As a graphic designer is the M1 Mac mini worth it?

[Kagesuro]

My girlfriend is a graphic designer for a small distribution company and recently her computer stopped functioning as they need it. The don't have the money nor the willingness to go all out on a work station so they are pretty locked into prebuilt. Most of her experience in the field and the programs her work uses are Mac based. I was takes to help find a replacement and ultimately I was wondering if the M1 Mac Mini was worth buying in this regard. 

 

I'm sorry if this question has been posed before and if there was a better discution about this I'd love to be directed that way. Thank you so much

[Electronics Wizardy]

What program is she using?

 

There pretty good systems if you need a mac desktop and the apps support arm reasonbly well.

[Radium_Angel]

2 minutes ago, Kagesuro said:

My girlfriend is a graphic designer for a small distribution company and recently her computer stopped functioning as they need it. The don't have the money nor the willingness to go all out on a work station so they are pretty locked into prebuilt. Most of her experience in the field and the programs her work uses are Mac based. I was takes to help find a replacement and ultimately I was wondering if the M1 Mac Mini was worth buying in this regard. 

 

I'm sorry if this question has been posed before and if there was a better discution about this I'd love to be directed that way. Thank you so much

Oh aren't we going to have some fun here? (check out the user icon)

 

Buying into a brand-new eco system is going to be costly and you have to hope all the software she is used to working with is either ported over, or well emulated.

[ProjectBox153]

If the software she will be using runs on Apple Silicon or works well with Rosetta 2 then the Mac mini would do great for her. They are very nice little machines, and I've heard great things about them. 

[kelvinhall05]

If she is using first-party Apple software then M1 is a wonderful choice.

[Kagesuro]

15 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

What program is she using?

 

There pretty good systems if you need a mac desktop and the apps support arm reasonbly well.

She is using the Adobe suit largely

 

[Kagesuro]

12 minutes ago, ProjectBox153 said:

If the software she will be using runs on Apple Silicon or works well with Rosetta 2 then the Mac mini would do great for her. They are very nice little machines, and I've heard great things about them. 

According to her, she is using largely the Adobe suit

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Kagesuro said:

She is using the Adobe suit largely

 

Can she use windows? A windows pc of the same cost would likely be faster, esp as CC isn't native on arm yet.

[Action_Johnson]

One of the big reasons creatives like to use Mac's (aside from most creatives generally being terrible at computers), is MacOS's color management is far far superior to Windows in the sense that once you calibrate your monitor using something like an i1 Display, Color Munki, or whatever, it's system-wide regardless of program. 

 

Windows does color management on a program-by-program basis. This means if you open a document in Capture One, Illustrator or Photoshop, it will look correct and be color managed, but open it in Photos or the other windows image viewer, the color will be messed up and not representative of reality. 

 

I use both systems working in commerical photography, and Windows color management is the bane of my existence