Robert Watcher
Well-known member
It was time to update my MacBook for working on the road.
My iPad isn’t a substitute for all of the coding I do using VSC, MMAMP and Transmit - as well as for running my primary photo editing software, ON1 PhotoRaw. As well I cannot use my Arturia USB-C Audio Interface without having power connected to it.
The update is from my 13 year old 2012 MacBook Air that no longer holds a charge and doesn’t run my modern software applications —- to a relatively newly released 13” MacBook Air M4, which I upgraded to a 512GB SSD drive to go along with the base 16GB of Ram.
I always prefer to store my data on an external drive and found the Crucial X9 Pro 2 TB SSD to be relatively inexpensive, fast enough, and very small and well built.
I find that ON1 Photo Raw is far snappier on the M4 than it is with my desktop M1 MacMini from 2020. I am also enjoying the updates to MacOS that makes wireless Screen Sharing to my iPad or even the 27” display connected to my MacMini - effortless. For the pic here, I extended the screen to my iPad running Affinity Photo 2, and dragged all of the essential editing panels, into my iPad leaving the full size of the laptop for viewing the image.
Besides the external ssd, I added an inexpensive compact dongle that gives me the ability to have a couple of USB-A ports, and HDMI connection as well as an SD card reader.
My iPad isn’t a substitute for all of the coding I do using VSC, MMAMP and Transmit - as well as for running my primary photo editing software, ON1 PhotoRaw. As well I cannot use my Arturia USB-C Audio Interface without having power connected to it.
The update is from my 13 year old 2012 MacBook Air that no longer holds a charge and doesn’t run my modern software applications —- to a relatively newly released 13” MacBook Air M4, which I upgraded to a 512GB SSD drive to go along with the base 16GB of Ram.
I always prefer to store my data on an external drive and found the Crucial X9 Pro 2 TB SSD to be relatively inexpensive, fast enough, and very small and well built.
I find that ON1 Photo Raw is far snappier on the M4 than it is with my desktop M1 MacMini from 2020. I am also enjoying the updates to MacOS that makes wireless Screen Sharing to my iPad or even the 27” display connected to my MacMini - effortless. For the pic here, I extended the screen to my iPad running Affinity Photo 2, and dragged all of the essential editing panels, into my iPad leaving the full size of the laptop for viewing the image.
Besides the external ssd, I added an inexpensive compact dongle that gives me the ability to have a couple of USB-A ports, and HDMI connection as well as an SD card reader.
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