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New Mac Mini with M4

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Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#521

Post by int_19h »

apitman wrote: post #470
vbezhenar wrote: post #312

I wish they would add small UPS inside (like super-capacitor or something like that) there to provide way for forced sleep when power is cut off. It's a neat small device which must be accompanied by huge bulky UPS for reliable operation. If someone didn't know, macOS ignores fsync, so without UPS your data is not safe. Not an issue for laptops, obviously, but issue for battery-less devices.

How does macOS guarantee no data loss when shutting down normally?

If you need to guarantee that data is, in fact, written permanently, you use fnctl(F_FULLFSYNC).

FWIW while fsync() on Linux does request that the drive flushes its hardware cache, it's up to the drive whether to actually honor this request, and many don't do so synchronously (but still report success). So unless you control the whole setup end-to-end - hardware and software both - you don't actually have the guarantees.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#522

Post by allenu »

deergomoo wrote: post #47
allenu wrote: post #25

Putting the audio jack on the front is a strange design choice to me if you plan on hooking it up to wired speakers all the time. Did they run out of space to keep it in the back?

On the front is far more practical for wired headphones. Plus you can always do something with USB-C pretty easily if you want to run it out of the back; if I had to choose a dongle for either fixed speakers or headphones, I’d pick them for the speakers.

It's definitely more practical for headphones. I'm curious as to why Apple decided to make this change now. Previous Mac Minis and the Mac Studios have always had them in the back. It seems uncharacteristic of them to go out of their way for wired headphone users after they removed the port entirely from the iPhone, so I wonder if it was a hardware/industrial design thing where it was simply more convenient to move it to the front for the new form factor.

Edit: also I noticed they moved the power button to the bottom corner of the Mac Mini! (It used to be on the back as well.) This makes me think even more that they didn't want to crowd up the back too much.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#523

Post by bufferoverflow »

butterlettuce wrote: post #395
bufferoverflow wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

sigh another Windows fanboy pushing inferior hardware for an inferior OS. The lot of us grew out of gaming in our teens and do real work now.

You realize you can run Linux or BSD on that hardware?

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#524

Post by matheusmoreira »

1propionyl wrote: post #182
diggan wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Neither MacOS nor Windows are very good console OSes They're great OSes for consumers who don't really work on their computers, and just want something that caters to the lowest common denominator. For professionals who use computers for work, Linux is really the only option that doesn't eventually get in your way. You can set it up and leave it as-is, with only security updates, and everything keeps working the sa…

> For professionals who use computers for work, Linux is really the only option that doesn't eventually get in your way. I really hope you're not expecting anyone to take you seriously with this. On principle I get what you're saying but in practice no one who works as a professional in any field has the time (or expertise) to be worried about configuring their operating system. As a Linux evangelist who begrudgingly…

I'm a professional who is often forced to suffer Windows nonsense. At work Windows routinely wastes my time with absolute bullshit I couldn't care less about and which makes me negative dollars, even though it is basically a glorified Chrome launcher.

Professionals should absolutely take it seriously because time spent updating Windows or even just waiting around while it gets its shit together is time you could have spent doing your job and making money. In fact, Windows and its spontaneous updates with obnoxious focus stealing prompts are major risks to the integrity of your work and might cause you to have to redo it from scratch, lowering the value of your time even further.

Linux boots in less than ten seconds and is already ready to use. There are distributions for all levels of expertise, and if there's an IT department it should be managing those boxes anyway. All that's missing is the Microsoft Office suite and in the end that's what the Windows vs Linux battle always boils down to. People put up with it because they just need muh Excel.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#525

Post by DrBenCarson »

astrange wrote: post #457
DrBenCarson wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly you’re very wrong. NPUs and GPUs aside, 16gb of GPU memory is very rare in consumer hardware

You can't use all 16GB because it's unified, so it's shared with the system, SSD controller etc. You can use something like 12-14GB though.

Sure, still incredibly rare in a $600 device

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#527

Post by marci »

sangnoir wrote: post #454
tmikaeld wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you factor in memory bandwidth (80GB/s for DDR4) - that's not even close to the M4 (120GB/s base model).

Which regular desktop tasks are kneecapped by 80GBps memory bandwidth?

You really start taking into account bandwidth when you need 64GB or more (which is rarelly).

If it's audio/video, spawning VMs, it doesn't matter much. If it's for generative software, it might become an issue.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#528

Post by ErneX »

farawayea wrote: post #381
ErneX wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but that’s easy to solve via USB

That's not a solution when your main SSD dies. The system no longer boots. The guy from the youtube video explains that as well. Normal computers with NVMe storage will always be more repairable than Apple's hardware with everything soldered on the board.

No that’s not a solution for that. I meant it if you need more space down the road.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#530

Post by gymbeaux »

anemoknee wrote: post #516
architect64 wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In my experience, you can’t do any sort of scaling with sub-4K displays. This is “since M1”. Intel Macs, even on the latest macOS, can do scaling eg 1.5x at say 1440p, which last time I bothered with an Intel Mac required a workaround via Terminal to re-enable.

But that workaround is “patched” on Apple Silicon and won’t work.

So yes if you have an Apple Silicon Mac plugged into a 1440p display, it will look bad with any sort of “scaling”- because scaling is disabled on macOS for sub-4K displays. What you’re actually doing when you’re “scaling” on say a 1440p display is running that display at 1920x1080 resolution- hence it looks like ass. Back before Apple Silicon, running that 1440p display at “1920x1080” was actually just scaling the UI elements up to appear as though you had a 1920x1080 display- since it was still utilizing the full …x1440 pixels of the display, “1920x1080” looked nicer than it would now.

So brass tacks it’s just about how macOS/OS X would obfuscate the true display resolution in the System Preferences -> Displays menu. Now with Apple Silicon Macs, “1920x1080” means “2x scaling” for 4K monitors and literally “we’ll run this higher-res monitor at literally 1920x1080” for any display under 4K resolution.

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