Apple vs PC for Photo Editing

Then Linux is a no-go for the OP who wants to use Lightroom. 😤

I looked, and there are workarounds to get Adobe products to run under Linux, e.g., https://www.maketecheasier.com/install-adobe-creative-cloud-linux/. However, it's nothing I would want to do.

"Keep in mind that not every Adobe CC app will run on your Linux PC. According to the developer, only Photoshop CC, Bridge CC, Lightroom 5, and the Creative Cloud manager have been extensively tested, so your mileage may vary".

The article was released in 2018 while Lightroom 5 was released in 2013, so someone needs to do a lot more testing. 

Quite a deal (the same system I'm using with an external SpectraView PA271Q):

https://appleinsider.com/articles/24/01/01/save-1600-on-this-loaded-macbook-pro-with-64gb-ram-2tb-ssd?utm_medium=rss

On 12/31/2023 at 9:37 AM, digitaldog said:

Then Linux is a no-go for the OP who wants to use Lightroom. 😤

 

Sadly, no 😞 However, I think one should always point out alternatives 🙂

Sadly yes: An OS the OP doesn't ask about that can't run the software desired. AmigaOne Anyone?😂

Not my field, but my impression is that Linux is primarily used for cloud management, which I think it dominates, and for heavy-duty professional work, e.g., statistical analysis of huge datasets, and not all that much for personal computing. I just looked up a couple of the 2023 estimates for desktop market share:

Linux: 3.2%, 2.8%

MacOS: 21.2%, 14.6%

Windows: 68.9%, 70.4%

So not a lot of reason for a company like Adobe to put money into recoding its suite for Linux. The word-around I noted earlier was via a Windows emulation under Linux, not native Linux.

22 hours ago, digitaldog said:

Sadly yes: An OS the OP doesn't ask about that can't run the software desired. AmigaOne Anyone?😂

I can see where this is going............have a great day 🙂

Another deal:

https://appleinsider.com/articles/24/01/03/unlock-high-performance-computing-with-an-1100-discount-on-this-16-inch-macbook-pro?utm_medium=rss

Ouch! 

https://appleinsider.com/articles/24/01/10/jp-morgan-pc-shipment-decline-trending-upward-as-apple-market-share-remains-stable?utm_medium=rss

On 12/27/2023 at 3:06 PM, digitaldog said:

For GPU, true, not short:

Might this disparity be explainable by the much greater installed Windows population? If the problems occur at roughly the same rate in both systems then one might anticipate that there would be many more Windows complaints. To answer this question might be necessary to know how many photographers who use LR are Apple or PCs. I assume Adobe know this. I am not in the Apple camp at all. The only Apple product I like is the iPad. I have had no problems with LR on a PC, until recently but I know this is due to my machine being 11 years old and with a no longer supported GPU. I get the impression that the latest LR classic is very crash prone, but again this may well be my machine, although it fulfils the requirements on their site to be able to run LR successfully.

Delete

Again, just check the Adobe user-to-user forums for those speaking of GPU issues, Mac vs. Windows. Quote rare for Mac users with modern GPUs. Not so with Win users. Big difference: One company controls all aspects of GPU for those Adobe apps. The other isn't the case. As for LR being crash-prone, I can't recall it ever happening to this Mac user. Based on your hardware, OS, YMMV. 

Just as an anecdote-

I don't run Adobe products on my one M1 system(first generation M1 pro) because I find it woefully inadequate for the task. When I bought it, everyone told me 8gb was fine, It's not, at least if you want to multitask while running Lightroom. I'm currently eying a 16" to replace it-undecided as to if I'll do refurb M1, M2, or go with a current M3, but in any case I'm eying the base Max config(which is 32gb RAM/1tb) and have eyed a few M1 Max 64gb models.

My Lightroom/Photoshop machines now are a 2019 5K iMac and a 2015 15" Retina MBP. I have a couple of eGPU enclosures with Radeon RX580 cards in them. One stays on my iMac, and it makes a noticeable difference in how Lightroom runs as long as, of course, I enable eGPU. With that said, It's not night and day-as an example running AI noise reduction on a 40mp X-T5 file or 45mp D850 file takes about a minute on the internal RX 570, and 30-45 seconds on the RX580. The big benefit to me to running it on the eGPU is to keep heat out of the main case.

The 2015 Retina doesn't officially support eGPUs, but it's easy enough to get one working. My 2015 does not have aa dGPU, and the Iris Pro is definitely showing its age with some of the GPU heavy stuff. AI Noise reduction takes 10-15 minutes for similar files as above, and that includes a couple of minutes just to render the preview(which is 10 seconds or so on my iMac. Adding in the eGPU gets me a preview in ~20 seconds, and 1-2 minutes to actually run it. That's slower than the iMac, but still workable especially as I don't do it on every file.

I picked up a "Trashcan"-Mac Pro 6,1-not too long ago, but haven't really played with it. It has decent specs for RAM and storage, and I have a 12 core CPU sitting here waiting for me to install. I'm expecting it may be pokey as it has the base D300 GPU, which was already a bit dated in 2013, but opted for that since the D500 and D700s, which I could have just as easily bought(I bought at a retail electronics retailer, and they had 14 of them in varying configs out, from absolute base to top of the line) have been known to have issues. Thermal management isn't the best in those computers-in a rare interview someone from Apple admitted as such shortly before the 7,1 was announced.

I know that's a bit of rambling, but it's all to say that the GPU seems to just work for me on my Macs regardless of what I throw at it. Even though I had issues with Lightroom on my M1 if I had say a browser in the background, it still was fine for GPU accelerated functions. Admittedly the last time I tried it was before the Ai NR update dropped. BTW, too, it's not a lack of use of the computer in general-I'm typing this post from it now and it's my main computer 80% of the time(the iMac the remainder at home, the 2015 Retina usually stays at work semi-permanently docked to an old Thunderbolt display). I just don't have any Adobe products activated on it.

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the latest LR classic is very crash prone, but again this may well be my machine

I can only speak from my experience, that's not been my experience. I can't recollect the last crash I've had with LR Classic (always kept up to date) on either my desktop or my laptop. Neither is super high end, but both are only a few years old, and the desktop meets Adobe's listed requirements.

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Again, just check the Adobe user-to-user forums for those speaking of GPU issues, Mac vs. Windows

Seems to me that one has to take into account market share, as Robin noted. Also, a lot of the PC GPU problems are from people who haven't checked to make sure their machines meet Adobe requirements. 

Indeed, it's useful and important to have GPUs that follows Adobe requirements. Sadly many Windows machines don't. 

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 it's useful and important to have GPUs that follows Adobe requirements. Sadly many Windows machines don't. 

Certainly true. Lots of Windows and Linux machines don't match Adobe requirements. I had to specify a GPU when I ordered my current desktop. OOH, Adobe is virtually the sole software vendor for which I have ever found that true, and I switched away from Apple after the Apple II. The only other example I can think of is that one of the software packages I use holds your entire database in memory and therefore required specific amounts of memory to be able to handle large databases, but that had nothing to do with the PC architecture. People in my group ended up using a compute server farm running Linux rather than their Macs or PCs for really big jobs.

I think one other part of the GPU equation comes down to this

1. Adobe likely has a larger percent of Mac users among their user base than the general public, just given the historic stronghold of Macs in creative fields and the like. This means that making sure their software is at its best on Macs. I think anyone who has used half-baked attempts to port PC software to macOS from some other makers can likely agree that, on the whole, Adobe does a really good job. \

2. When you're catering to a Mac audience, your possible hardware configurations are pretty limited. For a long time, you only needed to worry about Intel CPUs, and at that nothing below the "Core" series CPUs. For GPUs, since about 2013 you're really only had to worry about AMD and Intel, although there were a few nVidia models still under support for a while. I'm not even sure if Adobe ever bothered to do much if any hardware accel on Intel GPUs, so really that limits it to AMD. Of course 2020 added a new CPU and GPU architecture, and I don't pretend to know software engineering but I suspect that the various Apple Silicon models are similar enough to not cause too much of a programming headache.

Even within AMD, you have a pretty short list of supported GPUs.

The only small wrench in the works are the old Mac Pros, especially when Apple gave them a lifeline by officially supporting aftermarket CPU upgrades. Past 2020 or so, a few years after nVidia discontinued the web drivers that allowed their GPUs to be used in 10.13 and earlier and that OS rolled off support, you really did have a very short list of possible GPUs. That certainly makes compatibility easy, and I imagine the onyl sort of niche case where someone really runs into a GPU wall is if they're still running a 2010/2012 Mac Pro with a current OS and have a GPU that's way off the rails from anything Apple ever imagined.

That certainly makes things a lot easier compared to the "wild west" of possible CPU and GPU combinations in Windows. It doesn't help that Windows 10 runs on a whole, whole lot of computers that may getting well on in age by now, where Apple does pretty regularly cut off older systems from new OS updates.

The Mac Studio  will serve the OP well and seamlessly for a long time, that thing is a beast.  You could also go with the latest build of a mini and also be happy.  For me, I prefer a MacBook Pro with the Max chip and the 16" screen which is nearly as capable as the Studio but is portable which suits my needs.  There are plenty of Window configurations that will run Adobe, but I switched years ago and wouldn't go back.  Mac OS is easy and not hard to pick up and is really comparable with Adobe.  I'd go Mac, smoother ride.