[al_borland]

My home Mac mini (2018 Core i5) running 12.4 runs dramatically faster than my work MacBook Pro (2019 Core i9) running 12.4-ish. It's malice, but not by Apple. It's from my company installing so many agents that typing becomes problematic. Some days it is down right unusable and I have to reboot every 2 days just to try and make it better.

[sneak]

I refuse to install software on macOS that requires root. (With the current single exception of the Creative Cloud, for which I am actively seeking replacements.)

[al_borland]

Unfortunately I don't have a choice. They silently push all kinds of things to the system. Every week my fans spin up and I look at the Activity Monitor to find a new agent using all my CPU.

[eastbound]

Have you found? Affinity Photo and Designer? Krita?

[andrewjl]

Have you tried comparing your i5 Mac mini to an M1 Mac?

[al_borland]

I have a MBP with M1 Pro, but that doesn't have any work junk on it so I haven't had the need to do any real comparisons. The only thing I could really do is check my FPS on Minecraft, but I don't play it enough or obsess about FPS enough to bother.

[edgyquant]

My M1 Mac Mini keeps up (and beats) my 2018 RYZEN with a dedicated graphics card.