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New Mac Mini with M4

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Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#761

Post by fennecbutt »

rowanG077 wrote: post #311
wing-_-nuts wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is huge for AI / ML at least for inference. Apple chips are among the most efficient out there for that sort of thing, the only downside is the lack of cuda

I consider that a plus. Maybe the AI community wil start to wake up and realize that going all in on cuda is ridiculously stupid.

Ceiling is too low on alternative hardware for that.

Until Apple can bang something out as good as an h100, it's no competition.

Cuda thrives bc of the hardware offering too.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#762

Post by fennecbutt »

kridsdale3 wrote: post #441
mmaunder wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s useful. The TB3 external 10 gig interfaces I’ve been using for my Mac get crazy hot.

As someone who just made a 16tb SSD array over Thunderbolt 3 (Best I could find) at 40gbps and the interface is still the bottleneck (disks are fast now!), 10gbps is going to feel really really slow vs the internal stuff.

Idk idt over a GB/s transfer speed is bad, like 15m for 1TB? How often are we chucking a TB back and forth? Almost never.

Hell if I'm dumping cards from my camera or moving models across the network that's like 64-128GB max.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#763

Post by fennecbutt »

seec wrote: post #736
mostlysimilar wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fair, it sounds like you've got a real problem. I'd be surprised of the majority of users experience that problem though.

No, they do. They just don't understand enough about technology/computing to know what's going on or they don't care (or at least pretend to, because they don't have any other experience). It's really crazy that some android phones at half the price give a better browsing experience than many iPhones, especially the non "Pro" ones.

Yeah on my S24U rn I have 8 or so apps open, 100 or so tabs in ff (enough that it just shows an infinity symbol rather than number of tabs). That's with 12GB memory.

Tbf it seems to be browsers that kill memory on any platform. The Web is now just mobile breakpoints that load needlessly high res images.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#764

Post by fennecbutt »

grahamj wrote: post #655
DrBenCarson wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well given they're leaning on concepts like loras etc so much with apple "intelligence" I don't imagine they've been planning this for as long as you think they have.

And their npus weren't added in anticipation of LLMs, imo. You give em too much credit.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#765

Post by fennecbutt »

ErneX wrote: post #263
alberth wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just RAM. It's Unified RAM. So that memory is also used for the GPU & Neural Cores (which is for Apple Intelligence). This is actually why companies moved away from the unified memory arch decades ago. It'll be interesting to see as AI continues to advance, if Apple is forced to depart from their unified memory architecture due to growing GPU memory needs.

I think they moved away because system memory was lagging behind in speed to the memory being used on video cards? And besides, what Apple is doing is placing the RAM really close to the SoC, I think they are on the same package even, that was not the case on the PC either AFAIK?

Apple has an arm license but they still buy memory from Samsung (and others), it's not on the m chip die but it's provided by Samsung and then packaged above the m die.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#766

Post by fennecbutt »

seec wrote: post #737
makeitdouble wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Jobs was extremely pragmatic, which is why for all his fault Apple would always come up with a desirable technological solution. Most things said about Jobs are pop culture caricature derived from peoples talking shit about him (mostly because of success jaleousy).

Did you know him?

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#767

Post by fennecbutt »

diggan wrote: post #107
leetharris wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a Steam Deck, Asus ROG Ally, M2 Mac Mini, M1 Pro laptop, M2 Max laptop (work). All of this runs on either an LG C3 42" OLED or a 34" 1440p ultrawide. Linux GeForce Now can only do 720p or 1080p, can't remember which. Also, it's just kind of laggy in desktop mode. The Macs run so much smoother. My current "main" desktop is actually my Asus ROG Ally. I use one USB C hub that is capable of 4k120hz, and I can move…

> Windows drives me crazy these days! At least it boots. I purchase a Surface Pro 8 a year ago or something, thinking Windows would surely work better than usual when it is Microsoft's own hardware too. But no, yesterday it got stuck in a boot loop, after a Windows update broke the audio drivers somehow. The Windows logs/reliability report can just tell me it "shut down abnormally" without any technical details what…

Tbf I've had the same thing with macos doing stuff like randomly recreating my keychain on login and other weirdness.

As a developer really I can work on Linux or Windows or macos. Long as I'm getting paid. Tools in the toolbox.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#768

Post by fennecbutt »

animal_spirits wrote: post #37

> Mac mini is made with over 50 percent recycled content overall, including 100 percent recycled aluminum in the enclosure, 100 percent recycled gold plating in all Apple-designed printed circuit boards, and 100 percent recycled rare earth elements in all magnets. The electricity used to manufacture Mac mini is sourced from 100 percent renewable electricity. And, to address 100 percent of the electricity customers us…

But we offer base models with paltry memory and solder our ssds and ram modules (look at the ram/ssd chips next to the m chip itself under the heat spreader, they could make em low profile socketed for sure).

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#769

Post by fennecbutt »

modeless wrote: post #284

> With M4, Mac mini delivers up to 1.8x faster CPU performance and 2.2x faster GPU performance over the M1 model They're comparing three generations back now? Oh, I see that they never updated the Mini for M3. So it's only two generations of Mini. Still, I prefer to see one generation comparisons. And it's kind of weird that Apple doesn't keep their smaller product lines more up to date. They certainly have the resou…

Not only that but they're still comparing m3 as being "17x more powerful than Intel" for the air, but neglecting to point out they haven't used Intel for several generations now. Lmaoooo.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#770

Post by fennecbutt »

infecto wrote: post #357
richwater wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes because it's so ridiculous to call it a professional machine and not let people put in their own RAM and instead charge $200+ for 8GB

The days where this actually matters is going away. Your opinion is but a tiny minority, for the vast majority it does not matter. $200-800 for a tool that generates an enormous amount of value is incredible, no desire to upgrade it myself. I think about how rarely a PC gaming computer needs to be upgraded these days, by the time it happens its usually a complete overhaul because there is a CPU, Mobo upgrade required…

More pointlessly defending multi trillion dollar companies for their penny pinching. Sure it's useful, but it could be cheaper without so much anti consumer markup. And y'all should be in favour of this yet you've been taught by apple's cult atmosphere to be "happy with what master gives us"
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