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Archive 2022 · How long is your Mac upgrade cycle?

jwolfe
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p.2 #1 · p.2 #1 · How long is your Mac upgrade cycle?

I don’t often tend to buy the latest and greatest. Usually I buy Black Friday specials or leftover models. For example, last year I bought a leftover 2018 Mac mini and maxed out the ram.

But this will be a short cycle since I’m wanting the M2 chip soon, so when apple comes out with the next mini I’ll probably upgrade.

My MacBook def goes longer. I’m due for a new one this year, and mine is a 2017.

Sep 05, 2022 at 10:55 AM

Peter Figen
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p.2 #2 · p.2 #2 · How long is your Mac upgrade cycle?

rscheffler wrote:
I had a look at apple-history.com and only see the G5 referenced to the new tower design. They state the G5 ran hotter than the previous PowerPC chips and required a new tower design centered around improved airflow. I recall that the G5 tower was considerably different, internally than the previous G4 towers (I had the 2001 Quicksilver). Indeed according to that site, a July 2003 version of the MDD tower was the last OS9 bootable PowerMac.

Anyway, it's splitting hairs.

If indeed you have a G5 in a MDD tower, perhaps it is rare and has collectible value!

Ugh. The "About This Computer" under the Apple logo in OS9 does not show all the detailed information that we have today so I'll have to open the case and look at the actual chips or boot into whatever early version of OS X is on that machine. I thought it would be easy. The mic is warming up so on to recording this afternoon.

Sep 05, 2022 at 02:30 PM

bjhurley
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p.2 #3 · p.2 #3 · How long is your Mac upgrade cycle?

My two Macs are from 2013 and 2014, still going strong with original RAM and SSDs, no issues, and they still meet all my needs. However, the 2013 Mac Pro has received its last OS update and once Apple stops issuing security updates for this one I'll either cut it off from the internet or upgrade to a new M1 or M2 Mac.

Sep 07, 2022 at 08:45 AM

RustyBug
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p.2 #4 · p.2 #4 · How long is your Mac upgrade cycle?

bjhurley wrote:
My two Macs are from 2013 and 2014, still going strong with original RAM and SSDs, no issues, and they still meet all my needs. However, the 2013 Mac Pro has received its last OS update and once Apple stops issuing security updates for this one I'll either cut it off from the internet or upgrade to a new M1 or M2 Mac.

Sounds like 10 years of OS support is reasonable ... so, 7-10 year outlook isn't out of the realm for a well configured M1.

Sep 07, 2022 at 09:20 AM

RustyBug
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p.2 #5 · p.2 #5 · How long is your Mac upgrade cycle?

Pulled the trigger on a 16" MBP M1 Max, 32GB, 24 Core GPU, 2TB

Not the most "bada$$" King Kong, possible. But, bang for the buck, I'm hoping for Goldilocks on steroids.

Thanks to everyone who chimed in along the way.

Sep 11, 2022 at 09:40 PM

leethecam
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p.2 #6 · p.2 #6 · How long is your Mac upgrade cycle?

My main Mac is a 2010 MacPro. Now these things WERE capable of serious upgrade paths, so mine is pimped out with 8GB graphics, 64GB Ram, 12x 3.46GHz processors, 8x USB-3 and 2x optical drives. With 2x SSD internals and 2x spinning drives.

The thing is still a powerhouse and I run C-1 with ease, but also edit / grade on DaVinci. All driving a 4k main monitor and a side "dump" monitor.

I have a 2008 MacPro which has been upgraded several times with an older OS to run FCP-7 and a variety of other programmes. It still runs like new - better actually with all the upgrades.

I still have a 2008 MBP that I reserve just for running an ancient ICC editing program, because there is nothing else like it on the market.

My two MBP laptops are 15" Retina. mid 2014 and they do just fine for tethered shooting - although they much prefer to remain mains powered or the fans kick in when I'm tethering and doing complex multi-layered C-1 adjustments on the fly.

And my iPad is a 2012 model which I use with CamRanger for any architectural work.

I tend to buy custom builds for MacFinder in the UK, which has amazing deals on refurbished, older models which they'll custom fit if possible.

But if I could justify it, I'd have one of those lovely little M1 Max toys...

Sep 12, 2022 at 10:23 AM

Zenon Char
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p.2 #7 · p.2 #7 · How long is your Mac upgrade cycle?

5 - 6 years.

Sep 12, 2022 at 10:25 AM

Scott Stoness
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p.2 #8 · p.2 #8 · How long is your Mac upgrade cycle?

RustyBug wrote:
Yeah, I don't get too enthused by 30% gain. I'm closer to a 200% gain to get my attention.

Not a fan of LR either. I'm currently using Bridge / PS. Bridge has gotten better since days gone by.
I danced with Capture One for a year (still have it, but Bridge / PS is doing pretty well right now).

When I get my Mac, I'll probably dance with Capture One again and see how it plays. I liked aspects of it, but my PC bogged with it at times. Round 2 should be improved, I'd think.

That said ... has me wondering...Show more →

I think I am finally at peace with LR.

I need a system -
A easily ranks photos - eg not neo Luminaire - it does not rank, nor does apples photo....
B uses lens profiles - cheaper RF require this - eg not photo mechanics, aperture does not
C can open and save copy of Luminare Neo or Photoshop - LR does this
D does not have a monster DAM - that gets corrupted on copying
E does not put the files in computer generated folders with DAM linkage to keywords - so that when I change DAM; I have a horrible job converting eg the file is 2022 09 16 Grizzly, Lake Ohara Landscape and the subfiles make sense too.

My solution is:
1) Put raw files in HD in folder, named appropriately eg 2022 09 16 Grizzly, Lake Ohara Landscape
2) Do batch Photomatix to create HDR, in case I need them on AEB, where appropriate. Or DPP batch if I want them.
3) Adobe Bridge to rank and sort and delete - creates xmp that just has rankings but LR can read them
4) Create new LR catalog for each new folder with same name 2022 09 16 Grizzly, Lake Ohara Landscape [stops back up elsewhere that takes space and lose linkage and is easily convertable to the next big and better LR. Plus if you look at the sub folders created by LR, its a nightmare to find anything outside of LR]. Importing by reference not copying or moving to the same folder.
5) Look at files in LR and flag the ones (already culled and ranked by LR) to either edit to my satisfaction in LR or PS or Luminare NEO.
6)Then back up the whole disk from time to time. Linkages will not be broken if I do a disk copy.

I am now back to a similar process I had with Aperture
Lets me out of the closed LR DAM system while keeping a simple crop, adjust viewer better than Bridge (LR).
My DAM is my folder names and my brain memory
Adobe bridge opens my old aperature with similar structure
Adobe LR has the profiles for previewing and usage for my eg RF 16/2.8 with heavy auto correction

I don't want to go through again, the process of importing and change from a DAM to a new DAM; and being unhappy enough (file naming system thats' not intuitive outside LR) to cause me to throw all my many days of work away.

I have 16TB of HDD pics. I am going to put all of this on NVME SSD's as soon as the price goes down to do a times 10+ speed adjustment. [180$ gets you 2tb now. When its gets to $150 for 4tb I am moving]

Sep 12, 2022 at 04:32 PM

rscheffler
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p.2 #9 · p.2 #9 · How long is your Mac upgrade cycle?

That's pretty much my philosophy with LR. I manually create a job/shoot folder, name it chronologically, put all images in it, also chronologically named, with unique caption info, etc., embedded in IPTC/metadata, and repeat until the HDD is full (always backed up, of course). LR links to it with a unique catalog for each event/job or trip (I'll put all days of a trip in unique subfolders, but in one LR catalog) rather than one mega catalog.

For cataloging everything, I instead use Neofinder to index all my HDDs.

I still prefer doing my initial edit in Photo Mechanic. I guess habits die hard.

For this task, I feel PM is very powerful (culling, captioning, renaming, basic cropping that carries over into LR, etc.).

One note about SSDs for archiving: they present their own challenges. While they don't have moving parts that can seize or break, SSDs need to be connected to power from time to time so that bit rot can be minimized. But if you plan to keep them connected most of the time, that shouldn't be a concern. Another consideration is number of writes, but again, may not be as much of a concern if these are mostly acting as write once, or only a few times, type of an archive. To reduce SSD wear, it might be advisable to have a working drive that you keep recent work on for editing, then migrate to archive SSDs once the bulk of that work has been completed. That said, for the way photographers work, I'd be surprised if we scratch the limits of SSD read/write lifespan. An SSD hosting the OS, may be another matter.

Sep 12, 2022 at 07:29 PM

jimmy462
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p.2 #10 · p.2 #10 · How long is your Mac upgrade cycle?

RustyBug wrote:
Since Macs are not suited to intermittent upgrades like PC's can be, how long do you expect your Mac to be your main rig, until you feel compelled to upgrade your Mac again.

In other words, how many years do you tend to keep your current Mac (upgrade cycle)?

Mostly curious about cycle expectations for the newer M1 chip Macbooks, but applies to all.

Well, let's see...I'd just come off of an ~9-year run with my Atari 520ST when I picked up my first Apple computer, a Performa 6300CD, in 1995 that ran System 7.5 and, on which, I learned Adobe Photoshop 3.0.5 (that came free with a scanner, ha!) and QuarkXpress 3.1 (provided me via floppy "sneakerware" by a friend in publishing in Manhattan...those were the days!

).

That was my main rig until being replaced by an iMac G5 in '04 for use with Photoshop 8 (aka CS) and to learn InDesign (an unhappy transition coming from Quark) and Illustrator (which I never took to).

The "late-2011" i7 iMac took over duties as I transitioned away from page design and focused on photography with Photoshop CS5.5 (my last Adobe purchase) and transitioned to Aperture and the then-burgeoning DSLR-video world with the Final Cut Pro 7 suite.

My latest rig being the 2009 i9 iMac for use with FCP (nee FCPX) and Aperture (via Retroactive [no affiliation] on Mojave).

Sooo, 1995–2004=~9yrs, 2004–2011=~7yrs, 2011–2019=~8yrs...so my average, so far has been ~8-years...meaning, I should be good until ~2027 (which should be perfect-timing for my next milestone birthday! Haw!)?!

Now, there is a caveat here in that, in between these desktop workhorses I also cycled in non-workhorse laptops...in 2001 I grabbed a PowerBook G3 (Pismo) to transition to OSX (10.1 Puma), in 2011 with an i7 MacBook Pro, to transition beyond (what I'll arguably call Apple's best OS, Snow Leopard 10.6.8, which still lives today on that 2011 iMac! Ha!), and, most recently, earlier this year a 2021 16" M1 Max MacBook Pro to transition to Apple Silicon and find a suitable DAM/editing solution with the final and impending demise of Aperture from my life.

Sooo, 2001–2011=~10yrs, 2011–2022=~11yrs, so a much better longetivity on the laptop end!

Hope that helps you, RustyBug!

Oct 13, 2022 at 07:08 AM

pr4photos
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p.2 #11 · p.2 #11 · How long is your Mac upgrade cycle?

Well I'm still using a 2018 Mac Mini 3.2 GHz 6-Core Intel Core i7, with 32gb RAM. And for the moment, it's fast enough for my needs.

Oct 13, 2022 at 11:44 AM

rico
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p.2 #12 · p.2 #12 · How long is your Mac upgrade cycle?

My four frontline machines are MP Late 2013 (trashcan), MBP 13" Early 2015, i5-11400 PC (for Windows), and dual-socket Sandy Bridge PC (for Linux). I don't upgrade my Macs on a regular schedule because Moore's Law is dead, and Apple often EOLs products without offering a plausible replacement. Case in point is the MP 6,1 trashcan which is a unique bit of gear.

Oct 13, 2022 at 07:26 PM

scottsoutter
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p.2 #13 · p.2 #13 · How long is your Mac upgrade cycle?

My mid-2010 dual xeon, maxed out memory, upgraded hdd, with a low end 2 year old gpu is ticking along quite well. OpenCore Legacy Patcher and a bit of tinkering keep it interesting

At some point I’ll think about an upgrade but I like these towers with all the internal expansion too much to abandon them to the increasingly inflexible form factors from apple. Not being able to upgrade disk or memory is a considerable limitation and burden on the user. It may eventually push me over the line to a windows powered build.

Oct 15, 2022 at 01:13 PM

elkhornsun
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p.2 #14 · p.2 #14 · How long is your Mac upgrade cycle?

It depends on Apple. They changed the OS in 2008 so we could not use it on our existing Mac Pro workstations but would have to buy new computers to be able to use the new version and we needed the new version to have driver support for video cards in the workstations.

That forced us to either spend $10,000 per workstation for new ones or migrate our applications to Windows workstations. We chose to migrate to Windows and the current workstations from Apple are still very expensive and very cumbersome (to the point where they need wheels).

Apple laptops have started to improve but for desktops and workstations we will continue to use Windows machines instead.

Oct 21, 2022 at 04:17 PM

jhapeman
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p.2 #15 · p.2 #15 · How long is your Mac upgrade cycle?

rscheffler wrote:
Not sure about C1... DPR has a couple tests with the MBPs and C1 seems to consistently be faster on exports than LR, especially as the resolution/MP of files increases.

https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/laptop-review-m1-max-macbook-pro-2021-back-with-a-vengeance
https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/msi-creator-z17-laptop-review-stealing-apple-s-thunder

The second review mentioned that the LR version 11.4 introduced GPU-accelerated exports. It's pretty clear from the tests that the Max chip is considerably faster than the Pro when it comes to larger MP exports. But again it will depend on your expectations and typical workload. Are you shooting events/weddings and exporting hundreds or thousands of images? I'm guessing not.

One aspect revealed by the above tests that I appreciate...Show more →

Their testing was a bit flawed though, and I could never replicate it this spring when I was doing some extensive performance testing on the new Mac Studio and comparing it to several other Macs and PCs. Lightroom just crushed C1 and the CPU/GPU graphs showed why--too much reliance on GPU isn't necessarily a great thing.

https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1748848/2#15901674

Oct 21, 2022 at 05:31 PM

anselwannab
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p.2 #16 · p.2 #16 · How long is your Mac upgrade cycle?

I run LR Classic on a MBP'17 and I run Lr6(?) on my MBP'13, which has some older OS on it to keep LR6 alive. I could move everything to LR Classic subscription, but I really don't want to do that yet.

The MBP13 runs great. No issues. I don't think of the 17 as 'old' but it is. I might get a desktop M2 in 2023-4.

I actually have my wife's old 2011 MBP- pre-retina IIRC. A few years ago I upgraded the RAM to 16MB and put an SSD in it. It started behaving errraticly. Haven't tried it in awhile, I'll have to try to boot it up. When I upgraded it, the battery had corrupted and bulged. Worked fine with the upgrades.

THe 2017 MBP is really a low point for the MBP line. Crappy keyboard that they fixed once. USB-C only. That goofy bar thing. Glad it was a work one that they just abandoned to me as a back up. Consilation prize for forcing us all to go to POC Dell Window machines.

So, 10ish years. 5 easy. WAY more than it seems for PCs. The older ones don't handle multi monitors as well as the new ones.

The 2013 MBP also has about 300,000 miles and 5 years of constant travel on it.

Oct 26, 2022 at 12:43 AM

johnvanr
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p.2 #17 · p.2 #17 · How long is your Mac upgrade cycle?

Depends on my circumstances. My MacBook Air was from 2011 and I replaced it with the 2015 MacBook Pro my son had when he upgraded. Didn’t care much, because I hardly needed a laptop except when traveling. My desktops last a bit shorter, because I upgrade them when they feel too slow with the latest software, probably about 5-6 years. I generally max out RAM when I buy a desktop, but stopped worrying about internal storage too much, since the bulk is on external drives anyway and critical files are on the SSD and iCloud.

Oct 26, 2022 at 02:48 AM

BirdsAndStars
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p.2 #18 · p.2 #18 · How long is your Mac upgrade cycle?

Impressively ran 7 years on my last MBP.

Absolutely had to manage memory usage and multitasking issues increasingly - but it was still manageable to keep pushing the need to spend 4K further out.

Oct 27, 2022 at 10:23 AM

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