New Mac Mini with M4 • Hacker News Board

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#361

Post by xiasongh » Tue, Oct 29, 2024, 5:05 PM UTC

zackymacky wrote: post #348

e63f67dd-065b wrote: post #330

With educational pricing this thing starts as $500, and at 16GB of RAM (finally) I think this easily beats any sort of desktop PC you can buy at that price (let's exclude custom builds, they're not the same market). I think this just became the go-to recommendation I'll give to anybody wanting an entry-level desktop computer of any kind. In fact I might buy one for my parents right now to replace the old mac mini the…

Help me understand the $500 starting price? I see $1250 starting price on pre-orders from the education store.

From the article

> Mac mini with M4 starts at $599 (U.S.) and $499 (U.S.) for education. Additional technical specifications are available at apple.com/mac-mini.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#362

Post by dvk13 » Tue, Oct 29, 2024, 5:06 PM UTC

JKCalhoun wrote: post #185

donatj wrote: post #121

It would appear the air intake is on the bottom like the Mac Studio. As someone who lives in a very dusty 150 year old house, My Mac Studio does not appreciate the air input being directly on the desk. It collects all the dust that lands anywhere near it. I have a large levoit air filter running 24/7 in my office and still end up with this[1] regularly. I wish I could at least reasonably take the thing apart to clean…

I'm imagining Apple building a Dusty Old House in the middle of Apple Park ... for testing.

Does The barn [1] count? :)

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Park#Historic_barn

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#363

Post by transitorykris » Tue, Oct 29, 2024, 5:06 PM UTC

whartung wrote: post #350

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

So, do you think that when the Mac Studio gets upgraded, it will also come with less max RAM, but be unified? Is the whole "unified" RAM a reason that the iMac and Mini are capped at 32G?

The Mac Studio has always had unified memory

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#364

Post by sgerenser » Tue, Oct 29, 2024, 5:07 PM UTC

etempleton wrote: post #277

ethagknight wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've followed Apple all my life and never heard of HP iPods!

It was a weird win-win for Apple if I remember correctly. They were able to sell more iPods, get iTunes installed on all HP machines, and block HP from creating a rival music player. I honestly am not sure what HP got beyond the logo on the back of some iPods and the ability to try and associate themselves with a popular and cool product.

I think HP in that era was definitely trying to be more "popular and cool." Not sure how much it really helped though.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#365

Post by rtkwe » Tue, Oct 29, 2024, 5:07 PM UTC

jsheard wrote: post #307

rtkwe wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more relevant with Apple because they've removed all the competition for basically all upgrades to their devices by either soldering things to the board or bundling them into their SOC. When there's no alternative their prices become the only option.

The Mac Studio technically still has socketed SSDs, which presumably cuts costs by not having to manage a separate motherboard SKU for every SSD capacity, but they went out of their way to design a proprietary SSD module format rather than just using the standard...

Kind of, they were socketed NAND cards and the controller lived on the mainboard, so as far as getting out of the problem of Apple entirely setting the prices for everything it's not relevant. As far as I'm finding no one managed to find a way to create a compatible card to create an avenue for DIY upgrades. I've found a few upgrades but they consist of buying an entire second Mac Studio to harvest the drive from.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#366

Post by HumblyTossed » Tue, Oct 29, 2024, 5:08 PM UTC

e63f67dd-065b wrote: post #330

With educational pricing this thing starts as $500, and at 16GB of RAM (finally) I think this easily beats any sort of desktop PC you can buy at that price (let's exclude custom builds, they're not the same market). I think this just became the go-to recommendation I'll give to anybody wanting an entry-level desktop computer of any kind. In fact I might buy one for my parents right now to replace the old mac mini the…

Wish I still had a .edu email address...

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#367

Post by dsv3099i » Tue, Oct 29, 2024, 5:08 PM UTC

madeofpalk wrote: post #97

unpopularopp wrote: post #81

>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...

I just assumed they were running one of the many "Office Productivity" benchmarks that are possible.

For example: https://support.benchmarks.ul.com/support/solutions/articles...

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#368

Post by jsheard » Tue, Oct 29, 2024, 5:08 PM UTC

kstrauser wrote: post #125

Longlius wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thunderbolt is significantly slower than gen 4 NVME. In the PC world, gen 3 speeds are considered an extreme budget-tier option these days.

This is the Mac Mini, their budget desktop. It's not the one targeted at people who would consider Thunderbolt a limiting factor.

The same limitation applies to all of their higher end machines though, with the sole exception of the Mac Pro.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#369

Post by farawayea » Tue, Oct 29, 2024, 5:09 PM UTC

Does this still have soldered flash chips for the SSD? This would've looked a lot better without the soldered non-upgradable SSD. It's not great at all.

This guy will probably have a lot of clients https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3N-z-Y8cuw.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#370

Post by klum » Tue, Oct 29, 2024, 5:09 PM UTC

Somewhat unrelated but Apple are mainly focusing on Apple Intelligence in these new announcements.

The first version of OS X I used was Mavericks. In hindsight, that was the last great version of OS X for me — the last version where it seems the priorities of the people deciding the direction of development where somewhat aligned with mine.

Many have written about the decline in usability and attention to detail in OS X since then — I guess Apple Intelligence represents this shift in focus perfectly: a black-box interface that may or may not do something along the lines of what you were intending.