Hi!

A friend is buying a new Macbook pro.

This new mac will most likely come preinstalled with Big Sur no matter what processor we go with, M1 or intel.


He will buy it for use with mainly these Adobe CC apps;

Photoshop
Premiere Pro
After Effects


My friend cannot afford renting these apps so activation with Zii is an absolute necessity!

Therefore;

1. Is it possible to activate current or semi-current Adobe apps written for intel on the new M1 mac via Rosetta2 running Big Sur?

2. Is it possible to activate current or semi-current Adobe apps written for intel on the current intel macs running Big Sur?

Also can anyone guess if future M1 native versions of adobe apps will be as easy to activate for the Zii team or is there any risk that the native m1 versions of adobe apps will be protected in a different way and harder to crack? Or is the risk mainly with apple OS versions becoming more restricted, perhaps locked to app store etc.

We'd like to know the likelihood of there being cracked Adobe apps native to M1 chips in the future.
If it is likely then the M1 is probably the way to go.

So should we get the new M1 chip or current intel? What do you guys think?


Thanks for any help

 

The next versions of Apple Silicon based Mac are to be the true Pro models according to those in-the-know. Due mid to late 2021.

If the current Intel "Pro" is working as needed, stay with it for now. We are still 2 years out from Apple ceasing development of Intel based Mac.

Hope this helps with your decision either way.

 

1 Yes
2 Yes
3 Guess? Abobe has no option so Yes
4 The team? Assume no but probably yes
5 Should you get an M1.. Yes .. No brainer on price and performance

There are plenty of alternatives to adobe like Affinity and Resolve

 

this is actually an important and tricky topic,

Apple's future lies in Apple Silicon,
as of today, majority of Adobe apps are not provided as native M1 versions,
as of today, Adobe support for Big Sur is kinda clunky,
as of today, most new Macs are sold with Big Sur preinstalled, without ability to downgrade,
as of today, Apple Silicon Macs are entry-level Macs limited by overpriced insufficient 16GB memory and only 4 high-performance cores (being weaker in real use than 5-year old 6-core Intel i7 for ex.)

your friend has enough money for new Mac but not for software? interesting...
maybe leaving Adobe and moving onto something like Affinity + Blackmagic DaVinci might be better option in the long run?
and on top of that, especially After Effects requires more than current M1 Macs can provide in terms of specs and performance,

as I see it right now, your friend should either buy used older MacBook Pro 16 which can run Catalina where most apps are proven to work (given the fact people will jump onto M1, those older machines might drop in prices pretty fast),
OR wait at least half year for more capable Apple Silicon Macs (by that time Adobe should have complete M1-tested suite of CC Apps)

 

Thanks for all the answers and info guys,

I'll just clear one thing up, that might have been unclear in my first post;

We have to buy a new computer before this financial year ends because of tax reasons.

The window for buying will be lost if we would buy the next gen M1 in half a year. We simply do not have that option. (Well we do but then 900 euros would have to be payed in taxes). Also we cannot buy a used computer because of VAT rules in our country, so buying an older Macbook Pro 16 as @tzzsmk advices is unfortunately not an option either. I know it sounds funny, but that's the premise here.

So we have 2200 eur that we have to spend before this financial year ends on a new mac.

My friends current computer is an early 2011 macbook pro with 16GB RAM, 2.3 ghz core i5.
It has been puked on and keyboard replaced. It has been dropped, screen replaced. I did those repairs for him. Those old macs have great repair ability.

This mac has served well but is getting slow according to my friend. The slowing down happened after the drop and screen replacement, so something is probably not right, but who knows what? I've told my friend that we could try reinstalling MacOS, but since we have this financial window right now, why not buy a new mac with about 900 euros in tax rebate?

My friend has had the old macbook pro for almost 10 years now and even though he uses after effects, he probably uses it in an unorthodox way. 2017 he made a film animated in After Affects with no performance issues. At the time we read up how much RAM was necessary for working in after effects and most people recommended 64 GB. But I'm guessing that the work he does in After Effects is not very heavy, he is an artist not a production company making blockbuster movies, so maybe that's why the macbook did not need that high specs.

Here is a YT video of someone testing After Effects performance via rosetta on M1 vs a Macbook pro 2018, even with rosetta there is a significant improvement in performance in after effects.

Performance wise I think he will be fine with either intel or M1. He was fine on a 2011 macbook pro!
I think the main issues are;

1. Longevity, he wants to use his new computer for 10 years like the last one he had.
2. Being able to use cracked adobe apps.
(Although we will check out your suggestions, I don't think there is a replacement for After Effects and the integration with Premiere is also nice. Photoshop could probably be replaced though.)

For longevity it seems better with M1, since intel support might be dropped in two years.
For cracked adobe apps its seems better with intel right now, and more uncertain with M1, am I right?

 

Do Adobe apps work on Apple computers that use the M1 chip?

 

ah that clarification makes things no easier I'm afraid,
let's say I have more than handful friends pretty much in exact same situation, and I don't want to be the one they will complain few years from now, yet I have tried to examine the current situation as deeply as possible,

I'm sorry to say your friend has picked the absolutely worst time to buy a Mac, in past 10 years,

M1 Macs are entry-level devices I doubt they would remain relevant once their warranty expires, it's rather obvious these first-gen models will be quickly replaced by proper designs and full Apple Silicon high performance counterparts, questionably not even more expensive,

and Intel Macs will become irrelevant very soon too, although Apple did admit they want devs to release universal apps for both platforms, it's rather obvious especially laptop product portfolio will be fully replaced with Apple Silicon Macs,

fact that Adobe provided literally no native apps at Big Sur + M1 launch means they weren't able to code things past 6 months since Big Sur developer betas and Apple Developer Kits became available, so I don't expect Adobe apps being full recoded to native M1 support anytime soon (just for reference, Microsoft Windows for ARM is available for years, Surface devices available for over year, and literally no developer bothered developing software for that yet - Apple has advantage of Rosetta 2 but then devs may as well just give up making M1 native software completely)

now to your 2 points,
1) I'm afraid none of currently sold Macs matches such requirement, as mentioned above,
2) this depends on Adobe ability to sustain both Intel and Apple Silicon versions of their products, which I highly doubt, due to limitations on either platform, sooner or later they may have to release portfolio of 2 distinctive product lines - as long as they remain relevant on the creative software market, and without some severe DRM protection, I'm pretty sure someone would take their time to reverse engineer that

there are basically 2 paths to choose from:
1) Intel - buy whatever fits the budget and needs, and just stick to whatever software and MacOS being compatible with Intel, higher-end models might hopefully retain decent resale value in following 5 years as I don't expect Windows counterparts evolving either (whole Intel is basically dead now), if your friend doesn't need always the latest greatest, then current software can pretty much work great even 5 years from now
2) M1 - buy 16GB ram and 1TB SSD version if possible, since parts are not user upgradeable at all, and those are all entry-level devices to be replaced with newer generations anyway, there isn't much hope in resale value if you get base models, and lots of problems to encounter until software gets really ironed out, on the other hand potential longer lifespan with more apps being natively coded for Apple Silicon in future, frankly 2011 MacBook Pro can do a lot already, so I would say MacBook Air can prove a worthy choice for less demanding tasks in the long run

 

I think using a 10 years old mac until the release of M1 regarding performance changes of the then-following generations of hardware has meant to be way less outdated than what we will experience from now on. Intel chips haven't improved significantly since 2012. That's why it's so common people still using these old stuff, only GPU has become the bottleneck.

It doesn't sound correct for me to call this 1st gen M1 as entry-level devices when these are beating recent Intel chips (for that same category) embarrassingly but the new horizon for Apple's development of SoC suggests a much faster growth performance wise.

Having said that I wouldn't be bothered with the future of macs though, if your friend needs a new mac for work and needs to spend that money now, your only question is which system can guarantee that it runs those software from day one.
Because we could argue that buying a M1 now will give the better selling oportunity in a few years than the Intel mac but if programs he needs don't run properly on the M1, that's not an option.

However, if your friend doesn't really eagerly need a new mac, buy an M1 for some family member from that tax reducing oportunity and wait for 6-12 months.

Edit:
Don't think of buying a mac for the next 10 years.
This era seems to be over, now you will see the growth similar with smartphones. You can't really use a 10 years old smartphone (not even a 5 years old, mostly due to the changes in the bands and technologies the telecom companies operate on).
We just don't know how the waffer technology will grow after reaching 3nm or so.

 

Last edited: Dec 14, 2020

...and in a year or so we will see better whether Adobe is still relevant or not.
The last transition was a bit different, Adobe was leading with PS, now there are enough alternative to vanish that monopoly after a slow transition. Quark is a good reminder for what not to follow.

 

Thanks for all your answers, guys, you've been very helpful!

With all this info my friend will decide in a few days what to do.

I have to say that if it was me who was looking for a new computer, that fanless MBA would be nice for quiet recordings. But for us audio folks I think it is an even worse situation with M1 then for graphical artists with software. Luckily I'm doing fine on my macbook air with mavericks.

 

Are you serious? Shit, I was planning on buying an M1 and starting fresh from my Mojave backup.

I guess I'll wait until start of new year when indeed prices of the 16inch Intel will start to drop.

 

Last edited: Dec 15, 2020

yes I'm serious, probably little exaggerating, but that's how things are now,

also be aware M1 Macs require Big Sur, so forget about booting Mojave,
similarly 16" MBP with Intel requires Catalina as minimum, forget about Mojave again,
latest Mac with Mojave support is probably Mac Mini with Intel (2018 model) - not sure if it's still relevant with current purchases though

 

You're not exaggerating, I checked and M1 chips require Big Sur indeed, it doesn't support anything below. Downgrading is not possible.

 

Last edited: Dec 16, 2020

As to the 16 MBP I think you're right according to this table :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacBook_Pro

The fourth-generation MacBook Pro (2019) is the final model that can be downgraded from macOS Catalina 10.15 to macOS Mojave 10.14; 2020 models cannot. Mojave is the final MacOS operating system to support 32-bit applications such as Microsoft Office for Mac 2011. Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 and other 32-bit applications will fail to run on macOS Catalina or later iterations of the Mac operating system, as they only support 64-bit applications.

Oh well I guess I will have to do with Catalina which works fine with most apps now.

 

Last edited: Dec 16, 2020

Correct - I own a 2019 16 inch MBP and it definitely came with Catalina and is therefore the lowest OSX version you can run it. I had to upgrade my legit MS Office for it as well.

I dont have any issues running Catalina on both my 2013 Mac Pro or the 2019 MBP.

 

So we settled on the M1 macbook pro. Unfortunately the M1 macs with the configs that we are looking have a 3 weeks dispatch time, which means that the money would be drawn in 2021. Which means that the tax rebate is no more.

Because of this we have decided to wait with the purchase, perhaps for the m2 or other offerings from apple in the future.

So we will upgrade the 2011 macbook pro with a SSD and update the OS. Hopefully, it will speed up things a bit.
Any ideas on what MacOS version to go for? @tzzsmk and others?
Current version is Yosemite

 

depending on specs you have (ram, ssd) I'd definitely decide between High Sierra 10.13.6 and El Capitan 10.11.6 (preferably the first newer option)

 

Specs are;

Early 2011 Macbook Pro
2.3ghz core i5
16 GB ram, 1TB Samsung 860 Evo SSD

 

Maybe this helps a little

 

Thanks,

I guess it's High Sierra then...

May I ask, why not Mojave or Catalina?