Short answer: buy the basic model (M1Pro 8-Core CPU + 14-Core GPU + 16GB RAM)
The original M1 is already good enough
It’s not as fast as the newcomers for sure, but you can easily playback most of the commonly seen video formats. That’s definitely good enough for a laptop. M1 series is just insanely fast. The 2013 M1 models are also much lighter than the new MBP14/16. Sadly it doesn’t come with the XDR screen. If you don’t care about XDR at all then the 2020 M1 models are still a solid pick.
The rumors say the 2022 Macbook Air is going to feature the same mini-LED screen. So you could always wait a little bit if you want a super compact/light weight travel companion with a top notch display.
M1Pro vs M1Max
The biggest advantage of M1Max is gaming since it has more GPU cores. It scales up quite linearly (double cores = double FPS). But for photo/video editing the top configuration + 64GB RAM only gives you 30~40% faster speed, despite having 2 media engines instead of 1. Doesn’t seem to worth it in my opinion. M1Max is also more likely to heat up, which leads to thermal throttling and louder fan noise. After all the peak power can be as high as 120W, probably too much for a laptop to handle. Since the 16inch model is better at heat dissipation, it is also a little bit faster than the 14inch model, but the advantage is definitely not large enough to impact your buying decision. Maybe we will only see the full power of M1Max in the new iMac.
16GB RAM vs 32GB RAM
This is not something I expected but the 32GB model is only 0~10% faster than the 16GB model in most cases. It looks like Apple can do insanely fast memory swap on their SSD so at the end 16GB RAM only means that your SSD is going to be abused more frequently. Will this shorten the lifespan of your SSD? There is no hard proof yet but based on the other SSD torture tests I’ve seen so far, it’s probably a big nothing burger. However, this doesn’t mean that the 32GB RAM is completely useless. If you’re running super RAM demanding tasks, like stitching 12 60MP RAWs into panorama, or editing a 20GB PSD file, or use 20+ masks in Adobe Camera Raw, then yes it makes a huge difference. 32GB RAM can be almost twice as fast as 16GB when doing insane stitching.
I don’t usually do these kind of stuff and I find that if you have to stitch 12 photos together you’d better just use PTGUI (ACR is probably going to fail miserably anyway). But given that the price difference is not really that large it doesn’t hurt to upgrade the RAM a little bit in case of these extreme scenarios.
iMac is going to have a 27″ XDR screen…
The chance is like 99%. A 27″ high-end display can easily set you back ~$3000 right now. TVs are much cheaper but you have to accept the huge size (42″ minimum). So if Apple doesn’t bump up the price like crazy then the screen itself is already worth it. I was this close to buy the new MacBook Pro but then I thought if I’m the kind of weirdo who’s more into the display than the M1 chip, then it makes sense to wait for the new iMac in Q1 2022. 16 inch is just too small and I don’t do photo editing outside my home anyway… Personally I’ll be happy with a 32G M1 Pro 1TB model but let’s just wait and see how Apple is going to price it.
Apple is on fire
Apple switching to ARM and gaining huge success is not a surprise for me at all. I’ve tweeted about a revolution coming before the debut of M1. The X86 supremacy is a big delusion based on Microsoft’s monopoly. Some idiotic people (mainly STEM students, sadly) are still saying Apple is only good for photo/video editing and it’s solely because of the media engines. “They can’t even run MATLAB properly!! Duh!!!” Well, watch and learn. In few years you’ll see most of these “pro software” swarming to the MacOS platform like crazy.
Photo Engineering 