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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.
Ohh i just noticed. M2 Max can go to 96 instead of 64. Means the M2 Pro intentionally goes only to 32 not 48.
New Mac Mini
371–380 of 424 posts
Re: New Mac Mini
#372Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
"Meanwhile, a 8GB stick of RAM can be bought for what? 40€? " Ha! Not if you want to get it in your MacMini. 8GB will set you back $200! The Apple Cult has gone all in...
What's the memory bandwidth on the 40€ stick? Apple charges a premium most of the time, sure, but there's a loooong tradition of the loudest voices complaining about the so-called Apple Tax also failing to actually compare like-to-like when drawing their conclusions about e.g. "The Apple Cult".
Re: New Mac Mini
#373Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
How expensive would it be? Windows XP (circa 2001) does it without GPU acceleration with ease on a 512MB ram machine. Windows Vista runs on 2G of ram, with transparency everywhere (to the point that it is distracting).
A lot worse than that. They didn't have 5K HDR 120fps displays and macOS has some significantly more demanding things than plain old transparency going on.
Re: New Mac Mini
#374Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Apple is charging multiple times the actual cost per GB, and they do the same thing for SSDs. Yup. I just checked Newegg, and laptop form factor DDR4 (not DDR5ᵃ) RAM is selling for $126 for 64 GB (2 x 32 GB). So market price for 1 GB of DDR4 small form factor RAM is $1.96 per GB . ᵃ DDR5 is almost twice the cost. Apple is charging 200/8 = $25 per GB. Apple charges 12 times the retail price of DDR4, and about 6 time…
Soldered chips are here to stay. DDR5 already struggles on 4-slot desktop mobos and laptops with SODIMM slots. You can use 2-slot mobos and CAMM to solve those problems for now, but I would be unsurprised if the DIMM/SODIMM DDR6 never sees wide adoption and everyone moves to soldered RAM by 2030.
> everyone moves to soldered RAM by 2030
This would be really horrible, and I hope it never happens. I was just readin up on CAMMᵃᵇ, and to me, CAM looks really promising. It solves the challenges with SODIMM, and the article says:
> We mentioned the faster DDR5 speeds above, but it is thought that CAMM could really take off when DDR6 arrives. Another appealing variation might be for adding LPDDR(6) memory to laptops. Traditionally LPDDR memory is soldered, so the new spring contact fitting modules might mean much better upgradability for the thinnest and lightest devices which tend to use LPDDR memory.
I'd like to see legislation passed (even if at the state/regional/provincial level) that forces laptop (and other device) manufacturers to use user-replaceable CAMM memory modules instead of solder-on modules (unless solder-on memory is absolutely needed/justified by a high technical need for it – and the bar for this should be high). Similar legislation for batteries, device screens, etc. – mandate standard interfaces and easy replacibility.
This will likely increase BOM, but it shouldn't add more than $10 to the overall average retail price of various devices.
ᵃ https://www.tomshardware.com/news/camm-to-usurp-so-dimm-lapt...
ᵇ https://www.pcworld.com/article/693366/dell-defends-its-cont...
Re: New Mac Mini
#375The thing that's truly insulting is their trade-in offer for a late 2020 M1 8G/512G is only $330 vs. an eBay average selling price of over $500.
Resale prices on eBay have always been significantly higher than any trade-in for any product for any company -- this isn't an Apple thing. And remember that eBay charges a selling fee of 12.9%, and you have to go through all of the time and effort of photographing, listing, selling, packaging, shipping, and dealing with a (small) risk of buyer fraud. On the other hand, Apple takes it off of your hands hassle-free, r…
Well, Apple resells the trade-in mini as a $750 refurb, so it's a pretty substantial margin they are asking for.
Re: New Mac Mini
#376I really love the idea of Mac mini, but when you add some more RAM and disk price is almost the same as for MacBook PRO, where you get almost the same hardware a superb display and a keyboard built in. And you can carry it around with you. These machines almost make no sense because of that.
> where you get almost the same hardware a superb display and a keyboard built in.
I just priced out a 24GB RAM/2TB storage M2 mini, and it's still $1kCAD cheaper than the equivalent Air.
There is definitely a large "screen and keyboard" upgrade tax if you're actually considering it.
Re: New Mac Mini
#377Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're looking only at idle power usage, the difference is around 20 watt compared to an idle pc. That's 0.5KWh. With the currency energy prices in NL (40ct/kwh, subsidized by the gov btw, because it's actually around 70ct now), this will save you €73 per year when idling, and even more when it's in use. So the macmini essentially for free after a few years compared to your windows machine
meh, only if you run it 24/7 and only if you live in Europe with very high energy prices. If the machine sleeps for 16 hours a day while the user goes to sleep or goes outside, you'll never break even. There's also no guarantee that next year will be as shitty as the last one regarding electricity.
If you're actually using it 8 hours a day then it's 30 watts for the mba, and 150 for the pc + 30 for the display. So the difference is 1.2kwh per day. For 200 days of work in europe, that's 2001.2.4 = 96 per year.
In the US that's 235 working days per year at around $0.20 (13 - 25ct), so about $50 per year.
Re: New Mac Mini
#378Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not saying you're wrong but specifically to address OP's memory usage issue when running over dozen tabs in Chrome, I'd suggest testing it against Firefox for start. I'm not proud of this bad habit, but I have an order of magnitude more tabs than that with FF running on a pre-M1 8GB Macbook and it's pretty great most of the time. I use Chrome mostly for development but wouldn't dream of keeping it running as many tab…
Maybe because Firefox automatically suspends old tabs, Chrome needs a extension for that. If you reopen FF it reloads only the tabs you actually visit.
FYI Chrome is trialing that feature natively titled "Memory Saver". It's available in my laptop's settings, but currently still not in my desktop's.
Re: New Mac Mini
#379Earlier quoted context omitted.
Soldered chips are here to stay. DDR5 already struggles on 4-slot desktop mobos and laptops with SODIMM slots. You can use 2-slot mobos and CAMM to solve those problems for now, but I would be unsurprised if the DIMM/SODIMM DDR6 never sees wide adoption and everyone moves to soldered RAM by 2030.
> everyone moves to soldered RAM by 2030 This would be really horrible, and I hope it never happens. I was just readin up on CAMMᵃᵇ, and to me, CAM looks really promising. It solves the challenges with SODIMM, and the article says: > We mentioned the faster DDR5 speeds above, but it is thought that CAMM could really take off when DDR6 arrives. Another appealing variation might be for adding LPDDR(6) memory to laptops…
Realistically, higher end manufacturers will just stop selling devices to that state/region/province and people who live there will figure out a way to buy what they want. There's a reason why the single most popular laptop model in the US happens to be a macbook and the iPhone is the most popular smartphone here.
There will always be laptops with DIMM slots in the future just as there are laptops that have CPU sockets today. But the bulkiness and performance gap will only increase every year. CAMM has about the same thickness as a single SODIMM slot so it only saves space if you need 2 sticks worth of RAM. Also compare 2 slot vs 4 slot DDR5 overclocks on desktop to see the impact of signal integrity.
Re: New Mac Mini
#380Earlier quoted context omitted.
I always imagined a 24x7 docked laptop was a good setup for a couple reasons: 1. built in UPS due to the battery. 2. easy to grab and go in an emergency situation. Could you tell me more about the liability it creates? Is it a fire hazard? Decaying battery performance?
I don’t know about the current M1 CPU, but my last work computer was a 2015 MBP and the fan was always on. Plugging a monitor enabled the dedicated GPU. So I had to keep it plugged so it does not crawl to a stop due to throttling. Being in tropical weather did not help either. The battery bulged within one year. And the one I replaced it was deteriorating fast. My current mac mini has much better thermal and I bought…
> Plugging a monitor enabled the dedicated GPU.
There's the problem.
Dedicated NVidia and AMD GPUs are the cause of a solid 50% of issues or instability with laptops. Including for Apple.
I get that some people really need them, but having one built-in to your laptop is just begging to have way more problems than if you left it out. If you want/need a high-reliability machine and can afford not to have a dedicated GPU, leaving it out is a really great way to instantly improve your odds a ton. Integrated GPUs used to be so bad they were a liability even if you weren't a gamer, but that hasn't been true in a long time. Hell, my base-model-with-a-little-extra-memory 2014 MBP could play Minecraft at high settings and Kerbal Space Program just fine on the integrated Intel GPU, plus a bunch of other Unity games. I know those games don't exactly represent the cutting edge of graphics (and didn't back then, either) but it was surprisingly capable.
Actually, now that I think about it, at least for me personally, GPUs are probably the cause of about half my problems on desktops, too.