Looking to buy a new Mac

PixelPun

Hello, Been away from GS for awhile about 1 year plus I am itching to get back into game design but my iMac is getting old, its a 2009 Core 2 duo, it seems to run GS ok, but it struggles with photoshop. My question is I'm curious if anyone on here uses a Mac Mini and what their experiences are using that and also which mini they have. I've also been looking at the used mac pro towers, but I'm not sure if these are going to be much of an upgrade on my iMac.

Any suggestions would be awesome

Thanks!
Rob W.

jamie_c

I've heard a few people here mention they use a Mac Mini and it works well. Perhaps one will chime in and offer more details.

I have a similar iMac as yours at home and I've been thinking about upgrading too. Like you say it runs Gamesalad no problem, but overall the system is slow and can take forever to launch applications like Photoshop.

The_Gamesalad_Guru

I have used mac minis they work great.

PixelPun

Yeah, I was thinking of doing a wipe on the old iMac and a fresh install of everything to see if that would help, but I'm not sure if it would as i've never done that with a mac before. I'm thinking a mac mini is most likely the way to go though.

RP

I have a 2013 model (trash can) Mac Pro that I bought this last year (they have not revised this line in while). It's completely overkill for general Photoshop and GS. A Mac Mini with a good amount of ram will likely be just fine for a couple years (I have a 2013 mini version), but an iMac will have more umph and if you start doing with anything animation, HUGE graphic projects or video related projects, it will certainly handle those things a lot faster and longer (dog-year longevity) than mini will.

The Mac Pro is really deigned for video or intensive rendering (2D/3D), unless you are going to really heavily use pro apps that can take advantage of the hardware in this, it will never really be used. And you could save thousands getting an entry level iMac or Mini.

A lot of peeps I know were all about getting the Mac Pro, but opted for a 5K iMac. It's a good system and some would argue (along with some proven points) that it is a far better solution than the Mac Pro.

The Mac Pro is a sweet machine, but even with the 4k video editing abilities, there are issues with true 4k/MST @ 60hz (particularly effects reference monitor/tv). There are also issues with plugins/drivers for camera and display support. I swear if I have to do one more Red update and re-render I'm gonna poop kittens.

Short term / regular work load= Mini / Macbook Air

Mid term / Regular - large work loads= iMac / Macbook / Macbook Pro

Long term / Big to heavy work loads and growth = Mac Pro or top end iMac

mhedges

@PixelPun,

Welcome back! I have a 2011 Mac Mini and a late 2014 Macbook Pro Retina. In terms of processing power, they are very comparable; the Mac Mini can hold its own pretty well. That said, where the MBP blows the MM out of the water is in the read/write times, as the MBP has a solid state drive (SSD), whereas the Mini has a disk hard drive (HD). I'm going to keep the Mini, as OS X really exceeded my expectations, and upgrade to an SSD.

If you're springing for the Mini, don't get the entry-level model; I've read it's quite a distance from the next step up.

PixelPun

Yeah I'm thinking about the i7 Mini and a large monitor, maybe two monitors... As long as I could get 3-5 years out of it before it starts to really slow down I would be good I think. I have an awesome PC and I would love to use GS on it, but it just so much different or at least it was a year or so ago.

RP

I'm sure you'll be fine with that solution.

PixelPun

I guess I could just run an old version of photoshop also... :P might try that out and do a fresh reinstall on the old iMac first.

tmann

@PixelPun a fresh OS install on a wiped machine will make a world of difference especially if you have been a heavy installer of software over the five plus years of your iMacs life. How much ram do you have ? If you only have 2 GB then that is what is slowing photoshop.

KnightStar

If you're tech-savvy, go home-brew and build a beast while saving a bunch of cash..

http://www.tonymacx86.com/building-customac-buyers-guide-january-2016.html

RP

If you are going to wipe it, let the Disk Utility make as many passes as you can (time consuming). Just to be sure it's nice and clan. Also, Reset the PRAM. If this has not been done in a while, or ever, this can clear out a lot of funky cached settings/power settings/allocation.

RAM. You can never have enough.

crestwoodgames

I would suggest SSD and as much ram as you can get. I used a mini for years and it ran like a champ.

app_sauce

I am thinking of upgrading to a 2012 mid macbook pro non-retina. Its the latest macbook pro that you can add swap in 16 gb memory and swap in your own ssd.

Here is a motherboard post about how a lot of apple employees still use this model because you can cheaply/easily upgrade it. http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-2012-non-retina-macbook-pro-is-still-the-best-laptop-apple-sells

Gnarly

Looking at same options. I have 2008 iMac 4 Megs. and painful since new OS update. El captain.

I think mini with 8 Megs will be adequate for me.

PixelPun

An update for everyone, I completely wiped the old iMac and installed a fresh OS and its night and day... I'm actually kinda surprised right now.. I guess I had a ton of junk on this thing that was just slowing it down. Now I'm really excited to get back into game design. Thanks everyone for their help

The_Gamesalad_Guru

Just as a point. I have a 5k iMac and as @RP says it a very powerful machine. I do video, audio and motion graphics and it is very fast. I was going to get a Mac Pro but after looking at the numbers it just wasn't the power for the money for what I could get with a 5k. Considering I got a 5k screen as well for the money as apposed to a pro with no monitor. If you want a power machine well worth the cost for the iMac and worth the savings compared to the Mac Pro.

imjustmike

One alternative would be to ditch Photoshop. It's expensive software and bloated for almost everyone that uses it. I've been using Affinity deigner, a hybrid vector and raster application for over a year now and it's great. It's lightweight, affordable and runs easy on my 2011 macbook. Before you drop a thousand dollars on a new machine, might be worth looking at seeing if there's a cheaper option

LumpApps

I'm looking for an iMac 17 2012 myself. From what I read this is the best one available. Because of that they are pretty expensive. I'm trying to trade in my iMac i5 mid 2011 because they go for about the same price. For daily work I bought a PC. For half the price you get more speed than most macs. I am a mac man in heart but I just do not see the difference anymore. Except for the daily crash but the PC has an SSD drive so it starts up in 6 secs. (Startup and ready to go, not like a mac start up and then wait for all your shizzle to start up). My PC (laptop) was under 1000 euro...

Gnarly

@imjustmike said:
One alternative would be to ditch Photoshop. It's expensive software and bloated for almost everyone that uses it. I've been using Affinity deigner, a hybrid vector and raster application for over a year now and it's great. It's lightweight, affordable and runs easy on my 2011 macbook. Before you drop a thousand dollars on a new machine, might be worth looking at seeing if there's a cheaper option

what does affinity cost?
I see it. 29$. Very resonable

PixelPun

Yeah I'm going to look into this affinity designer... I pay for the full adobe cloud because of my graphic design freelance work so I have it already... but I do agree it is over kill for my simple pixel artwork.. :P

PixelPun

K I have to say I am digging Affinity Designer....

fZolee

I have a Mac Mini, 2.6Ghz, 8GB ram and with an SSD. Works perfectly fine for almost everything. If possible avoid using the 2015 PS CC which have major performance issues and use older versions or an alternative software...
and for the screens I can recommend a 21:9 monitor, but don't forget if it is 4k resolution it needs more resources for all those pixels. (mine is 2560x1080, it's enough for now)

Approw

Just build your own hackintosh! You dont need to be a NASA scientist to build one. You can spend the same amound of money as a decent mac mini, but you will have a lot more bang for buck. Besides that the new mac mini isnt upgradable, so youre always going to be stuck with the same amound of memory and storage. If youre interested and you have no clue where to start, send me a pm, i can help you out:)

Edit:
You can aslo run windows on a different drive or partition without the bootcamp drivers. @LumpApps maybe its woth a try for you since you already own a pc?

LumpApps

Hey, thanks! @Approw
I still want a mini also as mediaserver/mame player for next to my TV. But maybe that will be a Hackintosh...

Approw

@LumpApps the mac mini is alright as a media player, but there are much better mediaservers out there although they dont offer the apple experience. Im using a stable hackintosh as my workstation for over 3 years now, cant complain:) I even build it inside a macpro G5 case, it took a lot of effort to modify it but its in there hahaha.

PixelPun

I was looking into a hackintosh actually but I don't really have that much experience building a PC. I do like the idea of this and building inside of a Mac case is pretty awesome also...

crestwoodgames

I built a Hackintosh and used it for about 2 years. It was a beast of a machine and would have been several thousand dollars more if it was an apple. It took some tweaking but once it was up and running, I never had a crash. It was awesome.

Then one day I let my son on my computer and he clicked on the OS update notification. This was the issue with the hacks. Doing OS updates was dangerous. Sometimes it was easy fix, others was bad. This update was not good to me. I did not want to mess with getting it to work an bought an Air.

This was the best decision ever. I can have that thing anywhere and code. The air is not optimal for heavy photoshop work, but it runs adobe Illustrator like a champ.

If you go hackintosh, make sure you are backing up all files remotely. This should be done anyway, but I stress this point. Having files saved remotely let me just wipe it clean and install Windows.

Approw

@crestwoodgames yes that is definately a downside of a hackintosh. But since the new clover bootloader I believe you can always update it since it has its own efi partition, you can even boot into mac recovery without an usb stick. I recently updated to el capitan with succes. Sometimes you just need to change a bootflag since apple is changing drivers etc. but it shouldnt be a big deal anymore. If you're planning on building a hackintosh, its wise to buy parts that are native supported by apple so you dont have to tweak and bootflag things, I was just lucky enough to have almost direct compatible computer parts. But yeah like you said, you can have a beast of a mac pro with a tight budget:) (compared to apple prices)

Approw

@PixelPun it feels really good, especially if you realize that you saved a few 1000 dollars. You really need to be a hobbyist or interested in building your hackintosh it into a G5 case, at least I had a lot of fun:) for $500/600 you can built a fairly good machine that is more powerfull then 5 mac minis all together. Its a really nice device though, but its not that powerfull and the fact that you cant upgrade it is just not for me. For others the mac mini might be a perfect solution.

tmann

@RP said:
If you are going to wipe it, let the Disk Utility make as many passes as you can (time consuming). Just to be sure it's nice and clan.

That would only apply if you had some data security issues, totally unnecessary for a personal upgrade or refresh.