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New Mac Mini

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Re: New Mac Mini

#271

Post by coder543 »

cmatthias wrote: post #263
coder543 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I don't think modern Apple Photos is built to handle slow spinning rust very well. Apple's software is garbage so I'm sure you're correct, but modern hard drives can do several hundred MB/s of throughput. How is that not fast enough for a freaking photo application? For Apple not to test/support this use case is inexcusable.

Modern external hard drives are more like 120MB/s, not "several hundred" MB/s, last I checked, but that's only for sequential access.

Scanning and accessing a photo library is extremely random I/O and has nothing to do with the peak sequential throughput. Hard drives are awful at random I/O.

If Apple kept proper indexes and thumbnails somewhere (especially somewhere fast, like on an SSD), maybe it would be fine, but I have heard some bad things about Apple Photos on hard drives, so they might not be doing things optimally.

Re: New Mac Mini

#274

Post by hgs3 »

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.

> 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.

If you decouple your UI from your business logic, then you only have to re-write the UI. If you must use a web-based UI, then consider using the platforms native browser control rather than bundling electron.

Re: New Mac Mini

#275

Post by nicoburns »

ziml77 wrote: post #218
coder543 wrote: post #55

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.

They have, but it used to be the case that these components were user-upgradeable.

Re: New Mac Mini

#276

Post by astrange »

jd3 wrote: post #261
speedgoose wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is strange, my M1 MacBook does have anti-aliasing. Not as good as the windows cleartype one though.

macOS still provides anti-aliasing — I assume the OP is referring to the removal of subpixel rendering/antialiasing. See "The subtle death of subpixel antialiasing" https://arstechnica.com/features/2018/09/macos-10-14-mojave-... https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Scree... The one thing I appreciate about windows is that you can completely disable cleartype/anti-aliasing, if you'd like. As far as I…

It's difficult and memory-expensive to do subpixel font rendering in the presence of things like transparency/colors/blur effects - eventually you'd end up in a situation where it's just missing half the time anyway.

Re: New Mac Mini

#277

Post by trynewideas »

coder543 wrote: post #256
trynewideas wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's kind of a problem, too. A top-spec M2 Pro Mini on CPU and RAM (12-core CPU, 19-core GPU, 32GB unified RAM) is $1,999. A bottom-spec M1 Max Mac Studio (10-core CPU, 24-core GPU, 32GB unified RAM) is $1,999. Since the low-end Studio has 10Gb Ethernet and four Thunderbolt ports at the same price, and neither has upgradable RAM, there's no reason to buy the high-end Mini.

> and four Thunderbolt ports The Mac mini with M2 Pro includes four Thunderbolt ports too, just FYI.

I know — the only thing a new M2 mini might've theoretically brought is going all-in on Thunderbolt ports vs. the Studio, even at the cost of the HDMI or built-in LAN ports, but it doesn't do that either.

Same RAM, same performance, slower built-in LAN, less storage expansion, same price. Is the smaller form factor really worth it? If not, why would anyone who'd consider that spec not get a Studio (or wait for an M2 Studio bump to get a M2 Max)?

Re: New Mac Mini

#278

Post by astrange »

loufe wrote: post #239
horsawlarway wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Way fucking cheaper than 40. Closer to $16 unless you really need DDR5. Even then, it's still around $29/8gb if buying 32gb or more. The issue is that Apple is integrating the RAM in the SoC. Personally, I'm not really a fan of "smart-phonification" of my desktop computers. I get that the mini is in a bit of a weird spot, since it's still got fairly challenging size constraints, but still... not my cup of tea.

The integration into the SoC is partially responsible for the amazing performance. The extra travelling distance for a click-in ram stick adds up, in terms of latency, quickly

Memory latency on the M1/M2 is no better than other systems. Other things are better, but not that.

Re: New Mac Mini

#279

Post by rayiner »

Varloom wrote: post #182

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.

They didn’t stop antialiasing. They stopped sub-pixel antialiasing and snapping stems to the pixel grid, which is less relevant on retina displays, to avoid artifacts when text is translated and animated.

Re: New Mac Mini

#280

Post by friedman23 »

scarface74 wrote: post #262
friedman23 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So exactly how do you create a performant cross platform framework that takes advantage of all the platforms features? What happens when one of them create a new feature for their operating system? When has there ever been a performant cross platform framework?

The abstraction doesn't have to be perfect. Most apps don't even take advantage of native platform functionality.
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