It's that time in the replacement cycle when we look at our current laptop computers with open distain.

Ben with his first Apple Computer. 

Not nearly as fast as his new one. 

I have nothing but praise for the Apple MacBook Pro 13 inch laptop computer I bought back in 2018. It's been in about 25 different airports, spent many days in various cars and trucks, been hauled around to a couple hundred photo assignments and has never so much as shown me a "twirling beachball." Zero downtime.  But 2018 to 2024 is a long, long time in computer world. 

My kid recently replaced his even earlier MacBook Pro with one of the current 14 inch MacBook Pro machines with an M3 processor, 16 GB of Ram and a 2 Terabyte SSD. We talked about the performance differences and he was a bit more animated than he usually is. And he is a paragon of calm. An opposite personality from his father... In a word, he said the speed increases all over the new system are life changing. And he rarely traffics in hyperbole.

That planted the thought in my mind. And it was fertilized a few days later when one of my nice clients got in touch to talk logistics for an upcoming multi-day event project. Would I be able to sit down late in the evening, after the social function at the conference and edit, post process and delivery maybe 100 files for the staging company to use at the show open the next morning? This is something that comes up on a lot of shows and something I've done a lot of in the past. In fact, I bought the current laptop to do fast turn images during a conference for several WP Engine showcases. Shoot and turn. On those projects I'd photograph each speaker on the stage, head out to the press room half way through their individual presentation and have fresh images of the presentation to the AV team before the speaker wrapped. Tight deadlines indeed. 

I thought back and remembered every bottleneck and slowdown in the process from each earlier show. From the slow, USB-2 ingestion of large camera files to the slow export of hundreds of files on the back end. I also reminded myself that the battery in the older machine is also starting to show its age. As is the screen and the keyboard.

I checked the pertinent reviews and one source indicated that my older i5 Intel processor in the 2018 laptop runs my favorite photo applications about 15X slower than a new M3 processor machine. Not 15% but 15X. They had me at Space Gray. 

My biggest  project of the quarter is just a bit less than a month away which should give me ample time to get used to the new machine and to test it out with my various favorite Adobe software apps. The machine will see most of its use alternating between simple tasks at the dining room table (paying bills, reading the news, watching interviews on YouTube) and fast turn photo editing and file delivery logistics in Hotel ballrooms hither and yon. With a few instances of tethering on slow moving advertising shoots.

I know a fair number of you would rather cobble your own machines together from scratch in your workshops but maybe that's not such a good idea for a portable computer. Also, I couldn't find any Windows laptops with M3 processors in them. I'm sure the Windows world will catch up in a couple of years. Maybe even quicker. But most of the charm of staying in your lane, OS-wise, is the profound lack of learning curve. And I'm all about taking advantage of that. 

I ordered the machine from one of my photo retailers. They had a better price than I would have gotten ordering direct from Apple. And they've always done a great job with delivering exactly what I've ordered. 

I can't wait to get the new laptop. My fear is that it will be so much faster than my iMac Pro that I'll get sucked into ordering a replacement for that machine as well. 

Sadly, JC, that Rolls Royce might have to wait for next quarter.