Unable to decide between PC and Mac

Hi. My aging 8-year-old i7 based desktop is slowly failing. I have been saying this for more than a year, when a couple of USB sockets and internal Wi-Fi failed. It's still going hardware-wise but is too slow for editing/exporting raw images.

I am planning for an inevitable replacement, possibly by this year-end (get some Thanksgiving deals). I feel that I need to get the best I can afford with all necessary hardware integrated from the start.

The following is what I found so far (all numbers in USD). I am trying to keep it around 2,000.

Intel NUC 13th gen i9 barebones
32 GB memory, 1 TB m.2 drive
Win11 64-bit
Total about 2,000
No GPU.

HP Z2 G9 13th gen 24-core i9
Same configuration as above, about 1,900
With NVIDIA T1000 8GB, about 2,230
Both include Win11 64bit, USB keyboard and mouse

Macs at similar price

14" MacBook Pro
M2 Pro 12-core chip
16GB unified RAM, 1TB SSD
19-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine
[Switch to 32GB RAM and 512GB SSD, cost goes up $100]

Mini with M2 Pro 12-core chip
32GB unified RAM, 1TB SSD
19-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine

MacBook obviously has included screen and keyboard.
The mini trades those for additional RAM (32GB instead of 16GB).
The mini needs keyboard and mouse extra.

The problem is, the following two tech specs are not apples to apples. They both do all my other personal stuff but editing photos in PL6 (PL7 in future) will be the key. * i9 24-core with T1000 GPU, 32GB RAM and 1TB M.2 drive * M2 Pro 12-core with 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, 19-core GPU and 16-core Neural Engine

With intel chips, I cannot get a desktop performance in a laptop. The two processor designs are different.
With Apple M1/M2, the same SoC is used in both mini and laptops. So, same performance.

What would you say are the pros and cons between the two?

Thanks.
Satya

If you are shopping by price - you’ll never get out of the PC pool. If you want ease of use, common operation across the entire line from phone to iPad to MacBook to iMac, then Apple wins every time. I denied Mac decades ago only to love its simplicity. Finally Windows tried to emulate Mac’s OS but has never quite caught up. My advice is for you to go down to the Apple Store and sit through a couple of their sessions and be marveled, or not. Once you go Mac (book or iMac), you won’t look back.

If you want to do post-processing (e.g. PhotoLab), you need a GPU, and I read that Apple hardware does not always work well with PhotoLab.

David

If having an integrated line-up is not the intent, then that could prove to be a negative!

My primary task is photo processing. MacBook gives desktop performance in a portable format. That's the only advantage I am seeing compared to a Windows laptop.

This is helpful pointer. I need to research this more. Yes, PL is my preferred tool as I have been used to Optics Pro for years and my workflow is adapted around that.
Thanks.

Not necessarily but it's an advantage. I am trying to replace desktop. Obviously today's desktops have smaller form factor compared to what I have from 8 years ago.

When I travel, I take my photos on an external disk and my laptop. If that laptop can do both travel and photo processing at home, that's an advantage.

In the PC world, unless you really need very small or portability is required, a full desktop PC has advantages in upgradeability, repairability, and can hold a powerful GPU, whose usefulness in software like PL6's DeepPRIME XD and the various AI applications is considerable.

I would say that a GPU is not currently required, but with the right one it’s really, really welcome.

Until recently I had been getting by with an old GTX 780 that I carried over from a Windows 7 build. I had been holding off on my upgrading for years because of the price and availability issues caused by the bitcoin mining insanities. That 780 was supported in Adobe apps only for purposes of display fluidity but not processing, and I saw something recently about an upcoming cutoff of support at some threshold.

After switching to an RTX 3070 in the last few weeks many tasks like panorama stitching in LR and noise & sharpening work in Topaz add-ons are now 10X to 30X faster. There are sizable performance boosts of focus stacking in Helicon too.

Thank you for that perspective. Portability is tempting but not necessary for this replacement.
The Intel NUC and HP Z2 G9 I quoted above are less than half the size of my current desktop!

Does anyone have comment on this NVIDIA T1000 vs. commonly quoted GTX models?
Is this a good one, or would I be better off adding a GTX model myself?
Thanks.

I favor higher counts of CUDA cores and higher version numbers of OpenCL. I don’t happen to know anything about the T1000, somebody might step in.

Have to agree in favor of a desktop computer (Windows based) as there are a few other considerations to take into account as well.

Laptop pro's

1) Portability
2) Power consumption (allthough pretty much negligible nowadays)

Desktop pro's

1) Processing power
2) Compatibility
3) Modularity (replacing single outdated or broken components whenever applicable. Which is mostly impossible or at a premium only ...if possible at all... with any laptop, with a Mac even more exclusively so)
4) Screen size but also choice/flexibility/modularity
5) Sound(card/speaker) choice/flexibility/modularity
6) Ergonomics (in general)
7) Less sensitive to damage or theft

*more distinctions can be made concerning available software, as has been mentioned allready

M2 Macbook Air 15" was just announced, $1699 for 16GB memory 512GB storage.

One important difference for me is the availability of customer-site service. I don't want my data sitting in a shop somewhere. With Dell and Lenovo, I get the 24/5 service.

From what I've seen online, unless you have a specialized application that requires a workstation card, you can get an RTX 3060 for about $300 that should considerably outperform the T1000. The caveat is that the RTX will consume more power under load and need more cooling, though much less of both than the top gaming cards..

Yes, and with a homebuilt PC, a user can have 24/7 on-site service you totally trust with an indefinitely long, free labor warranty. 😀