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New Mac Mini

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Re: New Mac Mini

#161

Post by isolli »

coder543 wrote: post #139
isolli wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're answering my question here with a no? "Is it realistic to have an external drive for photos that integrates seamlessly with the native Photos app?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34413791

Apple disagrees, and I would take Apple's advice over some random anecdote. There is no reason that an external photo library would be inherently worse than an internal one. If that person actually did use a hard drive (not an NVMe SSD), then yes, the experience would probably be janky. I don't think modern Apple Photos is built to handle slow spinning rust very well. If someone uses an external SSD with equal or gre…

Thanks for the tips!

Re: New Mac Mini

#163

Post by [deleted] »

cmatthias wrote: post #33
wilsonnb3 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another anecdote: I have a M1 air and an m1 iMac both with 8GB and have never run into a problem. I think 8gb is still the sweet spot for casual users.

Can you define "sweet spot" in this case? Usually I see that term used when the thing being considered is a pricey upgrade, and you need to strike a compromise between price and performance. In this case, we're talking about an extra 8GB of memory, which would add perhaps $10 in cost to the bill of materials for the machine (or maybe less in sufficient volume). Given that Apple is also overcharging by at least 3x cur…

[deleted]

Re: New Mac Mini

#164

Post by ceejayoz »

gymbeaux wrote: post #148
jmull wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people use 8GB/256GB happily. It's like a faith amongst some people that this is bad, but the idea seems to lack evidence.

"many people" is as anecdotal as it gets. I don't know anybody who A) only needs 8GB/256GB and B) isn't better-served by an iPad or something similar. I think if anyone from Apple Marketing is reading this thread, they are laughing at how people are so instinctively buying into the entry-level Mac mini. The biggest value-add the $599 Mac mini has is that Apple can say Macs start at "just $599". There will always be s…

> "many people" is as anecdotal as it gets. I don't know anybody who...

lol

Re: New Mac Mini

#165

Post by gwt4life »

friedman23 wrote: post #141
Nextgrid wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More than a dozen chrome tabs and a few discord servers has been enough to crash/significantly slow down my m1 Mac mini On the other hand, maybe there should be pushback against shitty inefficient software? I remember a decade ago being able to have a dozen browser tabs and instant messaging clients on 4GB of RAM just fine, and neither the web nor instant messaging experience has changed significantly enough to war…

Get ready for AR apps written in react native. The reason we have shitty inefficient software is because Apple, Google, and Microsoft haven't standardized on a performant cross platform framework other than the browser. Don't blame people writing software for not wanting to waste their lives translating the same logic to 3 different platforms and then maintaining 3x the code for the rest of their lives.

THIS

Re: New Mac Mini

#166

Post by cmatthias »

jeffbee wrote: post #152
cmatthias wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the alternative is to add literally a few dollars to the bill of materials for the machine, double the memory, and give everyone a better experience. This also means the machine will last longer and likely not end up in a landfill as soon. $200 to add 8GB of memory is _insane_, and framing it as "consumer choice" is bad when consumers are being gouged so badly. It's literally at least a 20x markup on the whol…

You seem to believe that doubling (or quadrupling as suggested elsewhere) the installed DRAM has no energy cost. Adding several watts of mandatory 24x7 idle power consumption to a machine mostly celebrated for its energy efficiency seems odd.

Citation needed for your claims, please.

My understanding is that at least for the lower-end machines, there are no additional DRAM chips in the 8GB vs. 16GB machines, they just use chips that have double the density, so the power consumption remains the same.

Even if I'm completely wrong on the above, I seriously doubt that adding 8GB of memory to a machine that consumes 7W at idle in total[1] would add "several watts of mandatory 24x7 idle power consumption."

[1] https://9to5mac.com/2021/01/28/m1-mac-mini-power-consumption...

Re: New Mac Mini

#167

Post by mathverse »

wilsonnb3 wrote: post #12
crypt1d wrote: post #7

disappointed to see them still selling these with 8gb RAM. More than a dozen chrome tabs and a few discord servers has been enough to crash/significantly slow down my m1 mac mini edit: the ad says up to 24/32GB of ram, but seems like 8gb/16gb models are the only ones available for pre-order at the moment.

Another anecdote: I have a M1 air and an m1 iMac both with 8GB and have never run into a problem. I think 8gb is still the sweet spot for casual users.

I doubt that. Almost every app out there uses at least 200MB of memory. I would say 16GB is a sweet for casual users. 32 a minimum for devs/tech people and 64 an optimum if you happen to be using a lot of k8s/docker stuff.

Re: New Mac Mini

#168

Post by jimsmart »

peanuty1 wrote: post #60
arprocter wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oof - once you bump the base model to 16GB RAM and 1TB of storage it doubles the price Apparently Mini RAM hasn't been user upgradable since the 2014 model https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205041#2020

[flagged]

I'm pretty sure your (repeated) comment here goes against HN guidelines — arguably: it's a shallow dismissal, it's snarky, it doesn't provoke thoughtful conversation, it supports an idealogical battle, etc., etc.

Please don't do that! (This is not Reddit)

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: New Mac Mini

#169

Post by bfgoodrich »

apetresc wrote: post #140
neighbor1 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> dozen chrome tabs and a few discord servers This is absolutely not normal...

Huh? It's completely normal (on the low range of normal, I'd wager), especially in the market of people buying desktop computers in 2023.

[dead]
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