IMac or Studio

Craig1912

Craig1912

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Currently have a Mac mini (1tb Fusion Drive, 16gb ram, late 2012) which is getting a little slow and can no longer be updated to latest operating system. It’s connected to a Dell U2515h monitor.
Was going to go with a iMac but also considering Mac Studio (512gb 32 ram). Both are similar price through refurb store And I can’t deceive wether to keep existing screen (it still seems OK despite getting on a bit) or get a shiny new iMac.
Mainly used with Capture One, but maybe moving back to Lightroom So any help appreciated.

thanks
 
Awfers said:
I can recommend you look on Youtube for the pros and cons of both setups, mainly that what you buy is what you get, upgrade are not really possible. There was one channel that was saying that Apple is going back to the "bald old days" of the late 80s, early 90s, ie: base machine costs the moon but aren't really that great, and if you want something that'll actually shift you have to pay a LOT more...

So, as much as I hate to say it (I've been a Mac user since 2003), for a better ROI, you might consider also looking at a Windows based tower, or see if you can get along with Linux and its solutions (Darkroom and Gimp).
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Clearly somebody who’s not used a M1 or M2 system.

I’ve just replaced my 10 year old iMac with a studio which I suspect will last just as long. That’s a pretty damn good ROI.

I was a long time windows user and never had a PC last anywhere near 10 years and still be useable.
 
Well I think I’m going with a refurbished iMac (I haven’t used a windows machine for 10 years and having an iPad and iphone im sticking with Apple) for the benefit of the screen and keeping within a budget of around £1.8k. 16gb ram and 1tb SSd will last me many years
 
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Thanks for the comments. The max RAM on an IMac is 16gb (which is what I am going to get) by all accounts 8gb is more than enough for what I need it for so all good there. My 10 year old mini is still OK even without an SSD so hopefully I can get a similar length of time out of this one.
 
The way Apple are going it won't be long before they put the maximum capacities into the iPad and let the iMac just drift away.

as has been stated above Apple have made it increasingly difficult year by year to upgrade the machine that you have , (and now impossible on most models)

it now seems to me that if you want to keep update with the latest apps (and indeed the latest MacOS), you have to replace your "machine" every 5 to 10 years
 
Awfers said:
Indeed, I do not own (but I have used) an M1 or M2 system, however you cannot say how long those will remain relevant as the storage and ram is integral to the logic board (or, if possible to upgrade the ram or storage on certain models, voids the guarantee).

I have been a Mac user for almost 20 years. What you may not see is that in the past 10 years they have gone closer and closer to "YOU CANNOT UPGRADE ONCE ORDERED", this is now prevalent across almost all of their offers. Have you ever tried to upgrade the ram on a 2009 iMac? Or a Mac Mini? It is a nightmare. Want to change the HDD? Great, you have to remove the SCREEN on an iMac.

It sounds to me like you purchased PC laptops and not towers. I have had PCs towers last longer than 10 years, they are easily upgradeable, which with an M1 or M2 Mac you cannot easily do (if at all). You are stuck with your local storage and RAM for the life of the machine (I am typing on a 2012 MacBook Pro, which is slow as cold tar thanks to Apple's "OS upgrades", and yes, I have maxed out the RAM and changed HDD for an SSD. My brother just put Endaevour Linux on his same MacBook Pro, it runs like lighting, so it is NOT a hardware problem). On an M1 or M2 Mac you can expand storage through an external drive, but the same goes for a Windows tower. I can right now expand the memory on my PC Tower, or even replace the processor, if I want. Good luck doing that on your M1 or M2 Mac after purchase when Apple slows it down: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51413724 If you think they aren't doing this with the other hardware, you are fooling yourself.

So yes, at this point with Apple's chosen path on tech offerings, you are stuck with what you order. Not so with a PC Tower. I wish this were not the truth, but that is where we are with Apple these days. Back to the horrible 80s and 90s offerings.
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Not entirely accurate - the storage and RAM are indeed part of the logic board, but only in so much as the RAM is part of the system on a chip, so, no it cannot be upgraded, but the trade-off for this is improved performance.

I have a 2010 iMac on my desk here, it is the easiest RAM upgrade ever - there's a door at the back to access the RAM modules. You are right about the screen coming out to to change the hard drive though.
Craig1912 said:
Well I think I’m going with a refurbished iMac (I haven’t used a windows machine for 10 years and having an iPad and iphone im sticking with Apple) for the benefit of the screen and keeping within a budget of around £1.8k. 16gb ram and 1tb SSd will last me many years
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I think you have made the right choice there, iMacs seem expensive, until you have priced up a similar-quality display. I am more than happy with the performance of my M1/16GB and M1Pro/16GB machines.
 
Awfers said:
The question is how long that performance will last.
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A counter argument would be that upping performance requirement is a tool for manufacturers to increase demand.

The machine you buy today to catalogue and edit your photos will still catalogue and edit them just as well in 5 years.
 
I think the lack of security updates for older machines is more of an issue than the lack of being able to upgrade RAM, especially now that it is used more efficiently as part of the SoC. And for most users, an older machine with 8GB is still fine - this time last year I was still using my 2010 iMac, for software development and photography. I still regularly use an "underpowered" 2015 MacBook with 8GB RAM for day-to-day stuff.
 
I currently have an iMac of the same era, late 2012. My next Mac will be the Studio, the base model is wayyyyy enough power for photo editing, it comes with 32G of RAM already. You can increase it to 64G if you want.
 
BillN_33 said:
The way Apple are going it won't be long before they put the maximum capacities into the iPad and let the iMac just drift away.

as has been stated above Apple have made it increasingly difficult year by year to upgrade the machine that you have , (and now impossible on most models)

it now seems to me that if you want to keep update with the latest apps (and indeed the latest MacOS), you have to replace your "machine" every 5 to 10 years
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Expecting computer technology to last more than 10 years these days and still be able to run the latest software apps is asking a great deal. Old kit will still do the basic stuff and what it did when new but won't cope with new features.

As for moving to a Windows system didn't Microsoft just declare many millions of PC's that are only 2 years old obsolete and stop them from running Windows 11?

The latest MacOS will run on systems released 6 years ago.
 
Raymond Lin said:
I currently have an iMac of the same era, late 2012. My next Mac will be the Studio, the base model is wayyyyy enough power for photo editing, it comes with 32G of RAM already. You can increase it to 64G if you want.
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I too have a Late 2012 Mac which I’ve had just over 9-years (after using many many PCs since the 80’s) and broadly it’s been a great machine.

It eventually got so slow running from the internal hard drive that for the last couple of years, I’ve run it from an SSD attached via one of the USB ports (much much faster) and use the internal drive for additional storage. The latest OS it can run is Catalina. I’m still using Lightroom 5.7 and Elements 15. Couldn‘t update to Elements 21 last year, I also couldn’t get Logic for it when I considered that last year, so use GarageBand for music stuff. So it’s getting towards the point where I’m thinking of replacing it with something else.

The next Mac? Goodness knows right now. I find the iMac 24 disappointing, smaller screen, fewer ports, no SD card slot. It’s pretty much a big (expensive) iPad on a stand.

The Studio looks like a useful option, but then I’ll need to get a decent screen etc. Really don’t know at the moment.

All that said, a lot even most of my screen time is via an iPad Air3. But for photos, I much prefer to sit in front of the Mac.
 
GeeJay57 said:
I too have a Late 2012 Mac which I’ve had just over 9-years (after using many many PCs since the 80’s) and broadly it’s been a great machine.

It eventually got so slow running from the internal hard drive that for the last couple of years, I’ve run it from an SSD attached via one of the USB ports (much much faster) and use the internal drive for additional storage. The latest OS it can run is Catalina. I’m still using Lightroom 5.7 and Elements 15. Couldn‘t update to Elements 21 last year, I also couldn’t get Logic for it when I considered that last year, so use GarageBand for music stuff. So it’s getting towards the point where I’m thinking of replacing it with something else.

The next Mac? Goodness knows right now. I find the iMac 24 disappointing, smaller screen, fewer ports, no SD card slot. It’s pretty much a big (expensive) iPad on a stand.

The Studio looks like a useful option, but then I’ll need to get a decent screen etc. Really don’t know at the moment.

All that said, a lot even most of my screen time is via an iPad Air3. But for photos, I much prefer to sit in front of the Mac.
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My iMac is still nippy enough because i went for the hybrid drive so 128G of it's internal is SSD. I can run the latest Adobe Cloud...right up until last month when it stopped. So now I am "forced" to upgrade to a new machine if I want to get the latest Adobe apps.

(side note, I had to format the machine 2 months ago, it was much painless than i thought it would. So migrating to a new machine won't be hard at all. I didn't even use time machine, i started from new)

In terms of screen, the one tech to wait for is QD-OLED. Only Dell make and sell one at the moment under their brand Alienware. It's basically the best colour and everything, true blacks being OLED, and no burn in with this tech. However, it is a £1k+ monitor.

I did buy a Huawei 28" Mateview 4k+ monitor 6 months ago, I am going to use that as a 2nd screen. For a 1st screen, if I don't get the QD-OLED then it will be another DPI-P3 compliant one. That really is the most important.
 
GeeJay57 said:
I too have a Late 2012 Mac which I’ve had just over 9-years (after using many many PCs since the 80’s) and broadly it’s been a great machine.

It eventually got so slow running from the internal hard drive that for the last couple of years, I’ve run it from an SSD attached via one of the USB ports (much much faster) and use the internal drive for additional storage.
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Modern OSXs are written in a way that means an SSD is the only really effective type of disk for them.
 
Pound Coin said:
Modern OSXs are written in a way that means an SSD is the only really effective type of disk for them.
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Thanks. I’d fit one internally, but
a) I’ve not taken an iMac to bits before and am not 100% happy about cutting the screen off etc..
b) don‘t think it’s worth paying to have it upgraded when it can no longer be updated to run current applications.
 
indeed, I've renamed several relatives Macs by putting the OS onto an external SSD. (Thunderbolt)
 
I had this problem up to last year. I was running a 2012 iMac 21.5 inch which couldn't be upgraded. Due to COVID and starting to properly working from home I had to get a monitor for the works laptop. I decided to get a good dell monitor as I really wanted to go with one screen for home and work. I was thinking of getting a M1 Mac mini (the Mac studio wasn't out at the time. It would be a harder choice now) but I ended up getting a MacBook Pro 14 inch with M1 Pro chip (upgraded to 10-core CPU and 16-core GPU) with 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD. Id have gone with 32GB RAM but I got it on offer via Costco and they didn't have configurable versions available).

The mobile benefit of the MacBook Pro has really helped me. I can take it away with me and upload directly to it whilst away. I've set it up so the Lightroom catelog and this years RAWS are on the MacBook SSD. Previous years RAWS are on an external hard drive kept at home. I have the benefit of a large 24 inch 4K screen at home but can use the laptop for basic sorting/edits whilst away or sitting on the sofa. The benefit of the screen (albeit only 14 inch) but being mobile is the best benefit it gives. My Home Screen can also charge through USB-C so its just two cables (one for the external daisy chained thunderbolt external drives) to connect which makes it easy.

Edit: sorry I got my screen size wrong. Its a 27 inch 4k dell screen. Having the option of a big screen (much bigger than my 2012 iMac) is great for photo editing.
 
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GeeJay57 said:
Thanks. I’d fit one internally, but
a) I’ve not taken an iMac to bits before and am not 100% happy about cutting the screen off etc..
b) don‘t think it’s worth paying to have it upgraded when it can no longer be updated to run current applications.
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It's a straightforward process.
I have upgraded a couple with large (4TB) SSDs.
 
Chris_911 said:
It's a straightforward process.
I have upgraded a couple with large (4TB) SSDs.
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Thanks.
I have watched a couple of decent videos that show the process. May bite the bullet one day I guess, though I’m surprised how well it goes with an SSD velcroed to the back of the stand. Boots from cold in like 30s or so.
 
Going to jump in here with my tuppence worth.

I bought the base model Mac Studio (32gig ram, 512SSD) and I tell you what, it is a no brainer compared to the new iMacs.

This machine flies, honestly and I am talking about boot times, app load times, working with big files and adjustments are on the fly so to speak.

Problem with the iMac is the smaller screen and less memory, don't know if the SSD speeds are the same as the Mac Studio, but mine is fast, like really fast.

I have a XPG M.2 ssd plugged into the back with a Thunderbolt caddy for the extra storage so one can upgrade that no problem.

If I had the choice again between an iMac and the Studio, would I choose the Studio again. You bet I would.

see this thread LINKY
 
rob-nikon said:
I had this problem up to last year. I was running a 2012 iMac 21.5 inch which couldn't be upgraded. Due to COVID and starting to properly working from home I had to get a monitor for the works laptop. I decided to get a good dell monitor as I really wanted to go with one screen for home and work. I was thinking of getting a M1 Mac mini (the Mac studio wasn't out at the time. It would be a harder choice now) but I ended up getting a MacBook Pro 14 inch with M1 Pro chip (upgraded to 10-core CPU and 16-core GPU) with 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD. Id have gone with 32GB RAM but I got it on offer via Costco and they didn't have configurable versions available).

The mobile benefit of the MacBook Pro has really helped me. I can take it away with me and upload directly to it whilst away. I've set it up so the Lightroom catelog and this years RAWS are on the MacBook SSD. Previous years RAWS are on an external hard drive kept at home. I have the benefit of a large 24 inch 4K screen at home but can use the laptop for basic sorting/edits whilst away or sitting on the sofa. The benefit of the screen (albeit only 14 inch) but being mobile is the best benefit it gives. My Home Screen can also charge through USB-C so its just two cables (one for the external daisy chained thunderbolt external drives) to connect which makes it easy.
Click to expand...
Very similar to my situation - I went from iMac/MacBook/work laptop and monitor to 1 monitor and a 14" MBP for personal, and just hook up my work laptop to the same screen/keyboard etc.
 
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