forward to being set for the next 5-6 years. What do you think is a good backup external drive around 2 TB in size... I don't need the quickest for backup but reliability is paramount. I think my WD on the 27 is about 6 years old now... I have been lucky and breathe lightly around it. Maybe I am being overly anal, but I did run Cat8 Ethernet up to my loft from the router as I am not 100% sold on WiFi yet if I have wired options.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Congrats! You will love it.

Good drives for Time Machine backup are Enterprise Class conventional, 7200 RPM spinning platter hard drives from one of the major drive vendors. Generally, if it has a five year warranty, it's built for the long haul.

I'd probably get a four or eight TB model, since they're reasonably inexpensive. Something like this:

https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/owc-mercury-elite-pro

If you get one pre-configured, the drive isn't enterprise class, and has a three year warranty. If you get the empty enclosure, you can pick your own 3.5" SATA drive and install it in minutes as we have done here.

https://eshop.macsales.com/item/Toshiba/MG08ADA800E/ is a winner.

In addition, you may consider a fast 2TB SSD for use as a working (scratch) drive and primary online storage. I like Samsung T7 portable SSDs.

Unless doing video editing or major Lightroom exports, you don't need a ThunderBolt drive. The T7 is pretty speedy, and a spinning drive is perfectly sufficient for Time Machine backups that happen in the background.

Modern WiFi is plenty fast enough and reliable if you have a reliable (and properly configured) WiFi router made in the last two years or so. But a wired connection is always secure and reliable.

If I were in an apartment or condo complex, I'd wire the heck out of everything I could — printer, smart TVs, and computers. We live in a neighborhood where there are lots of folks with WiFi. But there is probably 100 to 200 feet between our house and the nearest router in another house. Interference is low.