M4 and M4 Pro Mac minis are probably Apple's best Mac minis

20 points by mafro 8 months ago | 28 comments
  • vachina 8 months ago
    Almost twice as fast as M2 Pro while using half as much energy. How is Apple able to pull this off as a consumer hardware company. What is Intel et. al. doing all these years?
    • jpgvm 8 months ago
      Money, also TSMC.
    • mentos 8 months ago
      Make 1TB of SSD not double the price and I’ll get one
      • dark__paladin 8 months ago
        This a million times over. This is why Apple will always play third fiddle to Linux and even Windows for power users.
        • jascha_eng 8 months ago
          How much slower is it to attach an external drive here?
          • kemotep 8 months ago
            It has thunderbolt 5 ports but the only drives capable of using that aren’t widely available or out yet and cost just as much as a base model Mac Mini.

            But it should be essentially the same speeds as the average internal m.2 drives it seems.

            https://www.owc.com/solutions/envoy-ultra

            • AbuAssar 8 months ago
              Only the mac mini with m4 pro has thunderbolt 5
            • dlachausse 8 months ago
              In typical average everyday use, not much at all if you get a high quality external SSD.

              Source: Me, with my M1 Mac mini using a Samsung T7 connected via USB.

              Things I use frequently are on the 256GB internal SSD, such as Office 365 and Xcode. Huge things like games that aren't a huge deal if they take a few more seconds to load are offloaded to the external. The only inconvenience this setup has caused me is that I have to periodically uninstall old iOS simulators from Xcode to keep enough free space available for OS updates.

          • dlachausse 8 months ago
            It's wild that with the educational discount ($499!) the base model is within striking distance of a Raspberry Pi once you add in the power supply, case, heat sink, and an SSD.

            I don't think there is anything else out there that has this combination of size, performance, price, and energy efficiency.

            • angoragoats 8 months ago
              > It's wild that with the educational discount ($499!) the base model is within striking distance of a Raspberry Pi once you add in the power supply, case, heat sink, and an SSD.

              Uh, what? There are lots of nice things about the new Mac Minis for sure, but this is the weirdest and most wrong thing I think I've heard thus far.

              I went to Micro Center's website and pieced this together (all parts are official Raspberry Pi brand unless I indicated otherwise):

              Raspberry Pi 5 8GB: $69.99

              Case: $9.99

              PSU: $11.99

              Active cooler: $4.99

              52Pi NVMe adapter board: $7.99

              Inland 256GB NVMe SSD: $24.99

              Total: $130.

              You could buy almost four of these for the price of one Mac Mini with edu discount.

              Side note: The SSD above appears to be literally the only 256GB NVMe drive that Micro Center carries. Just goes to show you how much the rest of the PC industry has moved on while Apple's still stuck on 256GB. Also, for $13 more you can get a similar Inland 512GB SSD instead (a $200 upgrade at Apple, whether you get edu pricing or not).

            • nullpoint420 8 months ago
              Would love to buy one of these to run as a server, but I really don’t need it. :)

              Besides that, my 16in MacBook Pro with M2 Max and 32gb RAM still does everything I need. I’m still so impressed with the raw performance and long battery life that Apple Silicon has brought to the laptop space.

              • tchbnl 8 months ago
                Isn't every new Mac mini Apple's best Mac mini? I don't know of any that were regressions.
                • AbuAssar 8 months ago
                  Intel's newest cpu is considered as a regression
                • nisegami 8 months ago
                  Still doesn't justify a model with double the base memory and storage costing over twice as much.
                  • mafro 8 months ago
                    In this pricing model, the power users effectively subsidise the entry-level users.

                    Not saying I agree with it, but Apple has been doing this successfully for many years.

                    • angoragoats 8 months ago
                      I’ve seen this argument before and I don’t get it. How is it that power users are subsidizing the entry-level users? The implication of this seems to be that the base models would otherwise be more expensive, which I’ve yet to see a shred of evidence for.

                      It seems more likely that Apple is just straight up overcharging for upgrades, and people have to pay it because nothing is user-serviceable or user-repairable anymore.

                  • zeroc8 8 months ago
                    What a great little machine.

                    Would be great if this could finally put the nail into Windows. It's about time.

                    • dlachausse 8 months ago
                      I disagree. I'd like to see Windows reduce in market share, but still remain a strong competitor to macOS and Linux.

                      There's a lot of cross pollination of ideas that comes from OS diversity and a greater resilience to cybersecurity threats, as it is unlikely for any one vulnerability to affect 3 different operating systems at the same time.

                      • xnyan 8 months ago
                        People using Windows generally are not actively choosing between windows and macos, it’s assigned to them or they have software that only runs on windows.
                      • tropicalfruit 8 months ago
                        i'm more interested in the mini pc's running AMD iGPU's like those found in the steam deck

                        to run triple AAA games at 40-60fps on a cold and quiet device is amazing and feels like a real progression. likewise with proton

                        something like beelink ser8 you can open it and add RAM and extra SSD for cheap too.

                        these mac mini are restricted by the OS. macOS is a boring system to me.

                        what can you do with this that you can't with the previous models. generate genmojis faster or render 4k videos faster, useful but boring

                        • schmookeeg 8 months ago
                          I feel like "boring" is praise for an OS, not a criticism.

                          I have no problem playing most of my steam game library on my m1 mini, I can only imagine the M4 is even better. Of the games that won't run on macos, yeah, most are "triple AAA" shooters that I spend less time with lately, so all good.

                          The Beelink ser8 looks cool. If I build another PC, that will be high up in the consideration list. My current PC is a watercooled monstrosity that is about as portable as a bank vault.

                          • 8 months ago
                          • jamespo 8 months ago
                            The steam deck has a fan which can be quite noticeable, same for these AMD mini pcs, cold and quiet is a stretch. I have one running as a proxmox server though, 64gb ram and expandable storage, the Mac mini can't compete with that.
                            • mnky9800n 8 months ago
                              Tbh I have steam deck oled and I never once noticed the fan running on any game. So ymmv.
                              • tropicalfruit 8 months ago
                                i have a ser9 and its silent and cool to the touch running cyberpunk at 60fps. its also about the same size as mac-mini

                                and i also added my own extra 4tb ssd for about $130. it took 5 minutes to do it.

                            • mnky9800n 8 months ago
                              I feel like it will play games very well my m1 MacBook Pro seems quite capable. So as a steam machine maybe it’s rather capable.