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Will the New Version of Affinity Photo run smoothly on the New M2 Mac Mini with 16GB RAM ?


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1 minute ago, N.P.M. said:

Cost a bundle, is obsolete in a year.

Most Macs perform quite well for long enough that the average time between replacements is around 4 years; plus, they tend to return a lot of their original cost if resold.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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25 minutes ago, N.P.M. said:

The days that apple was leader in the graphic industry are long gone, all that's left is a sandboxed overpriced, marketing hyped shiny box.

Yet despite the high prices Apple's devices continue to sell quite well because lots of people think they are worth it, including the OP of this topic.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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56 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Most Macs perform quite well for long enough that the average time between replacements is around 4 years; plus, they tend to return a lot of their original cost if resold.

in the past yes.  However the new M1s have a shorter life span if you skimp on the RAM and SSD size. Apple has calculated that most users won't fail inside the 3 year Apple Care. After 3 years the new M1s will have zero resale value. That is the problem. If you can afford the max RAM and SSD they will hold their value if you are not a video editor.

www.JAmedia.uk  and www.TamworthHeritage.org.uk
[Win 11  | AMD Ryzen 5950X 16 Core CPU | 128GB Ram | NVIDIA 3080TI 12GB ]
[MB ASUS ProArt B550| C Drive:; 1TB M2 980 Pro | D Drive; 2TB M2 970 EVO ]

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51 minutes ago, N.P.M. said:

The days that apple was leader in the graphic industry are long gone, all that's left is a sandboxed overpriced, marketing hyped shiny box.

But at least you get a return on that shiny box.

Interestingly in a discussions elsewhere The video industry is jumping to Windows and Linux.  Particularly for the reasons above however in a discussion with some audio people it seems the music/recording industry has also moved off Macs for PCs.   It seems that the Professionals in Music, Video and according to NPM Graphics are leaving Apple.  This is not a surprise as Apple has over the last decade or so chased he mass consumer market at the expense of the Professional market which, it has to be said is now a niche market for Apple.  The Mac Pro user base is probably as large as it was in numbers but as a percentage of Apple sales is now lost in the mist.
The killer was the "Trash-Can" Mac Pro.  That was a real kick in the nuts. The new Mac Pro that went back to the silver crate format of the previous one was too little too late and far too expensive. Most  I know who trialed it returned it to Apple. Also as several people pointed out you could build an entry Pro spec PC for half the cost and for several design reasons the PC would perform better than the mac. In fact the same as the pro two levels up. Not Good Especially when the Professionals knew the "Arm-Based"  Macs were on the horizon.  Why buy an expensive pro that was about to become obsolete? That broke the connection for most pro users with Apple. It is up to Apple how they work. 

If had plenty of spare cash I would have an m2 laptop as they are nice to use.
For serious work it is now a PC.

www.JAmedia.uk  and www.TamworthHeritage.org.uk
[Win 11  | AMD Ryzen 5950X 16 Core CPU | 128GB Ram | NVIDIA 3080TI 12GB ]
[MB ASUS ProArt B550| C Drive:; 1TB M2 980 Pro | D Drive; 2TB M2 970 EVO ]

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31 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Yet despite the high prices Apple's devices continue to sell quite well because lots of people think they are worth it, including the OP of this topic.

As the saying goes: Eat shit! 10 million flies can't be wrong.
Apple is chasing the consumer market  who go for style.
The professional market that worked on performance is leaving Apple for other things.
Not all of the pros are going, many have too much invested in Apple but lot have gone.

www.JAmedia.uk  and www.TamworthHeritage.org.uk
[Win 11  | AMD Ryzen 5950X 16 Core CPU | 128GB Ram | NVIDIA 3080TI 12GB ]
[MB ASUS ProArt B550| C Drive:; 1TB M2 980 Pro | D Drive; 2TB M2 970 EVO ]

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This topic is quite interesting. I don't really require a lot of RAM myself, nor huge amounts of storage, so this machine, especially in its base version (or maybe I'd throw in 16GB RAM), may be quite interesting in terms of cost efficiency (I'm doing a lot of rendering and code compiling). I don't mind slower read and write speeds. But I do want a machine I can still use 10 years from now. But some posts here are concerning in terms of SSD wear. So I'd like to ask, in case someone knows: Using the M2 Mini,

- can you boot from an external drive?

- can you boot from an external drive once the internal drive fails?

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4 minutes ago, shushustorm said:

- can you boot from an external drive?

- can you boot from an external drive once the internal drive fails?

I think we already answered those two Q's shortly, or at least named the Apple silicon behavior here therefor. - However see related the following articles which do describe the whole much better in words, than I could write it up here ...

 

☛ Affinity Designer 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Photo 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Publisher 1.10.8 ◆ OSX El Capitan
☛ Affinity V2.3 apps ◆ MacOS Sonoma 14.2 ◆ iPad OS 17.2

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27 minutes ago, shushustorm said:

- can you boot from an external drive?
- can you boot from an external drive once the internal drive fails?

EDIT Answer deleted as  more fully answered in post above.

www.JAmedia.uk  and www.TamworthHeritage.org.uk
[Win 11  | AMD Ryzen 5950X 16 Core CPU | 128GB Ram | NVIDIA 3080TI 12GB ]
[MB ASUS ProArt B550| C Drive:; 1TB M2 980 Pro | D Drive; 2TB M2 970 EVO ]

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Thanks for your replies!

@v_kyr

I'll have a look at that! Thanks!

@Chills

I do like to go with officially supported behaviour. The reason I do still use macOS is that I still do find the OS more stable than others I tried. The difference gets slimmer year by year, but I still like the stability of macOS in its "official" form.

That said, I wouldn't mind roasting the internal SSD some time down the line so much, as long as I can still boot externally (and access via ethernet from another Mac for headless rendering).

16 minutes ago, Chills said:

It was possible (from very dim memory a LONG time ago) that I could have two Macs and use one to boot from the other.  

Interesting! Not really my focus, since if one SSD of one Mini fails, chances are, another one's SSD fails as well (I may be purchasing more than one and let one just run for rendering). But still, interesting!

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@shushustorm Well if you don't mind a small and slower operating internal SSD here at all, but you want the hardware to last and be usable overall long time, then I would at least take one with more RAM memory as the initial/base tiny 8 GB RAM here. - Why? ...

... well 10 years are a very long time in IT and till then all sort of software (...the sizes of the OS, applications, libs ... etc.) do continiously grow over time and releases from year to year. And since you can't afterwards change the internal glued together Apple Silicon SoC & RAM, you have therefore to act and plan forward-looking here. Thus take at least one with more RAM, so you are more secure to be able also in future to run certain newer software still at all. - So IMO 16 GB RAM is the bare minimum here and having more than that is always welcome and either way good to have in reverse!

☛ Affinity Designer 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Photo 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Publisher 1.10.8 ◆ OSX El Capitan
☛ Affinity V2.3 apps ◆ MacOS Sonoma 14.2 ◆ iPad OS 17.2

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12 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

@shushustorm - So IMO 16 GB RAM is the bare minimum here and having more than that is always welcome and either way good to have in reverse!

Inless you are just doing emails, web serfing and the odd light office document: you also NEED  512GB SSD MINIMUM
The problem is on just the OS but the applications also use swap pages and write temporary files etc.   You some times have some control over this if you dig deep enough in to the advanced preferences in the apps. You need a larger SSD that has wear leveling to even out the wear of the flash so that the SSD lasts long enough.

Note that people are talking about a 3-4 year life for these M1/2 Macs. IT seems to be entering the Mac world as a reality now.  

My older MAcs have a 15 year life. Very cost effective, . My PC's a similar life span.  But then I can upgrade both my PCs and Macs.
The problem is the M1/2 Macs have componants with a finite life span. That on current usage for many is 4-5 years. For some power users (photo, video, audio) with lower spec Macs it is 3-4 years. 
 

www.JAmedia.uk  and www.TamworthHeritage.org.uk
[Win 11  | AMD Ryzen 5950X 16 Core CPU | 128GB Ram | NVIDIA 3080TI 12GB ]
[MB ASUS ProArt B550| C Drive:; 1TB M2 980 Pro | D Drive; 2TB M2 970 EVO ]

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@v_kyr

@Chills

That's great info!

Well yes, I indeed think 16GB could make sense to make things a little more future proof. My 2015 Macbooks run on 16GB and 8GB. Can't say I'm hitting a bottleneck with 8GB even for some heavier 3D modeling, but still. It makes sense from a cost perspective. But I wouldn't be upping the internal storage at all. I'd rather buy a third Mini (more total computation power) than upping the internal SSD of two of them. Given that I would be running the OS as well as all the data IO externally, I don't see a point in increasing internal capacity. In fact, unless I'm missing something, I would't be using it until my external one dies and I'd have to temporarily use the internal one to duplicate from a backup to a new one that I boot from externally. Or is the internal one used for memory management even if I am booting externally? I do write a lot of data externally, so if chunks of that end up on the internal one, I don't see a long life span for those machines.

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2 minutes ago, shushustorm said:

@v_kyr

@Chills

That's great info!

Well yes, I indeed think 16GB could make sense to make things a little more future proof. My 2015 Macbooks run on 16GB and 8GB. Can't say I'm hitting a bottleneck with 8GB even for some heavier 3D modeling, but still. It makes sense from a cost perspective. But I wouldn't be upping the internal storage at all. I'd rather buy a third Mini than upping the internal SSD of two of them. Given that I would be running the OS as well as all the data IO externally, I don't see a point in increasing internal capacity. In fact, unless I'm missing something, I would't be using it until my external one dies and I'd have to temporarily use the internal one to duplicate from a backup to a new one that I boot from externally. Or is the internal one used for memory management even if I am booting externally? I do write a lot of data externally, so if chunks of that end up on the internal one, I don't see a long life span for those machines.

With the older Macs eg the 2015 vintage you can replace the HDD/SSD etc (or upgrade HDD to SSD, I did)  you can't do that on the M1/2 Macs.  
The problem is the SSD's on the M1/2s are very fast so people don't realise they are  "thrashing the disk"  as we used to say.  This is the killer flaw.

Cynics would say Apple have done this intentionally so that people have to buy new Macs every 4-6years. I am not so sure.  If you buy the right spec mac it should last a good long while. However that can be expensive.

www.JAmedia.uk  and www.TamworthHeritage.org.uk
[Win 11  | AMD Ryzen 5950X 16 Core CPU | 128GB Ram | NVIDIA 3080TI 12GB ]
[MB ASUS ProArt B550| C Drive:; 1TB M2 980 Pro | D Drive; 2TB M2 970 EVO ]

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11 minutes ago, Chills said:

The problem is the SSD's on the M1/2s are very fast so people don't realise they are  "thrashing the disk"  as we used to say.  This is the killer flaw.

Well yes, that, combined with not being able to boot with an internal drive that failed, makes me want to use those Macs from external only. So I don't run into swelling batteries anymore (which I used to get and you can't boot without a battery since MBP 2015 either.... so similar issue), nor do I want SSD failures that turn the Mac into a brick.

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How can I delete this thread ?? People are coming here and posting their question as free for all here. My thread is getting hijacked. I want to close it best is delete it !! 

Hijackers stay away from here. Start your own thread. This is is not free fund.

I have taken effort to type my description here. Do not take undue advantage of it.

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3 minutes ago, augustya said:

I want to close it

You may want to "give it up" and unfollow it, so that you won't receive any notifications.
Also, you can simply put certain users on ignore. (Been there done that… ;))

MacBookAir 15": MacOS Ventura > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // MacBookPro 15" mid-2012: MacOS El Capitan > Affinity v1 / MacOS Catalina > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // iPad 8th: iPadOS 16 > Affinity v2

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5 minutes ago, augustya said:

How can I delete this thread ?? People are coming here and posting their question as free for all here. My thread is getting hijacked.

In order to delete this thread entirely, some forum moderator has to do that for you!

☛ Affinity Designer 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Photo 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Publisher 1.10.8 ◆ OSX El Capitan
☛ Affinity V2.3 apps ◆ MacOS Sonoma 14.2 ◆ iPad OS 17.2

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  • Staff
10 minutes ago, augustya said:

How can I delete this thread ??

I will lock this thread so no more replies can be added.  

There has been some good information shared here, I think it would be best to leave the thread up BUT if you would rather it be deleted, then I can do that for you.  Just drop me a PM :) 

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