90K+ Macbook M4 Pro or Mac Mini M4

[rushikesh_jadhav]

Currently apple is giving instant cashback of 3k + no cost EMI up to 24 months. you can get mac min m4(16,256) within 50 k even if you are not student by purchasing with ICICI bank credit card with 24 months no cost EMI. if we cancel the Emi by calling to bank the effective price becomes around 49k. I am not sure that we are allowed to cancel this EMI or not though. can anyone confirm please?

 

[princeoo7]

if you choose the laptop, Get the base storage variant.
Spend the saves on a Thunderbolt enclosure and 2TB or 4TB SSD instead.
512GB will be adequate for all your documents and other base data. Any large projects can sit at your desk


The newer USB4/TB drives actually do match up onboard storage and are extremely reliable.
Macs in fact see them as PCIE drives connected to the PCIE bus (and not a USB drive)

any suggestions for Thunderbolt enclosure? I ended up with Mac mini for now with 512gb which is around 484gb and I nearly have 60 to 70 gb free XD

 

[superczar]

any suggestions for Thunderbolt enclosure? I ended up with Mac mini for now with 512gb which is around 484gb and I nearly have 60 to 70 gb free XD

I have a ASM2464PD based enclosure called NewQ something. Real world Seq R/W are around 3-4GB/s
My understanding is that anything with Jmicron asm2464 is the preferred option followed by JHL7440.

these enclosures used to be around 7-8K but limited supply (would have been a niche item in India) coupled with sudden demand spike (Mac mini release) has pushed the prices up for now.

 

[princeoo7]

I have a ASM2464PD based enclosure called NewQ something. Real world Seq R/W are around 3-4GB/s
My understanding is that anything with Jmicron asm2464 is the preferred option followed by JHL7440.

these enclosures used to be around 7-8K but limited supply (would have been a niche item in India) coupled with sudden demand spike (Mac mini release) has pushed the prices up for now.

yes, I can see some selling for 82$ but in India its 13.4K or something :/ Samsung T9 2Tb going for 21k or something ...

 

[superczar]

yes, I can see some selling for 82$ but in India its 13.4K or something :/ Samsung T9 2Tb going for 21k or something ...

yeah, the same units were 7-8K till not too long ago.
give it perhaps a few months as more importers would have placed orders by now

 

[desiibond]

any suggestions for Thunderbolt enclosure? I ended up with Mac mini for now with 512gb which is around 484gb and I nearly have 60 to 70 gb free XD

First, glad that you did not fall for '256GB is enough' misleading suggestions. I hope you now understood why I went with 1TB (as it is a MBP and I cannot carry it around with an external drive plugged in all the time). Do not waste your money on TB4 enclosures 'yet'. Cheap ones come with lot of issues and last thing you want is for your data to go corrupt. Can you share screenshot of your mac's storage page from settings? Lets see how you can free up onboard storage without spending too much. Why go with TB4 enclosures and all if there is possibility of going for normal external SSD.

Also, Apple does not like USB 3.2 as much as Thunderbolt, thanks to lack of support for USB's 2x2 standards that allows higher speeds. Look for Samsung T7 vs T9 speed comparisons on mac. Not much difference though T9 advertises double the speed in normal operations. The key difference is when you transfer huge amount of data that needs more cache (T9 has some 120GB cache, T7 has 50GB I think). So, unless you use the same drive to record log from iPhone etc, think again about spending so much for USB 3.2 external storage. If you really want fast SSDs, check Sandisk's G40 that support TB3. To get best possible speeds, you have to shell out a lot for USB4 or TB4 storage. IMHO, not worth it unless your job depends on it.

 

[princeoo7]

First, glad that you did not fall for '256GB is enough' misleading suggestions. I hope you now understood why I went with 1TB (as it is a MBP and I cannot carry it around with an external drive plugged in all the time). Do not waste your money on TB4 enclosures 'yet'. Cheap ones come with lot of issues and last thing you want is for your data to go corrupt. Can you share screenshot of your mac's storage page from settings? Lets see how you can free up onboard storage without spending too much. Why go with TB4 enclosures and all if there is possibility of going for normal external SSD.

Also, Apple does not like USB 3.2 as much as Thunderbolt, thanks to lack of support for USB's 2x2 standards that allows higher speeds. Look for Samsung T7 vs T9 speed comparisons on mac. Not much difference though T9 advertises double the speed in normal operations. The key difference is when you transfer huge amount of data that needs more cache (T9 has some 120GB cache, T7 has 50GB I think). So, unless you use the same drive to record log from iPhone etc, think again about spending so much for USB 3.2 external storage. If you really want fast SSDs, check Sandisk's G40 that support TB3. To get best possible speeds, you have to shell out a lot for USB4 or TB4 storage. IMHO, not worth it unless your job depends on it.

View attachment 223490

here we go

500 gb is fine for me but I am kinda of lazy person when it comes to cleaning caches on Mac. plus in future I will require space for recording desktops so was looking into solutions. and I am a bit spoiled with 2TB on C drive on my windows machine

 

[desiibond]

Can you move atleast 100 GB of those documents into external drive? As this is a Mac mini. You can write automation that moves any document that is not access in last 60 days etc into external drive. Once a document is accessed from external drive, it has to be moved to local drive. Check once, I think macOS does this anyway (keeping most opened files in cache).

For virtualization, yes, better go for a TB4 external drive to make full use of speeds. Again, if total space utilized by your VMs is smaller than free space available on onboard storage, try to live with onboard storage + normal external drive where you have all your documents in external drive. This gives say 150GB of free space atleast and Mac can use this for VM cache. Your mini has 16GB memory right?

 

[superczar]

First, glad that you did not fall for '256GB is enough' misleading suggestions. I hope you now understood why I went with 1TB

I dont think its a misleading suggestion. You need to understand the use case of the user.
I have a 512 M1 Pro and a 512 M3 pro. I also had a 256 M1 for a long time.
In none of the cases have i felt shortchanged for storage.

If you work on videos for work .. or carry 3d design projects to home and office then even 1TB may feel less.
But for someone who needs their regular word/pdf docs/mails on the go (along with normal pc needs), even 128 may suffice.

On a side note, I in fact do have a high storage requirement. FWIW, i have over 600GB of 2 decades + of photos / videos on the same Macs.
iCloud will automatically offload old files from local storage and keep only local cache of maybe 15-20GB.

OTOH, the mini has no storage constraints so I keep a local cache as well of the same data on a 2TB SSD which is where the photo library resides for the Mini.
for triple redundancy, the library also rsyncs with a NAS for maintaning a cold storage backup every 3 days.

The money saved on the lower storage variants pays for several years and more of cloud storage as well as the NAS redundancies- which for something like photos (and similar high criticality data) is anyway a must have

 

[JMP]

An alternative option for those beyond warranty, maybe.

 

[roadrash99]

Also an option -

 

[dissel]

 

[desiibond]

That save $600 is misleading. Many tubers say things that you want to hear for clicks.

For someone who has huge fast storage needs (content creator or heavy productivity that requires access to high speed data storage ), a TB4/USB4 external drive is absolutely necessary. They do not fit into this category.

For those who don't have need for that, a 512GB/16GB Mac mini costs $200 (20k INR) over the base Mac mini price. No need for TB4 drive, no need to move applications to TB4 drive, no need to juggle lot of things. You get a Mac mini with 512GB storage. A 2TB normal external drive costs 7k. That's it. No juggling. You use this 2TB drive to archive. If you want triple quadruple pentuple data redudancy, you build on top of this.

I am not sure why we have to make lives so complex by shuffling things around just to save 7k rupees. Not to forget that few years down the line, you have to be even more aggressive with shuffling as 256GB becomes woefully low. You are also forgetting the fact that caching is crucial for MacOS performance.

There is a golden rule in computers. Do not pick specs that is just borderline enough for you today, pick specs that gives you peace of mind in the future. 256GB is 'just enough' today, just like how 8GB memory was 'just enough' last year.

 

[dissel]

That save $600 is misleading. For someone who has huge fast storage needs (content creator or heavy productivity that requires access to high speed data storage ), a TB4/USB4 external drive is absolutely necessary. They do not fit into this category.
For those who don't have need for that, a 512GB/16GB Mac mini costs $200 (20k INR) over the base Mac mini price. No need for TB4 drive, no need to move applications to TB4 drive, no need to juggle lot of things. You get a Mac mini with 512GB storage. A 2TB normal external drive costs 7k. That's it. No juggling. You use this 2TB drive to archive. If you want triple quadruple pentuple data redudancy, you build on top of this.

I am not sure why we have to make lives so complex by shuffling things around just to save 7k rupees. Not to forget that few years down the line, you have to be even more aggressive with shuffling as 256GB becomes woefully low. You are also forgetting the fact that caching is crucial for MacOS performance.

There is a golden rule in computers. Do not pick specs that is just borderline enough for you today, pick specs that gives you peace of mind in the future. 256GB is 'just enough' today, just like how 8GB memory was 'just enough' last year.

Hey,
I just recently finally got a 16/512GB version, but I am still following this guy's instruction and waiting for the breakdown, probably not break until the next OS update - before I thought I go for a 24/256GB version from Apple IN, but latter backed out as the external enclosure may fail and Indian summer.

Below Proof

Spoiler

 

[desiibond]

Hey,
I just recently finally got a 16/512GB version, but I am still following this guy's instruction and waiting for the breakdown, probably not break until the next OS update - before I thought I go for a 24/256GB version from Apple IN, but latter backed out as the external enclosure may fail and Indian summer.

Below Proof

Spoiler

View attachment 223512

16GB/512GB is right balance for regular use. With external drive in heavy use, data corruption is one thing. Other headache is that you have to format that drive with APFS is not compatible with other OSes. Even if you do some jugged and get it to mount, there is a high chance of data corruption. The moment you remove that drive containing apps and home directory, Mac will have issues till you reconnect. Why to do all this when you can just get enough onboard storage and live life in peace. Have critical docs in iCloud and a backup drive.

 

[rushikesh_jadhav]

That save $600 is misleading. Many tubers say things that you want to hear for clicks.

For someone who has huge fast storage needs (content creator or heavy productivity that requires access to high speed data storage ), a TB4/USB4 external drive is absolutely necessary. They do not fit into this category.

For those who don't have need for that, a 512GB/16GB Mac mini costs $200 (20k INR) over the base Mac mini price. No need for TB4 drive, no need to move applications to TB4 drive, no need to juggle lot of things. You get a Mac mini with 512GB storage. A 2TB normal external drive costs 7k. That's it. No juggling. You use this 2TB drive to archive. If you want triple quadruple pentuple data redudancy, you build on top of this.

I am not sure why we have to make lives so complex by shuffling things around just to save 7k rupees. Not to forget that few years down the line, you have to be even more aggressive with shuffling as 256GB becomes woefully low. You are also forgetting the fact that caching is crucial for MacOS performance.

There is a golden rule in computers. Do not pick specs that is just borderline enough for you today, pick specs that gives you peace of mind in the future. 256GB is 'just enough' today, just like how 8GB memory was 'just enough' last year.

Agree but today 16gb Ram is just enough, but in may be next 2 years it will be low. In that case it's better to spend 20k for ram upgrade instead of SSD which atleast you can manage with external SSD.

 

[desiibond]

Agree but today 16gb Ram is just enough, but in may be next 2 years it will be low. In that case it's better to spend 20k for ram upgrade instead of SSD which atleast you can manage with external SSD.

Ideally, I would go with 32GB/512GB variant. But 16->32 costs 40k more just 8GB adds 20k to the bill. 16GB 'may' become less in few years time but 256GB is a bottleneck already. If you have 512GB or more onboard storage with 16GB of memory, you have enough memory and for odd higher memory needs, onboard storage is used for caching. It will stay this way for few years atleast. Like I said earlier, I had a 128GB Mac mini and from day 1 I have to manage storage. At least, I had option to upgrade then as it was good till now. This is why I picked higher storage variant when I upgraded to MBP.

 

[prd_407]

Currently apple is giving instant cashback of 3k + no cost EMI up to 24 months. you can get mac min m4(16,256) within 50 k even if you are not student by purchasing with ICICI bank credit card with 24 months no cost EMI. if we cancel the Emi by calling to bank the effective price becomes around 49k. I am not sure that we are allowed to cancel this EMI or not though. can anyone confirm please?

We are allowed to cancel the EMI on credit card, some banks just charge a small fee but usually free if cancelled within 2-3 days of original transaction.