A new Mac Mini M2 Pro

I have always been a Windows user. Up till now I used a Windows laptop for all my work, including all my photo editing. But ON1 Photo RAW that I use was very slow. This was, I think, primarily due to the lack of a good graphics card. So the software has to do a lot of processing on the main processor, rather than the graphics card, which is way slower. So I need a new machine.

I took a bold move and, after 30 years of using Windows, I went with Apple and got myself the new Mac mini. To have enough power, I got the M2 Pro chip, with 32 GB of internal memory. Probably a bit of an overkill, but I wanted to be good for a long period of time. Today I installed it. The Mac OS is definitely something to get used to, but, up to now, my experience is really good. Everything worked and installed without a glitch. Of course I have to get used to the different location of the menu (and everything else), I have to learn how to create shortcuts, move stuff around, and so on. But that was not difficult. And I can continue to use my favourite apps, like the Microsoft Office apps. No need to move to Mac apps (at least, not for now).

But the main question was: how does ON1 Photo RAW perform. Was buying this expensive machine worth it? There is a big speed increase. Things like masking now go very smooth. I can also work in full screen mode without any problem. NoNoise AI still takes a few seconds, but on my previous machine this was close to a minute. The same holds for exporting files. Again, NoNoise AI seems to be the big time consumer. This will help a lot to speed up my editing process and, in particular, will reduce the amount of frustration. 

On a side note, I also added all 15 caterpillars that I photographed this summer to the caterpillar page. Hopefully next year i manage to see a lot more, but they are hard to find.