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

511–520 of 789 posts

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#511

Post by semanticist »

holografix wrote: post #475
huijzer wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do note only 256 GB of storage. Should be enough for most people, but at the same time can become very annoying once it gets full.

This is a conscious tactic so X% of customers say yes to using iCloud storage

Apple offering expensive upgrades for storage and memory pre-dates the existence of iCloud storage by decades. It was entirely standard before MobileMe, or Apple offering any kind of "cloud" services.

Apple just charge a lot of money for upgrades, even did when it was trivial to do them yourself, and they're not going to change once they made it impossible to do any kind of internal upgrade.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#512

Post by wtallis »

rsync wrote: post #431
ErneX wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Website says it supports 3 6K displays, here you go: M4 (Thunderbolt 4): - Up to three displays: Two displays with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz over Thunderbolt and one display with up to 5K resolution at 60Hz over Thunderbolt or 4K resolution at 60Hz over HDMI - Up to two displays: One display with up to 5K resolution at 60Hz over Thunderbolt and one display with up to 8K resolution at 60Hz or 4K resolution at 240Hz…

OK, so unnecessary and arbitrary restrictions on screen numbers, once again. There is really no reason you couldn't drive four (or more) lower resolution (4k) screens, given the array of ports. In case anyone is wondering, the use-case here is a triple-monitor configuration at a desk with a much larger "TV" positioned, or hung, elsewhere in the room.

USB PHYs aren't the same thing as display controller IP blocks. It's obviously possible to design a chip with more of the former than latter. At the hardware level, nothing is actually an arbitrarily-subdividible budget of display bandwidth.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#513

Post by adib »

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.

Docker on Mac works fine on external drive. I moved the storage volume on a rotating USB 3 drive.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#514

Post by pa7ch »

Thomashuet wrote: post #510
supportengineer wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you have to run Windows, which is a deal breaker for most people.

You don't have to, you can run your favorite flavor of Linux. Unlike with the Mac Mini which can only run macOS.

Asahi Linux has changed that equation for M1/M2 mac minis. I'm sure M4 will be supported soon.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#515

Post by int_19h »

fckgw wrote: post #65
npsomaratna wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are these games available on OSX? Or are you somehow booting Windows? (Apologies if this seems like a stupid question. I've not played games for a very long time, mainly because most stuff doesn't seem to be available on Macs).

All those games listed have native Apple Silicon Mac ports now.

In my experience with gaming on Macs, even when there is a native Mac port of a particular game, the experience is inferior to Windows more often than not. Many of them don't do 4K properly, for example (you get everything rendered at half-res in fullscreen). Things like Cmd+Tab don't work reliably, either.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#516

Post by anemoknee »

architect64 wrote: post #439
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…

One issue to watch out for: Sub-4K res monitors look surprisingly bad on newer versions of macOS with Apple Silicon Macs. And no, it's not simply a matter of non-Retina obviously not looking as nice as Retina monitors - something like a 1440p monitor will look much worse on macOS than it would on Windows or Linux. This is partly caused by a lack of subpixel rendering for text on macOS, but it doesn't affect just text…

Is this with newer Apple Silicon Macs? My 2020 M1 Mac Mini looks unremarkably normal on my 1440p display. I'm also going between that and my 14" M1 Pro Macbook Pro, which of course looks beautiful but doesn't really make the 1440p on the Mini 'bad'.

Edit: Adding that both of these machines are now running macOS 15.1 at this time.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#517

Post by rtkwe »

throwaway48476 wrote: post #508
rtkwe wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought I had seen something about that but couldn't find the actual boards mentioned for sale. Sounds even worse though because it should be possible but Apple being Apple has ensured there's no source for Giles or other companies to perform repairs.

There's an industry in China for desoldering and reusing apple bands. Unfortunately getting new oem nands is going to take legislation.

Yes, though that relies on the product being fairly popular and for the chip to be stable for a while for it to be a useful source. Mac Studio NAND chips aren't going to be readily available from them unless they happen to be a shared part from a more popular device.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#518

Post by leetharris »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #275
leetharris wrote: post #24

Love to see that it still starts at $599. My M2 Mac Mini that I got for $499 is my favorite gaming computer I've had in a long time. Runs many games like WoW, Dota, League of Legends, etc great. Anything that it doesn't run due to MacOS I use GeForce Now over ethernet. And this was with 8gb unified memory, now with 16gb it'll be even better value. Very excited to see how the GPU has improved in the M4, especially the…

> Anything that it doesn't run due to MacOS I use GeForce Now over ethernet. Can you elaborate? Thinking of setting up a MacMini for my kids but worried about lack of gaming options for them (I haven't gamed on a Mac in a dozen years and the state of gaming on MacOS was sad back then).

There's a lot of Mac games on Steam, Apple Arcade, and Battle.net these days. Anything that isn't supported there, I generally use Xbox streaming or GeForce Now streaming.

Here's a list of my most played games on my Mac in the last couple of years:

WoW, Hearthstone, Dota 2, League of Legends, Thronefall, Vampire Survivors, Baldur's Gate 3, Cult of the Lamb, Balatro, Death Must Die, Terraria, Dave the Diver, Mechabellum, Space Haven, Hades 2, Peglin, Stellaris, RimWorld, Dead Cells, Total War: Warhammer 2, Valheim, Civilization 6, Slay the Spire, Don't Starve Together, Cities: Skylines, Oxygen Not Included, SUPERHOT.

Games I play through GeForce Now:

Fortnite, Diablo 4, WoW, Apex Legends, Halo Infinite, Baldur's Gate 3, Cyberpunk 2077

The point of such an annoying long comment is to demonstrate that there is a very substantial Mac gaming library. The problem is that a new shiny game comes out that doesn't support Mac and you don't want to be the ONE guy in your group who can't play it because you're on Mac. The latest one for me is Deadlock. Not on GeForce Now, not on console, not on Mac... so I needed to get a Windows PC.

But if you're a kid and just looking for a general gaming machine, it plays a ton of cool stuff.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#519

Post by vid »

So Apple just released their new caste-defined product line. Sure, they're technically good. But I don't know how they can claim any vision aligned with any legacy, they're basically a shiny walled-garden Dell.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#520

Post by srid »

goosedragons wrote: post #416
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…

There's still good deals in mini PC land. Yes, the M4 is faster but there's loads of mini PCs with decent CPUs, 32GB RAM and a 1TB of SSD storage for under $600. I think for a lot of people for basic usage they'll get more value out of the larger and upgradable SSDs than the faster CPU. https://www.amazon.com/BOSGAME-5700U-Displays-Computers-Emul... https://www.amazon.com/Beelink-SER5-Desktop-Computer-Graphic...

Which mini PC is recommended for those looking to run Linux (as a server, not desktop) on them?
Post reply on HN