Mac Mini
For Brian:
I am waiting to hear if my (relatively new) MacBook Pro with bells and whistles is a brick and requires a new logic board. Sometimes, the cost is just not worth it.
If the news is bad, I am thinking of getting the Mini, since I already have an external monitor and the Magic Trackpad.
I would have all my photos on an external SSD, so just wanted to confirm whether 8GB RAM is sufficient. I'd also get one of those hubs that can be purchased on Amazon quite cheaply. Any advice appreciated.
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I'd recommend 16GB if possible. You can't upgrade it later without needing even more expensive hardware later.
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I changed my old iMac to Mac Mini last spring; my picture folder is on it, perfectbrowse cache is on an external ssd (500 Go), ON1 Pr works very fine (bugs are in all machines, Mac or Windows), faster than on my iMac 32 Go, new Mini is 16 Go/1To internal. As you know, we can't add more ram in the Mini, so if you want the "top", buy a 16 Go, because 8 will be maybe poor in next years.
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I agree with Brian Lawson. I have the new M1 Mac mini and upgraded to 16GB. There are still times where that isn't enough, but not often. I had an older MacBook Pro and loved it, but it isn't fast enough for the editing on On1Photo Raw. I made the switch and can still port it around if I need to, but it is not ideal. A few things to be aware of if you go with the Mac mini:
* Bluetooth functionality isn't fully functional. It is best to keep a wired mouse and keyboard on hand. There is something tied to the File Vault that negates bluetooth connectivity when you restart, resulting in the Mac mini not being able to recognize the keyboard or mouse unless directly plugged in. I recommend turning off file vault before restarting your computer.
* The Mac mini has limited ports. 2 USB- A and 2 USB-C/thunderbolts. With using an external hard drive, you may need to plug the hard drive directly into the Mac mini for sufficient power supply (depending on the drive). I have added a USB hub to mine and have made things work, but sometimes I need to move things around.
* Do NOT leave your external hard drive connected to your Mac mini overnight (or when you are not using the computer), especially if you leave the auto-update on. There is a known issue with Mac OS overwriting external hard-drives during updates. I found this out the hard way when an update corrupted and over-wrote my external hard drive. Apple denied it was caused by their update, but the hard drive company reported this as a known issue and has impacted hundreds of their customers.
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Thanks for the helpful advice. I am still waiting to hear if my MacBook Pro 2019 can be repaired at reasonable cost!
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You all might laugh at this but I am running ON1 on a 2015 iMac 27 inch. It had 8GB which wasn’t enough. Fortunately the RAM on those older models could be easily upgraded to 32 GB and that did the trick
I also obtained the new MacBook 14 inch M1 PRO new chip with 16 Gb: lightning speed must say
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As I suspected, the repair of my MacBook Pro is going to be excessive, so I have ordered a Mac Mini with 16GB RAM.
Thanks for the advice above, especially with regard to risks to external drives.
Since it only has 2 Thunderbolt ports, could I use a USB 3 thumb drive as my scratch disc and leave it in permanently?
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I use a Mac Mini M1 from 8 months now, with 2 external USB SSD permanently connected. No problem. You can also add a Satechi hub including cards connectors and 3 more usb. https://satechi.net/products/type-c-aluminum-stand-hub-for-mac-mini?variant=33595995947096
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You can give it a try but the USB3 port is slower than the Thunderbolt port and thumb drives are slower than SSDs.
FWIW, here is how I have my system configured.
On the Mini:
- One Thunderbolt port is used for my Scratch space SSD. I also have the PerfectBrowseCache there to remove its space requirements from my internal boot drive. This was needed when I was running on a MacBook Pro with only 512GB for the internal drive. All programs that allow for their scratch space to be relocated are also on the Scratch drive since only one of those programs will be using it at any one time even if I have multiple programs running that make use of it.
- One Thunderbolt port is connected to a hub.
- One USB port has a cable for connecting my iPhone or other devices as needed.
- One USB port is connected to my BenQ monitor. This is required for the hardware calibration that the BenQ monitors allow. The monitor also provides 2 more USB ports and an SD card reader. Those ports are left empty for use by transient devices I might want to connect.
- HDMI port connected to monitor
The hub has 4 USB ports on the back and 1 on the front and 2 Thunderbolt ports as well as DVI.
- Thunderbolt port connected to Time Machine backup drive.
- Thunderbolt port connected to Mini.
- USB for Wacom tablet.
- USB for my data drive where my photos and other documents are stored.
- I have an HDMI cable with a DVI adapter on the desk that I connect to the hub when I want to use my big screen tv for a display.
I have ports left over for connecting either of my scanners (flatbed and film) or other drives as needed. I plug in my nightly backup drive to the front of the hub and disconnect it in the morning when the backup has finished.
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Subias. Not an SSB but a thumb drive in the USB-A port.
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My Mac Mini is due to be delivered in the next few days. I am not planning to get a hub at this stage since the Benq monitor has one Thunderbolt and 4 USB-A ports that I can make use of. Can the Thunderbolt be used to attach an external SSD?
I am hoping that the internal SSD from my dead MacBook Pro can be removed and placed in a casing to be used as an external drive to hold all my photos. If it can, I still do not plan to migrate anything from it to the Mini but to do a clean install of OS Monterey and of all the apps I use. My photos, On1 sidecars, docs etc are all backed up, both to iDrive cloud and an external HDD.
I don't have any On1 presets to migrate and think I am happy to recreate my catalogued folders and albums. I have a small external SSD for On1 scratch and cache, which is currently connected to the Benq via USB-A. With the Mini it can connect via Thunderbolt, which should be a lot faster.
Comments welcome. Thanks.
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By the way, on my older MacBook Pro, Topaz Sharpen AI runs incredibly slowly, both as a plugin and in "send to" mode. With the former it often crashes, probably due to the fact that there is only 8GB RAM. Can I expect rip-roaring speeds on the Mini with 16GB but no GPU?
I am still undecided on whether there is any real advantage to using SAI as a plugin, since it creates a very large onphoto file rather than a tif. I'd appreciate others' experience of the pros and cons.
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If you're going to want to hardware calibrate your BenQ monitor with their Palette Master Element software you'll need to connect it to your Mini via Thunderbolt. That will use one of the 2 Thunderbolt ports on the Mini leaving the other free for your Scratch drive. Check out ArtIsRight's YouTube channel on using PME.
You can easily remove the SSD from your laptop yourself and put it into a external enclosure. iFixIt.com has instructions on how to do it. It's pretty easy.
The Mini does have a GPU. Yes, you'll see better performance all across the board. I rarely use SAI anymore; only when I have a really nice shot that is a bit soft. I use NNAI to do most of my sharpening now even if I don't use the noise removal side of it.
Make sure that the first thing you do with your Mini is to get the latest OS updates. You'll want to do that before you start loading your software.
You might want to open the Books app and download the free Mini guide from Apple too.
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I don't think I need to worry about calibration. The factory settings on my Benq PD monitor seem OK to me. I had thought to connect the monitor to the Mini via the HDMI cable, thereby freeing up the Thunderbolt port.
Thanks for the heads-up about the Apple Mini guide. (I found ArtIsRight's video incomprehensible!)
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Watch it again. You can't get consistent color if you do not calibrate the monitor regularly. They drift and they age and the color changes.
Watch the videos again. Slow it down, pause it to take the time to read the info he displays, whatever it takes to get an understanding. If you don't agree then that is different. To dismiss it out of hand because you didn't understand it the first time you watched it is, respectfully, short sighted.
Profiling your monitor is not the same as calibrating it even though the two terms get used interchangeably. Calibrating adjusts the hardware so it produces the correct results out of the gate. Profiling is adding a correction after the fact. Think of it like getting things right in camera rather than trying to fix poor shooting in post.
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You are no doubt right about the video, but he only seemed to be talking about the 4K range of monitors (up to where Left off anyway).
I suppose I could give it a try since my 2017 MacBook Pro is connected currently via Thunderbolt. Not sure which version of PME to use: guess I need to look at his update reviews.
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I meant the videos on running the Palette Master software. There are two and they go through how to set each setting and explain the calibration reports that come with the monitor and from each calibration run of the program.
This is a couple of years old so it uses older monitors but it's all the same regardless of which monitor you use. There are noted exceptions where there is a bug in the program or an incompatibility with a specific monitor but again, those are older monitors. Find one where he reviews your specific monitor to see if he notes any problems there.
Here are the links to PME videos. I had to watch them a couple of times too. Walk through the steps with him. You don't have to actually run a new calibration yet if you're not ready but you'll still get a feeling for what you should do and why.
How to Calibrate BenQ SW Displays with Palette Master Element - Art Suwansang
BenQ Palette Master Element 1.3.15 is Now Apple Silicon M1 Compatible! Watch for best settings!
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I should add that all this requires that you have a compatible colorimeter. If you do, the software is a free download.
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Another question, this time about the external SSD scratch disc.
I know Brian is adamant that this speeds things up, but I am puzzled as to why that would be so, when an external SSD is so much slower than an internal drive. I just ran a test on mine and it has write/read speeds of only 70/400: and not sure why there is such a big difference. It's a cheap Emtec brand with 125GB.
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It's not about drive speed, it's about shared lanes. When your application, photos and scratch disk are on the same drive the asll compete for the same communication lanes. By moving your scratch to a different drive it gets it's own communication lanes and thus speeds things up.
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OK, thanks. What about the Perfect Browser Cache? That is currently on my external SSD and everything is going very slowly.
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I keep my PBC on my Scratch drive. We aren't using it while editing, except possibly when the Filmstrip is visible, so the I/O issue isn't one. We aren't editing while browsing so they stay out of each other's way.
What do you mean by "everything is going very slowly"? Browsing?, brushing masks?, loading images?, can you be more explicit please?
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The slowness is probably due to the fact that I am using my older MacBook Pro with just 8GB RAM. However, no other programmes are running and three is plenty of spare space on my internal SSD.
For example, when I open a folder, previews do not render until I scroll down and then take several seconds to snap into focus. And when I switch to edit mode, it takes about ten seconds for each (previously edited photo) to render.
Since the MBP has only two Thunderbolt ports, one for power (the battery on it is dead, so can't use it) and the other to hook up to my monitor, the external SSD used for scratch and PBC is connected to the monitor via one of its USB-A ports. Not sure if there is any way to speed things up by connecting differently or moving the scratch and PBC to the internal SSD drive for the time being.
The MacBook Mini arrives next week. Then I plan use the Thunderbolt port on the monitor for the scratch SSD, connect it to the Mini via HDMI, and use one of its Thunderbolts for a newly purchased Samsung T7 drive.
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Is your 2017 MacBook Pro the 8GB, 13" model or is it one which has a dedicated GPU? If you have one of the models which only has the integrated Intel GPU then you shouldn't expect much in the way of performance.
You could use the MBP's graphics port to connect the monitor instead of the Thunderbolt port. That would free that port for the scratch drive. Putting it into a Thunderbolt enclosure would help with browsing speed as the PBC would be accessed and transferred more quickly.
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Here are the specs. I can't tell from them what type of GPU it has. It does not have a graphics port. Might it work faster if I move scratch and PBC to the main drive for the time being?
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That's the one I suspected it might be. If it had a discrete GPU it would be listed below to the Intel Iris Plus line. That line of GPUs is integrated into the CPU.
I doubt moving things back to the internal SSD will help and I suspect it might even slow things down some more.
When is your Mini supposed to arrive?
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Next Wednesday, Dec 8, need to be patient! Hoping it will be as good as the defunct MBP 2019! That had 32GB RAM and the Mini will have 16. But I believe it works in different way using SSD swap or something.
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The M1 chip is an entirely different beast than what has come before. It has everything all wired together into one integrated chip — the CPU, GPU, SSD, RAM, and I/O ports are all one piece. Unlike the CPU/GPU in your laptop which behaves as though they were separate pieces with shared memory, the M1 is designed to be programmed as an integrated whole from the beginning.
Normally data has to be transferred from RAM to VRAM before the GPU can start working on it. Even though the integrated Intel processors are sharing RAM, the data still gets transferred resulting in 2 copies. After the GPU does its processing the results have to be transferred back for the CPU to make use of.
With the M1 that data transfer back and forth doesn't happen which makes things much faster. There are other things about how the chips work that also increase performance which gives us the fast systems we see.
There is an eBook by Glenn Fleishman called Take Control of Your M-Series Mac you can get from the Apple book store that covers the new hardware and OS pretty well. It's less than $10 and updates are free and fairly frequent. https://www.takecontrolbooks.com/m-series/
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I am looking forward to seeing how the M1 performs.
I have moved my scratch disc for the time being to the second Thunderbolt port on the MacBook and it has speeded things up. Of course, it means I can't use the monitor as well.
One thing I have noticed is that, as I catalogued a folder I was working on it, it showed 100% complete when I opened On1, but then went down to 69%. Is this normal behaviour. And do folders stayed catalogued when they are moved, say, from an external drive to the internal?
Roll on Wednesday: I will report back on my setup.
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It is normal to see the catalog's completion value change as the program updates the catalog looking to see what needs to be added or removed.
As far as I know, moving a Cataloged folder from one drive to another will break the Catalog. They are identified by path which changes when you move the folder.
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As I thought, in both cases. So, when I get the Mac Mini, the best plan would be to erase the PBC on my scratch drive and start all over again. I won't get the 1TB external drive anyway until after Christmas, when friends bring it down from the US.
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