Apple launched two new lineups of Mac models today (mini and Studio).
The Macintosh hardware recommendations on this site were already a bit out of date, and today get even further out of date. Instead of rewriting that article for this old site design, I’m completely rewriting and configuring that article for the new byThom site. But the new site design isn’t ready yet, so in the meantime, many of you are wondering about where we stand in the Mac recommendations.
Pretty much as we were before:
- For a portable, a reasonably configured MacBook Air is all most people need. Some might want to look at the higher performance of the MacBook Pros, but you’ll pay for going very deep into that lineup. Basic needs haven’t changed: 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD, though I still believe you should push that RAM number up, and strongly consider your internal storage needs so that you’ll never fall below the performance threshold of the SSD (typically 75% full; keep reading).
- For a desktop, it’s the same story: a reasonably configured Mini is all most people need. Some might want to look at the higher performance of the Studio, but you’ll pay severely for going very deep into that lineup. Again, basic needs are similar to laptops.
So what about the MacBook Neo? Nope. It’ll work for photographers in a pinch, but performance is constrained the minute you start working on large images or with really sophisticated app features (e.g. AI features). You also have no ways to reduce those constraints, as max memory is 8GB and maximum internal SSD is a constrictive 512GB (and only one extra port to plug anything external in [the first port is going to be used for power]). The Neo is great for every day tasks such as email, Web browsing, and running the Apple-supplied and basic productivity apps, but in my experience things start breaking down fast the more you throw at it.
Which brings us to today’s new computers: the Mac mini (M5 Pro or M6), and the Mac Studio (M5 Max or M5 Ultra).
The mini is really all the desktop power most photographers require, as long as you configure it correctly. The new US$899 base model is M6, 16GB RAM, and 256GB SSD. That’s fine on the CPU side, but too skimpy on the memory and storage for desktop use. Here I’d say push up to 24GB or 32GB RAM, and a minimum of 1TB SSD. A fully configured M6 mini is 32GB/2TB and comes in at US$2299, a very reasonable price considering what the machine can do (which is pretty everything a photographer needs). Many of you will be tempted to get even more memory or storage, but that flips the mini to a M5 Pro chip at its heart, and you can whip that into a US$6699 64GB/8TB one. That’s a very capable machine, about as good as my M2 Studio, though with fewer external connections.
That’s sort of the dividing point between mini and Studio. With two USB-C 3 ports on the front and three Thunderbolt 5 ports on the back, using a mini as a desktop computer starts eating up those connections fast, and typically causes you to buy a dock of some sort. The mini doesn’t have an SD slot, so there goes one of those five connections, and that port problem snowballs fast. The Studio has an SD slot, an extra Thunderbolt port, plus two USB-A connectors for your slower accessories, and doesn’t hit the “dock needed” requirement nearly as fast.
The problem with the Studio is that about the lowest configuration I’d consider (base CPU, 36GB, 2TB SSD) is already at US$3299, which is the same price as a M5 Pro mini with 48GB/2TB). So be careful about considering whether you need a Studio or can just get by with a properly configured mini.
These new minis and Studios are very powerful computers. They’re capable of running freely available AI large language models locally—I recommend using LM Studio—with very good performance. I run Gemma 4 31b, which with enough memory is really all you need for useful AI (though you’ll find a Learning Cliff to getting everything you need using a local model, particularly if you want to integrate it with your other apps via MCP). You might see in the footnotes on Apple’s site that they’ve been doing much of their on-computer AI speed testing using LM Studio.
I’ll have much more to say about the entire Mac lineup when the new byThom site launches (and it will be easier for me to update those articles on the fly when Apple does near surprise launches like today’s). But you can’t go far wrong with any of the Apple Macs (other than the MacBook Neo) as long as you’re paying some attention to how it’s configured.
So to round things out, let me explain a bit more about that (configuring). The macOS today uses the RAM Doubler scheme my team launched back in 1993. That means that physical memory is enhanced by compression and external spooling of compressed RAM to the internal drive. A 16GB machine doesn’t act like a physically constrained 16GB machine. Indeed, the performance of Apple Silicon has been optimized to the RAM Doubler approach and there’s little initial penalty when you exceed a 16GB need, and maybe not even a noticed penalty when you actually need 32GB.
Adding more memory to a Mac you’re about to buy will net you some modest performance benefits, but aside from running AI locally, even adding just a minimum of memory to the base configurations probably is all most people need. So my recommendations remain for memory: base memory (except for the Neo) is probably okay, but doing a bump to 24GB or 32GB probably extends the useful life of your machine, as software developers always take up any memory they can find.
The bigger configuration issue on a Mac these days is the internal drive, which is always an SSD. You’re probably aware that the macOS itself will slow down when a drive approaches 90% capacity, but SSDs have an additional trigger point at about 75% full where there cell management and repurposing starts to slow.
If you go to System Settings > General > Storage Settings, after a few moments of calculating you can see how much storage is being used by what. On my MacBook Pro 16” that currently stands at 25GB for the macOS, 117GB for applications. That would be over half of a 256GB SSD, and I just mentioned that there’s a penalty that starts hitting you at 75% use. That wouldn’t leave much room for documents, caches, and other things. It’s the reason that I typically suggest a minimum of 1TB for most people (and at least 512GB for those that don’t have many apps and are willing to use external drives for their main document storage).
So be careful not to underestimate your SSD needs; you can sacrifice some memory expense for SSD expense and not pay a lot of penalty for that due to the RAM Doubler functionality going on behind the scenes. But once you start hitting the penalty limits on the internal drive, you’re going to be upgrading to a new computer sooner rather than later.
By the way, I expect the iMac to be updated with an M6 chip shortly. Probably as soon as Apple feels they can adequately supply minis. I don’t expect any other changes on the iMac, just the chip change and what it implies.