I have been testing the new Apple M1 Macbook pro with Photoshop and other applications.
I have to say I’m actually shocked by the performance on this little laptop.
I have been testing the base version with 8Gb of ram. You would think you can barely even run Photoshop with 8 gigs, but this little beast beat out the loaded 16″ MacBook pro with 64Gb of ram in some of my tests. I have been using the native M1 version of Photoshop ARM, as well as Photoshop 2021, and I give you the results of all those tests.
It struggles when I throw a huge 20k 64 layer file at it. But shockingly it is able to process this file. Check out my video reviews to see these different tests and my recommendations.
Adobe has released a public beta of the ARM version of Photoshop. It does have some features that are missing, and under development right now, they are.
Known Issues:
In my tests, Photoshop 2021 is running fine under Rosetta 2, but not quite getting the speed it will under native M1.
I will be testing Lightroom soon and posting the results, as well as comparing the 16Gb version. This new direction for Apple is game changing. We haven’t see this type of performance increase before. On top of that, the way it manages power is something. It has 8 cores, 4 are for performance, and 4 for efficiency. As a result, I found the battery life amazing, more than twice the useable time as any laptop I’ve ever used. To top it off, the machine stayed very cool through all my tests.
My suggestion is if you need a laptop right now and don’t mind waiting for the native versions of your favorite apps, go ahead and by it, its a great machine. (But first make sure the apps you need will run on this M1).
If you are patient and have a little time, I’d wait for the apps to be running natively, as well as the next Gen. Yes, the next version is alway going to better, no matter when you buy. However, we will see more options in the future including iMac and MacBook Pros with larger screen as well as the Mac Pro eventually running apple silicon. For Pros with heavy lifting, you might wait for a 32 or 64Gb versions, or even the M2. Also I suspect that apple with be redesigning the MacBook pro pretty soon around this chip. Having said that, the design of the current model is very good, with a nice bright retina display and the scissor keyboard (thankfully not the butterfly design which I really dislike).
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Just what I have been looking for. My 13” Macbook Air is now seven years old with 8GB RAM. Yes it is limping along, especially when I throw in 3D and rendering. So a new Mac is needed, and the M1 looks inviting. I suppose I will hang on for Apple to come out with the m2 with additional memory.
Thanks,
John
I just ordered the M1 and I’d like to know how Photoshop 2021 works on it. And if OnOne and Nik plug-ins will work with it. I’m holding my breath until I get my new laptop and can take it for a test run. Meanwhile, thanks for this video about it.
I use Photoshop extensively — and especially the healing brush and spot healing brsh a ai am a photographer lovingly restoring my photo archive. I’m getting the new M! macbook pro – 16 instead of 8 — however -are you saying i sho wait for the M@ so that it works with photoshop- because i wont survive with a laptop that doesn’t let me use those 2 features in photoshop!! I can still postpone the arrival of my new order — unless you are saying hold on – adobe will have a fix for this -so the M1 is still viable. And Thank you so much for your research!
You can get your work done, however it will be on Photoshop 2021 through Rosetta, which runs fine, but once Adobe updates the beta with these features it will work better.
hey hey
so wat do you think, i mostly work with 30cm x 30cm or a4 documents in a 300dpi resolution
i typicly have between 50 and 250 layers
will the 8 gig models handel that ?
thanks
Yes it will, Im testing the 16 right now, and Ill have a video up comparing the 8 and 16 soon, By end of weekend at latest
could you please tell me about illustrator 2020 on Macbook Pro 2020 – M1 ?
For the record Im experiencing a lot of problems with photoshop on my m1 machine. I would hold on to my intel MacBook for a few months, to see if this gets sorted out with the new native photoshop. Right now it is not very usable. I see spinning beach balls in quantities I never saw before.