M4 Mac mini's efficiency

https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2024/m4-mac-minis-efficiency-incredible

568 611 2 years ago

austinpena• 2 years ago

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.

wslh2• 2 years ago

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!

nordsieck• 2 years ago

I have an m1 as well.

And while I'm broadly satisfied with its performance, I do think that the SSD is probably carrying some of that load. And for a machine that often gets used far longer than a PC, I can't see that being great for longevity.

wkjagt• 2 years ago

I'm still very happy with my 8GB Air M1 as well. It's incredible how well it still works for a 4 year old entry level laptop. I see all these new M's come out, and I'm sure they're fantastic, but I'm not at all tempted to upgrade.

cchance3• 2 years ago

Macbooks Air thermal throttle, thats why the Air with 16gb is an issue and the mini isn't, no fans = throttling at heavy loads, its not a ram issue.

wslh2• 2 years ago

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

philip1209• 2 years ago

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/

choilive• 2 years ago

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

zikduruqe• 2 years ago

Don't forget Tailscale serve and funnel.

https://tailscale.com/blog/reintroducing-serve-funnel

mmastrac• 2 years ago

I use CF Tunnel to serve progscrape.com. It's easily the best way to serve from home infrastructure, IMO.

ewalk153• 2 years ago

Given these efficient numbers, I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple were racking Minis for serving the new ML models for Siri.

wmf• 2 years ago

Mac minis probably don't have enough RAM to hold Siri's models. It's more likely that Apple is using (modified) Mac Studios.

jsheard• 2 years ago

Why use Macs at all? It's well within Apples abilities to make a completely custom server motherboard built around Apple Silicon rather than hacking something together out of Mac parts. That would allow for much better rack density, and they could add proper server amenities like a BMC for remote management.

favorited2• 2 years ago

They've publicly disclosed that they built custom Apple Silicon servers to power Private Cloud Compute.

"The root of trust for Private Cloud Compute is our compute node: custom-built server hardware that brings the power and security of Apple silicon to the data center, with the same hardware security technologies used in iPhone, including the Secure Enclave and Secure Boot."

<https://security.apple.com/blog/private-cloud-compute/>

opdahl2• 2 years ago

You should check these guys out. They actually do it (rack, not hosting ML models) and it seems to me to be pretty elegant: https://www.macstadium.com/blog/m4-mac-mini-review

LordKeren• 2 years ago

I can’t help but wish that Apple would provide the handful of features needed to make a Mac mini into a competent home server.

rgbrgb• 2 years ago

what else do you need?

timc3• 2 years ago

What I look for is, 128GB RAM minimum, decent number of PCIe lanes because I want two fast NVMe drives, a HBA card ( though this I guess could be external ), two network ports minimum, ZFS, sane terminal, native support for containers and VMs. Native support for UPS interfacing, native support for backup of containers and VMs. And lastly a community of other users doing the same.

Dual power supplies is a nice to have.

riknos314• 2 years ago

What specific feature gaps would you like to see them address?

echoangle3• 2 years ago

Official Linux support would help, is anyone running MacOS on a server?

risho2• 2 years ago

Linux support. MacOS is a desktop first gui based operating system. Linux on the other hand is a server first cli/terminal based operating system. Everything server related is designed to on linux first and foremost and may or may not incidentally also run on MacOS.

nikcub2• 2 years ago

I'd like to replace my NAS using a mini - but Apple segment the market on disk.

A "dumb" NAS 2.5" SSD drive array plugged into one via ~~firewire~~, and then out to the network via the Mac Mini would work.

edit: thunderbolt!

MBCook6• 2 years ago

What would those be?

bryancoxwell• 2 years ago

I’ve never tried turning a Mac into a home server. What features do you need that it’s missing?

toast02• 2 years ago

Depends what 'home server' means.

MacOS would need syncookies to be a viable tcp server on public IPs, IMHO, but MacOS pulled FreeBSD's TCP stack a couple months before syncookies were added, and they never rebased or otherwise added syncookies later.

I haven't looked into if they pulled any scalability updates over the years, but I kind of assume they haven't, and the stack would have a lot of lock contention if you had more than say 10,000 tcp sockets.

Given that, if I were Apple compatible, I might run a mini as a LAN server, but my home servers provide services for the LAN as well as some public services (of limited value and usefulness, but still public).

lurking_swe3• 2 years ago

i’ve found it pretty easy to run my “homelab” with docker compose. Traefik binds to port 80 and 443, and all my apps are accessible behind the proxy.

Docker desktop can be configured to start on login. For keeping the mac awake “forever”, i’d suggest the Amphetamine app.

I also appreciate that you can easily use the macOS screen sharing app to login and manage the mac from a laptop.

manmal3• 2 years ago

That certainly works, but Docker will use a Linux VM, right?

mbs159• 2 years ago

For keeping the mac awake “forever”, i’d suggest the Amphetamine app.

macOS has a built-in console command for that: `caffeinate` [1]

1. https://ss64.com/mac/caffeinate.html

prewett• 2 years ago

Maybe they already have, depending on what you need. Settings >> General >> Sharing provides lots of options. "Remote Login" is SSH and SFTP, and last time I used it, "File Sharing" was SMB. "Screen Sharing" and "Remote Management" seem useful, too. I assume that "Media Sharing" is supposed to allow iTunes on your network to see media files, although I've never used it and the information on the dialog is limited.

ideashower6• 2 years ago

Can you run it headless? Like, if I have it power on after a reboot, is it possible to log in remotely?

spacedcowboy2• 2 years ago

I have a Mac mini backed by an Areca 24-bay Thunderbolt disk-array in the rack in the garage. Works like a dream.

objektif3• 2 years ago

Sorry not knowledgeable about this but do you use this as NAS? What software do you use?

NotYourLawyer3• 2 years ago

Such as?

mannyv• 2 years ago

Funny, I've been using Mac Minis as servers for more than a decade.

nextos4• 2 years ago

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?

vetinari6• 2 years ago

NUC 14th gen with i3 is around 400 EUR with VAT, with no RAM or storage. For the other 250 EUR, surely you can get more RAM than 16 GB and more storage than 256 GB.

nextos4• 2 years ago

I use a NUC as a daily driver. The problem with NUCs is that cooling is suboptimal, the fan is small and thus noisy. It can be fixed with a third-party case, but that's at least €60-100 more for a much slower machine. Plus, you may void the guarantee by transplanting the motherboard.

gjsman-10002• 2 years ago

NUC 14th gen with i3 is around 400 EUR with VAT

4 cores instead of 10 cores, 69W TDP instead of 22W, UHD Graphics 730 versus Apple's 10 core GPU (0.5 TFLOPs vs about 4.3), 23% worse single core performance, 45% worse multicore, and much louder cooling.

It's not a fair comparison.

MBCook6• 2 years ago

RAM is completely fair.

Apple is certainly out of their mind on storage. But on a desktop it’s trivial to plug-in an external disc that you can buy at an absolutely reasonable price instead of the insane Apple one.

talldayo4• 2 years ago

Any experiences using Nix and nix-darwin as a daily driver?

Not positive ones, even on x86 Darwin. Homebrew feels a lot more stable, which is a decidedly concerning thing for the average Nix enjoyer.

edude032• 2 years ago

What kind of issues are you having?

tredre3• 2 years ago

With education discount

I don't understand why so many people use the discounted price as reference. Surely very few of us on HN are still in college? So let's use the actual price when making comparisons.

no_wizard• 2 years ago

all you need is a .edu address If I recall correctly. you can buy them on alumni addresses.

That said, a far chunk of HNs never completed college, like myself and lost access to any email accounts of this sort, which only further supports your argument directly, as the EDU discount isn't universally attainable

stirlo2• 2 years ago

It’s trivially easy to obtain the discount. Anyone working in education, or a student at any level, k-12, higher ed, graduates with access to uni email can get it. Apple doesn’t ask any questions or for verification.

They also go on sale at a similar price to the general public relatively frequently.

mp05• 2 years ago

Surely very few of us on HN are still in college?

What makes you think that? I'm back in school getting a MEng degree in my 30s.

bdangubic• 2 years ago

very few on HN pay full price for Mac products ;)

brailsafe• 2 years ago

Shush ;)

But also a ton of people are absolutely in college, at any age, new people are coming to HN every day; I'd think HN is an easier place to discuss and explore vaguely tech/startup related topics than in school

lupire• 2 years ago

Corporate perks brokers and Amazon also give 15% off.

But anyways, 15% is pretty much in the error fuzz range of "which platform do I like better" and "dominated by RAM upgrade price.

icedchai• 2 years ago

We're all students of Internet University.

mrtksn2• 2 years ago

A lot of people have a relative or something still in education, just buy it through them. It's not like this is government subsidy, just a promotion to increase sales and maybe hope to have long term customer by hooking them at younger age. Probably much less immoral than blocking ads on YouTube.

bliteben• 2 years ago

Even Apple Store employees will freely give you the discount. Apple doesn't discount because they aren't a discount brand, but they will give you this discount if you ask.

whyenot• 2 years ago

Take a pottery course at community college. Pay $65 in tuition, get your education discount, and um, relive the scene from Ghost? :)

IAmGraydon• 2 years ago

They use it because they have an inherent bias and want to put the Mac in a position to compare favorably.

okaram• 2 years ago

But a ton of us have a friend/kid/relative in HS or college ...

wodenokoto• 2 years ago

Educational discount is a pinky swear that you are a student or buying it for a student.

So it is in practice available to everyone if you want to ruin nice things for students.

aziaziazi• 2 years ago

The cheating/fraudulence encouragement in this thread is disgusting. You guys are not stilling a pencil but several hundreds dollars. Paying a part of it or apple being fatty rich doesn’t make it more honest.

I don’t think I ever encounter here such collective encouragement to bypass a law (ok probably for jailbreak which is not a fraud). Not sure if the demography changes, societal culture change or just luck.

Edit: Oh and yeas I never completed college, don’t own a .edu and am maybe just subconsciously jealous.

Suppafly4• 2 years ago

I don't understand why so many people use the discounted price as reference.

Or when they only use it to make the Apple pricing seem more favorable and ignore it when it comes to PC pricing. Most PC manufacturers also have educational pricing, whether directly or through some portal provided by your institution. I know my son's college had a deal and also had a list of the tax free days in the state so that you could pre-order and then pay and pick up on the day the tax didn't apply.

yalok• 2 years ago

It may be a local thing in Bay area, but usually there’s some way to get some discount when making a purchase with Apple - be it via education, or via a corporate discount (just show your badge from another company), or via a friend who works at Apple, or some big retailers start selling at good discount (eg Amazon easily gets 5-10% lower price over time).

Anecdotally, last week I visited a local Apple Store with my son who is in middle school. Without any prompting from us, the Apple rep asked my son if he is planning to go to college some day, and applied the college discount to our purchase without my son saying much…

AlchemistCamp3• 2 years ago

If you continue reading the sentence, it gets even more bizarre:

it's around €650, including VAT.

Whatever taxes and discounts apply to the commenter’s own idiosyncratic situation have nothing to do with the price of the product.

A couple of years ago, I might have cared what the price of an M2 with Pasadena sales taxes was since I lived there at the time, but I sure wouldn’t have included them when talking about Apple prices here.

Similarly, VAT costs are between you and whatever jurisdiction you live in that’s levying them. Apple isn’t the one to thank or complain to about them.

vbezhenar• 2 years ago

Because when one configures it with reasonable 32GB RAM/2TB SSD and EU prices, it suddenly becomes £1800 and it's harder to convince anyone of its price superiority.

denkmoon2• 2 years ago

Just put Asahi on there, or any linux you like. I'm sure the support will be there soon if it's not already.

stirlo2• 2 years ago

Asahi Linux doesn’t currently support M4 but it’s planned for next year.

seabrookmx• 2 years ago

or any Linux you like

That's not a thing. Apple silicon doesn't use EFI so you need a completely custom ROM to satisfy the boot process, hence Asahi. And Asahi doesn't support M4 and likely won't for a while.

ARM64 support for GUI apps (via flatpak in the Fedora Asahi Remix) is also pretty poor, though your standard fair of CLI apps are present.

steeleduncan2• 2 years ago

Nix works well on mac, very similar to Nix/Linux for the most part. There are some missing packages, but the common ones tend to be fine. Its worth using the Determinate Systems installer to avoid reinstalling Nix on every macOS update though.

Nix-darwin is good, and I use it, but it is nowhere close to NixOS. I think there are some options I've set through it that macOS keeps overriding, so the declarative configuration drifts from the real one eventually

I think the only real issue with Nix on macOS is that Nix can eat through storage quite quickly, and storage upgrades are pretty expensive on Macs. This might push the balance back to an fanless ryzen build

nicce8• 2 years ago

I think the only real issue with Nix on macOS is that Nix can eat through storage quite quickly, and storage upgrades are pretty expensive on Macs. This might push the balance back to an fanless ryzen build

Only if you want to be able to roll back multiple versions. Otherwise, I think it is fine.

lloeki3• 2 years ago

Its worth using the Determinate Systems installer to avoid reinstalling Nix on every macOS update though.

I've had Nix installed from the traditional installer since the very first M1 and never had to reinstall nixpkgs across OS updates.

GeekyBear12• 2 years ago

Beelink has dropped the price for a roughly comparable unit with an Intel Core Ultra from 800 US Dollars to $700.

https://www.bee-link.com/products/beelink-sei14-ultra5-125h

nl3• 2 years ago

This is the best answer.

The Beelink (and other mini-PC brands) offer comparable performance.

The fact they offer lots of different configurations lets you choose your own trade-offs.

Assuming you don't have an operating system preference, the base model Mac Mini is tough to beat outright, but as you upgrade it there are other options that get interesting.

yla92• 2 years ago

Beelink are awesome little machines!

foobarian• 2 years ago

At this point maybe the main benefit of an x86 machine is it has a spot to plug in an Nvidia GPU :-)

josephg8• 2 years ago

That and Linux support is better, if you need it.

edude032• 2 years ago

Daily nix user across Mac and Linux, though I use Mac for actual development. No problems here moving between the two with my dev env defined on GitHub [0]

[0] https://github.com/edude03/dotfiles

WuxiFingerHold• 2 years ago

How do you handle the different keyboard layouts (cmd and ctrl on Mac, ctrl and superkey on Linux)?

I'm using a Mac at work and Linux at home with a programmable keyboard but I didn't find a solution to "merge" cmd and ctrl on Mac, so I still need to use both on Mac (not a big drama, but slightly annoying).

naoru6• 2 years ago

A comparable option in my opinion would be Minisforum 790S7. They also have a separate mini-ITX motherboard from that one if you want to DIY.

The CPU in it is faster in raw multi-thread performance, single-threaded it's a bit slower, but still quite impressive.

The only problem I had with Minisforum is that they couldn't supply the exact hardware I ordered and their suggested solution was either to wait for 1+ month or get a sligtly different configuration. Two times out of two.

Quality-wise they're pretty good though, no complaints there.

nextos4• 2 years ago

That's a good suggestion. How are the cooling systems supplied with Minisforum in terms of noise and efficiency?

gzer0• 2 years ago

I can't find a Minisforum 790S7 for anywhere near the price of the base model mac mini. I am seeing $459.00 USD and that is "BAREBONE (NO OS/RAM/SSD)" [1]. I am comparing this to the M4 Mac Mini base model, that does indeed come with an OS, RAM, and an SSD[2] at $499 USD.

[1] https://store.minisforum.com/products/minisforum-mini-itx-pc...

[2] https://www.apple.com/us-edu/shop/buy-mac/mac-mini/apple-m4-...

rhplus• 2 years ago

The configuration being tested by OP is a $1499 model.

koiueo2• 2 years ago

After experiencing NixOS it's hard to settle for anything less. Nix is only good for running home-manager; nix-darwin is mostly a joke (I don't mean disrespect, I appreciate the work devs are doing, but limitations of the platform cripple the entire experience).

FWIW, Mitchell Hashimoto runs NixOS VM on his Mac for development. And that's the option I'm gonna implement once I get my MBP from repairs.

cascades42• 2 years ago

While I suspect it is silent for most tasks, the M4 mini isn’t fanless.

For my music studio I’ve enjoyed the M1 mini since it is totally silent and am eager to read some noise tests on the new M4 mini.

rowanG077• 2 years ago

I can at least attest to linux nix on arm working pretty well as I use NixOS asahi linux. Unfortunately M4 support is not there yet.

msgilligan2• 2 years ago

Asahi M4 support and 3rd-party SSD upgrades[1] will result in me buying an M4 Mini. Glad to hear that Nix works well on Asahi!

[1] https://wccftech.com/m4-mac-mini-ssd-already-modded-to-2tb-s...

throawayonthe2• 2 years ago

well asahi is going to bring M4 support eventually and there is https://github.com/tpwrules/nixos-apple-silicon

also you could just Containerize All The Things on macos idk

cchance3• 2 years ago

Ya like i get the love for linux, but seriously give MacOSX a try for a while, its pretty damn good lol

fulafel2• 2 years ago

There's no container support on macOS unfortunately, except for the frontends for linux virtual machines.

(Well they do have a thing called containers, but it's a desktop app security/sandboxing feature that does something conceptually different)

VancouverMan• 2 years ago

Pricewise, things start favoring PCs if you need more RAM, as Mac upgrades are costly.

That's the position I'm in, along with some other people I've talked to recently, too.

For our situations, the M4 would likely offer more than enough processing power, and the efficiency and physical size are attractive, but a maximum of 32 GB of RAM definitely isn't sufficient.

The M4 Pro's 64 GB of RAM is somewhat better, but the cost of those upgrades are very hard to justify.

I'd also prefer to use the system for at least 5 years, and likely up to 10 years, if not longer. Even if 64 GB is tolerable now, I can easily see it becoming insufficient for my needs before then.

The lack of reasonably-priced internal storage, while easier to work around than the lack of sufficient and reasonably-priced RAM, doesn't help matters, too.

Even if future Studio models, for example, might allow for a more ideal amount of RAM, I have to expect that unjustifiable upgrade costs will likely still be an issue, and then there's the wait on top of that.

I can easily see myself and the others I've talked to settling for PCs, rather than making unjustifiably-expensive Mac purchases.

kamranjon6• 2 years ago

For what it's worth, the apple silicon machines are much more efficient on RAM than most - a 16gb m1 absolutely mops the floor with the 32gb of ram I have in my thinkpad with an i7. It's not really even close.

layoric6• 2 years ago

In same boat, I have the 5950x with 64gb memory running PopOS and there are times I'm hitting swap a lot more than I'd like. 16 or 32gb of memory is just not feasible, and even 2TB of storage would likely cause headaches, I have a 4TB and a 2TB nvme at the moment which will come with me next upgrade.

I'm leaning towards an upgrade next year to the 9950x3d if reviews pan out. Sure, it's going to be a bigger machine with louder components, but the upgrade will likely be half the cost of anything close from Apple since I can take my existing GPU, PSU and storage at the very least along with me.

And "upgrade costs" is highly misleading for most of the components. You are buying a different machine config that you can't change, up or down, later on. I get that most people don't want to bother opening up a PC to swap out components, but the easier they made it, the more people will do it, and Apple is running the other way.

MBCook6• 2 years ago

There was a comparison mentioned on last week’s episode of the Accidental Tech Podcast, I don’t remember if it was pointed out to them or they noticed it themselves.

Base Mac mini: $599, 16/256 GB

Double storage and ram: $600 upgrade.

Price of 32/512 config: $1199

Two 16/256 machines: $1198.

The ram is (Apple) reasonable at $200, but $400 for the storage doubling is insane.

matt-p4• 2 years ago

I think you have it the wrong way round? Ram is 400 (200/8GB) storage is 200

ewzimm3• 2 years ago

Also, the 256 uses 2x128 drives while the 512 uses a single drive, so you even get slightly slower storage with the upgrade. The base model is a great deal.

0cf8612b2e1e• 2 years ago

While I am sure there are performance differences, I picked up 128GB of DDR4 a few months ago for ~$200. That is some wild margin.

arianvanp• 2 years ago

Nix support on Darwin is really good in my experience. Though it does happen that some packages are not supported.

Next to that I run a NixOS VM on https://getutm.app/ using Virtualization Framework. Performance is great.

You're one setting away `virtualisation.rosetta.enable = true;` to also use that VM for x86_64 packages and builds.

I have a WIP PR for Rosetta AOT caching on NixOS as well: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/330829

fulafel2• 2 years ago

How is the graphics/desktop performance in VMs, do you get accelerated graphics with NixOS?

ar_lan• 2 years ago

I use nix-darwin on an M2 as a daily driver. It works great! A few quirks you need to go with Brew (mostly graphical applications), but my setup is almost identical between my NixOS and my nix-darwin setups other than that (and some OS toggles).

layoric6• 2 years ago

Maybe for a little server or something, but with the hard to upgrade 256GB storage.. I don't get the appeal. Also 16GB of memory is extremely limited these days. Again, perfect for a little server, but not for a daily driver.

mh8h• 2 years ago

It's a desktop computer. What's keeping you from using an external SSD?

luxuryballs• 2 years ago

For someone who wants to develop and build apple ecosystem apps or cross-platform an existing game this is a steal.

mahkeiro• 2 years ago

The storage is easily upgradable on the new Mac mini as it’s using a standard M2 SSD (a short version)

https://youtu.be/cJPXLE9uPr8

johndoe0815• 2 years ago

In Germany you can get the cheapest (base version, 16GB RAM/256GB SSD) M4 Mini for 579€ via Unidays edu discount (also including VAT).

I picked mine up from the post office yesterday, it's 50% faster in Geekbench single/multi-core CPU benchmarks than my M1 Pro Macbook Pro and about as fast in GPU performance. Impressive.

ksec• 2 years ago

With education discount, it's around €650,

It is €579 including VAT. The Educational discount in US is only $499. €650 sounds wrong. Where in EU is that.

gorbypark3• 2 years ago

Data point: base model Mac mini is 719€ in Spain, 599€ with the educational discount.

msgilligan2• 2 years ago

I've been using Nix on macOS for almost a year. The good (and bad) thing about Nix is that it supports many different use cases, so you have to spend some time understanding the options before you can even figure out which flavor to install.

A good way to get started is to start using Nix to replace/supplement Homebrew. You can install Nix in addition to Homebrew and have some packages installed by one and some by the other. You can uninstall a Homebrew package and then reinstall it with Nix. You can even remove it with Nix and go back to Homebrew if you like.

I would generally recommend the following:

1. Use the Determinate Systems Nix installer, see https://zero-to-nix.com/start/install

2. Use "Flakes" (unfortunately the core documentation isn't updated for flakes)

3. Use "Home Manger" -- I would recommend the Flakes-based "Standalone setup": https://nix-community.github.io/home-manager/index.xhtml#sec...

I would wait on nix-darwin until you are sure you need/want it. (I have recently started using it for its support of the `linux-builder` feature, but not everyone needs that.)

As a software developer who uses macOS to develop for Linux, it is a great tool and I cautiously recommend it to those who are willing to deal with some learning curve and frustration.

I haven't yet used nix-darwin enough to make a recommendation one way or another. (But the `linux-builder` feature is compelling if you need it: https://nixcademy.com/posts/macos-linux-builder/)

hoppp• 2 years ago

There is a linux for apple silicon called ashani linux.

virtualwhys• 2 years ago

Pretty sure only M1/M2 supported, so none Apple's new offerings will fly...yet.

Shame, I'd love to use Linux on Apple's latest and greatest MacBooks, but will stay with tried and true Dell Precision series until the year of the Linux Apple laptop becomes a reality.

thefz• 2 years ago

650$-€ for 16GB and 256GB? No. Hell no.

lloeki3• 2 years ago

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?

Been using that ever since M1 became a thing; nothing worth mentioning, "not supported" is vanishingly rare in practice.

_kb• 2 years ago

Seconding this.

Made the switch back to MacOS with the M series after being on x86 and NixOS prior.

The experience was refreshingly tepid.

apexalpha• 2 years ago

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?

Would this run anything Docker/ARM?

My entire home server setup is Linux/Dockerized and the Mac Mini hardware looks so good, but the more I read about MacOS as a server OS the worse it seems to get.

pjot• 2 years ago

I recently upgraded from a 2020 Intel MBP to an M3 Pro. I’ve been been blown away. Even more, I’ve yet to hear the fans turn on.

NKosmatos• 2 years ago

Best quote from the post: “If only they didn't put the power button on the bottom“

rgovostes3• 2 years ago

If only they didn't put the power button on the bottom.

I can't tell if anyone is being serious about the "Powergate" issue. The thing is 5" wide and weighs 1.5 lbs, it's not exactly a burden to lift it a little. And there are highly practical workarounds: https://www.reddit.com/r/macmini/comments/1gncek7/nailed_the...

ewhanley• 2 years ago

I also wonder how often people are actually turning them off. It's generally a rare event to push the power button on a mac in my experience

artdigital• 2 years ago

I turn my Mac off every day

kranke1553• 2 years ago

It’s not a burden.

I consider it a typical Tim Cook decision, in that the man led the company that made one of the fastest CPUs in the world, makes it draw as much as a Raspberry Pi. Absolutely crazy feats of engineering, design, manufacturing… and -

There is that ONE detail that would’ve made it perfected but it’s botched!

I don’t mind it too much, since it’s still 99% close to perfect.

But, but…

AcerbicZero• 2 years ago

Hah, Tim Cook decision pretty much sums it up; its the kind of thing that wouldn't have lasted 5 seconds when placed in front of Jobs (although there is a strong chance Jobs would have demanded his own nonsensical addition/subtraction to the design).

whartung• 2 years ago

Shame they got rid of the ability to power the computer on and off from the keyboard. I know its been that way for some time, I'm sure there's good reason for it (maybe it doesn't work well over BT or something, or simply few generic keyboards offered the power button).

soheil• 2 years ago

1. Given millions of things that are perfect it takes one of them for HN to lose its mind, power button happened to be it this time, Cook didn't decide that.

2. How often do people exactly have to turn off and on a mac that consumes less than a pi for them to constantly be reaching out to that power button?

3. Standby, hibernate exist.

latexr• 2 years ago

I consider it a typical Tim Cook decision

Tim Cook cares about money and efficiency of building and moving product. That’s it. I highly doubt there’s been any important design detail about any product that he made himself.

7thpower3• 2 years ago

It could be worse, they could’ve located it in the center of the bottom.

Do people really use the physical button that often? 99% of the time I just let it go to sleep.

devnullbrain• 2 years ago

makes it draw as much as a Raspberry Pi

That's a funny comparison. They don't have power buttons at all. Without mounting, you need to pick it up to be able to remove the power supply.

And the power supply I bought with my Pi 4, at the Cambridge store, doesn't even work.

bookofjoe• 2 years ago

Apple Says There’s a Simple Reason for the Mac Mini’s Odd Power Button Location

https://gizmodo.com/apple-mac-minis-odd-power-button-locatio...

muti• 2 years ago

Apple VPs Greg Jozwiak and John Ternus explained in an interview to a Chinese content creator on Billibilli (spotted and machine-translated by ITHome) that the main reason the power button is on the bottom of the 2024 Mac Mini is because of the computer’s size. Since it was nearly half the size of the previous generation, the underside was “kind of the optimal stop” for a power button. They also say most users “never use the power button” on a Mac, anyway.
Apple isn’t wrong here. The Mac mini measures 5 x 5 x 2 inches, compared to 7.75 x 7.75 x 1.4 inches from the last generation; it takes up much less space on your desk, which is great. The trade-off is that you run out of space for some important things, like a power button.

steeleduncan2• 2 years ago

Because minis are very commonly racked in bulk, and its both very irritating for that use case, and entirely unnecessary

cguess5• 2 years ago

Minis are rarely racked in bulk unless you're running a server farm, which is not the use case they design for. The MacMini is first and foremost a desktop computer for non-professional people or at least not sysadmins. If people want to rack them, go ahead, but in that case how often are you hard rebooting a machine vs soft reboot anyways? Macs aren't known for freezing up too much.

Either way, it works for the use case its designed for.

evilduck• 2 years ago

Why not just rack them upside down then?

rgovostes3• 2 years ago

Some of the rackmount kits for previous generations already reroute the power button and connectors to the front, like this https://racknex.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/with-power-bu.... (Though why not just install it backwards?) I guess they will be able to run a little lever under the M4 model the same way.

Actually, the M4 model is a little taller so it no longer fits in a 1U rack mount. Whereas before you could fit 2 horizontally in 1U, now you'd possibly fit 8 or 9 vertically in 3U. (Edit: This company says 10 per 2U https://www.racksolutions.com/m4-mac-mini-apple-hypershelf.h....)

astrange4• 2 years ago

In that case wouldn't you rather have a managed power switch / iDRAC / restart over ssh, than send someone to go press buttons in person?

(I've only ever racked things remotely, so don't know if this is common.)

matt-p4• 2 years ago

In that case then they should be on switched pdu ports and plugged into permanent kvm.

I'm sorry but this is nonsense, if you're really racking them in bulk the above is obvious.

ChrisMarshallNY3• 2 years ago

I just got one (M4Pro model).

It's pretty zippy.

I have pressed the power button exactly once, since Friday (the day I got it). All other restarts were "soft" (including a couple of crashes). The keyboard and trackpad do fine, starting a shut-down computer.

It's replacing a docked MBP. That power button was a lot more difficult to reach, and I needed to hit it more often than this.

rgovostes3• 2 years ago

I spent a few minutes looking up whether a Mac could be booted from a Bluetooth keyboard but couldn't find any documentation of that. Back in the day some(?) Mac models could be booted by a USB keyboard, see https://www.projectgus.com/2023/04/griffin-imate/ for technical details.

akira2501• 2 years ago

it's not exactly a burden to lift it a little.

Human dexterity is not constant. Some people have injuries which compromise them.

And there are highly practical workarounds:

Apple. A consumer product company where every _single_ product has some massive defect which must be apologized around.

Which is fine.. but I'm not sure how that justifies their typical price point.

darknavi• 2 years ago

If the power button is the main gripe with this model of Mac Mini, then its doing pretty well.

userbinator• 2 years ago

Or rotate it 180 degrees. There's nothing on the top (now bottom) anyway that can't stand being covered up.

leptons3• 2 years ago

Sounds vaguely like "you're holding it wrong". Maybe it was always supposed to be placed on its side? Apple should clarify why the button is on the bottom.

mlsu• 2 years ago

And I mean, it uses 4 watts idle. If you power it off overnight for 12 hours you've saved... half a glass of orange juice worth of energy.

redundantly2• 2 years ago

As with all things regarding power efficiency, you have to consider the wide use of these devices, not just the individual use.

If moving the power button there changes the behavior of thousands of people that would typically shut their computer down when they're not using it, that half glass of orange juice turns into thousands of gallons.

rconti2• 2 years ago

Because the comment is very specifically talking about rack-mount installations. Granted, no matter you put the power switch, it's going to be difficult to reach if you install 21 of them on a single shelf.

00deadbeef2• 2 years ago

The comment in the article is in the context of rack mounting them which is a common thing to do with Mac minis. Having it on the bottom makes it hard to press as you can’t lift them up when they’re secured in a mount.

geerlingguy3• 2 years ago

Exactly this.

I am working on a solution to make it easier to hit the button from the front of a rack shelf, but the fact I have to mess with 3D printing just to hit a power button is silly.

Older Macs also had the power button on the back, which was also annoying, but at least a Mac that's secured to a shelf could have its power button pressed pretty easily.

The Mac mini _requires_ a mechanism to press up from the bottom in any permanent-ish install.

JumpCrisscross2• 2 years ago

Having it on the bottom makes it hard to press as you can’t lift them up when they’re secured in a mount

Hard rebooot is the only situation where you should be using the physical power button on a modern Mac. If you're installing Macs on a rack, presumably you can sudo shutdown -r.

The button on the bottom is trying to tell you that the system is built to be well behaved on stand by.

kalleboo• 2 years ago

I would have thought that them being slightly higher than 1U would have precluded people from rack mounting them "flat" in the first place. It seems like it would be more efficient to rack mount them standing on their sides, and then the air gap between them would be enough to reach the power button easily.

gre2• 2 years ago

power button on the bottom means kids/cats won't accidentally press it

ahartmetz• 2 years ago

Steering wheel in the footwell means the front passenger won't sneeze on it.

Come on, it's a dumb idea. Apple has them sometimes - really!

znpy3• 2 years ago

one of my favorite conspiracy theories i've picked up recently is that apple purposedly puts these kind of annoyances in their product.

things like the button on the bottom of the new mac mini or the dumb notch on the macbooks.

according to the theory, such things:

1. they catch attention of people and give them something to talk about (and to fight about)

2. they might steal attention from other flaws

it makes perfect sense: the notch, this idiotic decision about the button, the charge port on the mouse.

johnklos• 2 years ago

I can't imagine it's anything but a silly comment. Macs have the equivalent of wake-on-LAN, plus you can configure them trivially to restart after power loss. The idea that you'd have to press the button often is just silly.

JumpCrisscross2• 2 years ago

can't imagine it's anything but a silly comment

Given my cat, after learning to press a button on his automated feeder, now presses anything that looks like a button with the curious expectation of food, I can only presume he got out while I was in Cupertino.

Button on the bottom isn't a design mistake. It's an opinionated choice.

tshaddox2• 2 years ago

It's probably easier to find and press than the old 27" iMacs. I always had a brief moment of trouble feeling around the back to find that darn button (part of the reason is that you need to press it very infrequently).

freetime22• 2 years ago

The thing is 5" wide and weighs 1.5 lbs, it's not exactly a burden to lift it a little.

It's the difference between being able to hit the button one-handed or needing two hands. My Mac Mini is sitting at the back of my desk, and the power button is toward the rear end of the Mac, and I definitely find it a bit clumsy to reach back with two hands, flip it over (disturbing an wires/peripherals that might be plugged in), find the button, and press it.

And there are highly practical workarounds

Not as practical as putting the button on the front or top.

It's certainly not a deal breaker, but I do find it mildly annoying. The ideal for me would be to have the button easily accessible on the front or top, and have it behave like other devices I use: a short press to sleep/wake, and a long press to initiate shutdown. And when I'm getting up from my desk, I could give it a quick tap to put it to sleep and lock it.

My workaround is to use a keyboard shortcut to put it to sleep, which it works fine and is not a big deal. But I still think Apple deserves a bit of mockery for this decision.

m4button3• 2 years ago

If you don't have a 3D printer, we've got you covered here: https://m4button.com

GeekyBear12• 2 years ago

Also interesting, the M4 Mini has the flash storage on a replaceable module, instead of being soldered to the motherboard, although the NVMe controller is still integrated into the SoC.

iFixIt and others have already posted videos showing that the flash storage is now upgradable.

M4 Mac mini Teardown - UPGRADABLE SSD, Powerful, and TINY

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rtdGxBeSkz8

winwang• 2 years ago

The controller being decoupled is an extremely interesting idea! Makes a lot of sense. I wonder if it includes a (nontrivial) cache.

telgareith2• 2 years ago

Seems likely its a cacheless (well, host bus memory) design like the ones used by Apple on their other designs.

GeekyBear12• 2 years ago

Apple bought a company that designed enterprise SSD controllers over a decade ago.

Anobit appears to be applying a lot of signal processing techniques in addition to ECC to address the issue of NAND reliability and data retention. In its patents there are mentions of periodically refreshing cells whose voltages may have drifted, exploiting some of the behaviors of adjacent cells and generally trying to deal with the things that happen to NAND once it's been worn considerably.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/5258/apple-acquires-anobit-br...

AshamedCaptain4• 2 years ago

"Upgradeable" is too big of a word here, specially considering that they're using different form-factors even between the models released on the same year (e.g. pro vs non-pro) ; and also different from models released on the previous year (e.g. studio). This almost certainly means that next year's model will also use a different interface, so you won't be able to upgrade your storage at all.

josephg8• 2 years ago

You might be able to. You just need to make sure you get a compatible module somehow.

I wonder if 3rd parties will start selling them. If the memory controller is in the cpu, there’s no reason for the little board housing the ssd to have any proprietary chips…

GeekyBear12• 2 years ago

The M4 Pro Minis support higher capacity modules, so it's not too shocking that they are not identical.

We've already seen videos from the usual suspects showing that people who are sufficiently skilled with a soldering iron can replace the flash chips in the modules with higher capacity chips, in addition to replacing the whole module.

IshKebab2• 2 years ago

"Upgradable" if you are willing to desolder and replace the BGA chips.

You can't just swap the module out.

favorited2• 2 years ago

The storage is not soldered to the M4 mini SOC.

GeekyBear12• 2 years ago

The iFixIt video above literally shows them swapping the module out.

choonway• 2 years ago

I think the reason to make it replace/removable is to reduce e-waste at EOL. Lots of companies have policies on data storage on decomissioned computers to be physically destroyed, so making it replaceable allows the machines to be repurposed after.

e40• 2 years ago

Someone actually doing the upgrade: https://youtu.be/cJPXLE9uPr8?si=IyTLwG9SC4r4dJXP

1-6• 2 years ago

“If only they didn't put the power button on the bottom.”

While I think Apple was off the rocker on this particular decision, I do respect their org structure that allows this type of decision to occur. Believe me, there are companies where a dozen people or more would weigh in and prevent an unpopular choice. Consensus sometimes hinders a desired result (both good and bad).

phillco3• 2 years ago

After buying one, I actually like it. I know exactly where it is, and can reach for it by feel more easily; I could never tell you whether the power button was on the left or right side of the old Mini/Studio without checking each time.

It's also larger, more satisfying tactile/clicky, and concave compared to the old button (which was rounded into the outside curve, not particularly be satisfying to press). I think the old one being so small and indistinct feeling, and also being so close to the cables meant you would never try to reach for it blindly. You do have to lift it up a bit, but the device is so light you can do that with the same finger you're using to push the button (of course you need another finger to push the top of the mini _down_).

I think neither old nor new button were really meant to be used more than occasionally, since you typically wake your Mac from the keyboard, and both designs reflect that. I do sympathize that the new version could be less flexible in different mounting positions though.

(that said, I'd bet Jobs/Ive Apple would never have shipped this, unless the height underneath was exactly perfect for even the larger fingers to fit)

atonse3• 2 years ago

Jobs and Ive had their head scratchers. Like the Magic Mouse with the bottom charging port, or the Cube with all its cables coming in from the bottom.

henryfjordan• 2 years ago

It's a way of signaling how the product should be used. Plug it in, hit the power button, put it down, and never turn it off again. For many users that's probably the only time they will ever interact with that button (or want to).

I actually think it's a really good choice and shows Apple really understands design. And with the relatively low power consumption it makes sense. It's not like it's drawing a ton of power on idle

mschuster91• 2 years ago

It's not like it's drawing a ton of power on idle

Probably even drawing less than a "normal" PC PSU would just burn to heat in losses, lol. 3 watts of total idle power consumption, that's nuts how low it is...

Your average PC PSU hits up to 95% efficiency, so even at maximum efficiency at full load it would burn like 30 watts.

spike021• 2 years ago

I have a Mac Mini and can't remember the last time I had to manually press the button. IIRC it even reboots on its own after a power outage.

I think I shut it down once for an extended vacation just to make sure appliances weren't on while I was gone and when I switched apartments. Otherwise I'd check and post my uptime from the command line.

It's a launch M1 mini so I'd wager less times pressing the power button than I have fingers on one hand.

sylens• 2 years ago

This is actually how I've used my M1 Macbook Pro since I got it. I never fully turn it in. It's either sleeping when plugging into my Thunderbolt 3 dock, or its sleeping on my dining room table on battery power. The efficiency is so good it never dies even if I don't use it for a day.

H1Supreme2• 2 years ago

I actually think it's a really good choice and shows Apple really understands design. And with the relatively low power consumption it makes sense. It's not like it's drawing a ton of power on idle

I use a Mac Mini (older model) in my music studio. It shares a surge protector with approx. $12k worth of audio gear (some of it nearly impossible to replace). I have all the gear + the surge protector switched off anytime I'm not using it. Which is most of the time.

While the weight and form factor would make powering the M4 Mini on a little more than a nuisance, I have a hard time lumping this into one of Apple's great design features.

jillesvangurp2• 2 years ago

Exactly; it's more of a reset button. You should not need it a lot.

s6af7ygt• 2 years ago

Zero power draw is still less than a little power draw. A couple million of these babies running on idle is a considerable amount of power. Please, turn off devices when you're not using them.

kevincox• 2 years ago

Even if it is rarely used there is no benefit of making it hard to access. There is no harm in having an easy-to-access button that is rarely used.

I guess someone thinks the astetics are worth it, but even if the power button did notably harm astetics (which I doubt) I would take functionality over astetics any day.

If there were two models with different power button placements which one do you think people would buy?

xxs2• 2 years ago

It's not like it's drawing a ton of power on idle

The power supply connected to the mains for sure does that.

raxxorraxor• 2 years ago

I think it is really bad design. Perhaps necessary because of space restraints and in that case understandable. But that is entirely different to good design and I cannot really buy the "use case explanation".

Many leave their devices on their desk and Apple always had a problem with just letting devices turn of completely, there are regularly problems with it. And they do drain power on idle, which is a frequent complaint.

Yes, we are that insane to use a lot of Apple devices for business in some departments. MDM for phones and iPads is top for the baseline administration, but the devices are eccentric to say the least.

sabareesh2• 2 years ago

Just flip it upside down

xpe• 2 years ago

Or just use it in Australia. Or Antarctica. Etc.

dan-robertson• 2 years ago

You don’t press it very often and this makes it harder to press accidentally (eg putting stuff on top of the computer or a curious cat). I very rarely use the power button on a computer but maybe we behave differently.

lm28469• 2 years ago

That's what I was going to say. Do people still use these ? Given the low power and the general stability (I often have 150-300 days of uptime on my macbook m1) why not just put it to sleep and wake it up with the keyboard/mouse ? I can't even remember the last time I actually rebooted my desktop, maybe last year and I'm not even sure

I'm the first to shit on apple but this sounds like a complete non issue

vunderba2• 2 years ago

I mind this design decision a hell of a lot less than the baffling deliberate decision to map EVERY KEYBOARD BUTTON to be equivalent to the power button (which the damn thing already has) on their laptop line-up.

I love it when my macbook is turned off and I accidentally nudge a single letter on the keyboard and it powers back on - not to mention when you're drying to clean it with a micro fiber cloth.

lukevp• 2 years ago

If you fully shut down a mac laptop, you have to press and hold the power button to turn it back on. Not sure what you’re talking about here and probably why you’re getting downvoted.

redler• 2 years ago

Just lock the screen and you’re good to go for keyboard cleaning.

620gelato• 2 years ago

For better or worse, I have a habit of clicking the touchpad or a few keys after I shut down my laptop. Just to make sure it's shut down properly. Back in Windows days with HDDs and hibernate, laptops sometimes took minutes to shut down completely, and I don't like closing the lid before shut down is complete.

Now, I end up restarting with that mere act, and have to long-press to shut down again because the shut down option won't show up on login screen.

justinclift3• 2 years ago

As a counter point, that same org structure resulted in the removal of the 3.5mm audio port. Ugh.

n_ary4• 2 years ago

Probably to gear up towards their bluetooth airpod series, which doesn’t need that port.

The wired ones are decent yet cheap, but if they did not remove the 3.5mm, then except teens and hip adults, most people would opt for the wired ones.

My M1 Max Pro again has the 3.5mm port, and I have bought a pair of wired ones and gifted my airpods to my teen nephew.

littlecranky673• 2 years ago

All Mac devices still come with a headphone jack - and they are even good for higher impedance headphones (I use a 32ohms DT770 on my Macbook/MacMini).

For mobile devices, removing the headphone jack was not well received and it annoyed me too when it happened. Last year I made the switch to airpod pros, and I think I was the last person on earth to switch to BT for headphones - never looking back. So much better not to have a cable and untangled it.

gwbas1c• 2 years ago

I have a lot of devices where I frequently accidentally hit the power / sleep button.

Keep it on the bottom where it's hard to hit accidentally.

thought_alarm• 2 years ago

I wish the same could be said of the Studio Display, which is quite power hungry. If the Mac is running then the display is using minimum 10 Watts of continuous power usage at all times, fan running, with the screen off.

I guess it takes 10 Watts to maintain the Thunderbolt controller, USB hub, A13 processor, and run the fan.

Power usage does drop to <1 Watt when the Mac is actually sleeping, unless anything is plugged into the USB hub. Even an empty iPhone cable will cause the display to draw 5 Watts. It's disappointing.

lurking_swe3• 2 years ago

Agreed. I’m very impressed with it as a general productivity monitor, but it’s a power hungry monitor. Kind of like an SUV lol.

The built in mics and speakers are fantastic, 5k is great, the webcam is meh.

ghaff2• 2 years ago

I may have to break down after the holidays.

I have a 2015 iMac and I've been holding off (and haven't really been using my Apple Silicon MacBook as intended) so it may be time to do the upgrade.

opdahl2• 2 years ago

This seems like one of the best times to do it as long as you get your own monitor. You will probably be set for 10 more years with this thing.

ghaff2• 2 years ago

I have a 5K monitor for the Apple Silicon MacBook which I could easily switch to a MacMini and would be ergonomically better. My other MacBook is also about 10 years old and it's a question of how long I stretch everything out while it's all basically working even if not on the current OS.

dangus6• 2 years ago

I see a lot of reviews that say things like this but seem to be written by people who aren't testing against commonly available mini PCs that are built on efficiency architectures.

How different is the efficiency of this compared to something like an Intel N100/200/300 or a Ryzen 7 7735HS that you can get in cheap mini PCs from manufacturers like Beelink?

I am not doubting that Apple's processors are class-leading but at the same time it seems like I see a lot of people impressed that a mini PC can idle under 10 watts. That's been common for a long time now.

lispm3• 2 years ago

https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/apple-m4-vs-amd-ryzen-...

dangus6• 2 years ago

These auto-generated comparison pages are not useful.

geerlingguy3• 2 years ago

I have an N100 in that listing on the linked GitHub project, it's the best Intel system I've tested, and it gets around 2.5 Gflops/W (which is a little less than a Raspberry Pi 5, which is not known for being the most efficient Arm system).

rstuart41333• 2 years ago

All his tests are published here: https://github.com/geerlingguy/top500-benchmark?tab=readme-o... He does test some N100 machines.

TL;DR: The M4 blows everything away, but isn't a general purpose machine. The N100 is slightly better than 50% of the power efficiency of the remainder. It's also slightly faster despite having less cores. Single core speed is looks to be twice the speed of ARM.

An N100 box with 16GB of RAM and 1TB of NVME is around the USD$200 mark, which is far cheaper than the Mac or Ampere, but in line with the other ARM options. It comes in more form factors with more customisability options than you can poke a pointed stick at.

All in all, it doesn't fair too badly. The low price, fast single core speed, and compatibility with everything makes up for a lot of sins.

rty323• 2 years ago

A few x86 CPUs used are 4-7 generations old. Not sure what to make of that.

rstuart41333• 2 years ago

I'm pondering the down votes. My current theory is they are over this:

The M4 blows everything away, but isn't a general purpose machine.

Perhaps that upset Apple fans.

My definition of "general purpose machine" is one that I can realistically write software for. I written operating systems (with a custom network and GUI stack) in the past. Doing that requires hardware that isn't locked down, and somewhat less obviously is well documented. As in "Intel Architecture Manual" style documented, or failing that at least open source drivers like the Linux i915 driver. Apple doesn't come close to meeting that criteria.

That's a shame, because their consumer hardware is stellar. If it was open, I would chose it over anything else.

dangus6• 2 years ago

I do indeed appear to be the idiot who missed the link within the article that had exactly what I was looking for.

jchw3• 2 years ago

While it may not be the literal fastest CPU ever, it still seems very, very fast, and the efficiency is pretty compelling. I'm not sure how much of those efficiency gains are a product of the design constraints that Apple is not beholden to (external memory, x86 backwards compatibility, other aspects of the AMD64 architecture, etc.), the slightly better process nodes, or superior design. I'm honestly dying to know, but I guess we won't find out, and as far as the products go, it doesn't really matter that much. The end result is a pretty good deal.

As a mainly non-Apple user I see the following caveats for my own uses:

- I'd love to see better Linux support. (As far as I know, Asahi Linux only covers the M1 and M2 lines, and as amazing of a project as it is, last I looked, it's neither upstreamed nor exactly what one might consider first class. Maybe it's getting there now, though...)

- I'm worried about the SSD situation still. It seems like it hasn't amounted to much (yet), but some use cases might be more impacted than others, and once the SSD does finally fail, the machine's dead. This is not how things work in most PCs, even mini PCs, and it's a bit of a hard pill to swallow.

- The pricing is great at the baseline, but it gets progressively worse as you go up. The Apple M4 Pro Mac Mini has a baseline price of $1,399.00, which I think is pretty decent for a high-end computer with 24 GiB of RAM. But, it maxes out at 64 GiB of RAM, which is less than half of what I have in my current main machine, and believe me, I use it. That 64 GiB of RAM upgrade costs $600. For comparison, the most expensive 64 GiB DDR5 RAM kit on PCPartPicker is $328.99. Don't get me wrong either, I understand that Apple's unified RAM is part of the secret sauce of how these things are as efficient and small as they are, but at least for my main computer I really don't need things to be this compact, so it's another tradeoff that's really hard to swallow.

But on the other hand, for people happy to use macOS as their primary operating system, the M4 line of Macs really does look the best computer Apple has ever produced. (For me, it is rare that I feel compelled to even consider an Apple computer; the last time was with the original M1 Mac Mini, which I did buy, although after some experimentation I mainly just use it for testing things on macOS rather than as a daily driver machine.) There really aren't many caveats especially since the base memory configurations this time around are actually reasonable.

I suspect these things could be great on homelab racks if the longevity issues don't wind up being a huge problem.

jeffbee2• 2 years ago

What's a CPU that is faster in some given 1T workload? I am fairly sure this thing is the fastest out there.

jchw3• 2 years ago

I don't think there's enough high quality benchmark information to really make a statement like that, but most importantly, I care about both single-core and multi-thread performance. I don't really have any workloads that only use one thread.

Comparing the M4 with PC CPUs will be hard. Typically when comparing two PC CPUs, to make the comparison more realistic, you'd set some reasonable similar constraints, like using the same memory kits and so on. However, even without considering overclocking, the actual performance of a given CPU can vary massively depending on the thermals, power delivery, memory and so forth. (It can vary by over 50%. I didn't check but you should be able to see this on benchmark charts that allow user submission.)

(However, for what it's worth, I always do at least a bit of mild overclocking personally. Nothing extreme, but what does fit within the power and thermal budget is basically just free performance at the cost of some efficiency, a trade-off I'm happy to make for my main desktop machine.)

JohnTHaller2• 2 years ago

The SSD in the new small Mac Mini is replaceable, though it is proprietary (not standard NVMe) and uses different physically sized and shaped drives that are incompatible with each other physically between the M4 base version and M4 Pro version.

MBCook6• 2 years ago

Plus it’s not like it’s designed to be user accessible. Yeah, you can get to it. But it’s not easy.

thoughtsimple• 2 years ago

NAND card is replaceable in a proprietary socket. So you don’t have to worry. It probably is not upgradable but you can definitely replace it.

collinmanderson• 2 years ago

- I'd love to see better Linux support. (As far as I know, Asahi Linux only covers the M1 and M2 lines, and as amazing of a project as it is, last I looked, it's neither upstreamed nor exactly what one might consider first class. Maybe it's getting there now, though...)

As I understand it M3 is not supported because there's no M3 Mini to run the continuous integration

There is now an M4 Mini, so there might be a chance Asahi Linux will eventually support M4.

https://social.treehouse.systems/@marcan/112277289414246878

Edit: Turns out the lack of Mini isn't really a huge issue and it's more just that there were significant changes between M2 and M3.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AsahiLinux/comments/1g07jui/mac_min...

up2isomorphism• 2 years ago

But you have to realize this computer only “partially” belongs to you.

00deadbeef2• 2 years ago

How so? They don’t prevent you installing other operating systems.

colecut• 2 years ago

please elaborate

dansky8• 2 years ago

The Mac mini M4 performance is around 4-5x in DaVinci Resolve for me - compared to my HP laptop (i5-1135G7).

Rendering HDR video was around 12fps there on the i5 - the same project in the Mac mini gets 60fps.

The M4 10 core GPU seems on par or better with a mobile RTX3060(65W) for video tests (NR / Deflicker) so I'm also impressed about the M4's efficiency. A lot of power per Watt.

It's becoming a dedicated video rendering machine for me where all the SMB auto mounting issues with macOS seem solvable. Pretty happy so far with the base model price even in the EU. The power button placement is an annoyance for me, though.

baq3• 2 years ago

The power button placement is an annoyance for me, though.

Keep the thing upside down.

Not joking.

nielsbot• 2 years ago

Feel like that risks overheating...

va1a• 2 years ago

Yeah it seems like this would also increase airflow. Is there any possible issue with just having it upside down all the time?

justinclift3• 2 years ago

Keep the thing upside down.

Or maybe on its side? :)

m4button3• 2 years ago

Well, you could try this solution, designed for people who’d like the flexibility of an on/off choice! https://m4button.com/

leptons3• 2 years ago

The Mac mini M4 performance is around 4-5x in DaVinci Resolve for me - compared to my HP laptop (i5-1135G7).

You could pick a variety of non Apple CPUs that easily deliver 4-5x the performance of an 11th gen i5. Maybe don't be disingenous and compare the M4 to a more recent CPU like i5-14600K, which is also 4x the performance. I'm not comparing on power efficiency, since that was not mentioned at all as part of your comment.

matthew-wegner• 2 years ago

Is it 4x the performance?

Passmark shows 38,951 / 4,282 versus 24,724 / 4,555:

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i5-14600...

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Apple+M4+10+Core&id...

So i5-14600K is 1.57x on multi-core, slightly worse on single-core. $235 for the CPU versus $599 for a whole system. Could maybe match the total price, but Intel won't be able to come anywhere close on the power efficiency.

nl3• 2 years ago

It's not disingenuous to do a real-world comparison to a system you already own when stating the specs. It's actually much more useful to hear these real world anecdotes than to look at geekbench numbers.

mamp• 2 years ago

When do you turn it off? I have a Mac M1 Studio and I just let it sleep. If things get weird I reboot. I think I recall using the power button about a year ago after returning from vacation after I had shut it down.

cchance3• 2 years ago

Like seriously WTF are people turning it off its 3 watts at idle lol, most power supplies have that much phantom drain lol

dansky8• 2 years ago

Right now I mount up to 7 HDDs to the Mac via SMB, have some Streamdeck / Pedal and the necessary external SSDs for fast storage connected. I will see if the SMB mounts come back OK after sleep (my laptop acts as server) but the Streamdeck and HDDs wake up randomly so overall it's easier to switch everything on and off depending on usage.

rwalle2• 2 years ago

i5-1135G7 is from about 4 years ago. If you look at the latest offerings from Intel/AMD the gap should be fairly small.

ideashower6• 2 years ago

Have you tried 8K video? How does each machine handle that?

dansky8• 2 years ago

I just arranged a selection of 4K H.264/H.265 clips in a 2x2 grid on a 8K timeline in DaVinci Resolve.

Playback works well - up to 60fps. However, export to H.265 creates a lot of Swap. Rendering went with 15-18fps. All videos on a SMB network drive but the GPU was the bottleneck for rendering.

Swap was even around 24GB with 5 videos which I tested first. Using 4x4K it went 9 GB before stabilizing at around 2GB. No effects or grading whatsoever - plain 4K60 SDR videos.

One single SDR 4K clip renders to 8K at 25fps. Using Superscale 2x makes that 0.5-1fps.

For 8K rendering you may be better off with 32GB RAM minimum or trying the M4 Pro model maybe with 24GB. For 4K/6K editing the base 16/256 M4 Mac mini seems sufficient when all video storage will be on external drives or network.

Edit: added single 4k->8K rendering performance

barbazoo• 2 years ago

Noteworthy because related to energy efficiency across the entire product lifecycle:

Mac mini is:
Designed with more than 50% recycled content. Made with electricity sourced from 100% renewables. Shipped 50% or more with low-carbon methods.

https://www.apple.com/environment/

rsanheim• 2 years ago

the mac mini is the first carbon neutral mac:

* https://www.macrumors.com/2024/10/29/apple-m4-mac-mini-carbo...

* https://www.apple.com/environment/pdf/products/desktops/Mac_...

2OEH8eoCRo0• 2 years ago

A Faustian deal. Worth the pound of flesh?

rconti2• 2 years ago

In 1.25U of rack space, you could run three Mac minis

I mean, 1.25U at 5" deep. Lots of cabinets are 35+" deep, if memory serves. So technically it would be 21 Mac Minis in 1.25U of space, so it's more like almost 6 teraflops. Again, button-on-the-bottom and wiring and thermals aside.

geerlingguy3• 2 years ago

Heh, can't wait to see what contraption @Merocle comes up with for densely-packing these things: https://x.com/Merocle/status/1848975509603934478

emp_• 2 years ago

The Studio being the GPU-centric model, I can't wait for all these M4 Mini performance improvements to make to the Studio line.

smm112• 2 years ago

I just sold an M1 Mini and grabbed a Beelink. It's wonderful being able to run whatever OS/distro I want on the Beelink, and it's plenty strong enough for whatever. I love this adoration for Apple, primarily for my investment accounts, but in a cloud world I have no idea why there's such a demand for the M4.

JohnTHaller2• 2 years ago

Beelink's $299 base model of their compact desktops is enough for most regular home users. Not as powerful as the Mac Mini M4 but half the price and double the storage. Plus you can upgrade your own storage to 2TB for about $100 and it'll be faster than the Mac Mini's.

smm112• 2 years ago

Exactly as described. I had an 8/256 Mini, and the Beelink solved more than a few problems.

rty323• 2 years ago

Yeah. I scratch my head when there is a ton of new models and competition happening in the mini PC market that provides good value for end users, but nobody notices. When Apple releases a new mini PC, suddenly it's like a breakthrough or something. I even see people say "the entry 8 core Ryzen you can get on a desktop PC is 7700" when discussing this new Mac mini on tech forum, as if giant towers are the only kind of desktop PCs and 7840U/7840H(S) doesn't exist. (You would expect these people to know better)

I guess marketing matters.

baudpunk• 2 years ago

I also have a Beelink, but it skeeves me out a bit. It's probably going to drive me more towards Apple M{X} for my next home server. Even though I know those parts are also made in China, I trust Apple's sourcing more. Bee-link's stuff is so affordable that it makes me wonder why that is.

The globe continuously inching towards war makes me quite paranoid, unfortunately.

pier254• 2 years ago

The M4 Pro is less efficient than the M3 though.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-M4-Pro-analysis-Extremel...

andy_ppp• 2 years ago

I am not sure that is true, does it not use more peak power but get more work done leading to less energy overall for say exporting a hundred photos because it finishes quicker?

scottyah• 2 years ago

It makes sense that the Pro model is less efficient since it's more focused on performance.

MBCook6• 2 years ago

Wait wait wait.

That’s comparing a M4 Pro (middle level) to a M3 Air. The Air is a lower power machine with the low spec processor.

There is no M4 Pro Air. They have to be using a MacBook Pro. That likely has a bigger display, a display capable of getting way brighter, showing more colors, better speakers, all sorts of other stuff.

That’s not a very valid comparison.

If anything, the fact that the M4 Pro gets so close to the M3 is impressive.

The M3 was on a process that was known to run hot. I strongly suspect that every M4 chip is more efficient than the equivalent M3 chip.

pier254• 2 years ago

There are multiple comparisons vs multiple chips on both CPU and GPU. Keep scrolling.

freehorse4• 2 years ago

The M4 Pro continues to be manufactured using a 3-nm process and on the old M3 Pro (27-28 watts), we measured a lower consumption than on the M2 Pro models (~36 watts), despite its improved performance. In contrast [...] the new M4 Pro can consume up to 46 watts, settling at around 40 watts during the further course—so at its peak, it consumes 60% more.

Assuming they refer to the full chips rather than the binned ones, each generation of pro chips has the following number of p and e cores:

  | Model  | # p-cores | # e-cores |
  |--------|-----------|-----------|
  | M2 Pro | 8         | 4         |
  | M3 Pro | 6         | 6         |
  | M4 Pro | 10        | 4         |

Thus m3 pro has more e-cores and less p-cores than m2 pro thus the big increase in efficiency, while the m4 pro has more p-cores than m2 pro thus the increase. It is all about tradeoffs and, honestly, the result is pretty much expected when you count the cores. I assume there is some improvement per generation, but if the number of cores is not constant, the latter is gonna drive most of the variance generation to generation.

pier254• 2 years ago

You're only considering the CPU though.

m3kw9• 2 years ago

How does one “idling” like this? “ In 1.25U of rack space, you could run three Mac minis, idling around 10W, giving almost a teraflop of CPU performance. ”

knodi• 2 years ago

I dream of Linux on this Mac mini.

dmitrygr2• 2 years ago

VMs work and you get amazing perf. Dream granted

taftster• 2 years ago

What's your best choice for hypervisor? Virtualbox? Parallels? Or what do you recommend for this unit?

cocoto• 2 years ago

Is there any noticeable latency in graphics using a VM? As far as I remember VMs were a disaster for latency some years ago (Windows or Linux host).

kopirgan2• 2 years ago

I bought a no brand mini PC really small with older Intel CPU. It runs Debian quite well. But noisy and slows down a lot, perceivable once it gets hot. But it's cheap around $100,-150 on Chinese e-commerce websites with memory, disk.

Apple does amazing stuff. But it's very pricey in most markets and unaffordable to those on budget.

sabareesh2• 2 years ago

I know everyone is complaining about the power button why not just flip it upside down ?

r0fl• 2 years ago

I haven’t powered down my iMac once all year

How often are these people powering down their iMacs? Why!?

People love complaining. Apple doubles the base ram and keeps the price the same, people complain that base storage is too low. If that doubled then they would find something new.

criddell2• 2 years ago

The thermal design assumes the normal orientation. Flipping it upside down might lead to more thermal throttling.

siddharthgoel88• 2 years ago

Any feedback on how it comes along for regular Software Development (backend stuff) activity and as a common home PC? Looking at the benchmarks looks like there shouldn't be any issue but any first hand experience would be greatly appreciated.

atilimcetin• 2 years ago

IMHO, developing with Node.js, Java, Python, Go, etc.. within MacOS is more convenient compared to Windows machines.

Also I can highly recommend using version managers (e.g. nvm, jenv, pyenv, gvm, etc..) for these languages to quickly install and manage different versions.

mocamoca• 2 years ago

Idk about this one but my daily driver is a Mini M1, 16gb, 1to.

The regular backend stack on docker is smooth. Vs code / jetbrain is smooth. Nothing to complain about.

I could use more ports however. That is easily fixed with an USB hub.

jillesvangurp2• 2 years ago

I'm pretty happy with my M1 mac book pro with 16 Gb. I'd expect this to be faster. I typically have intellij, vs code, slack, a bunch of docker containers, etc. running. All fine. Get more memory maybe.

freehorse4• 2 years ago

The m4 has 6 efficiency cores and 4 performance cores. This is 2 efficiency cores more than the previous generations, and the same number of p-cores, thus higher e to p core ratio, which can explain a large part of the increase in power efficiency. Not to say that otherwise there is nothing remarkable here, of course there is, but if the author found a 30% increase in efficiency compared to m2 while they claim they expected 4-10% after 2 generations of chips, it could be because of that.

The m4 pro has 4 e-cores and 6-8 p-cores, hence I would not expect similar increase.

madeofpalk• 2 years ago

IIRC as well, the M3 chips had an odd efficient to performance core ratio that’s not present in the M4, which is slightly interesting

ghshephard• 2 years ago

That would explain improving performance, but I don't actually understand how that would improve efficiency. Particularly at the high end where they quote 6.74 Gflops/W .

wtallis3• 2 years ago

If a higher proportion of the total performance is coming from efficiency cores, it is reasonable to expect overall efficiency to be improved.

ideashower6• 2 years ago

I’m contemplating whether this can handle editing 8K video. Does anyone have any idea?

My goal is to venture into 180-degree VR production. With the Canon R5C and the RF 5.2mm f/2.8 Dual Fisheye Lens, I want to produce stereoscopic video at 8K. However, rendering such high-resolution footage demands substantial processing power, and my current setup definitely isn't enough.

ganoushoreilly• 2 years ago

Base version, probably not. If you went with one with M4 Pro cpu and the 48gb or greater ram you should be ok. Storage isn't as much an issue with Thunderbolt 4/5 drives easily meeting similar speeds to the internal storage.

I've done some 8k fisheye footage and converted for Vision Pro / Quest with the prior gen hardware kit and was able to edit and process it on an M2 Max with 96gb ram.

ideashower6• 2 years ago

Super cool yeah I'm mainly looking to create 8K fisheye footage for the Vision Pro so that's really good to hear!

Wondering if it's worth spending that much money on the M4 Pro or just building a PC tbh.

kasperset• 2 years ago

It is amazing to see drop in idle power consumption over the years for Mac mini: https://support.apple.com/en-us/103253

32 W for the PowerPC to 5w to Apple Arm ones (Current).

dcl2• 2 years ago

Is there any benchmarks for these chips doing like regular 'data-sciency' CPU grunt work? Dataframe-wrangling, inverting matrices, doing large matrix, factorisations, fitting decision tree's, etc?

I'm very keen on one of these, but I simply have no idea how good they are at my day to day tasks in R or Python.

woodson• 2 years ago

It depends. If you're using Python with numpy>=2.0.0 (and macOS>=14) then you should benefit greatly from Apple's Accelerate implementation of BLAS/LAPACK routines which are behind most linear algebra operations. I'm not aware of any serious public benchmarks, though.

dcl2• 2 years ago

That sounds pretty promising.

twilo2• 2 years ago

Apple's ARM chips have been incredibly effecient for a while now.

My m3 air draws around 3W on avarage and that's with a 14 inch screen running at around 40% brightness.. impressive stuff. Passive cooling too!

n_ary4• 2 years ago

M3 airs come in 14” or did you mean m3 pro?

To best of my knowledge, airs come in 13” and 15”.

twilo2• 2 years ago

13.6 inch screen on the small air

seanarnold• 2 years ago

Worth noting the base model only has 1Gb ethernet, not 10Gb as mentioned in the blog.

freetime22• 2 years ago

And the system I bought includes 10 Gigabit Ethernet and 32 GB of RAM

I thought it was pretty clear from "the system I bought" that he was not talking about the base model. And I think $100 for 10 GbE is surprisingly reasonable for an upgrade from Apple. For comparison, 10 GbE Thunderbolt adapters typically cost about $200 - and while 10 GbE PCIe cards can be bought for less, they tend to be much less power efficient and generate a surprising amount of heat.

I actually think it's very commendable that Apple even gives the option to upgrade to 10 GbE on a mass market desktop. I was recently looking to buy a non-Apple Mini PC, and while 2.5 GbE is very common now, 10 GbE is still relatively rare. The options I found were to go with a Minisforum MS-01, which is considerably more expensive than the base M4 Mac Mini w/10 GbE upgrade, or to order something slightly sketchy from Aliexpress. So as soon as Apple announced the new M4 Mac Mini, I went with that instead.

nobrains• 2 years ago

If only they didn't put the power button on the bottom.

Question for HN: How would you redesign the power button, assuming you work at Apple and the final design should align with Apple's design ethos?

Y-bar2• 2 years ago

Since I turn off my Mac almost every night, just like I turn off my television, lights, and other stuff when I don’t use them. To me, personally, it makes no sense to waste the electricity for about 15 hrs * 365 days per year.

I would put the power on any vertical side of the mini if I were designing it for my use.

kissiel• 2 years ago

I really hope you mean you unplug the power cable from the TV, cause none of the modern TVs turn off when you ask them to. The TV bootup takes too long for it to be "off" off.

switch007• 2 years ago

Stupid question but why can't it (non Pro particularly) be powered over USB C like a MBP, if it's so power efficient?

Does it have extra performance that makes full use of the 155W input?

What would have it taken Apple to have given us the option to be powered by 100W USB C (eg the tech to downgrade power usage to match the power input)?

physicsguy• 2 years ago

I guess the inclusion MBP battery allows drawing higher current than a USB C power supply can provide?

watermelon0• 2 years ago

I think most of the 155W is for USB-C power delivery, not the machine itself.

Blog post mentions that power usage during benchmark was at 42W.

hi_hi• 2 years ago

Kinda unrelated, but with all this amazing efficiency, I wish Apple would re-introduce the one feature that made me truely love my old MacBook.

On my ~2010 Macbook Pro they had a series of small green lights on the chassis that acted as a battery indicator. When the laptop went to sleep, it would take on a slow breathing like animation effect. It was beautifully done. I was sad when it was removed.

Please bring this back.

lifeinthevoid2• 2 years ago

I just bought an ASRock Deskmini x600 with a Ryzen 7700 to run as low-power Linux server / workstation. Given the trouble I had with this thing due to (I believe) buggy amdgpu drivers and/or buggy firmware, I'm inclined to throw it out and just buy this Mac Mini.

rty323• 2 years ago

Well, I wouldn't consider 7700 low-power in any sense, maybe 7640U or 7840U on a mini PC. You are running Linux the entire time?

lifeinthevoid2• 2 years ago

True, it was low-power in my mind compared to my previous gaming rig. Yup, running Linux the entire time.

pimterry• 2 years ago

Very very cool, but only makes it more disappointing that you can't actually use this for anything innovative, except in the Apple-approved format & use cases.

Can't upgrade any of the internals, doesn't run Linux easily, no way to use any of the internal components separately, or rebuild them into a different form factor. Imagine being able to directly mount these to VESA behind a dashboard. I have an old M1 Mac Mini I'd love to use as a NAS, but the disk is slightly too small and you can't upgrade it, so it's just useless to me instead.

Impressive to see Apple match the Pi for idle power & efficiency, but deeply frustrating to see them takes the exact opposite design philosophy.

ramassnel1• 2 years ago

What i am thinking right now is, what we can push the M4 Chip to the Maximum of its power? i've seen a lot of people using it for LLM, making cluster with ExoLab. It's amazing how its perform with such an efficiency.

signa11• 2 years ago

it would really be nice to run vpp (https://s3-docs.fd.io/vpp/25.02/ on this machine, packet forwarding with pico-joules/packet would be excellent.

shark1• 2 years ago

I rarely press the power button on my laptop.

I suspect Apple tracks/measure the usage of the button and took the decision to design it hidden.

M4 Mac mini's efficiency

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