Apple's 2024 M4 Mac Mini: What We Know

[Tago]

I want to future-proof my next Apple Mac because they are expensive machines. Overpriced upgrade options is bad enough. Not letting anyone ever upgrade RAM or SSD on their machines again is a shame.

Beg to differ.

I've been through those exercises a few times both for stationary and Thinkpads, and the numbers don't add up.

Basically what you do is debottlenecking the computer. Which means whenever you carry out an upgrade of the component constraining your work, you remove a bottleneck. That means that another component becomes the bottleneck, and then the next one and the next one. For instance a juicy graphics card with a now lame CPU or a motherboard for that matter.

Meanwhile, newer computers have progressed, thus when you replace a component it is one inferior to later tech, and as the vendors becomes fewer and and less components are available the prices goes up. If a computer lasts for say 8 years and you upgrade it after 4 you'll have to "write off" the upgrade costs within a shorter period. In addition to that, you are stuck with the parts you removed and nobody wants it.

Assuming long term economical Mac ownership with decent performance is the objective, I'd rather go 2nd hand, for instance 2 years old with the spec you need for the planned duration of ownership, and keep it for whatever makes sense - 2-4 years, then get another 2nd hand as an upgrade for what you need THEN, and sell off the one you are replacing. You will have great and quite recent hardware matching your needs at any given time, and very sound annual costs of ownership.

If you spec for the future (no one knows what's up next anyway) you pay a lot for stuff you don't need. Better save the cash until you need a different spec.

One can do the same thing with iPhones as they get updates for a long time. Buy 1-2 years old just around fresh releases by Apple, and keep them for whatever makes sense.

I bought a new iPad 12.9 Pro cellular 2020 in 2021 at clearance discount, and sold it 14 months later for the exact same amount. I lost 40 USD (the cover) but nothing on the iPad and the pen. 3 USD a month for that pad is fairly neat.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Not letting anyone ever upgrade RAM or SSD on their machines again is a shame.

More than a shame, it is exactly why I have not bought any new Mac hardware in years now

 

[Chuckeee]

Overpriced upgrade options is bad enough. Not letting anyone ever upgrade RAM or SSD on their machines again is a shame.

SSD is different than RAM. For a Mac mini (or any desktop) there is always the option to an external SSD. And while it might not be as fast as an internal SSD it is still plenty fast for most functions. In addition there are some places that will update internal SSD. There is the risk it will brick your mini, it is still expensive (so you save only around 25%) and it is much easier to find someone in some places (Taipei for example).

 

[thebart]

The majority of Apple Mini customers (who are not tech oriented) will do fine with 8 gb. They shouldn't have to pay more for memory they'll never use.

Those that actually need more memory (editing 4K videos, processing multiple large images in photoshop, signal processing in MATLAB, decrypting foreign adversary communications, chip design, driving multiple displays, etc) can simply choose that option when making a Mini purchase.

It's great Apple offers choices.

By this logic, the base mini should come with M1 every year. If you want to upgrade the chip you pay extra. Why is Apple forcing basic users to buy more power than they need?

The base M2 actually cost $100 less than the base M1. OMG what happened? Did Tim Apple have a stroke? Did Apple hemorrhage money with this move? No. Because that's how computer tech works. Prices fall. Economy of scale. Moore's law and all that

Yesterday I stumbled on the feed the world song. There's a line that goes "do they know it's Christmas time at all?" We need a live aid song for these Apple defenders. "Do they know what year it is at all?"

 

[citysnaps]

By this logic, the base mini should come with M1 every year. If you want to upgrade the chip you pay extra. Why is Apple forcing basic users to buy more power than they need?

The base M2 actually cost $100 less than the base M1. OMG what happened? Did Tim Apple have a stroke? Did Apple hemorrhage money with this move? No. Because that's how computer tech works. Prices fall. Economy of scale. Moore's law and all that

Yesterday I stumbled on the feed the world song. There's a line that goes "do they know it's Christmas time at all?" We need a live aid song for these Apple defenders. "Do they know what year it is at all?"

Because M1 was retired in an old process, allowing M2 to go forward in a newer process (at the time) at different tiers, the lowest offering a $100 reduction in retail pricing. A good thing for customers.

8gb of ram still works fine for the majority of Apple customers with modest computing needs.

 

[Tago]

Because M1 was retired in an old process, allowing M2 to go forward in a newer process (at the time) at different tiers, the lowest offering a $100 reduction in retail pricing. A good thing for customers.

8gb of ram still works fine for the majority of Apple customers with modest computing needs.

Each has different peak usages where one gets hampered by the hardware of course, and the reason for being rather doubtful about getting a M1 Mini is that software increasingly will utilise AI and I belive that will make the M1 a drag at some point. When, is anyone's guess, but 2 years from now it should be noticeable, with 8gb in particular. 16gb is more likely to endure a bit longer.

I somehow belive M2 would be prone to that too, and as it already gets close to 2 year from launch, I don't believe it will be great for long term ownership. Purchasing a new one is a no go unless a juicy discount, and for 2nd hand it has to be a fairly good deal. M3 was always transitional only.

Given long term ownership is the objective and the potential (future) software resource demands for AI, I wouldn't consider 8gb a very good option. If the ownership perspective is short (2 years +), it might be ok, but it will likely become sticky after 3 or so.

The reason for nagging about AI is that "all" applications including basic ones will seek to exploit that as much as they can. As it still is early days for AI, much/some software will not have nailed it, and until they do, there will be resource hogs amongst them. If the AI/Neural hardware isn't sufficient, it likely will bug down CPU/GPU/Ram, and the ram will determine the longevity of great performance ownership. Sticking to 8gb will cut it short even if it is sufficient at present.

Normally, I would have argued that a preowned M1 or M2 with 16gb would be healthy for as long as Apple provides MacOS updates, but everyone going all in on AI, my perspective has become rather different. Would only go preowned M1/M2 and 16gb for give or take 2 or 3 years planned ownership tops.

Only Apple knows how the M4 will be configured for Mac, assuming strong similarity to M4 iPads is only a wild guess. The configuration might be very different, and how much AI capacity they throw into the mix will be an indication of how fast M1/M2 will become a drag. If they throw in a lot of AI, the software vendors will go all in.

Each to their own in terms of storage capacity needs, one gets whatever is needed, as far as I'm concerned the spec upgrade starts with ram. Then again, who knows? Will Apple increase diversification of AI/Neural between the SoC levels?

 

[Surrylic]

"Why then pay for a beautiful fast processor, and upgrade your existing system, just to have its performance dragged back by swapping"

There will be no swapping for people with modest computing needs. As attested by many users here in the recent past on MR reporting using Macs with 8gb of ram.

This actually isn’t true. I have the M2 mini with 8gb RAM and it always has swap usage. I only use web browsers most of the time.

 

[citysnaps]

This actually isn’t true. I have the M2 mini with 8gb RAM and it always has swap usage. I only use web browsers most of the time.

That's actually at odds with many here on MR who have weighed in on this subject over the last two months and reported no degradation or adverse consequences.

 

[citysnaps]

Each has different peak usages where one gets hampered by the hardware of course, and the reason for being rather doubtful about getting a M1 Mini is that software increasingly will utilise AI and I belive that will make the M1 a drag at some point. When, is anyone's guess, but 2 years from now it should be noticeable, with 8gb in particular. 16gb is more likely to endure a bit longer.

I somehow belive M2 would be prone to that too, and as it already gets close to 2 year from launch, I don't believe it will be great for long term ownership. Purchasing a new one is a no go unless a juicy discount, and for 2nd hand it has to be a fairly good deal. M3 was always transitional only.

Given long term ownership is the objective and the potential (future) software resource demands for AI, I wouldn't consider 8gb a very good option. If the ownership perspective is short (2 years +), it might be ok, but it will likely become sticky after 3 or so.

The reason for nagging about AI is that "all" applications including basic ones will seek to exploit that as much as they can. As it still is early days for AI, much/some software will not have nailed it, and until they do, there will be resource hogs amongst them. If the AI/Neural hardware isn't sufficient, it likely will bug down CPU/GPU/Ram, and the ram will determine the longevity of great performance ownership. Sticking to 8gb will cut it short even if it is sufficient at present.

Normally, I would have argued that a preowned M1 or M2 with 16gb would be healthy for as long as Apple provides MacOS updates, but everyone going all in on AI, my perspective has become rather different. Would only go preowned M1/M2 and 16gb for give or take 2 or 3 years planned ownership tops.

Only Apple knows how the M4 will be configured for Mac, assuming strong similarity to M4 iPads is only a wild guess. The configuration might be very different, and how much AI capacity they throw into the mix will be an indication of how fast M1/M2 will become a drag. If they throw in a lot of AI, the software vendors will go all in.

Each to their own in terms of storage capacity needs, one gets whatever is needed, as far as I'm concerned the spec upgrade starts with ram. Then again, who knows? Will Apple increase diversification of AI/Neural between the SoC levels?

With respect to AI... that remains to be seen, as at this point in time no one other than Apple knows how that will affect usage and configurations. If AI will be as pervasive/integrated as some are *suggesting*, I suspect Apple will configure their computers appropriately - even at the base level, as they do now for ordinary people with ordinary/modest computing needs.

 

[Tago]

With respect to AI... that remains to be seen, as at this point in time no one other than Apple knows how that will affect usage and configurations. If AI will be as pervasive/integrated as some are *suggesting*, I suspect Apple will configure their computers appropriately - even at the base level, as they do now for ordinary people with ordinary/modest computing needs.

Agree. Therefore I await M4 as I believe it will provide an indication of the weight they put on it and how fast they move towards it. I do believe their approach to AI will have an impact upon how relevant previous M generations will be. AI set aside, it's business as usual, pick a relevant spec from any M generation.

 

[theluggage]

That's actually at odds with many here on MR who have weighed in on this subject over the last two months and reported no degradation or adverse consequences.

Well, just having some swap used is a non-issue - what counts is the page fault rate which shows how often data has to be written to or from swap. That isn’t displayed in Activity Monitor any more, but it is reflected in the “memory pressure” reading, according to some algorithm designed by Apple.

If your system is swapping frequently then the processor is being slowed down by lack of RAM - accessing SSD is an order of magnitude slower than RAM - end of. Apple Silicon is very efficient at using swap, and faster than the old Intel machines in other ways, so whether this leads to something you’d notice is unclear. In the early days there were a lot of reviews comparing 8GB M1 and 16GB Intel using tests that simply didn’t need more than 8GB or which flew through on M1 - swap or not - because they were now being accelerated by the Media Engine.

I can see why people with modest RAM needs don’t want the base price to go up by $200 - the issue is that going to 16GB shouldn’t cost anything like that amount, and a premium-priced system (and all Macs are premium priced) shouldn’t be cutting corners like that.

 

[turbineseaplane]

I do believe their approach to AI will have an impact upon how relevant previous M generations will be.

And all the data seems to suggest that Apple has been caught off guard by how quickly some of this AI stuff has come on and been adopted by so many competitors.

That would lead me to believe that Apple were not anticipating the impacts of AI tech on 8 GB base users and they are going to get hosed here most likely

Quite frankly, they should’ve been shipping 16 GB base ram for years now.

 

[Tago]

And all the data seems to suggest that Apple has been caught off guard by how quickly some of this AI stuff has come on and been adopted by so many competitors.

That would lead me to believe that Apple were not anticipating the impacts of AI tech on 8 GB base users and they are going to get hosed here most likely

Quite frankly, they should’ve been shipping 16 GB base ram for years now.

I have 16 on the MacBook Pro I'm about to replace with a Mini and I alway made ram a priority for my machines, thus I picture it as important. It's been more than I have needed, it's the CPU and GPU++ that have aged into notable bottlenecks, but I believe the maxed out ram gave it a longer life.

If the idea is to get the best possible option within a given budget limit I would prefer to get an older gen with more ram (or processor cores for that matter). I'd pick M1 16 ahead of M2 8 without blinking.

...but the 8gb iterations serves as a entry point that will serve many users for some years, and entering the MacOSsphere would be more expensive for people who need a basic computer without a lot of power. They just need the system and that it just works.

Again, AI may or may not flip a lot of stuff upside down. Not sure how surprised Apple was wrt AI, they have been at it for quite some time. From their perspective it wouldn't make sense to throw everything they can do into the Macs in one go. That would be bad business strategy.

Not sure how others view this, but from my perspective their most important sales strategy for Macs++ isn't really what they deliver. It's what they don't. The minute a new Mac or an AppleOS has been released by Apple is the minute when you start hoping the next one will bring some missing feature. Believe that's one reason for not plastering all Apple hardware with USB C / Thunderbolt yet. They always make sure there's great suction in the pipeline.

 

[turbineseaplane]

...but the 8gb iterations serves as a entry point that will serve many users for some years, and entering the MacOSsphere would be more expensive for people who need a basic computer without a lot of power. They just need the system and that it just works.

Going from 8 to 16GB of RAM literally costs Apple pennies
It's pure 100% gouging of their customers to not make 16GB the base

I will not make excuses for Apple (not saying you are...I'm saying I will not)

 

[Tago]

Going from 8 to 16GB of RAM literally costs Apple pennies
It's pure 100% gouging of their customers to not make 16GB the base

I will not make excuses for Apple (not saying you are...I'm saying I will not)

That's how they operate of course. How they place products and specs along the performance line is all about optimising profits. Component costs is not what determines a price point, It's what they belive a lot of people are willing to pay in order to get it.

It's not entirely about the profits from that particular spec either. It's about getting people to purchase on the next level. I'd argue the jump from base Mini to the Pro iteration is a step far more expensive than the hardware difference justifies.

They provide USB A because of that in my opinion. Not because they want to keep costs down or caretake owners of "vintage stuff", it's to get more people to pony up for the Pro. If they provided all Thunder and USB C with the base Mini, you'd have a harder time justifying the upgrade in spec.

Likewise, as discussed previously in this thread, I belive Max would do just fine in a Mini chassis. But you'd pay more for it in a Studio chassis with a few complimentary perks.

And they will keep the out of date cheap card reader to ensure the photographers will upgrade when they eventually provide it. Can't picture any good technical/practical reason for not being up to the latest standard. It's all about a marketing strategy focusing on the nice bits, and a sales strategy counting upon the suction from lack of features.

It's great. For Apple.

The best thing an enthusiast of some tech can do is to become pragmatic and rational. That would change the game in the favour of the pragmatic. Don't get emotionally attached to technology. The companies are not at all attached to you beyond the cash in your pocket.

 

[turbineseaplane]

It's great. For Apple.

That's really all that needs to be said

 

[Tago]

A general observation not directed towards anyone specific:

There are 2 "contradicting arguments" swivelling around Apple, success and prices.

-One is the user base pride for great quality in software, security, privacy and hardware plus how successful, profitable and big they are.

- The other is how expensive their hardware, media rent/purchases and SaS (Software as Service) is considered to be and how the eco systems are closed/proprietary and so on.

All the above is very strongly related, and no one should have the misconception that Apple is an idealistic organisation or a fan service corporation. It is hardcore profit driven business, where fans are tremendously important both as customers and evangelists. For that to work, they have to provide products and services their fans and other customers consider preferable be it based upon hardware quality, performance, design, user experience or services/media for the prices they are charging. If they tick off the various boxes for the individual fans/custumers and those are willing to pony up, they will charge whatever they belive they can get away with.

Apple sells the illusion of value, and fans/customers purchases that illusion. I'm not arguing whether that illusion is a reflection of hard facts or a dilution as it will be a combination where each fan/customer swallows the entire bucket or picks what's makes sense to them.

This is nothing particular for Apple, every big tech Tom, Dick and Harry do it, and so does any other consumer business. Where Apple differentiate themselves is their typically well off and/or professional target audience and the success they have achieved in matching the needs/preferences for those at price points they accept.

As far as Mac Mini is concerned, it is fully possible to have a very sound economical ownership combined with the performance and usability it provides given that it covers the usage scenario of the customer and the user is within the target group of the product.

That only becomes a problem when trying to stretch the usage beyond what it is designed for by someone outside the target group.

It is VERY easy to make a membership of the Apple sphere extremely expensive. All you have to do is to purchase the latest and greatest as soon as it arrives at every launch, sign up for every app and purchase every movie or whatever they have to offer, regardless of factual needs for features or performance. If brand new specced out Apple devices is your thing, pay up and enjoy.

But it is also rather easy to tune a membership into a very economical long term experience by being sensible and stick to what one actually need. Ride the latest and greatest bandwagon won't make any sense for A LOT of users. Being rational and content tend to work rather well.

Being entirely pragmatic in terms of new/preowned, performance, needs and preferences I have a low budget perspective stronger than most, and my annual costs for the Apple hardware ownership are indeed comfortable.

 

[ninecows]

A general observation not directed towards anyone specific:

There are 2 "contradicting arguments" swivelling around Apple, success and prices.

-One is the user base pride for great quality in software, security, privacy and hardware plus how successful, profitable and big they are.

- The other is how expensive their hardware, media rent/purchases and SaS (Software as Service) is considered to be and how the eco systems are closed/proprietary and so on.

All the above is very strongly related, and no one should have the misconception that Apple is an idealistic organisation or a fan service corporation. It is hardcore profit driven business, where fans are tremendously important both as customers and evangelists. For that to work, they have to provide products and services their fans and other customers consider preferable be it based upon hardware quality, performance, design, user experience or services/media for the prices they are charging. If they tick off the various boxes for the individual fans/custumers and those are willing to pony up, they will charge whatever they belive they can get away with.

Apple sells the illusion of value, and fans/customers purchases that illusion. I'm not arguing whether that illusion is a reflection of hard facts or a dilution as it will be a combination where each fan/customer swallows the entire bucket or picks what's makes sense to them.

This is nothing particular for Apple, every big tech Tom, Dick and Harry do it, and so does any other consumer business. Where Apple differentiate themselves is their typically well off and/or professional target audience and the success they have achieved in matching the needs/preferences for those at price points they accept.

As far as Mac Mini is concerned, it is fully possible to have a very sound economical ownership combined with the performance and usability it provides given that it covers the usage scenario of the customer and the user is within the target group of the product.

That only becomes a problem when trying to stretch the usage beyond what it is designed for by someone outside the target group.

It is VERY easy to make a membership of the Apple sphere extremely expensive. All you have to do is to purchase the latest and greatest as soon as it arrives at every launch, sign up for every app and purchase every movie or whatever they have to offer, regardless of factual needs for features or performance. If brand new specced out Apple devices is your thing, pay up and enjoy.

But it is also rather easy to tune a membership into a very economical long term experience by being sensible and stick to what one actually need. Ride the latest and greatest bandwagon won't make any sense for A LOT of users. Being rational and content tend to work rather well.

Being entirely pragmatic in terms of new/preowned, performance, needs and preferences I have a low budget perspective stronger than most, and my annual costs for the Apple hardware ownership are indeed comfortable.

3 stars ⭐️ for a pragmatic and non-polarizing contribution to this world 👏🏻😊

 

[Surrylic]

That's actually at odds with many here on MR who have weighed in on this subject over the last two months and reported no degradation or adverse consequences.

I'd wager they just don't realize it. I have a web browser open right now with three tabs (macrumors, google chat, and my company timecard), Activity Monitor, and one screenshot. Currently at 1GB swap used.

Actually I typed this comment without hitting submit, and coming back a couple hours later I see the swap has decreased to 573MB. But still, it's using swap. And if I have anything else open it's just going to increase. The people that don't complain about performance are the people that don't realize it's not performing at full capacity.

Quick aside - I use Lightroom occasionally. I'm no professional, I'm barely capable, but I find photography fun. Editing photos on my M2 Mac Mini is very slow and laggy compared to my old iMac that I was able to manually upgrade the RAM for. I paid less for 64GB of RAM four years ago than Apple wants me to pay for 8 today. I know not everyone uses Lightroom, but to say I must pay a minimum of $200 extra just to get decent performance out of an infrequently used piece of software is bananas. Especially on hardware and operating systems Apple constantly advertises as for creatives.

 

[theluggage]

Actually I typed this comment without hitting submit, and coming back a couple hours later I see the swap has decreased to 573MB. But still, it's using swap. And if I have anything else open it's just going to increase. The people that don't complain about performance are the people that don't realize it's not performing at full capacity.

As I said in a previous post - just "using swap" isn't necessarily a problem if it's just swapping out less frequently used data - that's what swap us there for. It's the rate of using swap that matters, which Apple have rolled into their "memory pressure" statistic. The slowdowns will come when the system is relying on swap for frequently accessed data.

What would be more interesting is the "memory pressure" reading when you're using Lightroom.

 

[citysnaps]

I'd wager they just don't realize it. I have a web browser open right now with three tabs (macrumors, google chat, and my company timecard), Activity Monitor, and one screenshot. Currently at 1GB swap used.

Actually I typed this comment without hitting submit, and coming back a couple hours later I see the swap has decreased to 573MB. But still, it's using swap. And if I have anything else open it's just going to increase. The people that don't complain about performance are the people that don't realize it's not performing at full capacity.

Quick aside - I use Lightroom occasionally. I'm no professional, I'm barely capable, but I find photography fun. Editing photos on my M2 Mac Mini is very slow and laggy compared to my old iMac that I was able to manually upgrade the RAM for. I paid less for 64GB of RAM four years ago than Apple wants me to pay for 8 today. I know not everyone uses Lightroom, but to say I must pay a minimum of $200 extra just to get decent performance out of an infrequently used piece of software is bananas. Especially on hardware and operating systems Apple constantly advertises as for creatives.

Sorry it's not working out for you. I'm very surprised. Well... I'll trust the people who have reported no issues as they seem technically competent.

As a photographer I use Lightroom daily. Seeing photography is a big part of my life, I didn't mind paying for the memory I *needed* when I purchased my Mac Studio and MBP.

It's like everything else in life from buying shoes/clothes, to buying a car, to renting/buying a home. Buy what you need.

 

[thebart]

And all the data seems to suggest that Apple has been caught off guard by how quickly some of this AI stuff has come on and been adopted by so many competitors.

That would lead me to believe that Apple were not anticipating the impacts of AI tech on 8 GB base users and they are going to get hosed here most likely

Quite frankly, they should’ve been shipping 16 GB base ram for years now.

Shortly after getting my M1 mini, I got into stable diffusion, a thing I wasn't even aware of when I bought the M1 (I'd seen some coverage of dalle and midjourney). I had other reasons for getting 16gb RAM, but I'm sure glad I did.

For their first foray into AI, Apple I'm sure will not leave M1 gen out in the cold. (I don't know what they'll do with Intel Macs.) But for the next iterations, we'll probably see some features requiring later soc to work seamlessly or at all.

 

[Motorola68000]

Sorry it's not working out for you. I'm very surprised. Well... I'll trust the people who have reported no issues as they seem technically competent.

As a photographer I use Lightroom daily. Seeing photography is a big part of my life, I didn't mind paying for the memory I *needed* when I purchased my Mac Studio and MBP.

It's like everything else in life from buying shoes/clothes, to buying a car, to renting/buying a home. Buy what you need.

An unsafe assumption to consider people who have reported no issues 'as they seem technically competent'....Merely the laws of physics dictate that they might not be aware of degradation in performance if they are using the equipment for basic tasks, and many of these what you call 'technically competent' have admitted they only use their computers for basic tasks?

 

[citysnaps]

An unsafe assumption to consider people who have reported no issues 'as they seem technically competent'....Merely the laws of physics dictate that they might not be aware of degradation in performance if they are using the equipment for basic tasks, and many of these what you call 'technically competent' have admitted they only use their computers for basic tasks?

Again... basic tasks, 8gb will be fine as reported by many MR contributors over the last few months.

Complex tasks, take personal responsibility and purchase the amount of memory you deem appropriate. Easy. Apple provides choices.

Don't like the above options... purchase a NUC and find happiness.

If none of the above work, simply complain on tech forums for years and years about how unfair/awful Apple is. Wah.

I think that about convers it.

 

[Tago]

3 stars ⭐️ for a pragmatic and non-polarizing contribution to this world 👏🏻😊

Most generous of you, thanks, appreciate that 🍰