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M4 Mac mini's efficiency

jeffgeerling.com

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Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#591

Post by flyingsorcerer »

ideashower wrote: post #349
prewett wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they already have, depending on what you need. Settings >> General >> Sharing provides lots of options. "Remote Login" is SSH and SFTP, and last time I used it, "File Sharing" was SMB. "Screen Sharing" and "Remote Management" seem useful, too. I assume that "Media Sharing" is supposed to allow iTunes on your network to see media files, although I've never used it and the information on the dialog is limited.

Can you run it headless? Like, if I have it power on after a reboot, is it possible to log in remotely?

Yes, but getting it to work requires that you both:

(a) disable FileVault, and (b) enable automatic login

One option is to automatically log in to an account which has very little access, and have everything sensitive on an encrypted disk/partition, and to use a separate keychain for any credentials you want to protect.

This and more suggestions here from a company using Macs as build servers: https://forums.developer.apple.com/forums/thread/737381?answ...

I don't like the idea of enabling automatic login on any machine, so I keep FileVault on and just accept that any rebooted Macs will need physical access on restart.

If it's possible somehow to get screen-sharing access (or even SSH) without automatic login after a reboot, I'm sure lots of users would love to know how.

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#592

Post by afavour »

derefr wrote: post #589
afavour wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you could plug it in all the time most would, which defeats the point The point of a mouse is to be a usable mouse. If folks care enough for it to be wireless then they can use it that way, but if they don't what's actually wrong with using it plugged in? Screams iPhone 4 era "holding it the wrong way". Baffles me why you'd want to provide fewer options for your customer to charge their wireless mouse in order t…

If you want to always drive a car with the parking brake on you can — it's your car — but if a driving instructor sees you doing it, they'll give you a demerit. Because you're massively hobbling the car vs. its design space. > in order to make them do it the "right way". To be clear, Apple likely didn't want to force people to always use the mouse that way; what they were likely aiming for was a "silent tutorial" — l…

I’m sorry but this is an absurd comparison. Driving a car with the handbrake on has an adverse effect on the primary purpose of the car. Using a wireless mouse with the wire attached still leaves you with an entirely functional mouse. Using it wirelessly is a preference. It is absurd to defend Apple forcing people to use it without a wire because it will “enforce design purpose”. If they need to do so then it’s the wrong purpose.

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#593

Post by jasomill »

spike021 wrote: post #291
henryfjordan wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a way of signaling how the product should be used. Plug it in, hit the power button, put it down, and never turn it off again. For many users that's probably the only time they will ever interact with that button (or want to). I actually think it's a really good choice and shows Apple really understands design. And with the relatively low power consumption it makes sense. It's not like it's drawing a ton of powe…

I have a Mac Mini and can't remember the last time I had to manually press the button. IIRC it even reboots on its own after a power outage. I think I shut it down once for an extended vacation just to make sure appliances weren't on while I was gone and when I switched apartments. Otherwise I'd check and post my uptime from the command line. It's a launch M1 mini so I'd wager less times pressing the power button tha…

IIRC it even reboots on its own after a power outage.

While macOS presents a "Start up automatically after a power failure" option, and it works, the reality is…complicated.

Intel Macs require a model-specific hardware register to be set after each reboot:

https://web.archive.org/web/20230218203824/http://www.macfre...

The analogous setting on Apple Silicon Macs appears to be nonvolatile:

https://github.com/AsahiLinux/linux/blob/de1c5a8be0ee99602e4...

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#594

Post by czottmann »

mkl wrote: post #546
n_ary wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My EU mind is blown by these claims. Let’s take the lowest(1W) at sleep mode. With a thousand mac minis at sleep mode, that is already 1kW! In my country, a single person household’s yearly electricity package comes at 1400kW(+100 depending on provider) per year. Note: intentionally keeping it simple, please don’t nitpick.

No household uses 1400kW, and kW/year doesn't make sense. Do you mean 1400kWh/year? That seems pretty low (NZ is 7000kWh/year), but if so, you're comparing power to energy, which doesn't mean much. 1W 24/7 < 9kWh/year, which is pretty small.

Personal guess from a fellow European citizen: I think they meant to say 1700 kWh/year. According to most German power utilities, the average 2-person household consumes about 2400 kWh/year.

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#595

Post by jasomill »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #429
henryfjordan wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a way of signaling how the product should be used. Plug it in, hit the power button, put it down, and never turn it off again. For many users that's probably the only time they will ever interact with that button (or want to). I actually think it's a really good choice and shows Apple really understands design. And with the relatively low power consumption it makes sense. It's not like it's drawing a ton of powe…

Exactly; it's more of a reset button. You should not need it a lot.

On a related note, the original Macintosh shipped with a physically inaccessible reset button, and the manual cautioned against installing the (bundled) switch that enabled access because "using it the wrong way could cause you to lose information":

https://archive.org/details/1984macintoshmanual/page/131/mod...

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#596

Post by ricardobeat »

The_Colonel wrote: post #493
ricardobeat wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

System design and stability. On MacOS a lot is shared between applications compared to the average Linux app. Dynamic linking has fallen out of favor in Linux recently [1], and the fragmentation in the ecosystem means apps have to deal with different GUI libraries, system lib versions etc, whereas on Mac you can safely target a minimum OS version when using system frameworks. Apps will also rarely use third party rep…

People who need 64GB+ RAM are not running 1000 instances of native Apple apps. They run docker, VMs, they run AI models, compile huge projects, they run demanding graphics applications or IntelliJ on huge projects. Rich system libraries are irrelevant in these cases.

This thread started as question on how MacOS is more efficient, not the usefulness of more RAM. In any case, you might still benefit from the substantial increase in bandwidth and lower system / built-in apps memory usage, plus memory compression, making 16GB on Mac more useful than it seems.

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#597

Post by 7thpower »

josephg wrote: post #572
7thpower wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously? What if you want to have a few browser tabs and a spreadsheet open? Or containers? My M1 routinely rests around 22gb of RAM.

How much RAM should a few browser tabs and a spreadsheet use? Spreadsheets and webpages were both invented at a time when computers had orders of magnitude less ram than they do today. And yet, Excel and Netscape navigator still worked fine. It seems to me that bigger computers have caused chrome to use more memory. If 16gb is considered to be a "bare minimum" for RAM, well, how much ram will all those programs use n…

It’s not just for tabs and spreadsheets, I also have an ide, containers, etc.

I do think the memory footprint of many applications has gotten out of hand, but I am more than willing to spend the extra money not to have to think about it.

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#598

Post by ryandrake »

derefr wrote: post #590
ryandrake wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should Apple care if I want to leave the device plugged in all the time? How does this choice remotely affect them? Same with this power button: why should Apple care whether or not I power off the device when I’m done using it and turn it back on in the morning? This all just seems like pointless behavior control.

> Why should Apple care if I want to leave the device plugged in all the time? How does this choice remotely affect them? Because the wireless-ness of the mouse (while also being a macOS-compatible multi-touch surface) was the selling point / feature / Unique Selling Proposition of this mouse vs. other mice (and vs. the previous Apple Mighty Mouse.) I don't know if you've ever had the opportunity to see many "normal"…

Thanks for the really really long reply... You've exhaustively gone over the selling points for a wireless mouse and why people would want and buy one. I don't think any of it is in question. It's great to have a mouse that can work without a cord connected. I bought a wireless mouse (not Apple's) because I agree with you about the selling points. What I don't get is why not also allow it to be used plugged in, if the user wants to, assuming it costs about the same to put the charging port on the front, and can be done without compromising the industrial design? Why deliberately make it useless while plugged in?

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#599

Post by dansky »

leptons wrote: post #423
nl wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not disingenuous to do a real-world comparison to a system you already own when stating the specs. It's actually much more useful to hear these real world anecdotes than to look at geekbench numbers.

It's comparing apples to oranges. If you want to compare computers, compare a macbook with an old i5 to your laptop with an old i5. Comparing an M4 to an old i5 is just silly. Of course it's going to be faster.

It's a comparison of two CPU/iGPU combos I have on my desk with similar power draw. Those iGPUs are most power efficient for video editing as I like QuickSync from Intel.

The i5-1135G7 (17W TDP) has 2 Media Engines which I use for proxy generation in parallel for example and pretty versatile so I use it daily (64GB RAM..).

Still, I think it's a notable achievement to get 4x performance with the M4 for video at similar wattage of the i5. I don't have an M4 MacBook but I guess the M4 would perform similar to the one in the Mac mini.

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#600

Post by ewzimm »

mkl wrote: post #445
ewzimm wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, the 256 uses 2x128 drives while the 512 uses a single drive, so you even get slightly slower storage with the upgrade. The base model is a great deal.

Do you have a source on that? It's not what I've read elsewhere, but I'm having trouble finding anything specific.

I had to look it up, and I had gotten that slightly wrong. The 256 did switch to 2x128 NAND while the previous model used 1x256, but the 512 is also multiple. https://www.macrumors.com/2024/11/08/m4-mac-mini-modular-sto...
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