Fotoartist wrote:
Is there such a problem as having too much power or speed? Do you have to drive a Ferrari at its top speed to enjoy it?
Not inherently... But if you have other priorities and limited funds, there are quite reasonable options. I have a lot of priorities and aim to spread the joy among them.
If I had copious amounts of spendable cash, I doubt I would have done much more than I did with my Mac setup, simply because I knew from trying others' M1 models (an Air, a Mini, and an iMac) that I could do everything I need to do and then some. I would have bought 2TB internal storage, had it been available in the Apple Refurbished store. Storage goes mighty fast when you're editing 4K video!
I have loaded as many as 47 different applications at once before my system showed signs of choking. Two of those were web browsers (Firefox and Safari), each running a different 4K YouTube video.
In another test, I loaded 111 tracks of audio into GarageBand, each with three different processors (compressor, limiter, reverb), and it played back fine. (It sounded like the random garbled mess it was, but hey, it played!)
I rendered 236 Lumix GH4 raw files to full size JPEGs in just 90 seconds.
So I'm set with what I need. Yes, it would be nice to have 32GB memory, but the way this system handles what I throw at it, I don't need it.
What seems to have made such a difference with memory requirements is the architecture. It is a lot more efficient at using that shared, unified memory, because it can use the extremely fast RAM for every core's needs, without moving data from storage to RAM to VRAM to RAM to storage. It just goes from storage to RAM, gets processed, with the result stored. The very fast storage is great for virtual memory, and the net result is all better than the Intel Macs. This is a game Apple's been playing for over a decade in their iPhones and iPads. The M1, etc., are using the same basic architecture. It's just silky smooth performance, and even though the Air has no fan, it seldom gets warm. Battery life is insane, and it does not slow down on battery unless I put it in low power mode.
Will this thing last me five years? I think it will. I'll probably want another one with an M4 by then. Maybe this goes to my wife, when she retires. It's overkill for what she does at home.