Mac Mini M1

Viggo

Viggo

Dec 13, 2010
5,060
1,662
#1
Hi guys!

Did anyone else but me jump on the Mac Mini M1 for editing?

Care to share your experience with ANY M1 Mac? Preferably in Lr and Photoshop, and what are you comparing it to?

mine is three weeks away.

I think I’m going for the LG Ultrafine 4K 24” as it seems like the most Mac compatible monitor and best bang for the buck.

what you guys think?
 
#3
Lr and PS will be running in emulation, so don’t expect a vast speed up. If it runs as well as it does on an Intel machine, that will be a triumph. I don’t need a laptop for anything. My iPad does all I want to do as I travel. At some point I will replace my 5K iMac. It is old, but still seems quite fast. I may get the final Intel iMac to run old software that I don’t plan to upgrade. I will have some months to decide my best course.
 
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#4
stevelee said:
Lr and PS will be running in emulation, so don’t expect a vast speed up. If it runs as well as it does on an Intel machine, that will be a triumph. I don’t need a laptop for anything.
Click to expand...
Emulation with support in hardware though. Nothing to sneeze at.

And with how thermally constraint Intel chips have been in most modern Apple devices, you may still see a nice improvement.

Pudget System did a nice benchmark on these and found the M1 Macbook Air and Pro to perform comparably to a Desktop with an i5 8600 and GTX 1060. That's a 6 core, 6 thread CPU. Source: https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/a...op-Workstation-for-Adobe-Creative-Cloud-1975/

The actual user experience in day to day tasks is harder to benchmark, so hearing about that may be more insightful to the typical Apple user. And it's what the OP asked for anyway.

Edit:

LTT has a more "Apples to Apples" (Pun intended) comparison in their video: M1 Mac Mini vs. 2018 Mac Mini with i7 9700B (6c, 12t). Very, very slightly worse than the Intel Mac Mini in Photoshop. If Adobe optimizes their AS versions to scale as well as Cinebench (50% Perfomance increase), it would easily beat the older Mac and even catch up to AMDs mid-tier 3600X. But that's using the words "optimized" and "Adobe" in the same scentence, so walking on thin ice :ROFLMAO:
 
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#5
Viggo said:
Hi guys!

Did anyone else but me jump on the Mac Mini M1 for editing?

Care to share your experience with ANY M1 Mac? Preferably in Lr and Photoshop, and what are you comparing it to?

mine is three weeks away.

I think I’m going for the LG Ultrafine 4K 24” as it seems like the most Mac compatible monitor and best bang for the buck.

what you guys think?
Click to expand...
From what reviews and tests I’ve seen it should do very well with LR and photoshop even if it has to run them as an emulation at the moment. The biggest thing with these m1 macs is the ability to hardware decode the h.265 video files of the new Canon cameras. Awesome value for money!

The only issue I have heard about is the Bluetooth connections being unreliable on the mini
 
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#6
stevelee said:
Lr and PS will be running in emulation, so don’t expect a vast speed up. If it runs as well as it does on an Intel machine, that will be a triumph. I don’t need a laptop for anything. My iPad does all I want to do as I travel. At some point I will replace my 5K iMac. It is old, but still seems quite fast. I may get the final Intel iMac to run old software that I don’t plan to upgrade. I will have some months to decide my best course.
Click to expand...
In emulation? Adobe has updated Lr for use with the M1.
 
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#7
Chris.Chapterten said:
From what reviews and tests I’ve seen it should do very well with LR and photoshop even if it has to run them as an emulation at the moment. The biggest thing with these m1 macs is the ability to hardware decode the h.265 video files of the new Canon cameras. Awesome value for money!

The only issue I have heard about is the Bluetooth connections being unreliable on the mini
Click to expand...
Hopefully an update with the Bluetooth, think I saw it was the 5.0.
 
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#10
BeenThere said:
Waiting for iMac with M1X.
Click to expand...
I know the feeling - we are due an IT overhaul for our office Mac Pros and going to wait for the Mac Pro to come out with whatever its going to be - rumour seems to be 'M1+ / M2', and a wait until Q2/Q3 2021 - but could even be into 2022 apparently - that feels like ages away. In the meantime we have M1 armed MacBook Pro's coming in the new year to replace ageing MBPs.
 
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#11
StoicalEtcher said:
I know the feeling - we are due an IT overhaul for our office Mac Pros and going to wait for the Mac Pro to come out with whatever its going to be - rumour seems to be 'M1+ / M2', and a wait until Q2/Q3 2021 - but could even be into 2022 apparently - that feels like ages away. In the meantime we have M1 armed MacBook Pro's coming in the new year to replace ageing MBPs.
Click to expand...

I’m also waiting for the higher spec chip. The current m1 can handle 4K video but apparently still struggles with 8k... let’s see what’s next to come...
 
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#13
I would avoid it until we see how the software and hardware situation goes next year. The software should be in good shape by Spring or Summer. A Mac Pro and iMac revamp may launch next year and the premium 16GB RAM/2TB SSD Mac-mini should be readily available, which is the only Mac-mini hardware you want to buy for media work. There's also a premium version with 10G Ethernet that will be available next year. In order to maximize the performance and longevity of the new hardware, you have to use advanced external SSD storage like the OWC Express 4M2 and that costs a lot of money to outfit with premium M.2 SSDs. The on-board SSD for the new mini is blazing fast, but once it goes, it's gone for good, so you can't rely on it for long-term use or storage. It is expected that the iMac will use the same on-board SSD design in higher capacities, while the Mac Pro will use the same upgradeable and replaceable M.2 SSD modules as the latest model in that product line.
 
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#14
Any updates on this topic from those that have purchased an M1 Mini and incorporated it into their workflow?

I understand Affinity Photo has ahead of the curve and has all their latest updates incorporated and ready for M1.
 
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#15
I couldn’t wait any longer to fire it up, so I used my tv to try it out and wow, just wow... it’s incredible... my short lived experience with the iMac 4K 2019 compared to the Mac mini is ridiculous ... the iMac crashed constantly on import of about 40 R5 raw files, I couldn’t touch the cursor or keyboard at all and it still crashed with nothing else open/

the Mac mini swallowed 850 raw files in under 15 minutes included was 1:1 preview build, which it did alongside import, my two iMacs did this consecutively, and it simultaneously uploaded backup to cloud. I could edit without hiccups while it imported, that has never worked for me. The apps starts SO fast it’s like an iPhone. I imported 120 raw files I had on the mini from earlier, they were imported in less than 4 seconds, then it took a few minutes to build 1:1 preview.

And I didn’t really get how annoying fan noise is until I’ve used the Mini now for a few hours without any sound whatsoever.
Very happy with the performance.
 
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#18
It’s here and all set up. The speed is borderline miraculous compared to what I was using before. Canon’s apps (I was able to migrate everything from our old iMac) work flawlessly through Rosetta. Affinity Photo? Fuggitaboutit! Stitched and rendered a 9 image pano in a couple minutes, which included finding the photos and intelligent infill rendering. Going to try a focus stack later after work. Even Apple Photos - I can scroll through our old library of JPEG’s faster then I can recognize what’s on the images. Have DPP4, Affinity Photo, and Apple Photos open as well as our Synology Photos app open all at the same time without a hitch!

If none of that impresses you, then you’ve already got a good setup.

The LG UltraFine 4K seems to be fine. Based on 100% image viewing, it appears to render photos using 4K but text and everything else is all rendered appropriately for reading.

I did have to let migration assistant run all night, but it was worth the wait.
 
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#19
FamilyGuy said:
It’s here and all set up. The speed is borderline miraculous compared to what I was using before. Canon’s apps (I was able to migrate everything from our old iMac) work flawlessly through Rosetta. Affinity Photo? Fuggitaboutit! Stitched and rendered a 9 image pano in a couple minutes, which included finding the photos and intelligent infill rendering. Going to try a focus stack later after work. Even Apple Photos - I can scroll through our old library of JPEG’s faster then I can recognize what’s on the images. Have DPP4, Affinity Photo, and Apple Photos open as well as our Synology Photos app open all at the same time without a hitch!

If none of that impresses you, then you’ve already got a good setup.

The LG UltraFine 4K seems to be fine. Based on 100% image viewing, it appears to render photos using 4K but text and everything else is all rendered appropriately for reading.

I did have to let migration assistant run all night, but it was worth the wait.
Click to expand...
I got hold of a LG Ultrafine 5K and been editing a couple of shots. Last night I exported 75 R5 raw to jpeg and it took less than 5 minutes, around 4:40. And the screen is GORGEOUS. I can’t wait for M1 support :p
 
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