Note. The power button is on the bottom now.
Does this mess up datacenters using Mac Minis in racks now?
New Mac Mini with M4
211–220 of 789 posts
Re: New Mac Mini with M4
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honestly, I wish they'd go with an external USB-C power brick. The only reason they might not is that they want to keep everything across the entire line, and the highest end Mac Studio probably needs more power than USB can offer.
Why would you prefer an external power brick? The internal power supplies in Mac minis have been extremely reliable and the fewer cables the better, in my opinion.
Plus you would lose a USB-C port to power
Re: New Mac Mini with M4
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unified memory too. It's your GPU and your ram.
This is huge for AI / ML at least for inference. Apple chips are among the most efficient out there for that sort of thing, the only downside is the lack of cuda
Lack of Cuda is not a problem if for most ML frameworks. For example, in PyTorch you just tell it to use the “mps” (metal performance shaders) device instead of the “cuda” device.
Re: New Mac Mini with M4
#214> 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…
I don't know why you're getting downvoted. I think it's a fair question.
The fine print says:
> Carbon reductions are calculated against a business-as-usual baseline scenario: No use of clean electricity for manufacturing or product use, beyond what is already available on the latest modeled grid; Apple’s carbon intensity of key materials as of 2015; and Apple’s average mix of transportation modes by product line across three years. Learn more at apple.com/2030.
https://www.apple.com/2030 which mostly seems to focus on the goal of being 100% carbon neutral in energy use.
It sounds like they're generally only looking at carbon emissions from _energy_ use in transportation and manufacturing, and they're probably using some sort of carbon offset to achieve that "net zero". They're probably also not counting carbon emissions from building construction and they're probably not counting carbon emissions from meat served at corporate events, etc.
Update: I found a breakdown for the Mac Mini (linked from the apple.com/2030 page).
https://www.apple.com/environment/pdf/products/desktops/Mac_...
> 100 percent of manufacturing electricity is sourced from renewable energy
> For Mac mini, we are matching 100 percent of expected customer product use electricity with electricity from low-carbon sources.
They are counting transportation in the "100 percent", but are offsetting it with carbon credits.
Re: New Mac Mini with M4
#21516GB base RAM across the board, following the iMac. AI is certainly good for pushing up the baseline RAM that manufacturers can get away with shipping if nothing else.
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…
> This basically proves that Apple shot themselves in the foot for AI on mobile by artificially restricting RAM for so long!
What they shot was us. My 14 Pro won’t do AI despite having a better NPU than an M1, all because Apple chose - intentionally - to ship it with too little RAM. They knew AI was coming and they did this anyway.
Although having played with it on my MBP it’s clear I’m not missing much. But still.
Re: New Mac Mini with M4
#216Positives: + form factor + ARM/Apple silicon/SoC Negatives: - Apple tax on memory, storage - non-upgradeable - Apple tax on 1GbE to 10 GbE ($100 surcharge lol) - maxes out at 64G of configurable memory w/ m4 pro Got to give it to Apple. The traunches between different configuration levels is “small” enough to convince buyers to enter the next level. It’s like “hey, you are already at $4000 for m4 pro with 64g. Just s…
Storage is usually a non issue on the desktop macs. Just hang a TB disk off the back of it. I've got a 2TB disk hanging off my 512Gb unit.
Just ordered the base M4 Pro so will just plug that into it and carry on.
Re: New Mac Mini with M4
#217Note. The power button is on the bottom now. Does this mess up datacenters using Mac Minis in racks now?
Well, the whole form factor is different, so you’d need to redesign your Mac Mini racks anyways.
Re: New Mac Mini with M4
#218>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...
While that sounds pretty funny I know people who actually burn the CPU on Excel so that might be significant. Granted they should not be using Excel for what they do but you know, it's easier than learning something new!
Re: New Mac Mini with M4
#219As 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.
Are we going to hear this for every product release ad nauseam forever? Not sure about you but at least for myself, I always trade-in/recycle my products with Apple which I hope closes the loop as close as possible.
Yes because it's so ridiculous to call it a professional machine and not let people put in their own RAM and instead charge $200+ for 8GB
Re: New Mac Mini with M4
#22016GB base RAM across the board, following the iMac. AI is certainly good for pushing up the baseline RAM that manufacturers can get away with shipping if nothing else.
Unified memory too. It's your GPU and your ram.
Yeah the same tech pcs were using for 14+ years