That doesn’t seem very good for the price.
When… have their products ever been competitive on price? Not even shitting on them, but there’s always been an Apple tax.
Honestly, now that they put in a reasonable amount of RAM, with a processor that strong and some external storage, 600USD isn’t that terrible of a price.
I’d need to see what comparable x86 processors and graphics are to the M4, but yeah, this seems like it could be one of the first Macs in a while to be really competitive on price. It doesn’t happen often but it does happen. Fifteen years ago, a couple years after Macintosh went to Intel, I bought a Mac Pro. I had a hard time comparing prices at first, but once I finally realized I needed to be looking at workstations instead of desktops the Mac Pro actually came out to be about $300 less than identically spec’d workstations from Dell and HP. That was about the price of a full retail license on Windows Vista Ultimate (or later Windows 7 Ultimate). With Boot Camp and feeling like I could find Windows on sale for less it actually seemed to make the most sense with the added benefit of access to both Windows and OS X. It was frankly the best Windows machine I’ve ever used. No bloat, and all the drivers worked.
For the Mac Mini? The Apple Silicon line has always been a really good value for the CPU, compared to similar performance from Intel and AMD. The upcharge on RAM and storage basically made it break even somewhere around 1 or 2 upgrades, if you were looking for a comparable CPU/GPU.
For my purposes the M1 Mac Mini was cheaper than anything I was looking at for a low power/quiet home server, back in 2021, through some random Costco coupon for $80 off the base $599 configuration. A little more CPU than I needed, and a little less RAM than I would’ve preferred, but it was fine.
Plus having official Mac hardware allows me to run a Bluebubbles server and hack Backblaze pricing (unlimited data backup for any external storage you can hook up to a Mac), so that was a nice little bonus compared to running a Linux server.
On their laptops, they’re kinda cost competitive if you’re looking for high dpi laptop screens, and there’s just not really a good comparison for that CPU/GPU performance for power. If you don’t need or want those things then Macs aren’t a good value, but if you are looking for those things the other computer manufacturers aren’t going to be offering better value.
Back in 2009-2010 I bought an entry level 13" MacBook Pro because it was fairly competitively priced compared to other options with similar specs, but the MBP had by far the better battery life, display quality, touchpad, and probably keyboard. It was easily worth the upcharge for those factors, so no real Apple Tax.
They’ve often been on par with competitors tbh.
The X1 Carbon isn’t much cheaper than a Macbook Air and ditto for Dell XPS vs Macbook Pro. The Macs have better build quality usually, but the PCs would get better specs. RAM, at least.
The Galaxy S series stars in the same range as iPhones do, though you get a better screen. But in the Ultra and Pro Max versions the screens trade blows and the iPhone is apparently cheaper.
When I was last comparing laptops a few years back I was seriously leaning towards the Framework AMD. It was clearly a tradeoff between Apple’s displays, trackpad, lid hinges, CPU/GPU benchmarks, and battery life, versus much more built in memory and storage, a tall display form factor, and better Linux support. Price was kinda a wash, as I was just comparing what I could get for $1500 at the time. I ended up with an Apple again, in the end. I’m keeping an eye on progress with the Asahi project, though, and might switch OSes soon.
Mac Mini M1 when it was released was a good deal compared to same form factor machines at similar prices. Same for the M1 MacBook Air, despite the base RAM.
That advantage lasted a while, too, considering battery life and build quality.
Still running an m1 Mac mini right now, it’s a damn good machine, but the performance gains over the years on the m series chips haven’t really forced me to upgrade yet. As for gaming, I just use GeForce now to play my steam library and it’s awesome, it’s a really great combo. The 8GB of ram is lacking, but I’m using GFN and not pushing it too hard, so I don’t notice any meaningful performance problems. I’m also not editing photos or videos, so that probably helps.
Its not, you can build your own mini pc with a ryzen 9700X, more ram, more storage, and it would probrally cost less. In addition you wouldn’t be locked into the Apple ecosystem and you would be able to upgrade it.
Ok, let’s put together a mini PC with a ryzen 9700X for under $600. What case, power supply, motherboard, RAM, and SSD are we gonna get? How’s it compare on power, sound, form factor?
It’s an apples to oranges comparison, and at a certain point you’re comparing different things.
- Case/mothedboard: minisforum ms-a1
- Power supply: external
- Ram: ddr5l (sold separately)
- ssd: pcie gen 5
- power: slightly worse single core performance (can be overclocked) slightly better multi core performance (with a better AM5 CPU)
My point isnt that Apple sucks and nobody should ever buy it, my point is that you’re paying an Apple premium for a fully assembled computer. That premium is greater over time since you cannot upgrade it, meanwhile every part of the minisforum ms-a1 can be. Its convenience and a premium product vs freedom and upgradability. I cannot say that every person does or should value freedom but I do and thats my opinion.
$600 gets you 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. You can get better hardware for less.
M4 reportedly outperforms Intel’s Core i9-14900KS by 16%. That CPU alone is over $600.
I don’t think anything with the word “intel” can be taken seriously in value comparisons…
When I got my last laptop I ended up with a MBP because there were no high end options for Linux laptops with AMD. Now the options are better, but back then, the only realistic alternative to a MacBook Pro would have had a third of the real-world battery life if not less, even if I decided to spend £3k. That didn’t seem like an acceptable compromise so there were virtually no laptops in existence that could compete with an M2 MBP.
True. It was just the first comparison I saw when I searched for M4 benchmarks.
Really, AMD isn’t even a fair comparison because we’re talking about an ARM SoC here. So maybe the Snapdragon dev kit that ultimately got cancelled?
It was supposed to be $900, for a special Snapdragon X Elite, 32GB RAM, and 512GB SSD.
cpubenchmark.net has comparisons to other X Elite chips, putting them pretty much on-par with the M4 or maybe just below it.
With the same amount of RAM and storage in a Mac Mini, you’re talkin $1200. So, $300 premium for a device that’s maybe 2-8% better, has retail support instead of being a dev kit, and… well, actually exists. It’s not a slam dunk for the Mini, but it’s clearly not a rip-off either.
I think the issue is - I would buy something positioned as a very long-living and good machine for that price.
Like Sun workstations were. The design and experience of everything.
The issue with Apple is that these things look expensive, temporary and inconvenient (that feeling of concept nice to look at … for a day or so). And what’s worse, they are.
I hope Larry Ellison gets geriatric demented sooner, maybe then he’ll try to resurrect Sun as a separate entity. Just joking, even to Larry Ellison I only wish good health.
I wish him bad health:
https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2024/09/16/oracle_ai_mass_surveillance_cloud/
Mac Mini’s are cool, and I appreciate that Apple has some of the most experienced and talented designers in the world… But they put the power switch on the bottom. You have to lift it up and turn it over to turn it on and off.
At the very least, the keyboard functions for power.
There is plenty of room on the front for a power button. Should have removed the headphone jack.
Lol, lmao.
Remember these are the same engineers who put the Magic Mouse charging port on the bottom, making the mouse unusable while you charge it
People treat it like a mistake but not be able to use the mouse while it’s plugged in is the entire point of the design. Right or wrong the Apple designers thought a cord drag was a bad experience and designed to prevent it.
They probably looked at their target audience and realized there was a certain percentage of folks that would just leave the mouse on the cord 24/7 and wanted to prevent that.
I don’t understand why this is so hard to understand. You’re supposed to stop using the mouse while it is charging, and use the mouse unplugged. That’s the purpose. It’s not a stupid decision, it just prevents some user’s preferred operation of using the mouse while it is charging
I don’t understand what was wrong with the original version that just took 2 AA batteries. Reaching for the AA charger and swapping cells not awkward enough or something?
Smart and elegant design would be hiding a battery charger in the iMac it self (maybe even use something smaller than AA), not expect you to flip and plug in your mouse every time ya leave it. The Nintendo Switch, while a completely different form factor, is a great example of an elegant (you could even say “wireless”) charging solution.
I’m getting really sick of the Apple esthetic of sticking out wires, be it the mouse or the dozen dongles for every portable device they now make. Uh! Can’t forget the world’s only pen that needs charging, for seemingly no reason.
Honestly, the mouse charger screams marketing or management. Apple’s brand is partially form over function.
It was very likely a designers decision. It forces the use the use case they wanted; wireless mice should be used wirelessly. I would bet they fought marketing and management to get this on the final product.
Marketing would want the mouse they can advertise as being useable with and wireless. Female ports are easier to mount and manufacture with they have depth to set the socket. So a plug on the front is much cheaper and easier to manufacture.
The fact the charging cable doesn’t get used in motion means it will last longer and you wouldn’t have people useing fraying cables on the front of their mouse.
Even worse, that was done intentionally. They wanted to prevent retail stores from leaving them plugged in at all times.
Yeah and I hear they might bring that back lol. Why haven’t there been any wireless mice that use wireless charging? They could include a super thin coil that you could place under any mouse pad. It doesn’t even need to charge fast so heat shouldn’t be an issue. Just trickle charge when it’s not being used.
Edit: guess I should have searched first. Of course it was Logitech
In case it wasn’t a joke, I imagine it would be high enough for your finger to just poke under it to push the button, like you would a monitor with buttons on the bottom of the screen.
A reporter at the Verge just had a hands on with it and confirmed that you do, unfortunately, have to lift it up.
there’s no way to reach the power button, which is on the underside of the computer, without lifting it up.
I bought my iMac in March 2020… since then it’s been powered down maybe half a dozen times (a couple of those were power cuts) and rebooted (outside of macOS updates) maybe ten times.
It just sits there reliably doing its thing and sucks little juice in power saving so 🤷🏻♂️
We used to have racks of these things for automated testing …. And eventually they stop responding, so someone needs to power cycle them. In the computer room. In a rack
I seriously don’t understand why Apple won’t make server macs, with proper server features like IPMI, rack mounting support, virtualization. As a software developer, macs are horrible to work with.
Beyond the nightmare that is code signing and certificates (required even for debug builds), the physical devices are special snowflakes. Getting them to play nicely in a CI/CD system is really difficult. They often freeze or misbehave requiring physical access to fix. Also, if you want to target older OS X or iOS versions, you need to use an older version of XCode (that Apple makes really difficult to find) and an older version of MacOS.
There are many other use cases beyond software development, such as render farms, network storage, backup etc.
The previous model has it in the back, you can’t even feel it properly because it’s not recessed.
On the other hand the last time I turned off my M1 mini was when we moved. It’s 100% silent and takes less power than a lightbulb when it sleeps, so why would I bother powering it off.
So while it sleeps, it still wastes electricity on literally nothing. Gotcha
The side with the power button is now the top. There is no ports or io on the bottom.
I’d just get two toothpicks and make a seesaw to press it, although I pretty much never turn off my computers so I still wouldn’t mind too much
I mean… It looks like the other Mac minis so… Okay.
Meanwhile… Apple TV stuck in stone age and still can’t do bitstream.
It’s kinda cute
