You don't have a keyboard?
If you don't have a keyboard or mouse, why do you need to wake the machine?
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M4 Pro Mac mini - form over function?
- Thread starter Peter_M
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You don't have a keyboard?
If you don't have a keyboard or mouse, why do you need to wake the machine?
Actually, that power button isn't on the very bottom. It's on the bottom of the rim on the outer aspect of the Mac mini, meaning that if you don't have fat fingers, you may be able to press the power button without lifting up the machine, although we'll have to see if that's true once the reviews come out.
Surely you'll either be proven wrong, or buy the M4 Pro Studio instead of Mini as won't there be one of those coming? So either way, not a thing.
Unless it directly plugs in, you can just get new cables and not use dapters anyway.
Analog in reply 25:
"Maybe you didn't notice the fan?"
I haven't seen anything definite yet, but I'll ask:
IS THERE a fan in the 2024 Mini ...?
"Maybe you didn't notice the fan?"
I haven't seen anything definite yet, but I'll ask:
IS THERE a fan in the 2024 Mini ...?
Absolutely there is
Apple has a whole graphic about airflow (fan needed for airflow)
I think this is the perspective from a lot of consumers. I guess they have hopes, and when the item comes out, not exactly what they thought it was going to look like it’s a letdown. To be honest it’s not what I would’ve hoped for. It looks like an Apple TV, but I wanted that cool thin glass rendition that was going around. I’m guessing making it so thin wouldn’t have worked with the Pro chips. Also, I can see glass breaking too easily, and plastic would’ve looked ugly after a few years.
This being said the base model mini with the Apple Studio display might be the best desktop for someone that needs a computer for general use. Doing things like browsing the web, social media, video conferencing, light photo editing, typing office documents, etc.
I'll go against the grain and say I am with the OP on this one. I want a new Mini, but I am going to wait for reviews. I feel like if Apple mentions cooling in the advertising, get ready for throttling and a loud fan. Sticking with my M2 Mini for now.
Yeah, my general intuition on the Mini, and especially now crammed into a much smaller chassis, is that it's probably a device that shouldn't really offer a Pro chip in there (from a cooling/thermals/throttling POV), but we'll see what third party testing reveals.
IMO -- the real reason they offer the Pro chip in here is to make sure they have it tiering right up to the edge of the Studios
Tim Cook's whole leveling up strategy really necessitates some ambiguity for the customer as the Mini Pro approaches the Studio and it's gets close enough to induce ... "hey, maybe I should just pay a little more and buy a Studio!?"
In a nutshell...
Tim Cook Apple is all about having enough SKUs to get folks thinking "maybe I should just pay a little bit more?"
All Apple silicon Macs can run Apple Intelligence.
If I had a M2 mini, I wouldn’t upgrade to the new M4 version. I’d wait until M6 or M7.
Nothing wrong with waiting for reviews. I myself am waiting for today's launch to see if there will be new displays. I expect not but it can't hurt to wait before deciding which Mac mini to get. The problem people here have with this thread is complaints about perceived deficiencies in the design based on complete conjecture, before any such reviews are out.
P.S. A lot of us have been arguing for years that the Mac mini had too big of a footprint, and could be reduced in size, as its internals had so much unused empty space.
This is a foolish assumption, given *EVERY SINGLE MAC RELEASED* since the advent of Apple Silicon. It especially fails to consider Apple's choices in engineering the Studio.
It's definitely true that the design of the Mini will affect total performance, based on its total cooling capacity. The two interesting questions to be asked about it are:
1) What is that capacity?
2) What's the performance/power curve of the Pro chip, and where on that curve will the mini sit?
With #1 totally unknown at this time (we can make reasonable estimates for #2), we can't assume much. If, despite Apple's track record since the advent of AS, you think they're going to build a really bad product... well, then wait for reviews. Or buy since you can always return.
BTW, the last sentence I quoted shows that you don't properly understanding throttling. Here's something I wrote back in May that will hopefully makes some things clearer:
"It seems that many people think that chips have a natural speed, and that when they get too hot to run at that speed, you have to throttle them. But that's false.
All chips have a characteristic power-performance curve. If you run the chip very slowly, at one end of the curve, you'll generate very little heat. As you ramp up the speed of the chip, it runs hotter and hotter. The curve usually extends (almost?) all the way down to zero (no performance at all) but it does not extend out to infinity - you can't run it infinitely fast even if you can cool it with infinite efficiency, because certain design choices you make will limit the maximum speed, regardless of temperatures and voltages. Also, power and performance don't scale linearly: in the general case, every time you ratchet up performance, it costs more power than the previous same-size performance increase.
Every chip's curve is different, and it defines what the optimal speed range is for that chip. That is, mostly, you want to run as fast as you can given:
- you're not using power inefficiently. You mostly want to stick close-ish to the part of the curve where power and performance *do* scale close to linearly. (Unless you're Intel...)
- you're not exceeding the heat envelope of the device the chip is in.
- you're not using more power than is available (either instantaneously, usually not an issue, or over time, due to battery constraints).
So, coming back to your example: Your M1 Air *does* "throttle". It does so aggressively enough that it never feels warm to you. (In fact, with chosen loads, you can get it to run warm. You can't get it to run really hot though.) But that's not really a property of the chip, it's a property of the choices Apple made in the part of the OS that manages CPU utilization. They certainly could run it hot, if they wanted to.
Changes from generation to generation that you perceive - that the M2 and M3 "run hotter" - are not properties of the chips themselves. They are, just as with the M1, properties of the choices Apple made for them: what kind of device to put them in, and how hot to allow those devices to get. Apple decided to get a little more aggressive with the M2 and the M3 in the MBAs, allowing them to run faster and draw more energy for longer than they did the M1.
To put it another way: The M3 is strictly more efficient than the M2, which is strictly more efficient than the M1. That means that for any level of performance that you care to pick, the M3 will always run cooler than the M2, which in turn will always run cooler than the M1. The reason MBAs with newer chips are running a little hotter is that they're not running the same level of performance- they're running faster. In fact their performance increase outstrips their efficiency increase a bit, but they did in fact get more efficient too.
All of this continues with the M4. So how it behaves in the MBA and the MBP will depend solely on Apple's choices about how hot and how fast they want those devices to run. You can't predict those choices based on the properties of the chip that we can discern in the iPad."
That's directly relevant to your comment about throttling. Will the M4 Pro throttle in the Mini? Almost certainly. Is that a problem, or a sign of bad engineering? Almost certainly not.
I hope you’re right, but I’ve started weight training anyway just in case I have to lift the edge of my Mac Mini every few months…
If I had to guess, then I would say it’s going to handle the fully maxed out specs just fine. No throttling. Indefinite fully sustained workloads. I wouldn’t worry.
Image playground: "Give me a YouTube thumbnail picture of a Mac Mini on fire next to me looking like I sat on a cactus under the caption 'Apple ****ed Up!'"
The thing that intrigues me is not only if the M4 Pro throttles compared to the M4, but also if the unbinned M4 Pro throttles more than the binned version of the same SoC.
The M1 Mac mini was like half empty. (or more) This is more like returning form to match function.
I love that Intel turned the table on the whole throttling debate by calling the brief un-throttled regime "turbo".
"Intel® Turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0" is actually a thing you can find in a datasheet...
Until the mini ships and is people hands, all you have is conjecture at this point. You or I cannot actually know if the new mini chassis will handle the thermal load well or not.
Given that high end audio engineering has been done with far lesser machines over the past 30 years, I find your concerns with how the M2 Pro mini will handle audio dubious to say the least.
Wait for reviews! Always wait for reviews.
Always buy and test your Macs for your use cases. Reviews barely scratch the surface unless it’s for generic use.