First time I've really been aware of an Apple product not just being like-for-like $->£ but actually a higher £ number: £649 vs. $599. For reference, $599 is £489.
New Mac Mini
281–290 of 424 posts
Re: New Mac Mini
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
For $100, you can opt to have 10Gb ethernet as well, so it's not really slower LAN. Personally, I think choosing the higher end M2 Pro doesn't make the comparison more fair than the lower end M2 Pro, so you can get 10GbE and "save" $200 (compared to the Mac Studio) by choosing the base M2 Pro Mac mini for the comparison and including 10GbE.
But, I agree. I don't understand the purpose of the M2 Pro Mac mini very well.
Apple is charging way too much for the M2 Pro upgrade, which makes it a confusing option. Is the fully enabled M2 Pro chip really worth $600 more than the base M2 chip by itself? That's the cost of an entire base Mac mini! I don't understand why Apple is charging this much. I think $200 for the base M2 Pro chip and $400 for the fully enabled variant would have been a more sensible price structure. Still a bit expensive, but less confusing.
Re: New Mac Mini
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
At one time Apple had to be competitive with aftermarket upgrades.
Re: New Mac Mini
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well it seems like for more than a decade, Apple seemed to think that nobody really needed more that 8GB of ram.
Apple offering 16GB is a clear counterexample to that. We can only say that Apple feels 8GB is enough for a significant fraction of users...
I have a Mac Mini from around 2010 that I saved from the recyclers recently. Dusted it off, put in 8GB of RAM and an SSD, and it booted up Windows 11 just fine. However, as far as I can tell there is no up to date MacOS available for it because Apple considers such a thing too obsolete to support.
Re: New Mac Mini
#285[flagged]
I feel you, but the laptop can be order with an M2 Max for 64gb+ of RAM. There is no M2 Max Mac mini.... M2 Pro goes up to 32gb.
If the plain M2 in the Air supports up to 24 Gb, they could have let the Pro support 48...
I don't need much CPU on the Mac (the arm transition forced me to get an x86 linux box in addition to it) but my ram needs are 24-30 Gb on average. 32 Gb is not future proof for my usage, 48 might have been.
All they need now is to cancel the Studio and make the only option a Mac Pro starting at 6000 :)
Re: New Mac Mini
#286Earlier 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…
The onus is really on you to back up your claim that 8GB/256GB isn't enough.
I don't see what iPads have to do with this at all. Surely tablet vs desktop is an entirely different decision.
Re: New Mac Mini
#287Apple: please give your customers ECC RAM, we take data integrity seriously.
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Re: New Mac Mini
#288Earlier 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.
> 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.
Ok, you decouple UI from business logic, have some state machine written in language X let's say that can compile ios, android, and wasm and allows for interop with the kotlin, swift, and js. Even then, the view code is often the most complex and bug prone part of the app. Business logic is easy by comparison (in my opinion).
Re: New Mac Mini
#289Earlier 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…
> On the other hand, maybe there should be pushback against shitty inefficient software? How would that work? You whine on an online forum over how bloated a software is, and in the process opt to be deprived of it's usage? Or would you continue to complain about bloated software while using it? Because none of those scenarios offer a compelling reason for the software maintainers to rearchitect their whole applicati…
Interesting, how are you planning on adding those extra 8 gigabytes if RAM to an M1/M2 Mac? Do you know of a mod that will make the motherboard take DIMM slots?
Re: New Mac Mini
#290First time I've really been aware of an Apple product not just being like-for-like $->£ but actually a higher £ number: £649 vs. $599. For reference, $599 is £489.
Interesting! Is this because the exchange rate (currently 1.23 GBP:USD but has been lower recently) is fluctuating in the same range as the VAT rate (20%)?