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New Mac Mini with M4

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Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#111

Post by jsheard »

avidphantasm wrote: post #57
mentos wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No mention of the SSD size that was the reason I returned my Mac mini 256Gb last year was just a pain juggling files

It's a desktop. Use an external disk. Much cheaper.

It kind of undermines the sleek form factor if you need to have a clunky NVMe enclosure dangling off the back though. Even with this tiny new design I bet they could fit a hatch on the bottom with space for a 2230 M.2 drive, but they don't want to because that would let you upgrade to 2TB of fast internal storage for $200 instead of $800.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#112

Post by mikepurvis »

enaaem wrote: post #95
allenu wrote: 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.

There are a lot of options out there now for USB PC speakers that have the DAC/amp built in, eg these are $50 and natively USB-C: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B08F57GSJ7

But yeah, anyone "serious" would go discrete for all that stuff regardless. I guess this also lets Apple sidestep a bunch of fuss around non-stereo use-cases, for people who want quadraphonic or 5.1 at their workstation.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#113

Post by pdimitar »

I've been pondering giving up on Macs for a while and this blind and rather stupid deferral to "AI" is going to accelerate the process.

Almost nobody asked for this. I personally would have wanted one program to not stop starting with a cryptic message after upgrading to macOS 15.1 earlier today. But hey, crazies like me who want a decently working software are apparently not welcome in the customer base.

The only reason I am still staying with Apple for my desktop needs is that I paid $8000 for my iMac Pro and that was just some short 5 years ago.

But as time goes by, buying 1-2 specialized text rendering displays and going full Linux looks more and more attractive, especially with Fedora and Manjaro now offering the "immutable" distros i.e. you can frak around with your environment but then revert everything if you don't like it (or the contrary, do a DB commit of sorts i.e. have your changes persist after reboot) -- those features make backing up entire workstations even easier.

Sprinkle an external ZFS server and the ability to just zfs send/recv entire disks with encryption and compression and I think just some 2-3 short years into the future I'll be laughing at Macs.

Apple keeps dropping the ball. iOS 18 lost all my tab groups in Safari as well. And Photos randomly chooses not to show pictures in the big Photos feed; you have to know which day they were saved to be able to see them.

/facepalm

Apple is now in decline, it can't be more obvious by these fairly outrageous bugs + the fact that they are now regular followers like everyone else and are jumping on the "AI" bandwagon.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#114

Post by hollerith »

animal_spirits wrote: post #37

> 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…

The Apple employees who worked on this product cause a lot of CO2 emissions just living their lives. I'm guessing Apple didn't try to offset that CO2.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#115

Post by diggan »

talldayo wrote: post #96
leetharris wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Neither MacOS nor Windows are very good console OSes

They're great OSes for consumers who don't really work on their computers, and just want something that caters to the lowest common denominator.

For professionals who use computers for work, Linux is really the only option that doesn't eventually get in your way. You can set it up and leave it as-is, with only security updates, and everything keeps working the same way, basically forever.

I've tried to set up an experience like that on both macOS and Windows, but eventually, the company will find a way of forcing an update on your, intentionally or not.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#116

Post by jeffbee »

madeofpalk wrote: post #97
unpopularopp wrote: post #81

>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...

It's funny that they advertise this because a Mac comes with a spreadsheet application that is hard to use and unbelievably slow. If they sent some engineers to work on that program they could get a 10x-100x improvement on the software side instead of grinding it out on the hardware side.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#118

Post by rsync »

How many 4k screens can be attached?

The published specs call out 3 6k screens but is that a display bandwidth limit or an arbitrary “screen” limit ?

I’d like to drive four displays and 4k is sufficient for me … possible? Perhaps with Number four on the HDMI port?

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#119

Post by detourdog »

etempleton wrote: post #102

What a great little computer at a very reasonable price. A few interesting things with this announcement: 1. Interesting that they did not have this as part of an event. I think this either means they do not have much else to share around the Mac right now or the opposite, there just won't be room to talk about the iMac or Mac Mini. I am leaning towards the former as a I suspect the other computers in their lineup wi…

This whole week will see a Mac annoucement according to what this Greg Joswiak said last week.

https://www.apple.com/leadership/greg-joswiak/

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#120

Post by aseipp »

wpwpwpw wrote: post #85
buildbot wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does not apply to memory. It’s much harder to maintain signal integrity. 200+ 4GHz signals.

If a CPU is socket-able, so should memory chips be.

And many desktops do that today, but like everything it has tradeoffs, such as peak bandwidth and power usage. DDR sockets inherently make this sacrifice, integrated designs will always have wider buses, higher bandwidth, etc. That's also why you don't get sockets for your GPU memory, either. It's a design tradeoff.
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