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New Mac Mini

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Re: New Mac Mini

#381

Post by qwytw »

dijit wrote: post #361
qwytw wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Linux (probably the operating system you mean) performs terribly when there is no available memory. I assumed you were talking about system with low amounts of memory rather than well almost all available memory is already used. You might be right about the second case (of course why would anyone have a new Linux PC with just 8GB of memory. Linux laptop OEMs charge the same for an upgrade to 64GB as Apple does for…

Send messages to people, write some code, do some online shopping. I don't see how much has changed except battery life and a few more pixels. 8GB of ram is more hardware cost than 16,32,64- thats just how it goes. Now, I dont want to make it sound like I am an apple fanboy, but iPhones have less ram than android phones, and for some time this had a material impact on size and battery life: the reason they got away w…

> Send messages to people, write some code, do some online shopping > I’m saying 8G is enough for doing most things,

All of that can be technically accomplished on Windows 98 machine with 128MB of RAM can't it?

Why shouldn't 4GB be more than enough for most things (maybe even 2GB? That would have been a huge hard-rive several decades ago). I mean I do agree with your main point, but the cost of additional 8GB at this points is not really significant compared to the cost of the entire (~$1000+) device which alone is IMHO a pretty good argument to ship 16GB in the base model.

> The state of hardware progress has slowed, for most of the last decade you could barely buy a laptop with more than 16GiB of memory

Through most of that decade you could upgrade most laptops yourself. Even macbooks until ~2012, I had a 17" MBP from 2011 and I had no issues installing 16GB RAM myself back then.

But yeah I agree that there is no good reasons for Slack, Discord etc. to use 1GB+ memory. The web apps use a bit less I think and they doe pretty much everything (including notifications) though, Safari and Firefox also seem to be much more memory efficient than Chromium.

> The better performance of the CPU helps everything, battery life (race to idle) included.

> More RAM helps people who don't close tabs; and people making software that does not even attempt to constrain its resources.

Well you have different preferences than some other people. Also there are perfectly legitimate reasons to need more than 8/16GB RAM besides more open tabs (what's wrong about wanting to open more tabs though?) or using Electron Apps.

Also I can both agree with you that software could and should be more efficient and think that Apple charging this much for memory and storage upgrades is objectively outrageous. They can only get away with it because they purposefully made their HW non upgradeable and because people who use macOS simply have no choice than to pay that much.

Re: New Mac Mini

#384

Post by dijit »

qwytw wrote: post #381
dijit wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Send messages to people, write some code, do some online shopping. I don't see how much has changed except battery life and a few more pixels. 8GB of ram is more hardware cost than 16,32,64- thats just how it goes. Now, I dont want to make it sound like I am an apple fanboy, but iPhones have less ram than android phones, and for some time this had a material impact on size and battery life: the reason they got away w…

> Send messages to people, write some code, do some online shopping > I’m saying 8G is enough for doing most things, All of that can be technically accomplished on Windows 98 machine with 128MB of RAM can't it? Why shouldn't 4GB be more than enough for most things (maybe even 2GB? That would have been a huge hard-rive several decades ago). I mean I do agree with your main point, but the cost of additional 8GB at this…

its not about preferences really.

as a developer myself I can justify the extra cost of RAM, I can make use of it (IDEs for example need a lot of RAM) but the company I work for should really pay for this. With that in mind: $200 is almost nothing.

Overall, I think we agree, mostly I’m absolutely pissed off about runaway hardware requirements for running basic software, leaving no room for me to run my specialist tools; even with top of the line laptops. (leading to me buying an absolutely overjacked desktop, which apparently is not enough soon?)

As mentioned, most of the 2010s I ran with the most RAM you could reasonably get in a laptop, but still felt the slowness because of these “productivity” programs which are often completely proprietary.

My main argument here is that I don't think we should all be running 256GiB of RAM, but it feels like the consensus is that “we need more RAM” and that continues to be an argument, because “we cant do much with 16G”.

I say we agree, because as you say “why is 4GB enough” I am saying “when is it ever enough?”

Re: New Mac Mini

#385

Post by saurik »

ubercow13 wrote: post #349
jasonpbecker wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The battery will be useless in 8-12 months if you keep it plugged in nearly 24/7.

What is the mechanism by which you think that'd happen? My understanding is that if you did that, the macbook would stay 80% charged and would use the power supply directly to power itself. So the battery stays about 80% charged and gets topped up to 80% intermittently when it naturally discharges. Is that not basically they optimum case for battery longevity?

I have never heard of this functionality. Is this some magic setting somewhere? When I plug in my MacBook it charges to 100% and stays there. This isn't a Tesla: this is a laptop. When the pandemic started and I stopped traveling the battery in my MacBook very rapidly nearly fully died.

Regardless, all of my MacBooks eventually have battery problems whether they were plugged in all the time or not: it is extremely common for MacBook batteries to eventually get so damaged they start to swell and either need to be replaced or crack the case (and that's ignoring the fire hazard).

Re: New Mac Mini

#386

Post by chrislund »

isolli wrote: post #102
coder543 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the plus side, with a desktop like this that isn't going to be moving frequently, there's really no compelling need to upgrade the internal storage. You could attach an external 1TB (or bigger!) NVMe SSD and you should be able to install macOS on that. You could just use the internal SSD as an extra storage drive. AFAIK, you're not required to use the internal SSD at all.

Is it realistic to have an external drive for photos that integrates seamlessly with the native Photos app?

I've had my 2.4 TB Photos library on external solid-state storage for six years now with no issues. Four years were via a laptop and so the drive was only connected when needed (to import photos into it or to back it up). The remaining two have been with it permanently tethered to a Mac mini. Of note is that I don't use iCloud Photos, though. Not sure how macOS would handle things if I did. If you had it always connected I bet it'd be seamless. If not, probably There Be Dragons. IIRC back in the days when I didn't have my Photos drive always connected, macOS would occasionally instantiate a fresh Photos library in ~/Pictures on the internal drive for Photo Stream (which I have turned on) photos.

Re: New Mac Mini

#387

Post by NavinF »

jasonpbecker wrote: post #319
misterprime wrote: post #318

Earlier 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?

The battery will be useless in 8-12 months if you keep it plugged in nearly 24/7.

This hasn't been true for a very long time. You lose 15% capacity per year just like with any other lithium ion battery that you store at close to 100% charge.

For UPS applications you can use 3rd party software to force the battery to stay at 80% charge and lose less capacity per year.

Re: New Mac Mini

#388

Post by ubercow13 »

saurik wrote: post #385
ubercow13 wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the mechanism by which you think that'd happen? My understanding is that if you did that, the macbook would stay 80% charged and would use the power supply directly to power itself. So the battery stays about 80% charged and gets topped up to 80% intermittently when it naturally discharges. Is that not basically they optimum case for battery longevity?

I have never heard of this functionality. Is this some magic setting somewhere? When I plug in my MacBook it charges to 100% and stays there. This isn't a Tesla: this is a laptop. When the pandemic started and I stopped traveling the battery in my MacBook very rapidly nearly fully died. Regardless, all of my MacBooks eventually have battery problems whether they were plugged in all the time or not: it is extremely co…

Its described here https://support.apple.com/en-md/HT212049

Re: New Mac Mini

#389

Post by crazygringo »

jeffbee wrote: post #375
crazygringo wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They also give it a brand-new housing so it looks brand new, full testing/inspection, and provide a one-year warranty. It makes sense you'll be paying more for those, none of which you get buying on eBay.

Re: New Mac Mini

#390

Post by manchmalscott »

ubercow13 wrote: post #388
saurik wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never heard of this functionality. Is this some magic setting somewhere? When I plug in my MacBook it charges to 100% and stays there. This isn't a Tesla: this is a laptop. When the pandemic started and I stopped traveling the battery in my MacBook very rapidly nearly fully died. Regardless, all of my MacBooks eventually have battery problems whether they were plugged in all the time or not: it is extremely co…

Its described here https://support.apple.com/en-md/HT212049

I'm pretty sure that article is talking about the feature where, if MacOS realizes that you always plug in your laptop at night, and unplug it every day at 7 am, it will pause charging at 80% until like 5:30 or whatever time it needs to, such that it will reach 100% exactly at 7 am.
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