Anyone using a dual core MacMini?

[billtils]

A friend (honest, it's not me, I'm perfectly happy with my MacBook Pro) is about to recycle his ageing MBP to a family member but is having some difficulty in selecting the replacement Mac. The choice is complicated by the fact that he will be using an external monitor. The MacMini looks ideal except that the current generation ones come with a dual core processor, and not the quad core of the MBP or earlier Minis.

He is uncertain that the dual core will be up to intensive PP of multiple large RAW files - does anyone have direct experience of using the dual core Mini? He uses Capture One, but experience with LR or PS or anything similar should be relevant.


Thanks

[Manfred M]

Bill - as no one is answering this, that shows how many people go that route for a computer. I only know one person that has a Mac Mini and it is pretty well 100% used for surfing the net.

I did have a hard look at going this route a few years ago when I was looking at updating my hardware. I ended up not going that route for a number of reasons that are probably still valid today. If your friend is worried about dual core not being appropriate, all photo editing programs (I use Capture One, but not for editing) are single threaded, which means they only use one processor. If he were into video editing, the better software is multi-threaded and on my editing computer, I use a quad-core i7 processor that runs 2 virtual processors per core, so effectively all 8 "processors" are in use for that type of work.

My big beefs concerning the Mac Mini are the limited amount of RAM (I prefer to use 16GB when I do heavy editing in Photoshop), the graphics processor is quite limited (can only do sRGB, not AdobeRGB) and no fairly limited HDD options (1TB max is pretty small in my view).

Bottom line, the product is essentially a laptop offered as a desktop. This means it has none of the advantages of either a desktop or a laptop, but has all of the disadvantages. As a small, handy stationary computer, I might look at one, but for serious photo work, I would definitely look elsewhere...

[billtils]

Thanks Manfred. I'll pass this on. He is receiving somewhat different feedback from other more Mac oriented sites, and of course as of today there is a rather nice spanner in the works with the release of the new 21.5 inch iMac. And the current Mini is configurable to 16GB RAM (and a 2TB fusion drive). Had not encountered any comments re "only" sRGB - that is not only acceptable but a standard in many settings. I'll let you know how it turns out

[billtils]

Also, device colour spaces in Macs are set in the colour sync utility in the OS, and AFAIK the chip in the current minis does not restrict this. For example from the Preferences help: "In Displays preferences, you can switch between different color profiles, including industry-standard color profiles like Adobe RGB, Apple RGB, and Cinema RGB, and custom ColorSync profiles that you create when you calibrate your display. If you have more than one display, you can assign a different color profile to each one." And of course you can set the printer colour space in the printer driver.

[dutyhog]

As my "desk" machine I use an old (2007?) Mac Mini 4.1 with an Intel Core 2 Duo (ie 2 cores), Processor Speed 2.66 GHz, Snow Leopard. A 500GB solid state HD makes it fast enough for me with Photoshop CS6. I often open and process a batch of 10 or so RAW files.

I always edit and print in Adobe RGB, but save Jpgs in sRGB.

After my MBP died I found that the Mini is portable enough to take to my camera club for presentations, using my keyboard and mouse and the club's projector.

[Manfred M]

Also, device colour spaces in Macs are set in the colour sync utility in the OS, and AFAIK the chip in the current minis does not restrict this. For example from the Preferences help: "In Displays preferences, you can switch between different color profiles, including industry-standard color profiles like Adobe RGB, Apple RGB, and Cinema RGB, and custom ColorSync profiles that you create when you calibrate your display. If you have more than one display, you can assign a different color profile to each one." And of course you can set the printer colour space in the printer driver.

Carefully said, this is how the computer maps various colour profiles to the output device capabilities. If I look at the Mac Mini spec page: https://www.apple.com/mac-mini/specs/

It mentions only "millions of colors"; this is sRGB.

[billtils]

Thanks Gordon. It's nice to hear from someone actually using a Mini in similar circumstances to my friend - there aren't many. You both use DxO Optics Pro and Topaz; he is Canon + Capture One and a few others such as Affinity Photo, but I doubt that there are any differences in the S/W and H/W in regards to the validity of your experiences to the question posed.