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New Mac Mini with M4

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Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#201

Post by crest »

jsheard wrote: post #111
avidphantasm wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Until someone brings out little two or four drive NVMe enclosures that fits exactly under the Mac Mini with a Thunderbolt bridge/plug that doesn't snag cables, because we all know Apple can't resist gauging buyers by refusing to include two easy to access M.2 bays on the underside.

I can't imagine anyone but Apple shareholders drooling at the taught of overpriced soldered memory would prefer a smaller Mac Mini case if ~0.5" more height would get you M.2 bays for storage.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#202

Post by 999900000999 »

kstrauser wrote: post #141
999900000999 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think these even boot once the SSDs die. Apple knows how to make money, I can buy a quality 4TB Nvme for 300$( you can definitely go lower if you want to risk it ). The upgrade to 4TB on the M4 Pro Mini is 1200$(it's not supported on the base model) , on top of 1400$ for the actual computer. It I had to guess, most of Apple's margin is on users riding the pricing ladder up into the stratosphere. I had an expe…

> I don't think these even boot once the SSDs die. All Macs that I know of let you configure the boot drive. I had an older Mac Mini with a spinning HDD. I added an external SSD, set that up as the boot drive, and never touched the slow drive again. I'd be extremely surprised if you couldn't do the same with this.

I can't find an official source, but from what I've heard the newer Macs need to boot from the internal SSD. https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/s/CZOHuFQcy4

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#203

Post by spiderfarmer »

rsync wrote: post #118

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?

Ergonomically one 6k display beats 4 displays by a mile.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#205

Post by ErneX »

terramex wrote: post #19

How good are modern external hard drives? Is it worth paying for more internal SSD storage or is it more reasonable to get high quality USB one?

I have an NVME SSD on a TB enclosure and I get 2600MB/s read speeds on my Mac Studio.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#206

Post by wtallis »

wongarsu wrote: post #100
rtkwe wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I just checked some Dell prices: $730 to upgrade an XPS desktop from 512GB to 4TB (Apple charges $1200), or $508 to upgrade an Optiplex tower from 256GB to 2TB QLC, or $654 to upgrade it from 256GB to 2TB TLC (Apple charges $800). Scalping on upgrade pricing is something all the PC OEMs do.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#207

Post by talldayo »

1propionyl wrote: post #182
diggan wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> For professionals who use computers for work, Linux is really the only option that doesn't eventually get in your way. I really hope you're not expecting anyone to take you seriously with this. On principle I get what you're saying but in practice no one who works as a professional in any field has the time (or expertise) to be worried about configuring their operating system. As a Linux evangelist who begrudgingly…

I'll take him seriously on it. MacOS and Windows are terrible for professional purposes, for a number of reasons:

1. Requires Windows Pro or Apple Developer license to unlock full featureset

2. Cannot reasonably disable targeted advertising or ad data collection from either OS

3. Neither come with package managers and do not respect third-party packaging either

4. Can be "managed" insofar as your buggy CPM software allows, often glitched by the OS itself

5. The experience is always getting worse since Apple and Microsoft share a united front of making people spend as much money on useless shit as humanly possible

Now, that's not to say nobody should use these OSes - certainly people are locked into them for some purposes. But as a programmer it's genuinely hard for me to be productive on these OSes because I end up fighting them just for everyday, non-programming purposes.

I think it's entirely possible that MacOS and Windows can be inherently terrible experiences while also being mandatory for certain workflows.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#208

Post by yunohn »

mostlysimilar wrote: post #195
yunohn wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learned yesterday that all M-chip Macs with enough RAM are getting Apple Intelligence? This basically proves that Apple shot themselves in the foot for AI on mobile by artificially restricting RAM for so long! Heck, even the Neural Engine has turned out to be basically useless despite all their grandstanding. So alas, their prior greed has resulted in their most popular consumer iDevices being the least AI compatib…

I think it's great that Apple was able to ship devices that millions of people made happy use of without needing to put additional hardware resources into them. That's efficiency, not greed.

I own almost every Apple ecosystem device, but I definitely wouldn’t call their mobile device RAM capacity as sufficient. It physically hurts me when my iPad Pro M2 and iPhone 16 Pro Max (earlier 15,14,13,12,11) start to swap out live apps - sure some apps retain state, but the majority still don’t. Even Safari randomly reloads tabs for me, while I’m just researching purchases across <10 live tabs.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#210

Post by jsheard »

wtallis wrote: post #206
wongarsu wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I just checked some Dell prices: $730 to upgrade an XPS desktop from 512GB to 4TB (Apple charges $1200), or $508 to upgrade an Optiplex tower from 256GB to 2TB QLC, or $654 to upgrade it from 256GB to 2TB TLC (Apple charges $800). Scalping on upgrade pricing is something all the PC OEMs do.

Yeah, but the 5 minute job of installing a cheap retail SSD in that Dell machine yourself is still an option which Apple has removed from all but the Mac Pro, which offsets any SSD savings by being $3000 more expensive than an equivalently specced Mac Studio.
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