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New Mac Mini with M4

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Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#161

Post by Etheryte »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #153
alberth wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just RAM. It's Unified RAM. So that memory is also used for the GPU & Neural Cores (which is for Apple Intelligence). This is actually why companies moved away from the unified memory arch decades ago. It'll be interesting to see as AI continues to advance, if Apple is forced to depart from their unified memory architecture due to growing GPU memory needs.

At this point it feels like (correct me if I'm am wrong) that Apple's AI is often performed "in the cloud". I suspect though that if Apple moves increasingly to on-device AI (as I suspect they will — if not for bandwidth and backend resource reasons then for privacy ones) Apple's Silicon will have adopted more and more specialized AI components — perhaps diminishing the need for use of off-board memory.

Last I checked, Apple was pretty much the only major player who does everything that they can do on device on device, that is their whole ethos behind it, no?

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#162

Post by jamesfmilne »

drexlspivey wrote: post #131

I want to buy one of these and run it headless as a plex server and a few other things. It can handle multiple transcodes without sweat. Is there a solution to log in to the OS GUI over wifi (like from an ipad or mac) if I need to use it as a computer? It won’t have a screen attached.

Yes, Apple Screen Sharing is built in. It's based on VNC. You can definitely run it from another Mac, although it's not a great experience with other VNC clients on Windows or Linux. They appear to have their own encoding via VNC, based on H264 or HEVC, and falling back to the encodings supported by other clients is pretty laggy.

NoMachine runs alright on macOS.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#163

Post by philistine »

diggan wrote: post #115
talldayo wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sa…

Thank you so much for telling me that I am actually not managing my non-profit on my Mac. I was convinced I was working every day on a Mac in a business setting, but I guess I was mistaken.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#164

Post by Y-bar »

donatj wrote: post #121

It would appear the air intake is on the bottom like the Mac Studio. As someone who lives in a very dusty 150 year old house, My Mac Studio does not appreciate the air input being directly on the desk. It collects all the dust that lands anywhere near it. I have a large levoit air filter running 24/7 in my office and still end up with this[1] regularly. I wish I could at least reasonably take the thing apart to clean…

That's a lot of dust.

However, I don't see how this leads to more dust going into the computer compared to e.g. front-facing ventilation.

The dust landing on the desk next to the computer will slowly drift down onto the surface, passing right in front of any opening and being sucked into the device anyway.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#166

Post by alberth »

donatj wrote: post #121

It would appear the air intake is on the bottom like the Mac Studio. As someone who lives in a very dusty 150 year old house, My Mac Studio does not appreciate the air input being directly on the desk. It collects all the dust that lands anywhere near it. I have a large levoit air filter running 24/7 in my office and still end up with this[1] regularly. I wish I could at least reasonably take the thing apart to clean…

If your Mac Studio is breathing that in, so are you.

Please take care of your health. Just saying as a fellow HN friend.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#167

Post by kissiel »

Longlius wrote: post #91
kissiel wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

TB5 is 15GB/s. So gen 5 equivalent. I'm not saying there are tb5 enclosures in the wilds, but it's a matter of time. Also if you're bottlenecked by buffered, linear reads and writes so much that there is a difference between 3GB/s and 7GB/s then I envy you. Most of what I choke my desktops and servers with is random IO that wouldn't saturate gen2 :)

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#168

Post by JKCalhoun »

leetharris wrote: post #24

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…

My Intel Mac Mini is still my "tv content" machine. Since it has no problem driving my Samsung OLED TV and keeping up with typical video framerates I suspect I will be holding on to it for many more years to come.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#169

Post by nickv »

drexlspivey wrote: post #131

I want to buy one of these and run it headless as a plex server and a few other things. It can handle multiple transcodes without sweat. Is there a solution to log in to the OS GUI over wifi (like from an ipad or mac) if I need to use it as a computer? It won’t have a screen attached.

I do this exact thing with my M2 Mac Mini (plex, a few home lab things with no display).

I use Chrome Remote Desktop to get into the box remotely. If the box does end up losing power/restarting, I also make sure to have SSH on so I can ssh into the box and start remote desktop before being logged in (Google provides instructions).

I found this to be the path of least resistance to getting it remotely accessible.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#170

Post by shantara »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #105
wpwpwpw wrote: 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.

Wow, are you still using your original 386DX board, with minor upgrades along the way? /s I actually think Apple's way of managing upgrades isn't as harsh as many people think. The first thing to get to sustainability is to use less. If you don't need the hardware to make hardware easily upgradable, you simplify the hardware and use less of it. This is one of the reasons Apple do it. Secondly, they're using a lot of…

I think you’re giving PCs way too little credit compared to Macs. AM4 motherboards from 2017 can have 5800x3d or 5700x3d CPU installed, the former of which is still #2 in the majority of gaming benchmarks beating anything Intel can offer for a fraction of price and power consumed.
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