peanutbutter
Contributor
Might be a good time to pick up a used M1/M2 mini for my homelab
News Apple Announces Redesigned Mac Mini With M4 and M4 Pro Chips
- Thread starter TinTinSnowy
- Start date
rsaeon
Herald
This base mini might end up being Apple's best selling Mac just by the enterprise/business adoption alone. Or it might end up a close second to the MacBook Air.
This has always been the case with a performant mini — the first Intel mini could be upgraded from a 1.5GHz Core Solo to 2.33GHz and was incredibly popular (I had one and did the upgrade). When Apple decided to upsell the mobile macs since they had greater margins, they cut the performance of the mini by offering the base model with ULV dual core processors.
Now, it would appear, they need real world performance and usage metrics/validation for the M4 and the mini is easiet way to get that done before a riskier implemention in a larger Max or Ultra version. Or not, ha. We'll know after the other macs are announced.
This has always been the case with a performant mini — the first Intel mini could be upgraded from a 1.5GHz Core Solo to 2.33GHz and was incredibly popular (I had one and did the upgrade). When Apple decided to upsell the mobile macs since they had greater margins, they cut the performance of the mini by offering the base model with ULV dual core processors.
Now, it would appear, they need real world performance and usage metrics/validation for the M4 and the mini is easiet way to get that done before a riskier implemention in a larger Max or Ultra version. Or not, ha. We'll know after the other macs are announced.
mantheman
Forerunner
TinTinSnowy
Herald
I think they are forced for 16gb because of Apple Intelligence. I am glad that on device LLM is pushing every company to bundle higher RAM.
Things are only going to get better with entry of Nvidia + Mediatek PC SOC and Qualcomm Elite X 2. Even Intel and AMD might be pushed to cut prices in the coming days. We went from an era of no competition to mid competition to extreme competition.
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k_m_Arya
Galvanizer
Qualcomm Elite X 2 might be a banger of a chip but I have the utmost confidence that Microsoft will shit the bed with their support. They still haven't fixed the sleep bug on laptops for a long time now I think, it's only reduced in new arm laptops but not gone completely.
I will hold my horses for now, what with them cancelling the Developer Kit for Win and the stuff with Arm.
desiibond
Keymaster
ARM is not going to cancel Qualcomm's license given how much money Qualcomm is paying ARM. This looks more like payback from ARM as Qualcomm rallied against nvidia-arm merger. And this is a good time to get higher license and royalties now that Qualcomm is going into PC market.
Dev kit is cancelled as the products are very well available in the market.
But the point stands. Qualcomm's entry into PC market lost most of its shine. Have to see what they bring next year.
Well they finally shipped them after being stuck for long and many folks received them as well; then they cancelled and everyone is getting refunded including those who have already got one. There are no exact equivalent ( laptops don't exactly count ) in the market but they did announce their ambition to launch in the SFF space so let's see.
desiibond
Keymaster
Throwing money at SFF (marketing etc) is waste of money and effort at this point of time. Most places where PCs are uses are in offices (not IT companies) where they run old version of windows and software that is not compatible with WoA. Those softwares may never get support/update to work on WoA. Other market is gaming and well, it is shit right now in WoA. Probably they realized this and decided to halt SFF push? The only market that they can succeed right now is casual use laptop market.
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And yet we are discussing this in the thread for one .. if Q have given up already then lets wait for an official confirmation after what they said in June ..
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Pat
Galvanizer
This. It is a given that all Macs from now on will come with 16gb as base to support Apple Intelligence which is a big win for consumers considering they charge fricking 20k/$200 for 8GB to 16GB upgrade.
Tracer_Bullet
Galvanizer
Why get so excited for a product from a very anticonsumer company.
Desktop pc is one place where these people don't have a hold and we can upgrade and choose components as we want without having to deal with segmentation and other nonsense.
Just the fact that people are so excited that this box has 16gb ram ( oh thank heavens ! ) tells you all.
Anyway, sorry for rant.
Desktop pc is one place where these people don't have a hold and we can upgrade and choose components as we want without having to deal with segmentation and other nonsense.
Just the fact that people are so excited that this box has 16gb ram ( oh thank heavens ! ) tells you all.
Anyway, sorry for rant.
TinTinSnowy
Herald
Highest single core performance for 50K. Most applications are single threaded in nature.
I don't think we can make any PC comparable to the M4 mini performance for 50K. Initial investment will be higher on the pc side and upgrade costs will add up. Whereas it will be easy to resell m4 mini and let's say upgrade to M7 mini.
M4 mini will be useless for gaming, legacy and some server application purposes though. But for all other uses cases, it will come out at top even considering the additional RAM costs.
rsaeon
Herald
Software, software, software. For me, at least.
Also I don't get this whole anticonsumer criticism. If anything, Apple is antipoor. Which is what most premium brands are anyway.
In my mind, anticonsumer behaviour would be imposing new restrictions after the initial purchase transaction, arbitrarily. Like taking away dark mode and putting it behind a subscription fee. That hasn't happened but if it does, it'll be messed up.
Is something anticonsumer if you go into it with full knowledge of what or what not to expect?
peanutbutter
Contributor
Adding to this, if you bump memory to 32GB the Mac Mini will cost ₹99900.00. This 32GB is available to the GPU as well. I run a lot of local models (whisper.cpp, Llama 70B) and I don't think there's ANY consumer GPU you can buy with 32GB VRAM in that price range.
TinTinSnowy
Herald
Check attached screenshot. I am not sure how powerful is A5000 but this is what it might cost for equivalent solution in the cloud. Cloud solution seems costly for you + no resale value.
I get a M1 mini cloud pc on rent for a day every month for testing purpose. Hardly costs me 3 euros and the cost is reimbursed from the client. But now I will get a M4 mini to use as my primary device.
Attachments
Tracer_Bullet
Galvanizer
Once you have a monopoly on things, its easy. Android people blindly copy Apple. Look at how batteries and audio ports gets removed to push their business. Proprietary cables, software lock etc etc.
This is just recent stuff that i remember.
Add to that once you get locked in to them, they are free to squeeze in future just like any company. look at Amazon/Flipkart today vs past.
And as a i said, getting 16 gb ram makes Apple people happy ...
To me experience and choice in buying a pc vs mobile/laptops makes its clear what happens when we let companies choose the whole specs rather than the parts.
Anyway, not interested in arguing. This product may or may not be good and will certainly have use cases, but apple is kinda shit to me. Wont ever touch it. My response was after seeing someone expecting that apple will become the only desktop company in 10 years. Because of 16 fking gb ( as the final straw, other things are there i get it) ...
TinTinSnowy
Herald
I think this is where the regulator needs to step in. Companies will always try to squeeze the last bit of margin. EU is working in the right direction on this front (usb c, removable batteries, better privacy, software updates, etc) and I expect many other countries to copy EU.
Tracer_Bullet
Galvanizer
yeah, right - do you see that happening? With these companies, insteads of standards and competition we proprietary stuff, segmentation and removal of choice and ultimately monopolies.
But anyway, don't want to spoil thread.
rsaeon
Herald
Can it not be argued that non-removable batteries ended up better for the consumer? I don't need to worry about water or dirt ingress as I used to with Pocket PC devices or early Windows Mobile ones. Fast charging negates the need to carry multiple batteries as I needed to do in the early days.
By the time battery health degrades, software support would've ended for the device. Third party battery swaps is a new industry that didn't exist before. Audio fidelity is no longer tied to the DAC inside your device, you can use much better inline USB-C adapters.
There are pros and cons but I can't say that we're worse off with these changes.
Fair enough but it is disingenuous to say it's anticonsumer when those decisions brought forward advancements that would not have happened if not for those changes.
Your other points stem from an incomplete understanding but then if you're not an Apple user already, it's to be expected that anything new wouldn't be enticing anyway.