Affinity Studios (All three) On Apple Macbook Pro - 13 Inch, M1, 16GB RAM VS Desktop Specs Below

[Desingerxo]

Hello Guys,

 

New Upcomer Designer looking for some feedback and opinion before making a purchase on whether I should Purchase Affinity (All 3 software) on my Mac Book or Desktop PC

Would it make a difference ? or any specific advantages when comparing the usage on both devices? if so ? what are your thoughts?

 

1 - MacBook Specification :  

 Apple Macbook Pro - 13 Inch, M1, 16GB RAM

 

2- Desktop PC Specifications : 
 

Processor        11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-11700 @ 2.50GHz   2.50 GHz

Installed RAM        32.0 GB (31.9 GB usable)

Monitor Odyssey G9 Samsung

 

Apart of my desktop having a bigger monitor + mouse + keyboard. 

The mac book is still fully operative and a strong competitor . what are you thought guys ?

[Dan C]

Hi @Desingerxo,

Welcome to the Affinity Forums

Although your Windows PC has more RAM available, the way that RAM is unified on the M1 devices will mean I would expect very similar performance between the two systems.

My best advice would be to try the free 10 day trial of the Affinity apps on both platforms and see which suits you best, and which you find to give the best performance in your given tasks. I've included links for the trials below - opening these links on your Windows machine should offer the Windows version, and opening on macOS should provide the mac versions for you:

Photo - https://affinity.serif.com/photo/trial
Designer - https://affinity.serif.com/designer/trial
Publisher - https://affinity.serif.com/publisher/trial

I hope this helps!

[Desingerxo]

Yes you are right,

 

but my question is which is better? on the mac as a laptop or on the desktop as a pc with mouse and keyboard ? your thoughts?

[Old Bruce]

1 minute ago, Desingerxo said:

Yes you are right,

 

but my question is which is better? on the mac as a laptop or on the desktop as a pc with mouse and keyboard ? your thoughts?

I doubt there is anyone here who has licences for Windows and Mac and have the same or very similar machines running all the software. So in short, no one can answer this but you who actually has the two machines can test the applications for you.

Use the Trials to do some testing and then purchase the Mac or Windows licenses. Or you may find that Affinity is not what you need/want. 

[NotMyFault]

I own all platforms. To be honest, this question has no serious answer.

It is more a matter of taste and personal preferences. Any performance difference is totally irrelevant compared to other factors which dominate your productivity:

• Familiarity to MacOS or Windows (keyboard shortcuts / modifier keys)
• Scaling  of UI (better on Mac)
• Integration with other apps / tools you need (scanner, printer, tablets, pens, other grafical  tools)

MacOS has an edge over Windows as it is historically the preferred platform, Windows version of Affinity apps have more platform specific bugs.

My PC has 2x the power / resources in multiple relevant  aspect (cpu / ram / gpu)  compared to my M1 Mac mini. But the Mac feels snappier / faster.

[Desingerxo]

2 minutes ago, NotMyFault said:

I own all platforms. To be honest, this question has no serious answer.

It is more a matter of taste and personal preferences. Any performance difference is totally irrelevant compared to other factors which dominate your productivity:

• Familiarity to MacOS or Windows (keyboard shortcuts / modifier keys)
• Scaling  of UI (better on Mac)
• Integration with other apps / tools you need (scanner, printer, tablets, pens, other grafical  tools)

MacOS has an edge over Windows as it is historically the preferred platform, Windows version of Affinity apps have more platform specific bugs.

My PC has 2x the power / resources in multiple relevant  aspect (cpu / ram / gpu)  compared to my M1 Mac mini. But the Mac feels snappier / faster.

Great reply , what about using Da vinci resolve? would you also recommend on mac? or should Use affinity on Desktop but video editing Resolve on Mac?

[NotMyFault]

For casual usage H.264, full HD, possibly 4K), it does not matter much. For serious usage (4K-8K, H.265, high compressed formats lacking frequent key frames, HDR, >8 bit color depth), small details can make a big difference like day and night (=unusable)

• certain codecs (H.265) have hardware support for encoding on specific new cpu / gpu‘s only. Check your requirements carefully. 
• Certain video RAW formats are supported on specific apps / hardware only (Apple RAW, etc)

So it totally depends on what you want to achieve.

Gear for serious work with 8K RAW video in HDR can cost a small town. 

[NotMyFault]

And a wide gamut 10-14 bit color depth hw calibrated low delta E 32 inch 5-8K display can set you back 3.5 to 10K$.

it is irrelevant if you create 4 color comic art, or weekly YouTube social media star videos.
It is a necessity if you create 4K HDR videos for critical customers.

It depends what on you specific niche of artwork.

If in doubt, start with whatever you have. You will find out quickly where hardware limits you. Sell everything what is holding you back and buy better gear, at least once a year. We have so frequent gear improvement, and your work time is far more limited than what you are able to purchase (and exchange) on gear / hardware.

[Desingerxo]

19 minutes ago, NotMyFault said:

And a wide gamut 10-14 bit color depth hw calibrated low delta E 32 inch 5-8K display can set you back 3.5 to 10K$.

it is irrelevant if you create 4 color comic art, or weekly YouTube social media star videos.
It is a necessity if you create 4K HDR videos for critical customers.

It depends what on you specific niche of artwork.

If in doubt, start with whatever you have. You will find out quickly where hardware limits you. Sell everything what is holding you back and buy better gear, at least once a year. We have so frequent gear improvement, and your work time is far more limited than what you are able to purchase (and exchange) on gear / hardware.

OK basically , you were speaking Chinese to me lol

 

all I want to do is edit travel vlogs and travel pics using affinity for travel pics and e-commerce using while using the mac for travel vlog editing nothing too serious.

 

and I am fairly a new upcomer designer actually I just started with it , and bought two beginner courses for Resolve and Affinity to learn what I can learn and apply it 

 

so what do you think ? Video editing on mac and photo editing on desktop or should it be the other way around in your opinion ? or it doesn't matter?

 

P.S I am mostly using my pc for gaming / trading while my laptop of on the go socializing and working emails etc...

 

[NotMyFault]

you can perfectly start doing everything with your Mac.

Just backup all relevant data frequently to external sdd and to cloud, to protect against data loss (e.g. by theft). If on tight budget, book a travel insurance or photo gear insurance. A friend of me is a professional photographer, his Macbook was stolen in seconds out of his car where he was editing, while he was tricked away by a fake accident. The main issue was the lost data / edit work, and lost time until he got re-purchased new gear out in the woods and he couldn't work.

 

[v_kyr]

Well honestly and related to the Affinity apps, the whole also highly depends on how stable the apps run on either of your systems. Hardware base wise both of your systems should be capable enough here (... assuming connecting an external mouse and the bigger display to the MBP for more comfortable working). But ...and this is a big BUT... as said before, the whole also highly depends on the Affinity apps stability and faultless working then under let's say Windows 11 or MacOS Monterey on your computer systems.

So nobody can tell or guess how things will then finally behave on your individual hardware & OS systems here, that would be plain speculation. Thus you have to tryout & test yourself here where things behave best and give the best performance, before you buy a specific platform license. - The same said would apply for DaVinci Resolve!

 

[Old Bruce]

Davinci Resolve works on both platforms.

As the PC (Windows box) is used for gaming and there are problems with some software that people have mentioned (Nahimic ???) interfering with Affinity I would avoid using the Affinity on the Windows machine. Simply because the gaming software would maybe benifit from the software that is causing people problems with Affinity.

Note that I am decades away from having used Windows. So you might be better off ignoring this advice.