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M4 Mac mini's efficiency

jeffgeerling.com

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Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#2

Post by austinpena »

M4 Mac Mini with 16GB RAM is doing a "good enough" job of editing 6k raw footage in Premiere for my team. I'm surprised to say I'm content with the 16GB of ram so far.

Edit: This is in contrast to my M1 Macbook Air with 16GB of ram which would stutter a lot during color grading. So definitely feeling the improvement.

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#3

Post by wslh »

I've been lurking here for more updates on the Mac Mini M4 since I haven't bought mine yet. I also shared some thoughts in previous comments [1][2], as I'm not only impressed by the technical achievements and form factor but also interested in seeing how Apple's business evolves over the next few quarters. I'm curious whether Apple will increase its market share on the desktop side while continuing to dominate in mobile.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42025411

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42099883

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#7

Post by wslh »

austinpena wrote: post #2

M4 Mac Mini with 16GB RAM is doing a "good enough" job of editing 6k raw footage in Premiere for my team. I'm surprised to say I'm content with the 16GB of ram so far. Edit: This is in contrast to my M1 Macbook Air with 16GB of ram which would stutter a lot during color grading. So definitely feeling the improvement.

I bought the first MacBook Air M1 with 8GB because it was the only option available in my area. Initially, I had doubts, especially after using notebooks with more than 16GB of RAM in previous years. But I was genuinely surprised by how well the M1 performed. My takeaway is that there’s a lot of room for similar improvements in Linux!

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#8

Post by choilive »

philip1209 wrote: post #4

That's great - I wonder if you could get one working with Kamal [1] and Cloudflare Tunnel [2] to run public web apps from a home computer? [1] https://kamal-deploy.org/ [2] https://www.cloudflare.com/products/tunnel/

Yes, just using docker containers and cloudflare tunnel I am using mine as a server for my self hosted apps.

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#9

Post by nextos »

I use Linux, but I think the cheapest M4 Mini offers an incredible value and efficiency per €. With education discount, it's around €650, including VAT. It's pretty hard to find such a silent and powerful machine for that little. Any comparable options?

A good fanless build with a i3-14100T is more expensive and 40-50% slower on Geekbench. An i5 is a bit closer. Some 2024 Ryzen CPUs can match or exceed its multicore performance, but these are also more expensive and much less energy efficient. Pricewise, things start favoring PCs if you need more RAM, as Mac upgrades are costly.

One can potentially use Nix on a Mac Mini to keep similar development environments to those used in Linux, but AFAIK some packages are not supported on ARM. Any experiences using Nix and nix-darwin as a daily driver?

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