If you don’t need portability, you’ll get more bang for your buck out of a iMac. Not to mention a 27 inch screen which makes post processing very nice. What ever you decide wait a few months if even that for the new models it will be well worth the wait. Apple has a history of adding new and better hardware, faster processors, bigger hard drives, etc and keeping the price in the same range. Just my two cents.

Since I am happy with my screen (a 27” Dell that cost me $999!) I am actually considering saving some money and buying a Mac Mini with the i7 chipset, 16Gb RAM etc and running that for a couple of years.

My Mac Pro is too long in the tooth and I also want to swap to Thunderbolt RAID - my FW800 setup just took 28 hours to create a new Vault…!

I actually think the ‘Super Mini’ is more than fast enough for stills editing.

Remember the Mac Mini doesn’t have any independent (2nd) graphics processor options. The GPU is more important than the CPU for speedily processing your image edits. The GPU also matters at import, especially importing large RAW files.

Any of the new Macs, including the Mini line, have thunderbolt and or will have USB 3 which will speed up file vault and indexing/database management functions of Aperture.

Judy, I agree with G.M. Re iMac. But if you want portability then the only MBPro to consider is the 15” retina MBPro. Again because of the GPU options. The 13” rMBPro does not offer GPU upgrades. It only has Intel…You’ll want Nvidia 2nd GPU.

All good comments. Id add “one more thing” (Jobs speak). If you are doing further processing in PS or Plugins and want to do them in 16 Bit mode then go with 32 GB Ram. You don’t have to do other editing in 16 bit but if you like to push your machine to its limit then go with 32GB. Other wise 16 is fine and being able to add later is critical IMHO Cheers DBM

You may be right Bob however the onboard graphics with the i7 chip are almost certainly several times faster than the 2006 graphics on my Mac Pro.

Certainly internet searches would suggest that the Intel HD 4000 graphics in the i7 Mini are plenty capable for anything but the most demanding 3D gaming uses etc. especially if you max the system RAM at the 16Gb presently available (I read that this is constrained by the non-availability of RAM boards over 8Gb of the relevant type, not by the system so 2 slots at 8Gb = 16gb max until larger sizes are available) The former 3000 Intel grapgics sounds as though it would have been a less useful option.

Here is quite an interesting review of the Mini for photo and video use:

http://www.parkablogs.com/content/review-mac-mini-2012-art-graphic-desig…

As a further note, if the rumoured Autumn refresh of the Mac Mini includes newer i7 chips with the Iris graphics, they will EASILY be fast enough - for even video editing I would think.

I am using the ‘12 iMac with i7’, 680MX, 32GB, 768 GB SSD. I also use a 2nd display (27” Apple Thunderbolt) My library is pushing 400GB and I keep it managed. For all practical purposes, A3 is instant.

In the field, I use a 13” MBA. I transfer all projects back to the iMac when I return.

Marcus… I used to use A3 vaults, but they were slow. Now I make full backup libraries using CCC which does incremental backups. It typically completes in a few minutes. Maybe after a full day of working… It might take 1/2 hour.

I cannot think of any downsides of cloning the library vs using vaults.

/Jim