is the M1 Mac for you? Depending on your needs and your budget,
buying the right computer for you now can save you time money and frustration down the road
I'm Rafael and welcome to the channel where our goal is to always fix it in camera,
and then finesse it in post! I always appreciate the early thumbs up because buying a computer
at any price point is always an investment and we all want it to last for as long as possible
before we even think about upgrading it. Now after having the M1 Mac Mini for a few weeks,
here are my thoughts on it for anyone that does any moderate creative work like, video editing,
photo work, and music. And consistently has multiple large apps open at the same time
like Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, Davinci Resolve, Premiere Pro,
Logic or Audition. With these apps it's best to always get a computer with at least 16 gigs of
ram. Ideally 32GB when apple finally releases the next gen M1x processors with higher ram variants,
but get as much ram as your budget can afford. Even if you feel like your workload is light to
moderate today, and you feel like the M1 Mac is perfect for you, it may not be two to three years
from now. If any variable changes over the next year like software or the OS is updated that will
require a little bit more resources it may really slow down your system, and it'll frustrate you and
potentially force you to upgrade early, which in the long run will actually cost you more,
time and money! Also, just like SSD's and other hard drives that slow down when they get close
to full, the same thing happens with RAM computers tend to slow down as the hard drive fills up hard
drives need empty space for virtual memory or swap memory. When ram becomes full it creates a file on
the hard drive for those overflow tasks. If the computer does not have the space available for
this it may slow down drastically. This is why i can't really recommend the base model M1 to anyone
that does any moderate creative work with any of the large apps time. And again it has been shown
that a typical system uses 4 to 5 gigs of ram just to operate basic functions like web surfing
word processing and general system tasks and most large apps use at least 5 gigs of ram. Photoshop
for instance recommends at least 8 gigs of ram as an ideal range. The same goes for Premiere Pro,
you can go down to three gigs but with the system already idle with five gigs it's already blown
past the 8 gig system resource. Final Cut Pro, 8 gigs is recommended and for Davinci Resolve,
the minimum system requirements is 16 gigs. So that means that the rest of that has to go
somewhere the SSD and swap memory. And today most of these apps are being shifted to use GPU more
and the M1 has dedicated graphics that again will be pushed far beyond what they are meant for. Over
the past few weeks i've been keeping an eye on the ram and is consistently and comfortably working in
the 9GBe range with the large apps and 12 to 14 GB with two of these large apps working at the same
time like Final Cut and Photoshop. If the ram is there the computer will use it instead of sending
it to the cache or swap memory. So the more you have, the snappier your system will always feel.
16GB is the minimum i would recommend, honestly it should be the default entry on any computer moving
forward with 512 GB of SSD. Either way always choose to up the ram and the storage to make
your computer feel snappier even a year from now. I know that if i spent money at computer today,
i would want it to work as expected for the entire time i had it not just for the first
year or two. I aim to buy computers that will last three to five years or longer. What i mean by that
is that I will buy something that is overpowered today but will be able to keep up with my workflow
for five years. Applications over that time frame become more powerful and use more system resources
and push the system to its max. It's like trying to play a game today on a five-year-old system,
how well do you think that will work? Cameras and codecs will also be more taxing on computers
three to five years from now. The M1 may be great for you today but three to five years from now it
will be underpowered probably even within two years from now. But if you need something today
get the M1 Macbook Pro or the Mac Mini with 16 GB of ram the fan will allow for longer stretches of
high performance over the no fan Macbook Air which may throttle the workload to protect the computer.
Ram is Ram and if the computer needs to use a lot of swap memory constantly that means the way
you use a computer needs more ram to run well. If the computer is using the SSD like ram it's
dramatically underpowered for what you need. There is a reason that these are entry level machines,
treat them as such. Save the money now and wait for something that will last for the long run.
The only people that i would recommend the base M1 Mac or any M1 computer is anyone that does
light creative work but mostly web surfing word processing emails and using it as a dedicated
stream computer. And that is because apple is on the cusp of releasing their new M1x iMacs,
Macbook Pros and Mac Pros. So at this point I feel most should wait to buy a computer right now. I've
made three videos about this exactly the M1 is a computer not designed with power users in mind,
but having it has allowed me to test it under a stress environment and this just solidifies
that the M1 Mac does get me really excited for what is coming down the pipe from apple.
Always get more ram and storage especially if it's not upgradable after you buy it.
The extra headroom will make any computer feel snappy for years.
Check out these other videos I have about the M1 Macs. As always thanks for watching,
give this video a big thumbs up, subscribe, I'm Rafael, I'll talk to you soon, bye for now!