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New Mac Mini

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Re: New Mac Mini

#221
post #177
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.

I will go a step further and state that they appear to top out at 32GB which is asinine. These are not manilla envelope laptops, but semi-compact bricks where the form factor in other brands can commonly take 64GB or more. Its sad for me that my initial reaction to this is where previously a corp Windows laptop was for email and MS Office, and the Mac was for "actual work", now Mac's are headed to the "email and Offi…

I'm sure Apple would point you in the direction of a Mac Studio instead…

Re: New Mac Mini

#222
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.

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

Huh? I can easily have 40 - 50 tabs open.

I don't know what a discord is though.

Re: New Mac Mini

#223
post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the real problem. M2 is just using LPDDR5. The memory modules themselves don't appear to be anything special; it's just the memory interface bus that is different. Apple is charging multiple times the actual cost per GB, and they do the same thing for SSDs. The entry-level product is a decent value, but the upgrades are ridiculous.

Apple has always charged those kinds of prices for RAM and storage upgrades. They don't care that their devices aren't a value purchase. And as long as people buy their products and pay those kinds of prices for upgrades, they really have no reason to change.

At one time, the prices kind of almost made sense. Apple just hasn't really "remembered" to update their upgrade prices for the last 5 years or so, and now they really don't make sense. I expect Apple will adjust upgrade prices to reflect reality at some point, but they will certainly milk this "forgetfulness" for as long as they can.

Re: New Mac Mini

#224
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has never been the case for the Mac Mini.

Yes it is. The Mac mini M1 requires a displaylink driver to support a third display, which in all cases requires uninterrupted screen recording permissions to function. M1 laptops require the same to support more than ONE external display, regardless of whether or not the laptop is in clamshell mode.

Apologies, missed the third display qualifier and thought you were referencing dual displays.

Re: New Mac Mini

#225

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…

But this is an M series system, it's not running of off-the-shelf Kingston DDR4.

Then it's probably cheaper to add RAM.

Re: New Mac Mini

#226
post #212

I can't use my M1 mini with non-retina monitor because of how blurry it is. They stopped providing font anti-aliasing (default on Windows) few years ago in MacOS to make retina displays more relevant.

Does Apple even sell any product with a non-retina display any more?

I think the mac mini fits that category.

Re: New Mac Mini

#227
post #212

I can't use my M1 mini with non-retina monitor because of how blurry it is. They stopped providing font anti-aliasing (default on Windows) few years ago in MacOS to make retina displays more relevant.

Does Apple even sell any product with a non-retina display any more?

I think the last time was in 2020, when you could still get the non-retina MacBook Air?

That said, the Mac mini and Mac Studio are reasonable to consider here, since they're sold without displays and I'd be shocked if the majority of them aren't used with regular 4k displays. (We're less than a year out from Apple having a first-party retina monitor at a vaguely reasonable price-point, still.)

Re: New Mac Mini

#228
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.

Before buying my M2 MBA, I had the opportunity to try one out that had 8 GB of RAM and another that had 16 GB of RAM. I set up each as a restore of my main laptop, which included hundreds of browser tabs, slack, email, messages, calendar, notes, keynote open at all times. There was no noticeable difference whatsoever.

I ended up getting the 16 GB machine (my RAM usage was around 12 GB most times, and never north of 15 GB), but I would be fine recommending an 8 GB machine to my parents. Even from a future-proofing perspective, their use is so lightweight (some photo editing, web browsing, and email) that they would never need more than this.

I could see a case for offering the new version with 16 GB and up, but keeping around an old M1 version with just 8 GB. But I don't think it's necessarily in everyone's interest to pay more for that much RAM.

Re: New Mac Mini

#229
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, soldered.

Nope, in the same package as the CPU and GPU.

>>> Is the RAM and SSD upgradeable?

>> Nope, soldered.

> Nope, in the same package as the CPU and GPU.

The SSD certainly isn't in the same package as the CPU and GPU, so your comment is simply wrong, given the question that was actually asked. Whether the RAM is on-package or not is irrelevant to the question asked further upthread. It is soldered. Neither the RAM nor the SSD can realistically be upgraded after the fact. That's the answer to the question.

I don't understand the purpose of your comment.

Re: New Mac Mini

#230
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.

Once you start adding memory and ssd, it makes more sense to just get a mac studio. You basically get less for more with the mac mini. Once you max out the memory and CPU, the entry level mac studio is cheaper and comes with the M1 Max instead of the M2 Pro. A bit of a toss up which is faster but for 230 euro extra you jump to 32 GPU cores, which is not an option with the mini.
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