I'm planning to purchase a 15-inch MBP and would appreciate any and all advice as to what specs I should incorporate in my new machine. I've pushed my four-year-old MBP to to the limit and there are still times when the processing power needed for Aperture results in a frustrating series of spinning beach balls.
So, I'm wondering, should I load my new MacBook Pro to the hilt as a way to maximize the Aperture experience or will that be over-kill? In particular I'm wondering about memory vs. processor speed.
Also, there are now three screen options available for the display, and while I realize that the glossy vs. matte screen is often a matter of taste, I'm wondering about the benefit of one over the other in regards to photo processing. In the past, I've preferred the matte screen, but I know from my iPad how amazing photos look on the glossy screen. And, is the high-res option of benefit when it comes to Aperture or is it a negligible difference?
I realize a lot of this is subjective, but I'm curious to hear others' opinions. Thanks!
Well, the purchase has been made and a shiny new MBP is whinging its way to me now!
Here are the specs I went with:
–> 2.2GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7
–> 8GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x4GB
–> 256GB Solid State Drive
–> 15-inch Hi-Res Glossy widescreen display
While I’m not really concerned with the drive size (for reasons discussed above), I did confirm that the SSD could be swapped out for a larger one down the road. Hopefully, by then there will larger sizes for less $$. Next on my list: a Thunderbolt external drive.
Thanks to all for your input. It’s very much appreciated.
And now, I’ll just sit by the window and wait excitedly for the UPS man to show up! :-D
Kathryn
Kathryn,
Great! You will have to let us know how it runs with the SSD.
I am looking to upgrade my current MacBook Pro soon.
Stu
Stuart
Website: http://www.stuartonline.com
Google+: https://plus.google.com/+StuartSchaefer/
Congratulations!!!
-Joseph @ApertureExpert
@PhotoJoseph
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Hi Kathryn, I’m not a A3 expert by any means, and therefore will let Joseph and the other experts here answer your questions and give you their opinions for the majority of your questions, but I just wanted to share one thing I heard over a year ago in a Creative Live A3 class with Scott Bourne. On the first day of class, one of the first things he said was that for optimal A3 performance your GPU is much more important than your CPU. Of course it’s important to have a powerful CPU and lots of RAM too, but if you don’t have a powerful graphics card, then A3 isn’t going to perform well for you because it’s very graphics hungry. I kept that in mind when I bought my last iMac in Aug 2010. I upgraded to the highest speed (?) graphics card they offered at Apple. I don’t have the fastest processor, and until recently only had 4 GBs of RAM (8 now), but A3 has always worked really well for me and I’m guessing it’s because I didn’t chintz on the GPU.
Oh, and I love the high gloss screen on my 27” iMac, but it’s also not opposite any windows and has no lights shining on it, so I don’t get reflections. I went from a matte 24” iMac screen to this iMac, and my photos look so much better! I was spoiled by my iPad too. ;)
Okay, back to the experts here… good luck! :)
~Debbie
Kathryn,
Debbie is absolutely right—the GPU (graphics card) is very important to Aperture. But the full truth is that Aperture takes advantage of everything. The GPU is mostly for image processing, RAM is used for storing images in fast memory (more images loaded at once, faster swapping between images), and the CPU is used for everything else, including exports. Remember too that the fast CPU will speed up the entire system, OS calls, etc. Really, you want it all :)
SSD makes a really, really big difference. I have a last-generation MacBook Air, Core 2 Duo processor, and am blown away at how fast it is, even for Aperture. That super fast solid state drive makes all the difference in the world. My next iMac will definitely be one of the dual-drive configurations, even though it’s a big extra cost.
If you want to configure your MBP on the online store, then share your configuration with us (I think you can link to the actual store config, but be sure it still loads even when logged out, so you know if we’ll see it or not), or just “print” a PDF and post that where we can get to it… anyway just let us look at the config and see if there are any tweaks. If you like, of course.
-Joseph @ApertureExpert
@PhotoJoseph
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@ Debbie–I recall hearing about the importance of the GPU. Thanks for the reminder.
@Joseph–Thanks so much for this info. This is exactly what I was looking for. SSD wasn’t on my radar at all but you bring up a great point and I’ll check it out for sure. I’ll try to configure a system at the online store (thanks for the suggestion) and run it by you all here.
Thanks much!
And just curious–do you have any preference as to screen option?
Kathryn
Kathryn,
Oh right, the screen. I *love* the glossy screen. I too poo-poo’d it when it first came out (and I was working at Apple at the time!), but I ended up with one at work and fell in love with it. YES it can be a pain at times getting rid of the reflection, but it’s something you just work around, and fact that the image you see is so much nicer makes up for it.
Now I will say that it’s not the best thing in the world for accurate color correction. If you’re the type who calibrates their screen and does critical correction, you may want to reconsider. Then again, most who are at that level are spending money on higher end screens as well.
For the normal user… I’d say go for it. I love it.
-Joseph @ApertureExpert
@PhotoJoseph
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Decisions decisions.
So here’s the configuration I’m toying with:
–> 2.2GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7 (Could go up to 2.3GHz but not sure it’s worth the $250 in my case.)
–> 8GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x4GB (A no-brainer. I saw what a huge performance improvement I had when maxing my current system at 4GB)
–> 256GB Solid State Drive (This is the hardest decision for me. $500 for a SSD is pushing the $$ limit for me. I gather from what you say that the performance enhancement will be worth it and while the size isn’t huge, it’s still double what I have now. I keep my Aperture and iTunes libraries on an external drive.)
–> 15-inch Hi-Res Glossy widescreen display (You sold me. :-D )
So, am I missing anything?
Kathryn
Kathryn,
Nice setup. Yeah, that $500 for the SSD is steep. Hmm. Do yourself a favor… do some more research on SSD vs SATA and see what you come up with. For $500 less you can do the 500GB 7200rpm drive, which is no slouch, but I just know from experience that the SSD really does kick butt. I didn’t have a choice with the Air. But facing a choice, that’s hard.
Try to find some speed benchmarks before you pull the trigger. Keep in mind as well that this MacBook Pro has Thunderbolt, and sometime in the near-ish future, manufacturers like LaCie will have Thunderbolt external drives, which paired with a small RAID could be very very fast for accessing your external files.
If money was no object, it’d be obvious. But if you’re pushing against your comfort level, do a little more homework.
And be sure to share your grades :)
-Joseph @ApertureExpert
@PhotoJoseph
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As another data point on SSD, I upgraded my 2009 Macbook Pro 13” with a 240GB SSD from OWC. All I can say is “Amazing”. I can’t believe what a dramatic speed up of the entire machine. Booting up, logging in, starting apps is all 2 to 4x faster. Aperture overall is faster. One thing that didn’t really speed up is when a RAW photo is “loading…” which I suspect is relying on the GPU mostly. The 2009 13” Macbook Pro doesn’t have much of a GPU to brag about.
Thomas
Very interesting thread.
One question (and I have no idea of the answer) is if the ONLY physical drive on an iMac were to be a 256Gb SSD, is there a risk that Kathryn [were she looking at iMac rather than MBP] would run out of this key space (OS, programmes etc.)?
A3 experts – are there performance implications for a referenced library setup where BOTH the A3 library AND the referenced images are kept on external drive(s)? Would not having the library itself ‘on the machine’ be beneficial? If yes, and you have a big library … you’ll need the local space (so, suggesting an SSD AND a spindle drive on the iMac: “1TB Serial ATA Drive + 256GB Solid State Drive [Add $US600.00]”). If you’re worried about that, look at the Australian pricing :-(.
As Joseph points out, throwing Thunderbolt into the equation [later!] may even things up … but in the meantime, connection type will have a big impact (FW800 is going to be better than USB2).
Steve,
All very good questions.
There’s always the risk of running out of space, no matter what size drive you invest in. 256GB is pretty good though; I’m on a 128GB on my Air and I’m doing just fine. It’s the photos and music that take up crazy space; I keep neither of those on the internal drive. At the moment I have nearly 40GB free space, and that’s usually where I’m at when I hit the road, and then fill that up with photos, and return with a full SSD. Of course I often overrun that, which means external drives, which on this generation Air means a USB 2 drive (!!) which of course means I need to upgrade to a new Air with Thunderbolt :) — when little pocket Thunder drives come out, of course.
Anyway, running out of space for apps only would be pretty hard to do I think.
I don’t think there’s a performance hit IF you have fast connections all the way around. In an extreme, there’s probably an advantage to having the library on one I/O (the ESATA) and the masters on the another (FW ports), but It’s likely negligible. I’d have to test it to know for sure (and no, sorry, I’m not going to :)
Thunderbolt will make a lot of this go away, of course. However remember that a slow drive is a slow drive, regardless the bandwidth. So what will be key on Thunderbolt drives is either RAIDs or SSDs. Or SSD RAIDs.
-Joseph @ApertureExpert
@PhotoJoseph
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Thks Joseph.
And of course, no Thunderbolt on my Oct 2010 purchased iMac … :-(
Kathryn
I am like Joseph as I do not store any images on my current MacBook Pro 2.66 June 2009 running with 8GB DDR3 ram. Now I did replace the hard drive with a Seagate 500GB Momentus XT Solid State Hybrid Hard from OWC:
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Seagate/ST95005620AS/
The Firewire 800 external hard drives I use are connected via NitroAV Hub
http://www.nitroav.com/product/113/.
I am looking to upgrade to a newer MacBook Pro so I would be able to use the new Thunderbolt drives that are now hitting the market.
Stuart
Website: http://www.stuartonline.com
Google+: https://plus.google.com/+StuartSchaefer/