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Ideal / Acceptable specs on Macbook Pro running LR Classic 9?

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NJHeart2Heart

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So, I need to upgrade my OS on my late 2013 model Macbook Pro, and I'm going to upgrade from LR5 perpetual to LR Classic 9. I have 135K original photos (just under 4 TB space of photos, and a bit under 400Gb hard drive space for everything else). I do have the money to upgrade to the newest MacBPro IF I need to for performance (and I currently store my photos on external- I'd get 8 tb internal SSD if I bought new) but it will really COST me, especially if I opt for large internal storage.
Can anyone share experiences regarding computer specs and performance?
 
I also use a late 2013 MBP, although it's the 2.6ghz version. Running all the latest Photography plan apps, including Classic and Cloudy, and haven't really got any complaints. My personal catalog is only 20k images, but I also have a test catalog with 115k images, and there's really no difference between them. Whilst I have been feeling that it's getting a bit long in the tooth these days, and maybe I'll be looking to replace it later this year, but I have to say that I've never encountered any of the performance issues which are often reported.

Having said that, of course, your idea of "acceptable performance" may be completely different to mine.
 
Looking at the Adobe system requirements for Lightroom Classic, for optimal performance you’ll what to aim for the Recommended level, not the Minimum level. That’s definitely possible with a new MacBook Pro.

The base 16" MacBook Pro ($2399) should run Lightroom Classic well as is; adding a few hundred dollars worth of upgrades might keep it current for longer. But the one thing that is not necessary is to max it out; that would be overkill for Lightroom Classic. If portability is more important than top performance, you might consider the 13". (Don’t get a 15", because the 2019 16" fixes a lot of what people complained about with the 2016–2019 15".)

If you want more details…

CPU: The 6 cores in the 16" base model CPU are already approaching the limit of how many cores Lightroom Classic can use productively, so there isn’t much need to upgrade the CPU unless your budget is generous. If you are looking at the 13", get a 2.4GHz CPU, not a 1.7GHz.

RAM: Lightroom Classic performs best with 12GB RAM or more, and the Mac system needs a few GB too, so 16GB RAM is the practical starting point. If you want to edit or merge large images, or run other memory-hungry applications at the same time such as Photoshop, get 32GB RAM instead which is only possible on the 16". There is no need to get 64GB RAM for the 16" unless you have a good reason other than Lightroom Classic.

Storage: Mac internal storage is so expensive in part because they use very fast storage chips which are several times faster than an SSD in a 2013 MacBook Pro. Get an amount of internal storage you can reasonably afford (mine has 1TB), making sure to allow for plenty of free space for caches, previews, etc. Then consider putting your main photo storage on a compact but fast external SSD such as a Samsung T5. I'd like to move my 100,000+ photos from hard drives to a single 4TB external SSD, but external SSDs of that size aren’t common. So I’m thinking about buying a 4TB internal SSD like those by Samsung or SanDisk, and putting it into a very portable USB 3.1 Gen 2 enclosure for speedy access from a MacBook Pro. But for now I’ve decided to wait for the street price of a 4TB SSD to come down from the current $450.

Graphics: The discrete graphics in the base 16" MacBook Pro can provide Lightroom Classic with much better GPU acceleration than the integrated graphics in any of the 13" models. For just Lightroom Classic, the graphics in the base 16" model are fine, especially if you are not plugging in external displays. Some power users say the $200 upgrade to 8GB of graphics RAM is worth it. But remember that in Lightroom Classic, only the Develop module uses graphics acceleration…everything else depends on CPU performance.

I moved from a 2011 15" MacBook Pro (i7 CPU) to a 2018 13" MacBook Pro (i5 CPU). On paper, the new one looks worse: Lower CPU level, no discrete graphics, same amount of RAM (16GB). But CPUs advanced so much in 7 years that the 2018 13" soundly beats the 2011 15" in Lightroom Classic performance, with better battery life, and a lot less fan noise.
 
Wow.. that's a very thorough and helpful review/opinion! Thanks for taking the time to post that much detail. I'm thinking it can't hurt to try the OS upgrade and the upgrade to LR9 Classic with my current unit, so I think I'm going to try that and see how things go. I tend to think to do one thing than overload myself with the possible options.. which just stops me from taking any useful action!
 
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