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New Mac Mini with M4

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Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#651

Post by throwaway48476 »

wtallis wrote: post #583
throwaway48476 wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All macs use the same compatible nand chips.

Is there any compatibility between generations, eg. harvesting NAND from a M1 generation machine to upgrade a M3 (or now M4) generation machine?

As far as I'm aware, yes they're all compatible.

Apples segmentation takes place in the nand firmware. The firmware contains the location in the storage configuration. And this may or may not be rewriteable. Iboffrc has done a video explaining how some of it works. It's all from reverse engineering though.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#652

Post by canuckintime »

barfingclouds wrote: post #648
makeitdouble wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There can be advantages to an external brick, but I see parent's comment mostly centered on having USB-C as input. That gives a lot more options IMHO on how to handle power for this machine, including portability, even if it's supposed to be a desktop machine. I thought the same for the minisforum machines which would be competitive to this, they have a 19V input that really should be USB-C at this point.

I bought a portable AC battery for my Mac mini for $65. Hard agree though that it would be a lot cooler if the conversion was in the cable so I could just do dc in. The thing is, M chips run so efficiently that even with the power loss from conversion, it’s still pulling less power than a lot of PCs. But yeah it running on a sleek dc battery would be a lot cooler

could you share the link to the portable AC battery?

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#653

Post by fourfour3 »

tiltowait wrote: post #612
fourfour3 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$100 for the 10GbE upgrade doesn't seem unreasonable to me. A PCIe 10GbE NIC using the same Aquantia chipset as existing Macs is $80-$90. https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-XG-C100C-Network-Adapter-Single/... edit: in fact, compared to Apple's usual price gouging for extra RAM/SSD/etc it is downright reasonable .

Not to mention, the vast majority of people don’t need 10GbE. Most users use WiFi and never touch Ethernet. Adding the functionality would just drive up the cost unnecessarily.

I would like to see 2.5GbE - that's getting pretty common on AMD/Intel machines now too. But afaik Apple love using Broadcom for 1G NICs, and I'm not sure they have a 2.5GbE chipset?

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#654

Post by bufferoverflow »

whynotminot wrote: post #386
bufferoverflow wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

… you see how massive that comp you posted is, right? You see it, don’t you? You’re comparing a used Tower to an Apple TV sized device.

Is this a problem? My PC sits under my desk. I only see it when I vacuum the floor.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#655

Post by grahamj »

DrBenCarson wrote: post #281
grahamj wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This basically proves that Apple shot themselves in the foot for AI on mobile by artificially restricting RAM for so long! What they shot was us. My 14 Pro won’t do AI despite having a better NPU than an M1, all because Apple chose - intentionally - to ship it with too little RAM. They knew AI was coming and they did this anyway. Although having played with it on my MBP it’s clear I’m not missing much. But still.

They knew they were releasing Apple Intelligence before ChatGPT went live? lol

They knew about LLMs in 2022. They've been shipping NPUs since transformers hit the scene in 2017.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#656

Post by insane_dreamer »

leetharris wrote: post #518
insane_dreamer wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, Mechabell…

Thanks for all the info! Great to hear about the availability.

I noticed the other comments mentioned GeForceNow over _ethernet_. What connection speeds do you typically need to play these games over GeforceNow or similar.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#657

Post by malshe »

diffeomorphism wrote: post #573
celestialcheese wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my experience, TCO on most apple products ends up being roughly the same when you factor in resale value. You'll be able to sell your M4 mac mini in 5 years for $150 for an instant-cash offer from backmarket or any other reseller, while you'd be lucky to get $30 for the equivalent Beelink or BOSGAME after 6 months on ebay.

So wait 6 months and buy the equivalent beelink for $30 instead of wasting $600 on the mac?

I’m curious about your definition of the word waste. If a $600 Mac lasts 5 years and still worth $150 and another machine loses all its value in six months, how is Mac a waste?

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#658

Post by 7e »

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…

4K displays are the new standard. I can buy a 27" IPS 4K display from LG for $200. Anything lower res. is a boomer screen; get rid of it and move on.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#659

Post by 7e »

srid wrote: post #520
goosedragons wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

And what's the cheapest that has IPMI? Severs without IPMI are so annoying.
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