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New Mac Mini with M4

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Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#91
post #42
post #18

As usual, no upgradability. There's evidence that it's possible with SSDs with no loss of performance. Probably the same would apply to memory, maybe with replaceable memory chips and a simple switch. More future landfill material.

On a desktop computer it's not as bothersome to have an NVME plugged in to one of the thunderbolt ports.

Thunderbolt is significantly slower than gen 4 NVME. In the PC world, gen 3 speeds are considered an extreme budget-tier option these days.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#93
> Mac mini is Apple’s first carbon neutral Mac

Hats off! I didn't expect the Mac to be next in line for the carbon neutral goals. But they did it!

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#94

Love to see that it still starts at $599. My M2 Mac Mini that I got for $499 is my favorite gaming computer I've had in a long time. Runs many games like WoW, Dota, League of Legends, etc great. Anything that it doesn't run due to MacOS I use GeForce Now over ethernet. And this was with 8gb unified memory, now with 16gb it'll be even better value. Very excited to see how the GPU has improved in the M4, especially the…

Are these games available on OSX? Or are you somehow booting Windows? (Apologies if this seems like a stupid question. I've not played games for a very long time, mainly because most stuff doesn't seem to be available on Macs).

It's not a dumb question. I actually used to use an iMac 27" with an Nvidia 680 that I would boot into Bootcamp / Windows for my primary gaming computer. I covered it in "built, not bought" stickers at Quakecon one year.

You can't do x86/x64 Windows on M-series Macs without emulation and it is generally a poor experience. There's a few things like Crossover, Parallels, etc that can help you run Windows games.

But I have found that most of the games I care about are either Mac native or on GeForce Now at this point. There's a surprisingly large game catalog on Mac now.

So the short answer is that some of them run on some sort of Windows compatibility layer, some are Mac native, some I stream. But most of my favorites run native on Mac.

To be honest, there are so many games to play these days that I don't mind missing out on a few titles. Valorant is a good example of a game that I can't play on Mac, GFN, or Crossover. But it's OK, I still have CS2.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#95
post #25

Putting the audio jack on the front is a strange design choice to me if you plan on hooking it up to wired speakers all the time. Did they run out of space to keep it in the back?

Many (I think most) monitors have an audio output port. I think that's good enough for most people. Audiophiles use external DACs anyway.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#96
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't steamdeck a better option for this use case?

I have a Steam Deck, Asus ROG Ally, M2 Mac Mini, M1 Pro laptop, M2 Max laptop (work). All of this runs on either an LG C3 42" OLED or a 34" 1440p ultrawide. Linux GeForce Now can only do 720p or 1080p, can't remember which. Also, it's just kind of laggy in desktop mode. The Macs run so much smoother. My current "main" desktop is actually my Asus ROG Ally. I use one USB C hub that is capable of 4k120hz, and I can move…

Get rid of Windows on it! Digital Foundry put out a great video on this exact process the other day, weighing the pros and cons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwWRCrGoXV0

Neither MacOS nor Windows are very good console OSes - you're really better off using Linux where anticheat isn't concerned. Even on the Ally.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#97

>Delivers up to 13.3x faster gaming performance in World of Warcraft: The War Within This is such an Apple stat especially for a game. What does "faster gaming performance" even mean? Every zone and city hub loads 13.3x faster so loading screens are quicker? They don't say anything about FPS and no one would use "faster" as a synonym for higher FPS. An MMO is really not the best benchmark tbh Edit: notes has the comp…

You didn't see the "1.7x more Excel productivity" chart from yesterday's new iMac?

https://youtu.be/eaB7nCdId0Y?t=364

https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/28/24281965/honestly-this-i...

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#98
post #53
post #18

As usual, no upgradability. There's evidence that it's possible with SSDs with no loss of performance. Probably the same would apply to memory, maybe with replaceable memory chips and a simple switch. More future landfill material.

> Probably the same would apply to memory, maybe with replaceable memory chips The memory chip is embedded in the SoC, how do you envision a way to do replacement of memory chips with this design/architecture?

I am not talking about DIMMs. Talking about the chips themselves. I am pretty sure they don't make different APUs for different memory sizes, it's just a fuse or something like that. If CPUs can use sockets, so do memory chips.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#99

> Mac mini is made with over 50 percent recycled content overall, including 100 percent recycled aluminum in the enclosure, 100 percent recycled gold plating in all Apple-designed printed circuit boards, and 100 percent recycled rare earth elements in all magnets. The electricity used to manufacture Mac mini is sourced from 100 percent renewable electricity. And, to address 100 percent of the electricity customers us…

What does it mean for the gold to be "recycled"? I get that the aluminum probably came for a pile of cans, but does this mean that the gold definitely came from a pile of electronics? Or could it be that they melted down a few old $20 coins from the US? It's not like a lot of gold ends up in landfills.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#100
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Base model is 256GB configurable up to 2TB, all others start at 512GB, the M4 Pro model can go up to 8TB

It's $800 to go up to 2TB from the 256GB model which is just criminally over priced. I can get double that for half the price with a Gen 4 NVMe drive. Weirdly the 8TB drive on the Pro is at least in line with the top of the line 8TB NVMe SSDs you can buy though there are cheaper options at about $600 vs the $1200 Apple is charging.

That's regular Apple pricing for you. Great deals on the baseline models, but insane margins on the upgrades that make them usable. And of course the ability to upgrade the devices yourself has been phased out in the name of performance and power efficiency
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