I have $11k to play with - most of which will end up going towards car expenses. I have to spend like $3000 of it before the end of the year for reasons I won't elaborate on. So it's this, or putting money into the Porsche, and I can't use the Porsche during the winter so it would lack the gratification I'm seeking to do so.
I used to be a professional photographer (www.bradgillette.net) and during the process became really good at Photoshop.
Then I stopped working, my computer got old (2013 i7 iMac), and I couldn't edit in Photoshop anymore because my computer was too slow. I don't know if I'm going to be able to become a professional photographer again, or if it's just going to be a hobby, but I'm worried I've lost a lot of my skills from lack of use. I feel like having a new, more powerful computer will inspire me to get back into it. In the meantime I've gotten really good at nailing shots in-camera and doing very minor editing, basically limited to what I could do in a physical color darkroom. That said, my images could always be improved with Photoshop.
I bought my current computer, a 2020 M1 MacBook Air, a couple years ago to do normal computer things and minor editing with my old camera (Canon 5D mkII) but now I have a new camera (Canon 5R) that produces much larger file sizes and it's too slow to run Photoshop to any useful extent and using Lightroom is painful.
I also want to get back into video production.
Should I dump $3500 into a laptop that could do everything I could ask of it, even though I don't have the income stream to support it at the time, and use it for practice? Or should I look at cheaper options like around $2500. I feel like if I don't spend the extra $1000 it'll come to bite me in the butt in the future.
This post is brought to you by weed, adderall, and lack of sleep thinking about this darn computer.
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The new Macs are fricking incredible. Could you get a cheaper non-portable Mac or do you need to be able to work on the road?
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Please elaborate. All I've heard about new Macbook pros is they have many comparably worse specs at their price point than the older pros. I've been waiting to upgrade from my 2015 pro because of all that. Mine has been basically indestructible and still runs great with all its existing software, but I can tell it's starting to reach the end of its life.
You've got me wondering if the bad press I saw was maybe two models ago rather than the most recent
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I use Linux on a chinkshit laptop and I completely acknowledge that Apple silicon Macbooks and Minis are fantastic machines. Even an M1 model with 16 gb of memory is worth getting. They're expensive but well-reputed for their build quality and battery life, even the Intel ones stand the test of time. Apart from some Thinkpads and Elitebooks most laptops degrade in quality fairly quickly since their battery gets btfo and the internals get cooked from the heat.
The main complaint against Apple was that their bottom spec Macbooks had only 8gb of memory, which Apple tried defending by saying that their 8gb goes further than Windows. It was bullshit, but thankfully the base spec Macbooks now come with 16gb by default.
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Not sure I've seen any bad press on the M series, they're amazing machines.
Perfect time to upgrade to M4 Pro that just came out.
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I have an M3 and it's just great. No faults. It's faster at compiling code than my high end Windows desktop.
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I'd also have to buy a nice monitor, it would be nice to be able to work on the road, have something to show stuff to clients instantly with (pending actual clients), and the Mac Mini isn't available with the M4 Max chip, which I feel like is important to future-proofing.
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