Ditto for RAM
My Max has 64gb of 8333 speed
It’s not some low end discount ram from newegg
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Rant about the new Mac Mini.
- Thread starter neomorpheus
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Ditto for RAM
My Max has 64gb of 8333 speed
It’s not some low end discount ram from newegg
Yup. The problem is that they don’t really have a good deal for “prosumers”.
Some are so pro that time is money so paying premium is no big deal. They are also the knights who will defend Apple here.
Consumers are those who are just checking mail and YouTube and can settle for the base model.
Prosumer are doing advanced stuff, but are just doing it for fun. Music and movie production etc.
Its probably a small group (I’m in it myself) and it might be an active decision from Apple not to cater for them. And it does seem unfair when looking at raw hardware prices.
Oh I totally hear you, and mostly agree.
I think a fair, simple compromise honestly, would just be to cut SSD upgrading pricing in half across all products at Apple. It would still fill Apple's coffers, but just be more generally reasonable and open to non Apple folks trying the ecosystem.
It's not quite apple's to apples (see what I did there?) comparing an SSD on Newegg to what apple uses, they do use twin drives in RAID for faster speeds, right? and the custom connection probably has performance benefits keeping the NVME controller on the SoC. So I have no problem with that.
I totally agree with you they are losing out on the opportunity of growing their market share with this pricing. I don't get their thinking at all with that, seems like such poor strategy.
I think 256GB starting storage is fine for base M4, works for my mom etc. but the M4 Pro should always start with 1TB ssd. That would help its value as well.
Student pricing helps these machines a bit, but the SSD pricing still makes it awful, thats why cutting SSD pricing in half would be best, and simple step to real change.
256GB as the base would be fine if Apple allowed for (easily) user-replaceable SSDs. Apple is moving in the right direction with a removable, non-soldered SSD… but it’s still Apple we’re talking about. So it’s of course an unnecessarily-difficult process to upgrade it after purchase. 😂
D**n right! 😊🏳️🌈
The efficiency is top notch. I recently did some power metrics logging while running several common benchmarks, including Cinebench and Geekbench: The M4 Pro maximum power draw (CPU+GPU+NPU/ANE) was below 40W. The M1 Pro was below 30W.
And, as you may be aware, TDP is plenty deceptive and otherwise not a lot of help. For example, for recent Ryzen CPUs, the PPT (i.e., basically, actual power consumption) is ~1.35x the TDP rating. Intel has (to their credit) dumped TDP in the Ark database specs and, now, (somewhat) more respectively/accurately refers to it as “Processor Base Power."
So, the only reasonable competitor is AMD’s Ryzen AI 9 HX 375.
Apple M4 (10-CPU) vs AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 375
Apple M4 (10-CPU) vs AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 375. Benchmark, test, review, comparison and differences between these CPUs in Cinebench 23 and Geekbench 5
Apple M4 Pro (12-CPU 16-GPU) vs AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 375
Apple M4 Pro (12-CPU 16-GPU) vs AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 375. Benchmark, test, review, comparison and differences between these CPUs in Cinebench 23 and Geekbench 5
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Apple doesn’t hide what they are. They are a premium computer company. You don’t buy Apple because you want the cheapest, or even a “good deal”. A premium car company wouldn’t sell you cheap upgrades, and Apple is the IT equivalent.
Apple stocks have out-performed most because they are a money making machine due to this. If you don’t like spending the money, buy their stocks instead of their products.
I do agree the upgrade prices are too high from our standpoint as consumers, but it’s not going to change because of the nature of what Apple is.
Apple stocks have out-performed most because they are a money making machine due to this. If you don’t like spending the money, buy their stocks instead of their products.
I do agree the upgrade prices are too high from our standpoint as consumers, but it’s not going to change because of the nature of what Apple is.
I'm not sure their metrics/research will show them that at all. Its just marketing tactic to push people towards costly upgrades and save them/make them money.
They will save a tiny amount of money speccing 256gb instead of 512 as base. Thats not their sum though. Their sum will tell them that perhaps they save £20 on each mac but they make £180 on 20% of sales because people pay to upgrade it. Thats ignoring the people that ride the slippery slope of apples upgrades and end up spending far more than the extra £200 to upgrade just the storage.
Apples machines are brilliant but they are utter ****s when it comes to encouraging you to upgrade on their base specs.
- Price discussions are really pointless. If you don‘t agree with the prices a company asks, don‘t buy the product.
- It‘s „never enough“ for bargain hunters. We just got 16 GB base RAM, now we absolutely need 512 GB base SSD.
- The base mac mini is basically subsidized and hence a hell of a deal. It‘s a powerful machine with the best consumer OS (by far).
- Speaking of the OS - those yearly upgrades used to cost 149 $ or so. They are free now but the Apple employees building and maintaining macOS still need to be paid (and really well). Think of the „outrageous“ upgrade prices as a way to finance the whole team and they start to make a lot more sense.
- The peace of mind, comparably, of owning a Mac vs. a PC is still priceless.
- It‘s „never enough“ for bargain hunters. We just got 16 GB base RAM, now we absolutely need 512 GB base SSD.
- The base mac mini is basically subsidized and hence a hell of a deal. It‘s a powerful machine with the best consumer OS (by far).
- Speaking of the OS - those yearly upgrades used to cost 149 $ or so. They are free now but the Apple employees building and maintaining macOS still need to be paid (and really well). Think of the „outrageous“ upgrade prices as a way to finance the whole team and they start to make a lot more sense.
- The peace of mind, comparably, of owning a Mac vs. a PC is still priceless.
I agree with 99% of what the OP states. Apple could go for the "sell low, sell lots" model.
Personally, given a choice I will always plump for Mac: but financial constraints do not make that possible: a language school in Eastern Europe (my business) can support 25 Macs.
However, "Linux Desktop looks like it will never happen."
Strikes me as uninformed nonsense.
Both at home and in my business I deploy both Macs and PCs, and as I really cannot stick Windows, I have run Xubuntu Linux on desktops as desktop machines for some 20 years now without a backward look.
Apple/Mac provides an easier use-case to any form of Linux, but at the price of a "one size fits all approach". The Linux Multiverse provides a slightly (and I would emphasis the word 'slightly') more difficult use-case, but provides a myriad of varieties on the basis that we are not all one size.
The other plus that is perhaps overlooked, is that I can buy "any old junk" for as little as €50 and have it up and running a perfectly competent Linux desktop system in about 60 minutes.
MY mother (currently 94 and counting) uses a Laptop running 32-bit Debian with the XFCE desktop manager, and "transitioned" from Windows XP about 16 years ago as the maintenance price and days lost with XP were just getting too much: she had transferred to XP because she could not afford a new Mac. In those cases it took about 3 days to get used to each new system.
Personally, given a choice I will always plump for Mac: but financial constraints do not make that possible: a language school in Eastern Europe (my business) can support 25 Macs.
However, "Linux Desktop looks like it will never happen."
Strikes me as uninformed nonsense.
Both at home and in my business I deploy both Macs and PCs, and as I really cannot stick Windows, I have run Xubuntu Linux on desktops as desktop machines for some 20 years now without a backward look.
Apple/Mac provides an easier use-case to any form of Linux, but at the price of a "one size fits all approach". The Linux Multiverse provides a slightly (and I would emphasis the word 'slightly') more difficult use-case, but provides a myriad of varieties on the basis that we are not all one size.
The other plus that is perhaps overlooked, is that I can buy "any old junk" for as little as €50 and have it up and running a perfectly competent Linux desktop system in about 60 minutes.
MY mother (currently 94 and counting) uses a Laptop running 32-bit Debian with the XFCE desktop manager, and "transitioned" from Windows XP about 16 years ago as the maintenance price and days lost with XP were just getting too much: she had transferred to XP because she could not afford a new Mac. In those cases it took about 3 days to get used to each new system.
If you are in the business of selling your products by creating a notion of luxury, products being priced accordingly, you never ever ever slash your prices. You don`t compete on pricing. At all, ever. Yes. Apple products are expensive, and upgrades are sobering.
But if you can`t get what you want from Apple, move on to the references you are using to illustrate your points. Walk the talk and move on.
The sobbing and moaning is getting embarrassing. Grow up, move on and put a sock in it.
But if you can`t get what you want from Apple, move on to the references you are using to illustrate your points. Walk the talk and move on.
The sobbing and moaning is getting embarrassing. Grow up, move on and put a sock in it.
Looking at the cheapest RAM and SSD offers is a red herring here. Even comparable faster SSD blades and RAM from leading brands are a fraction of Apple prices.
Better comparison: https://www.crucial.com/memory/ddr5/CT64G75C2LP5XG
$330 - *retail* - for 64GB of LPDDR5x in the latest bleeding edge module format (AFAIK only adopted by one Thinkpads model so far)- c.f. Apple’s $200 per 8GB.
Apple’s RAM and SSD upgrade prices are 100% “artificial scarcity” and have nothing to with the actual hardware cost.
Apple sells a complete device that includes free OS, free OS upgrades, R&D, capex, opex and other costs. This is like beating a dead horse. You want to buy components and upgrade, build your own computers. Apple doesn’t sell RAM/Disks, they sell computers and devices with certain configurations.
Why? Because they can. Microsoft would do this too if they could get away with it. The only way this will stop is when people vote with their wallets and stop buying Apple products. Until that happens, you are part of the problem. It clearly isn't a big enough dealbreaker if you keep buying Apple products, right?
I was talking to a friend the other day and we were discussing Range Rovers. They are very expensive, yet unreliable pieces of junk. My friend said, "Why dont they just improve their quality?" I said, "What incentive do they have to invest time and money to improve reliability? Everyone keeps buying their cars, despite the terrible reliability."
Also, try getting large quantities of RAM working at DDR5-8333 on say Ryzen. Apple's memory controller is capable of those speeds guaranteed. build your own... unlikely.
Good luck!
Nobody here is asking the government to force Apple to give us 512GB of SSD. We’re allowed to criticise.
People here have been criticising 256GB (and the huge $200 upgrade charge) for as long as they have been complaining about 8GB. Apple have done the absolute minimum to address that by upping the base spec - they’re still charging the same $200 per 8GB upgrade rate.
The industry has changed since then - Apple now have new income streams such as the App Store, developer subscriptions and iCloud for which Mac OS is their “cash register”. Plus, they’ve saved a shedload of money by dropping physical media.
They’ve probably upped their profit margin on hardware as well: the whole complaint is that the RAM and SSD specs and prices haven’t kept pace with falling $-per-GB in the industry. There’s no reason to believe they’re not making a decent profit on the Mini - I doubt that even the educational discount is “below cost” (otherwise they’d police it more strictly). Yes, Apple Silicon is impressively powerful, but it would never have happened unless it was saving Apple serious coin compared to using Intel.
The odd thing about this entire argument is they really finally do have something for "prosumers" and its this setup.
The arguments posed here would have been more valid any other Mini release cycle but this Mac Mini is insanely powerful, and they finally did away with the 8GB base. If you upgrade to the $999 model with 24gb memory and 512Gb you have a machine that is nearly as powerful as the Pro systems people paid thousands for just a couple years ago and for the $1399 M4 Pro it is way more powerful.
You can find/build cheap PC systems, but I just bought my son a gaming PC for Christmas and spent 2K on it. If I put together a 2K Mac Mini it would be a beast in an awesomely tiny form factor. Name brand PCs with sleek designs aren't cheap and that is who Apple is competing with.
Yeah this is legit, however the market you're talking about is extremely niche (I used to be in it myself).
I don't think apple are specifically trying to alienate that crowd, but they're also unwilling to compromise to cater to it, when it is so small.
In the end, I compromised. I bought a low end Mac mini to experiment with (2007), and it hooked me.
Thing is, looking at raw hardware prices doesn't really paint the full picture. For one, you have no idea what the R&D cost is for the M series parts. Yes on the face of it specific upgrades are expensive but they are perhaps subsidising the low end/base product so that apple can sell that at a cheaper price.
Also: You aren't buying a collection of parts, you're buying a cohesive product with a functioning OS, with functioning drivers, no adware, proper support, etc.
Yes, it's more expensive than buying a collection of parts, but just try using apple support vs. troubleshooting an issue that could be either your CPU, memory or motherboard vendor's fault. There needs to be a profit margin for apple to:
- offer the support they do
- ship an OS no subsidised by data theft, borderline malware behaviour, ads, etc.
- continue development of their products
The base M4 Mac mini is the greatest deal in the history of Apple Computer.
The upgrades are so hilariously overpriced that you might as well buy two Mac minis instead of adding what’s really 20 bucks worth of storage and ram.
The upgrades are so hilariously overpriced that you might as well buy two Mac minis instead of adding what’s really 20 bucks worth of storage and ram.
Eventually upgrades get like that for any product, look up the cost of the very high core count parts from intel and AMD.
The above only works if you can split your workload effectively over two machines - and most of the time, you can't.
LOL. Epic troll here. The OS takes up 30GB. Cache is another 15GB. App cache will likely sit at another 10GB (Safari alone gobbles up 2-3GB). Install some apps, and wipe another 30-50GB. Storage probably another 20-40 GB.
Likely leaves about 100GB to play with. Given that any AAA game will consume around 50-80GB, that ain’t much to work with.
No system should ship under 512GB in 2024+ and I’d say 1TB given how cheap SSDs are these days is a solid starting point. Especially when 99.9% of Apple devices cannot be customized by the customer at a later date and the fact Apple devices tend to last 3-5 years easy.
My hats off to you good sir. Epic.
I was one of the “Apple upgrades were always marked up” people, until I watched this video explaining how much worse it has gotten than it was, and compared to the rest of the industry. It definitely convinced me.
Sure, but most people aren't installing AAA games on a baseline Mac mini. They're using it to check email, log into cloud services and watch netflix/appleTV.
there's a segment of the population (like, a LARGE segment) who just need/want a computer to do banking, basic spreadsheets, etc. if you're a AAA Mac gamer, you're like... 1% of the 10% Mac market share...
Imagine putting Baldur’s Gate 3 on the internal SSD 😂 obviously I put it on the external and am having no issues with that.
The fact that the M4 base Mac mini can actually play AAA games with very respectable frames says different. No longer are Mac users stuck with integrated Iris chipsets that can barely push the desktop.
So I’d say the average person is actually gaming on entry level Macs like the mini and Air.
Next.
Here in this forum : "256GB of storage" rants are the new "8 GB of RAM" rants.To me the Mac mini starts at USD799 since 512GB storage is nearly necessary in today’s standard. (Don’t convince me otherwise, thanks)
(I totally agree with you BTW)