My current system is a 2018 Mac mini i7 (3.2Ghz 6-core, 32G RAM, 1T drive) running macOS Sequoia 15.1.1 at present, bought in Jan 2019. It's running fine for most of what I do, but I've been noticing that latest LR Classic is getting a bit sluggish with M10-R, M10-M, and CFVII 50c raw files. My internal storage is getting a little thin on free space due to stuff I need to keep on it (and all my photo files are on fast external media already).
I checked all the specs and looked at a lot of performance evaluations. If I were doing a lot of video editing, I'd choose the mini M4 Pro immediately ... but I don't. I do only light video editing, infrequently. More RAM and more storage are worth more to me, the incremental performance improvement
for what I do with the M4 Pro cpu isn't worth the $400-500 premium.
(... And since nothing else I own is Thunderbolt 5, eh? I'll cross that bridge when I get to it and have a few more T5 needs; I don't believe in future-proof, I just believe in getting the best fit at the time I'm buying.
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I ordered a Mac mini M4 with 32G RAM and 2T storage. I might update all my USB 3.1 drive enclosures to TBolt4 as well.
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