Can MacBook Pro and Mac mini play well together?

I have a MacBook Pro 15" retina with Yosemite that I wander around the house with. It has photo apps, games, browsers, all sorts of things. It also has acquired some quirks. I want to buy a Mac mini specifically for Lightroom and Photoshop—nothing else to mess up my work. Can I run the occasional app from my Macbook Pro wirelessly on the mini as needed?

cascadesjohn said:

Can I run the occasional app from my Macbook Pro wirelessly on the mini as needed?

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G'day and welcome to the forums.

Short answer, No. . . .
Long answer, is you can't wirelessly run App, that is on one Mac to another. You can however, install said App on the Mac Mini, and using iCloud Drive, have all your Projects/PSD's/Documents/Photos in the Cloud, OR use something like Dropbox to have the Images, or whatever your working on, waiting for you, on either Mac.
Adobe lets you place Photoshop, and LR on at least 2 Macs, as I have Creative Cloud on both my Macs, and use DBox.

EDIT: If you are on Creative Cloud, you can also use the Assets option, to have your work on both Macs, and then you can also use all of Adobes Apps on a iPhone and/or iPad.

Hey TM can't he do what he wants using screen sharing between the two machines? I used to do that between my MB Pro and Mac Pro. Haven't tried it in a while but I think it still works as long as the machines are on the same network and screen sharing is enabled.

3 Free Ways to Remotely Connect to Your Mac’s Desktop

Yea Sly you are correct, but then I ask myself, why ?? With such labour intensive Apps, why would you want to remote connect them, and deal with lag, and what not, when you could just install them on the Mac Mini. . . I suppose the OP has their reasons.

I agree there with one caveat. If the taks is something that can run unattended once started the lag really won't be an issue. When you "pop in" from the other machine to check things there may be a lag otherwise it should be OK.

We have now Handoff as well which is nice. If I leave something in Safari on my Mini it will be waiting for me on my Macbook Pro. Your best bet is to use the Cloud or a home server to move around your projects, documents, etc. Install a copy of major applications you use on each computer rather than Stream. Even low end Macs are fairly sophisticated devices capable of running complex apps. Leave that remote connection nonsense to bottom feeders like chromebooks.

Algus said:

We have now Handoff as well which is nice. If I leave something in Safari on my Mini it will be waiting for me on my Macbook Pro. Your best bet is to use the Cloud or a home server to move around your projects, documents, etc. Install a copy of major applications you use on each computer rather than Stream. Even low end Macs are fairly sophisticated devices capable of running complex apps. Leave that remote connection nonsense to bottom feeders like chromebooks.

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The downside to this method is that having some apps on more than one machine at a time will require a second license which can get expensive.

When I was using the screen sharing option I was starting an operation and letting it run until it was finished. All I was really doing is starting the operation and checking occasionally to make sure things were progressing OK. In that case the lag really wasn't a big issue to me.

Thanks all. I think it sounds like a good idea to just use the two computers separately. I believe Adobe lets me use my Creative Cloud subscription on two personal Macs as long as I don't use them simultaneously (not a chance of that - - I'm a senior citizen!)