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New Mac Mini with M4

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Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#741

Post by reissbaker »

Y-bar wrote: post #690
reissbaker wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For reference comparing to what the big companies use, an H100 has over 3TB/s bandwidth. A nice home lab might be built around 4090s — two years old at this point — which have about 1TB/s. Apple's chips have the advantage of being able to be specced out with tons of RAM, but performance isn't going to be in the same ballpark of even fairly old Nvidia chips.

The cheapest 4090 is EUR 110 less than a complete 32GB RAM M2 max Mac Studio where I live. Speccing out a full Intel 14700K computer (avoiding the expensive 14900) with 32 GB RAM, NVMe storage, case, power supply, motherboard, 10G Ethernet … and we are approaching the cost of the 64GB M2 ultra which has a more comparable memory bandwidth to the Nvidia card, but with more than twice the RAM available to the GPU.

Apple will let you buy more RAM for cheaper than Nvidia, but it won't be the same speed — it'll be ~20% slower than a 4090.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#742

Post by johnnyyyy »

seec wrote: post #730
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…

This is the biggest issue with Mac hardware at the moment. All because of a decision to make it easier for their developers (and 3rd party too I guess) to be able to claim they figured out high-DPI before everyone else. It comes at a large cost now, either more money than reasonable for one of the few compatible displays or accept a much worse experience, that is just not good for devices of this price. This is why a…

Wait about what kind of people are you talking about and how niche is that target group?

You are saying Mac are expensive but at the same time the potential buyers cant afford even a cheap 4K monitor? They go by like 200$? now. and even is that group exists.. its not like 2560p is torture on a Mac especially with that BetterDisplay HiDPI, I would bet many would not even notice the difference.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#743

Post by digitaltensor »

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...

None of them have a proper HDMI 2.1 FRL port that is needed to run a 4k 120Hz monitor. Likely because the Iris Xe / AMD equivalent does not support it, and dedicated ITX GPUs are expensive. This isn't a problem with M4.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#744

Post by seec »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #105
wpwpwpw wrote: post #18

As usual, no upgradability. There's evidence that it's possible with SSDs with no loss of performance. Probably the same would apply to memory, maybe with replaceable memory chips and a simple switch. More future landfill material.

Wow, are you still using your original 386DX board, with minor upgrades along the way? /s I actually think Apple's way of managing upgrades isn't as harsh as many people think. The first thing to get to sustainability is to use less. If you don't need the hardware to make hardware easily upgradable, you simplify the hardware and use less of it. This is one of the reasons Apple do it. Secondly, they're using a lot of…

A 2004 G4 iBook has been unsupported for any software for decades, let alone Chrome who was first released in 2008. I don't know if they actually ever made an official PPC version of Chrome but I doubt it.

You are a liar but a bad one.

You can like Macs, you can prefer it, you can rationalise the added cost any way you want. But the fact is, Macs do not have any more useful life than PCs if your price matches them. You play the role of the typical Apple fanboy who compares a 1.5k MacBook to a random crappy Lenovo that was on sale for less than 500. The Mac is better/longer lasting. It's almost as if price convey some sort of information on quality...

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#745

Post by seec »

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.

Well yes, it's the most reasonably priced upgrade. But when you start upgrading the other options and you come into expensive computer territory it becomes another thing that you need to drop cash on when it feels like it should be default at this price. Many NAS have 2.5G or 5G interface now, so it's not like there is no use case at all...

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#746

Post by al_borland »

makeitdouble wrote: post #193
etempleton wrote: post #102

What a great little computer at a very reasonable price. A few interesting things with this announcement: 1. Interesting that they did not have this as part of an event. I think this either means they do not have much else to share around the Mac right now or the opposite, there just won't be room to talk about the iMac or Mac Mini. I am leaning towards the former as a I suspect the other computers in their lineup wi…

> This seems small, but it would have been almost blasphemy under the jobs era. I feel like Jobs was a lot more pragmatic than we give him credit for. I mean we had the HP iPods, iTunes on Windows etc. And the iMac's catch copy was "BYODKM" at the very start, fully putting the spotlight on third parties and composability.

> And the iMac's catch copy was "BYODKM" at the very start

I think you meany Mac mini there. It was definitely built as the gateway into the Mac ecosystem. Swap your tower for a Mac mini, and keep using the rest of your old hardware.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#747

Post by al_borland »

shadowmanifold wrote: post #630
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…

It will make me a mac owner for the first time in 25 years. I was just looking at a mac book air yesterday but I just can't get over the complete ripoff of a memory upgrade from the base model. 16 gig starting at $599. I honestly don't need to know anything else to buy one.

If you wanted a MacBook Air, that was also upgraded to 16GB of RAM for the base model for the same price.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#748

Post by seec »

c0nsumer wrote: post #474

I'm finding this monitor: https://press.asus.com/news/press-releases/asus-proart-5k-pa... ...to be looking really appealing to pair with one of these new Mac Minis. $899 MSRP in the US, 5120 x 2880, same dimensions as an Apple Studio Display but a lot cheaper... And B&H just got them in stock. Just ordered one myself, now I need to pick which variant of the Mac Mini M4 to pair it with. (My goal here is replacing a 27…

Ah that's cool, it seems to be better than the one Samsung released. And the price is not too bad.

Is Asus going to make "cheap" Macs better with their display offering, that would be kind of hilarious. But yes, if that display is half decent, it makes entry level Mac Mini pretty good, at least you can get a sub 2k setup.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#749

Post by seec »

hbn wrote: post #405
diggan wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple is now in decline I've been saying this since the butterfly-keyboard fiasco. At that point it was clear that professional users weren't the focus anymore, and I promptly left the ecosystem. I still have a iPhone (12 mini) that I only keep because it still works, but every time CarPlay tries to murder me in traffic, I get one step closer to just yeeting that phone into the sea.

Apple silicon Macs have been many people's favorite computers they've ever purchased (myself included) and blew out the value proposition for buying practically any other computer, unless you specifically need Windows for some reason. iPhones have gotten so good they can barely come up with anything new to add year-over-year. Young people in the west are almost exclusively buying iPhones because people like them. The…

People buy their hardware for entirely different reasons than what you make up. They have financial success but that doesn't mean much. I have had 2 Apple Watch and I mostly find it to be a deeply flawed poorly thought product, especially for the price.
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