2023 m3 MacBook Pro and 24” iMac buyers thread (1 Viewer)

[Ted Todorov]

That really surprises me. Apple isn't exactly known for going bargain.

DHL a bargain?!? Not according to me -- I've had to use them twice to send a couple of 8 page documents to Bulgaria -- i.e. something that would fit in a regular mail envelope. Was almost $200 each. (I had no choice -- FedEx/UPS do not send stuff to Bulgaria, and USPS has no certified/Express Mail service going there either -- I sent a huge, very heavy book to Brazil via USPS Express Mail last year, it was overnight for 1/3 the cost.).

I have all sorts of complaints about DHL, but bargain it ain't. FWIW they were faster in delivering from China than UPS/FedEx -- my MBP arrived two days ahead of the earliest possible shipment date -- and the delivery itself was very professional -- two DHL -- people are there making sure I got it and signed it off.

My complaint is that DHL's UI/online contact/phone contact are all beyond bad. They even had the wrong location of their nearest UWS in Manhattan service listed online, when I was sending with them.

 

[CarlLaFong]

Hi All, I'm far from a computer expert, and would like some advice. We need to replace my wife's 10+ year-old MacBook. Budget is an issue, but want to get a MacBook that can handle the PhotoShop suite. What's more important: a faster chip or more RAM? Processor? The Pro is out of our price range. I'd prefer to stick with one of the Air models. Thanks in advance for any suggestions you all could pass along please.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Hi All, I'm far from a computer expert, and would like some advice. We need to replace my wife's 10+ year-old MacBook. Budget is an issue, but want to get a MacBook that can handle the PhotoShop suite. What's more important: a faster chip or more RAM? Processor? The Pro is out of our price range. I'd prefer to stick with one of the Air models. Thanks in advance for any suggestions you all could pass along please.

You are in luck, Carl!

The M1 and M2 Airs can easily handle Photoshop.

Not sure how available the M1 Air is these days, but if you find one, it's plenty powerful. I have an M2 Air and love it. You just need to decide 13" or 15". I have the 13" and love its portability.

Keep in mind, Apple is about to announce the M3 Air in another 3 months (approx.) for most likely the same price as the M2 if you can wait, but certainly not going to be a game-changer for your purposes.

Now the second part of your question...

I think RAM is the most important aspect of buying a computer. I would go at least 16GB. That will ensure that your computer will remain relevant for a few more years.

 

[JohnRice]

Hi All, I'm far from a computer expert, and would like some advice. We need to replace my wife's 10+ year-old MacBook. Budget is an issue, but want to get a MacBook that can handle the PhotoShop suite. What's more important: a faster chip or more RAM? Processor? The Pro is out of our price range. I'd prefer to stick with one of the Air models. Thanks in advance for any suggestions you all could pass along please.

I love the 15" M2 Air. With Photoshop, I think it'll be a lot better than the 13". As far as RAM, with Photoshop I definitely suggest at least 16GB, or even 24GB. Then you have to decide on storage space. Personally, I'd be inclined to save some money there and go 256GB, knowing you can plug in a cheap, fast M.2 drive/enclosure combination if needed. That will depend on the workflow, though.

As far as processor power, the M2 (even the M1) is plenty powerful. More powerful than probably anything you've ever used. For example, heavy image processes that took 3-5 minutes on my 6-core i7 Mini take 10-15 seconds on my M1 Studio or M2 Mini.

 

[Robert Saccone]

As everyone has said all these Apple Silicon processors are more than capable of running photoshop but you will need enough memory to hold the dataset (workload) that you're trying to process. Buy as much memory as you can reasonably afford (but please get at least 16 GB). For storage, you can save money and use external storage but if you use it on the go a lot having to manage the external storage might become somewhat of nuisance. Toughest part is deciding to wait on the new Air or not.

 

[CarlLaFong]

Thank you all for your prompt, detailed and well-informed advice! I'm lucky in that I don't have to decide whether or not to wait for the new Air. We have to replace the laptop before year-end. Thank you all again!

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Thank you all for your prompt, detailed and well-informed advice! I'm lucky in that I don't have to decide whether or not to wait for the new Air. We have to replace the laptop before year-end. Thank you all again!

Carl,

Good luck and do me a favor and come back to let us know what you purchased.

Seems like your biggest choice will be 13" or 15" MB Air. If you can make it to an Apple store to compare the two, I would do that.

 

[JohnRice]

Thank you all for your prompt, detailed and well-informed advice! I'm lucky in that I don't have to decide whether or not to wait for the new Air. We have to replace the laptop before year-end. Thank you all again!

I wouldn't worry about it. The new processors are so powerful, there's not much significant to improve with subsequent generations. As I said the M2 should be more than you need.

 

[DaveF]

I bought the Samsung 4TB for my wife. I looked at @JohnRice approach for buying an M2 SSD and a housing. I can see doing that for myself next time I upgrade, but decided that had a little too much risk for my wife's computer (namely risk to me if I screw it up and she loses data...)

I'm hoping this is fast. I can't figure out the speed and feeds and cable issues with external SSDs. The connect specs are written as 10Gbps or 40Gbps but the claimed speeds are written as 1000 or 2000 MBps. None of that adds up to me so I gave up and bought a seemingly fast SSD that is a little more than the $200 I wanted to spend.

@Sam Posten so when you get your SSD can you post a benchmark of it? I can do the same for the one I'm buying and compare. That will help me know if I bought the right one or not.

See on Amazon

Everytime my wife’s iMac wakes up (typically in the morning after being asleep overnight), it gives an error that the SSD was unexpectedly disconnected.

The drive is still connected and working. But there’s an annoying error that must be dismissed. Every single day.

Brand new SSD connected directly to the USB 3 / C port.

Is this normal? Is there a way to fix this?

 

[JohnRice]

Everytime my wife’s iMac wakes up (typically in the morning after being asleep overnight), it gives an error that the SSD was unexpectedly disconnected.

The drive is still connected and working. But there’s an annoying error that must be dismissed. Every single day.

Brand new SSD connected directly to the USB 3 / C port.

Is this normal? Is there a way to fix this?

I stopped putting my computer to sleep years ago, for various reasons. Partly because I also use it as an HTPC using iTunes and AppleTVs. I only put the monitors to sleep. I'm not certain there's actually much to gain by putting the computer fully to sleep.

 

[Scott Voth]

The new iMac would be a great upgrade from a 2017 27” Intel i5 iMac in every way except for the screen. I’m interested in upgrading next year. And that gives me time to see if the mini gets an m3 update and then I can have analysis paralysis over which way to go.

I upgraded to the new M3 iMac from a 2014 27" Intel iMac because Apple is dropping support for the operating system. Until they came out with the M3 I was going to go the Mac Mini route myself but that $1,600 27" monitor is really expensive. There was really nothing wrong with my old iMac - it was still plenty fast enough. The good news is I really don't notice the decrease in screen size that much. Setup was really easy and all my old programs transferred over and run flawlessly. That was not the case when I got my last one and I spent a day with tech support to get it working plus my checkbook program wasn't supported. I was up and running in about 15 minutes this time. I like the fingerprint scanner on the keyboard. The not so good news is speed wise it isn't really any faster than my old one. At least I'm in the Apple silicon world now so I can get the operating system upgrades for a long time. Now I just have to wait till the new iPad Air comes out in March so I can upgrade that since that is getting slow.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

I upgraded to the new M3 iMac from a 2014 27" Intel iMac because Apple is dropping support for the operating system. Until they came out with the M3 I was going to go the Mac Mini route myself but that $1,600 27" monitor is really expensive. There was really nothing wrong with my old iMac - it was still plenty fast enough. The good news is I really don't notice the decrease in screen size that much. Setup was really easy and all my old programs transferred over and run flawlessly. That was not the case when I got my last one and I spent a day with tech support to get it working plus my checkbook program wasn't supported. I was up and running in about 15 minutes this time. I like the fingerprint scanner on the keyboard. The not so good news is speed wise it isn't really any faster than my old one. At least I'm in the Apple silicon world now so I can get the operating system upgrades for a long time. Now I just have to wait till the new iPad Air comes out in March so I can upgrade that since that is getting slow.

Scott, congrats on your new iMac. I am amazed to read that you don't think the M3 is much speedier than your 2014 Intel.
I went from an i9 Intel to an M1 and noticed how much more responsive it was. M3 is a big improvement over M1 so, again, surprised you are not noticing a bigger speed difference.

In any event, enjoy your new iMac.

 

[DaveF]

I upgraded to the new M3 iMac from a 2014 27" Intel iMac because Apple is dropping support for the operating system. Until they came out with the M3 I was going to go the Mac Mini route myself but that $1,600 27" monitor is really expensive. There was really nothing wrong with my old iMac - it was still plenty fast enough. The good news is I really don't notice the decrease in screen size that much. Setup was really easy and all my old programs transferred over and run flawlessly. That was not the case when I got my last one and I spent a day with tech support to get it working plus my checkbook program wasn't supported. I was up and running in about 15 minutes this time. I like the fingerprint scanner on the keyboard. The not so good news is speed wise it isn't really any faster than my old one. At least I'm in the Apple silicon world now so I can get the operating system upgrades for a long time. Now I just have to wait till the new iPad Air comes out in March so I can upgrade that since that is getting slow.

If I go to an m3 mini (if there is an m3 mini) I'll consider a non-Apple monitor too, since the Apple's 5K is so expensive.

 

[DaveF]

I stopped putting my computer to sleep years ago, for various reasons. Partly because I also use it as an HTPC using iTunes and AppleTVs. I only put the monitors to sleep. I'm not certain there's actually much to gain by putting the computer fully to sleep.

Same here, especially when macOS was having severe crash problems while asleep on my iMac a couple years ago. But this is my wife's iMac and I don't know if that's a viable solution.

 

[JohnRice]

Well, in any case, since essentially the exit of platter drives, I'm really not certain there's a viable reason to have the computer go completely to sleep. At work, we shut them down at the end of the day, but my home Studio stays awake all the time, with the monitors going to sleep.

 

[Scott Voth]

Scott, congrats on your new iMac. I am amazed to read that you don't think the M3 is much speedier than your 2014 Intel.
I went from an i9 Intel to an M1 and noticed how much more responsive it was. M3 is a big improvement over M1 so, again, surprised you are not noticing a bigger speed difference.

In any event, enjoy your new iMac.

It could just be that the apps I run don't show the speed increase. I use my Mac for basic stuff like managing my finances and surfing the web. For that it doesn't seem faster. If I was playing games that use a lot of graphics that might be different.

 

[Scott Voth]

If I go to an m3 mini (if there is an m3 mini) I'll consider a non-Apple monitor too, since the Apple's 5K is so expensive.

The only problem with that is you might lose some sound quality since Apple incorporates the sound and camera into the monitor. $1,600 is ridiculous for a 27" monitor you can get for 1/3 of that from someone else. What i do like is the Mac Mini is relatively cheap so once you have the monitor upgrading the CPU won't be that bad. When I was buying my iMac I called in for some info and we looked into being able to use just the screen of my old iMac but they didn't have that built in back in 2014. You might want to check that out for your 2017 iMac.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

Well, in any case, since essentially the exit of platter drives, I'm really not certain there's a viable reason to have the computer go completely to sleep. At work, we shut them down at the end of the day, but my home Studio stays awake all the time, with the monitors going to sleep.

I imagine the M series APUs also consume so little power when idle, so...

My 4-yo AMD CPU + nVidia-based GPU (still running Windoze 10) probably do consume enough power that it's still worthwhile for me to put to sleep, so I do... I too have recently started to experience issues w/ crashing or something w/ its sleep mode.

But if I were using an M series Mac of some kind, I'd probably try not putting it to sleep and see if there's any meaningful power savings w/ sleep mode.

_Man_

 

[DaveF]

The only problem with that is you might lose some sound quality since Apple incorporates the sound and camera into the monitor. $1,600 is ridiculous for a 27" monitor you can get for 1/3 of that from someone else. What i do like is the Mac Mini is relatively cheap so once you have the monitor upgrading the CPU won't be that bad. When I was buying my iMac I called in for some info and we looked into being able to use just the screen of my old iMac but they didn't have that built in back in 2014. You might want to check that out for your 2017 iMac.

Sound isn’t important for my computer. And the other 5K monitors that I know of are also $1000+. Cheaper than Apple but still up there.

Target Display Mode is a decade obsolete unfortunately.

Use your iMac as a display with target display mode - Apple Support

Target display mode is a feature available with certain older Mac models.

support.apple.com

 

[Clinton McClure]

One of the first things I do with any new machine (Mac or Windows) is to disable sleep and set all power setting to full throttle performance. I lock my computer when I walk away from it (by bringing up the screen saver on my Mac or Win + L on my work laptop) and I let it be.

I learned many years ago that the yearly energy savings I would see by putting a computer to sleep is negligible compared to the pain in the ass issues that sleep mode often causes.