Will a new 13" macbook be better than a 2011 imac?

[gad-westy]

Our 2011 27" imac is feeling more and more sluggish and really struggles with lightroom and video playback (let alone editing). We're ready to replace it.

Spec is as follows:

2.7 GHz Intel Core i5
24gb RAM
1tb SSD
AMD Radeon HD 6770M 512 MB

The easy but expensive option is just to buy a new imac. Future proof spec comes in over £3k. Concerned that it's an old model and even the next release may be made obsolete fairly quickly when ARM versions come along. Uneasy about sinking loads of money into one at present.

We could get a used 2-3 year old imac. Big saving not much performance penalty. My wife uses it for work though so being outside of Apple care etc is a little less comfortable though we have got by with current computer like that so maybe.

Third option is that we replace the imac and our ageing macbook with current 13" model. The 16's are better specced but quite £'y and bulkier than ideal. A 13" macbook specced up with a 1tb SSD and a decent extrernal monitor and dock is about £1k cheaper than option 1 and we'd have proper warranty etc.

My worry with the last option is will it actually be much more capable than the existing imac? They're quad core processors but have integrated intel graphics etc... Not sure what to expect.

 

[ancient_mariner]

Concerned that it's an old model and even the next release may be made obsolete fairly quickly when ARM versions come along. Uneasy about sinking loads of money into one at present.

I think you're correct to be concerned for both those reasons - if the 13" you're looking at is not recent (check for keyboard issues too) with the shift to ARM I reckon you'll get about 3-4 years of support from now. In your situation I'd be more inclined to pick up something like a Mini around 5 years old for a few hundred quid, run it for 12 months, then upgrade when things are clearer & flog the Mini again for a couple of hundred less.

 

[gad-westy]

I think you're correct to be concerned for both those reasons - if the 13" you're looking at is not recent (check for keyboard issues too) with the shift to ARM I reckon you'll get about 3-4 years of support from now. In your situation I'd be more inclined to pick up something like a Mini around 5 years old for a few hundred quid, run it for 12 months, then upgrade when things are clearer & flog the Mini again for a couple of hundred less.

Sounds sensible. Been putting off upgrading the imac for months because it always seemed like a new model is just around the corner. Now it seems a new model is just around the corner but then another one after that and that one will change things!

The one we use keeps soldiering on and maybe we can flog some more life out of it but there are days it drives us nuts!

The 13" macbook would be current model (i edited post, that wasn't clear). We would still have the ARM concern but the investment would be much less so I'd feel more comfortable about that. I just worry that it will lack oomph.

 

[ancient_mariner]

Some machines have longer legs than others. My Macbook (late 2008 unibody, core 2 duo) always struggled with photo editing, even when it was just a couple of years old running Lightroom 5, and despite upgrades I was really happy to replace it at 5 years old. My XPS 15 is 6 years old, but I've never upgraded for performance (only storage space - now 3TB on board) and it's gone from being super-quick to just a little less quick than I'd like. You're wise to spec up a machine, but this may not be the right time to take a long-term plunge.

 

[gad-westy]

Some machines have longer legs than others. My Macbook (late 2008 unibody, core 2 duo) always struggled with photo editing, even when it was just a couple of years old running Lightroom 5, and despite upgrades I was really happy to replace it at 5 years old. My XPS 15 is 6 years old, but I've never upgraded for performance (only storage space - now 3TB on board) and it's gone from being super-quick to just a little less quick than I'd like. You're wise to spec up a machine, but this may not be the right time to take a long-term plunge.

Think that's basically the same conclusion I've come to. Thank you.

 

[stickytape]

Some machines have longer legs than others. My Macbook (late 2008 unibody, core 2 duo) always struggled with photo editing, even when it was just a couple of years old running Lightroom 5, and despite upgrades I was really happy to replace it at 5 years old. My XPS 15 is 6 years old, but I've never upgraded for performance (only storage space - now 3TB on board) and it's gone from being super-quick to just a little less quick than I'd like. You're wise to spec up a machine, but this may not be the right time to take a long-term plunge.

I agree on that. I'd say my 2015 MacBook Air 11 is sufficiently quick with photoshop, illustrator etc. Certainly don't notice it being slower than my 2018 MacBook Pro 15 in day to day use. Fans go a bit louder but thats it really!

 

[LCPete]

I thought that my MacBook Pro 13 inch wasn’t quite as fast as it should be but when I moved from lightroom and photoshop to Affinity photo it ran much better

 

[gad-westy]

I thought that my MacBook Pro 13 inch wasn’t quite as fast as it should be but when I moved from lightroom and photoshop to Affinity photo it ran much better

What sort of spec is your's if you don't mind me asking?

 

[LCPete]

What sort of spec is your's if you don't mind me asking?

Can’t remember but I’ll have a look

 

[LCPete]

What sort of spec is your's if you don't mind me asking?

Late 2013 2.4gz i5 8gb
Intel iris graphics

 

[AZ6]

I just worry that it will lack oomph.

Oomph for what, though? What are you wanting to do with it? Heavy processor intensive 3D and video work, then it'll probs have insufficient oomph. For general browsing, photo sorting/light editing, playing media, then quite frankly an iPad is more than sufficient. More involved Photoshop typestuff, with multiple layers, then I'm sure it'll be perfectly capable. It's a bit like how most cars these days can do well in excess of 100mph, but how often do you ever drive at such speeds (the answer is never, because the NSL is 70mph and everyone is a law abiding citizen of course ;-) )?

Personally I would much rather a proper good sized screen (21"+) for doing anything with images; laptops are ok for watching a film on a train or whatever, but too tiny for me to be comfortable with for doing proper computery stuff.

 

[LCPete]

Oomph for what, though? What are you wanting to do with it? Heavy processor intensive 3D and video work, then it'll probs have insufficient oomph. For general browsing, photo sorting/light editing, playing media, then quite frankly an iPad is more than sufficient. More involved Photoshop typestuff, with multiple layers, then I'm sure it'll be perfectly capable. It's a bit like how most cars these days can do well in excess of 100mph, but how often do you ever drive at such speeds (the answer is never, because the NSL is 70mph and everyone is a law abiding citizen of course ;-) )?

Personally I would much rather a proper good sized screen (21"+) for doing anything with images; laptops are ok for watching a film on a train or whatever, but too tiny for me to be comfortable with for doing proper computery stuff.

Actually yes I agree on screen size although I take my laptop when I go away at home I still do all of my editing on the PC as it’s so much better with a bigger screen
My PC is getting on a bit it’s a four core i7 but I’ve upgraded the memory and changed to an SSD drive, it’s perfectly fine for all my photo editing

 

[gad-westy]

Oomph for what, though? What are you wanting to do with it? Heavy processor intensive 3D and video work, then it'll probs have insufficient oomph. For general browsing, photo sorting/light editing, playing media, then quite frankly an iPad is more than sufficient. More involved Photoshop typestuff, with multiple layers, then I'm sure it'll be perfectly capable. It's a bit like how most cars these days can do well in excess of 100mph, but how often do you ever drive at such speeds (the answer is never, because the NSL is 70mph and everyone is a law abiding citizen of course ;-) )?

Personally I would much rather a proper good sized screen (21"+) for doing anything with images; laptops are ok for watching a film on a train or whatever, but too tiny for me to be comfortable with for doing proper computery stuff.

Just as per my OP. Our current imac is struggling with photo editing in lightroom, video playback and video editing especially. I feel like it shouldn't really struggle with those, particularly the video playback but it is. We've tried to do the traditional fixes and 'tune ups' but it's just very slow with those tasks now and at times, near unusable.

What my concern is is it that a new 13" macbook pro still has a very basic graphics card (maybe better than our imac though?), less RAM, and still an SSD drive (which we already have not that it's a bad thing!). It has a quad core processor but of lower rated speed. My worry is that for all that expenditure, we might not see a big improvement. Though I suspect the Apple OS is far better optimised for the newer hardware so maybe...

Again, as per my OP, we'd be running an external monitor most of the time. Probably a 24-27" 4K IPS.

 

[gad-westy]

Late 2013 2.4gz i5 8gb
Intel iris graphics

Cheers. Reassuring. That's similar to our current macbook pro, which does run LR CC absolutely fine though I rarely ask much more of it at present.

 

[AZ6]

Just as per my OP. Our current imac is struggling with photo editing in lightroom, video playback and video editing especially. I feel like it shouldn't really struggle with those, particularly the video playback but it is. We've tried to do the traditional fixes and 'tune ups' but it's just very slow with those tasks now and at times, near unusable.

What type of video editing though? 720p, 1080p, or 4k? It will struggle with the higher resolutions. And what aspects of editing is it struggling with? Rendering effects/transitions? Exporting to different formats? Or just a general slowness? I ask this, cos my ancient (2006!) Mac Pro can easily chomp through the numbers, but lacks the graphics oomph to cope with 4k, and even 1080p is a bit much for it at times. It deals with LR/PS etc easily though. It's a 14 year old machine. Granted it's probs still more powerful (4x3GHz processors, 32GB RAM, SSD boot drive) than a lot of laptops even now, for anything other than graphics, but it'll be 'slow' compared to the latest MacBooks and iMacs, I'm sure. Are you sure the hard drive is an SSD? That model iMac shipped with HDDs, or a 256GB SSD. So if yours is a 1Tb SSD, you must have had it replaced?

 

[gad-westy]

What type of video editing though? 720p, 1080p, or 4k? It will struggle with the higher resolutions. And what aspects of editing is it struggling with? Rendering effects/transitions? Exporting to different formats? Or just a general slowness? I ask this, cos my ancient (2006!) Mac Pro can easily chomp through the numbers, but lacks the graphics oomph to cope with 4k, and even 1080p is a bit much for it at times. It deals with LR/PS etc easily though. It's a 14 year old machine. Granted it's probs still more powerful (4x3GHz processors, 32GB RAM, SSD boot drive) than a lot of laptops even now, for anything other than graphics, but it'll be 'slow' compared to the latest MacBooks and iMacs, I'm sure. Are you sure the hard drive is an SSD? That model iMac shipped with HDDs, or a 256GB SSD. So if yours is a 1Tb SSD, you must have had it replaced?

I put the SSD in myself. It has a 3tb HHD as well. SSD used for all booting and LR library.

Not sure about video editing. That's the other half's domain. She is probably mainly working with 1080p files and outputting in various formats. Nothing dramatic, just family montages etc.

 

[AZ6]

I put the SSD in myself. It has a 3tb HHD as well. SSD used for all booting and LR library.

Hmm. Should be running ok then. Speshly if you're using the SSD for the LR library. Mine is on a RAID 0 drive, which utilises 2x Toshiba 'ultra reliable' HDDs, so there is a speed bottleneck, but it doesn't cause too many problems (just a slow initial seek for the correct files).

You don't have any Microsoft software on there, do you?

 

[gad-westy]

Well, it does run MS office but actually that stuff is fine. It's really LR and imovie that see it struggling.

 

[AZ6]

Well I dunno.

But as for a MacBook being better; if it's got to the stage where you feel the need to replace your existing computer, then if you're doing photo and video work, wouldn't a new iMac be a better choice than any laptop? Do you really really need the portability? An iMac will simply be a lot better, spec for spec, at any given price point.

 

[gad-westy]

Well I dunno.

But as for a MacBook being better; if it's got to the stage where you feel the need to replace your existing computer, then if you're doing photo and video work, wouldn't a new iMac be a better choice than any laptop? Do you really really need the portability? An iMac will simply be a lot better, spec for spec, at any given price point.

Yeah, it's simply the cost of imacs that makes me question it. In the past, I've been comforted by the fact that you can extract several years out of them, particularly with some upgrades along the way. Now, it's slightly different as the current model is long overdue an update and Apple has announced a future wholesale move away from intel is imminent. And you cannot so easily perform surgery on them (glues together). A current model with large SSD would cost us more than £3k. So as I say, not ruling it out but feels like I'd be more comfortable minimising Apple spend until the ARM stuff comes along.

 

[AZ6]

Yeah, it's simply the cost of imacs that makes me question it. In the past, I've been comforted by the fact that you can extract several years out of them, particularly with some upgrades along the way. Now, it's slightly different as the current model is long overdue an update and Apple has announced a future wholesale move away from intel is imminent. And you cannot so easily perform surgery on them (glues together). A current model with large SSD would cost us more than £3k. So as I say, not ruling it out but feels like I'd be more comfortable minimising Apple spend until the ARM stuff comes along.

Yeah fair enough. I need a new Mac, so am waiting to see what comes out. I don't mind spending a bit; my MacPro was about £2250 back in 2006, so I'm looking at about £3000 for an iMac with boosted spec. I'll get it through the Apple educational discount scheme, as I know various people who are either studying or work in education. Good for at least 10% or so off, which is quite a significant chunk when spending so much. But I may get a s/h Mac Mini to tide me over, if it becomes apparent we are still several months from new models being released.

 

[gad-westy]

Yeah fair enough. I need a new Mac, so am waiting to see what comes out. I don't mind spending a bit; my MacPro was about £2250 back in 2006, so I'm looking at about £3000 for an iMac with boosted spec. I'll get it through the Apple educational discount scheme, as I know various people who are either studying or work in education. Good for at least 10% or so off, which is quite a significant chunk when spending so much. But I may get a s/h Mac Mini to tide me over, if it becomes apparent we are still several months from new models being released.

Sounds like a similar boat to us then.

It would be a business purchase for us as it's my wife's work tool first and foremost. If it costs over £2k we get the VAT back as well as some other tax write offs which helps a lot. It sort of steers us it being worth spending just over £2k and no more! It just means finding the best value for us in that range. Not really concluded what the answer is yet.

 

[JonathanRyan]

But I may get a s/h Mac Mini to tide me over, if it becomes apparent we are still several months from new models being released.

I think that's a really sensible option right now. 2nd hand Macs aren't pocket money but they are also a commodity - you buy a particular spec machine and you know exactly what you are getting.

My 2011 iMac is on e*ay right now. It was about 2.3K new, 1.5k when I bought it about 6 months old and now at the age of 9 I'd hope to get £600 for it.

These are out of stock ATM but for a little over £1K and with a 24 month warranty it would be a really nice upgrade for the OP's machine.

 

[AZ6]

I think that's a really sensible option right now. 2nd hand Macs aren't pocket money but they are also a commodity - you buy a particular spec machine and you know exactly what you are getting.

2014 Mac Mini would do me fine. Not too bothered about losing a bit of money on it if I sell it on. £600 up, they seem to go for. If I got £400 or so for it, in a year's time, I'd be more than happy. My MacPro has cost me around £200 a year, factoring in original cost, and extra RAM, a replacement graphics card and that. All the drives, I can use for other stuff. My plan is to turn it into a server. The biggest problem is how to create a secure data connection between our flat and the basement, which is 3 floors down. About 12m of Cat6, in some suitable trunking, down the outside of the house, should do it. WiFi is a no go, cos it would involve spending tens of thousands on all sorts of gubbins (virtually impossible to get any signal down there).

 

[JonathanRyan]

2014 Mac Mini would do me fine. Not too bothered about losing a bit of money on it if I sell it on. £600 up, they seem to go for. If I got £400 or so for it, in a year's time, I'd be more than happy. My MacPro has cost me around £200 a year, factoring in original cost, and extra RAM, a replacement graphics card and that.

Yes I haven't checked the other Macs but my iMac should end up costing me about 10 quid a month which isn't too bad. MacPro probably cost me nearer to the £200 a year you suggest.

 

[whiteflyer]

Stop dilly-dallying , take the plunge. You know you really want a top spec Mac Pro, you don't need our approval to splash out £52,899.00.

On a slightly more serious note, personally if buying a new iMac I'd hold out for the apple cpu version. If buying second hand things to note Apple only support parts hardware for 5 years and the newer gluded on screens are much harder to upgrade than the older magnet screens.

Second hand price are pretty low to0 2014 minimac your looking £400 max, 2015 21" iMac around £500

 

[garryknight]

I don't know if this helps but I just did a test render in iMovie on my MacBook Pro 2020 with the 4th gen processor, 32 GB RAM and 1 TB SDD. I don't have an iMac to compare it with but thought it might tell you what you can expect from a new MacBook.

I dragged 94 clips ranging in size but with an average of about 5 seconds onto the timeline along with a handful of Sony ARW stills. The total movie size was 12m 3s. It took 4 minutes and 15 seconds to render to a 1080p high-quality .mp4 file. This seems a little slow to me as my iPad Air 3 renders in less than half that time. Then again, it is running on an Apple Processor. Also, I had Safari, Mail, Notes, and MS OneNote running idle in the background, though I doubt that this would have slowed it down too much. It's possible that more advanced software such as Da Vinci Resolve might cut this time down considerably.

Apple confirmed at WWDC five days ago that they will be putting out a new Intel-based iMac at some point, though I don't think they said when exactly that would be. So they're not done with Intel processors yet. You could hold out for a new ARM-based MacBook possibly in the 1st quarter of next year, or wait for the new iMac, or take a gamble on the current generation of MacBook Pro. Or just stick with what you already have.

They also said that they will be supporting Intel-based Macs for "years to come" though they didn't say how many. When MacOS 11 (Big Sur) is released in September it will be compatible with these devices:

• MacBook – 2015 and later models.
• MacBook Air – 2013 and later models.
• MacBook Pro – late 2013 and later models.
• Mac mini – 2014 and later models.
• iMac – 2014 and later models.
• iMac Pro – 2017 and later models.
• Mac Pro – 2013 and later models.

So iMacs will have had six years' support. MacBook Pros will have had seven years' support. It's possible that both machines will get more than that. Apple have 'retired' some machines from 2012 recently. And I wouldn't have thought that Apple would just abandon users of Intel-based machines just because their devices won't be running on Apple silicon. Applications will be compiled to be able to run on both types of machine for "years to come". At some point they'll have to 'retire' the last of the Intel-based machines, but I'm betting that it will be no earlier than 2027. (In fact, I literally bet the cost of a 2020 MacBook Pro).

It might be worth remembering that they did something very similar with the move from the PowerPC to the Intel chip, announced back in 2005. Support for the PowerPC was withdrawn in 2012, seven years later.

 

[AZ6]

Stop dilly-dallying , take the plunge. You know you really want a top spec Mac Pro, you don't need our approval to splash out £52,899.00.

Does that price include the special display arm and the little wheels?

I don't need anything like that. It's mental. Even an iMac Pro is way beyond my needs. When I bought my Mac Pro in 2006, I wanted summat that would last a few years; my G3 iMac was already inadequate after 6 years, which itself is a long time in computer tech. But the Intel based stuff has lasted better. The MacPro then was way ahead of other Apple products, but nowhere near the madness of the new model. But then the tasks demanded of computers has got far more demanding too. There's a much bigger gap between a MacPro user and ordinary people now.

I will wait for the new iMac. I want summat that will last hopefully more than 6 years, and be a pleasure to use.

 

[Nikon f1.8]

13" macbook comes with intel graphics on the chip, not as good as your Radeon even if it is 9 years old.
Have you not tried backing up your stuff and do a fresh install of Mojave, you have a SSD and 24 gig of ram, should be OK with that after a fresh install.