Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New Mac Mini with M4

apple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 789 posts

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#441

Post by kridsdale3 »

mmaunder wrote: post #254
GeekyBear wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do have the option of a 10 gigabit Ethernet port, so you can build out a linux box for local shared storage with components as cheap as you're willing to trust.

That’s useful. The TB3 external 10 gig interfaces I’ve been using for my Mac get crazy hot.

As someone who just made a 16tb SSD array over Thunderbolt 3 (Best I could find) at 40gbps and the interface is still the bottleneck (disks are fast now!), 10gbps is going to feel really really slow vs the internal stuff.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#442

Post by jlokier »

Afforess wrote: post #16

This seems like the perfect home media transcoding server (Plex, Kodi, etc). I am curious if these will ever be able to run Linux.

The other comments talk about Asahi Linux, which doesn't support the M3 yet. You can also run Linux in a VM on MacOS, and it runs very well.

For some uses you won't get the best performance compared to native Linux. But for a Plex/Kodi server a VM should be great.

(On an x86 Apple laptop I found the power consumption better with a Linux VM on MacOS than with native Linux, so VMs can be quite efficient for some uses. Software builds sometimes run much faster in a Linux VM inside MacOS than natively in MacOS. On the other hand, I found Qemu inside a Linux VM for Android development was extremely slow.)

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#443

Post by kridsdale3 »

avidphantasm wrote: post #403
crest wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until someone brings out little two or four drive NVMe enclosures that fits exactly under the Mac Mini with a Thunderbolt bridge/plug that doesn't snag cables, because we all know Apple can't resist gauging buyers by refusing to include two easy to access M.2 bays on the underside. I can't imagine anyone but Apple shareholders drooling at the taught of overpriced soldered memory would prefer a smaller Mac Mini case i…

You mean like this [1]? I would shocked if OWC didn’t have a version of this for the new mini form factor in the works. [1] https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/external-drives/owc-ministac...

It even looks like the standard iconography for "Database"!

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#444

Post by _mlbt »

eastbound wrote: post #414
_mlbt wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a desktop, so plugging in a USB external hard drive isn’t too painful or expensive.

Dockers can’t run off external drives.

Since macOS is a UNIX system, can’t you just use a symlink to the external drive or is there something specific about Docker that prevents this?

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#445

Post by msh »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #308
wongarsu wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Base model is 256GB configurable up to 2TB, all others start at 512GB, the M4 Pro model can go up to 8TB

You can get some decent size external usb SSDs. I have the Samsung T5 2TB. I think they have larger models now. Works pretty well. And with USB-C speeds are very usable. You can probably get faster/bigger stuff via thunderbolt. I'm considering getting one and a nice big monitor or TV. It needs to run x-plane 12 at decent speeds and maybe support a bit of light gaming. My macbook M1 pro is actually pretty decent for t…

The big problem is that there are lots of stuff that macOS won’t let you move to a external drive, like iCloud Drive.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#446

Post by ChumpGPT »

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…

>I think this just became the go-to recommendation I'll give to anybody wanting an entry-level desktop computer of any kind.

Perhaps you should check out some Beelink and GMKTec Mini PC Systems.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#448

Post by LeoPanthera »

sangnoir wrote: post #434
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…

> 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). This is squarely in the NUC/SFF/1l-pc territory, and there is plenty of competition here from Beelink and Minisforum. I just found the Beelink SER7 going for $509, and it has an 8-core/16-thread Ryzen 7 CPU, 32GB DDR4. The 8845 in the beelink is very competitive[1] with M4 (beaten,…

There's a huge difference there. Those PCs have to be ordered from Aliexpress, or some other Chinese site, or else from Amazon via a third party resellers that adds their own markup on top.

Neither gets you any kind of useful warranty, at least for most people, who are unwilling to deal with overseas companies.

Apple has actual physical stores, and a phone number you can call.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#449

Post by wtallis »

rtkwe wrote: post #298
wtallis wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. The repairability argument is the reasonable discussion to have. The silly pricing games are more of a red herring.

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.

I think repairable or not, the pricing to upgrade to the max config just isn't something a price-sensitive consumer should take seriously. Beyond one or two upgrades, you might as well pretend it says "call for quote" and just not consider 4+ TB as a realistic option to get from the OEM, because those prices are trying to cause sticker shock. And that goes for any PC OEM—the price-gouged upgrades are so far beyond reasonable that it really doesn't matter whose prices are the most silly or by exactly how many hundreds of dollars. What does matter is whether aftermarket upgrades and repairs are possible.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#450

Post by sangnoir »

wtallis wrote: post #221
jsheard wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but the 5 minute job of installing a cheap retail SSD in that Dell machine yourself is still an option which Apple has removed from all but the Mac Pro, which offsets any SSD savings by being $3000 more expensive than an equivalently specced Mac Studio.

Right. The repairability argument is the reasonable discussion to have. The silly pricing games are more of a red herring.

"Repairability" is a red-herring when the discussion is about user-upgrades and the ability to purchase components from 3rd-party suppliers (who compete against each other and the OEM)
Post reply on HN