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IngerMan

macrumors 68020
Feb 21, 2011
2,016
905
Michigan
I have a 2018 i7, its now hooked to a 32" BenQ, when its sleeping I have to press the keyboard then press the power on the display to wake it up. Usually its not the first try. I should mess around with my connections and see if I can get it more consistent. After 4 years with the Mini and a few eGPU I just learned to except its not perfection like the old iMac I had but I still like it. It seems just to be that morning start.
 
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tubular

macrumors 65816
Oct 19, 2011
1,341
3,249
M2 Mac Mini, so want!
Placed my order for an M2 Pro mini with 1TB SSD on Friday. Due first week of March.

At that point I’ll have gone through the 24-bit-to-32-bit-OS transition, the 68000-to-PowerPC transition, the System-7-to-System-X transition, the PowerPC-to-Intel transition, and now the Intel-to-Apple-Silicon transition.

With the processor in-house, maybe there won’t be so many transitions anymore.
 
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gusping

macrumors 68020
Mar 12, 2012
2,024
2,309
I have mine set so that only the display sleeps, not the computer. No problems for me awakening from display sleep with either USB-C or HDMI.
For this to work, do you simply select the 'Prevent your Mac from automatically sleeping when the display is off' box and use a shortcut to put your display to sleep instead of the whole Mac?
 

NeonNights

macrumors 6502a
Jul 22, 2022
674
894
For this to work, do you simply select the 'Prevent your Mac from automatically sleeping when the display is off' box and use a shortcut to put your display to sleep instead of the whole Mac?
Yes, that is correct. In the Lock Screen options I set the duration for "display" to turn off, but prevent full sleep in the below settings. I don't use any shortcuts and simply walk away knowing my TV/monitor will turn off at the set idle interval and "wake" when I'm ready to use the system again.

Screenshot 2023-02-13 at 2.59.07 PM.png
 
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gusping

macrumors 68020
Mar 12, 2012
2,024
2,309
Yes, that is correct. In the Lock Screen options I set the duration for "display" to turn off, but prevent full sleep in the below settings. I don't use any shortcuts and simply walk away knowing my TV/monitor will turn off at the set idle interval and "wake" when I'm ready to use the system again.

View attachment 2158160
Fantastic, thank you very much. I regret not trying this on the M2 Pro mini I had with the severe monitor issues, but it's very much a last ditch effort to solve things. I'd rather not have to keep my computer on the whole time in order to avoid such issues.
 

IngerMan

macrumors 68020
Feb 21, 2011
2,016
905
Michigan
The mac mini is definitely do it your self project. I have a Dell 38" 4K I used to have hooked up with a eGPU Vega 56 and the 2018 MM, I figured out after trial and error the best cable setup for wake from sleep. It did take me some time to get the black screen restart fixed.

I was trying to run bootcamp for a short period and it worked great for a short period. But after windows updates and frustration I gave up.


Then I went to a BenQ monitor and a RX5800 eGPU and the cabling had to be totally different to work from the Dell setup. In my opinion every setup that is non apple is going to take its unique path. I am sure there is a lot of commonality but not between the 2 setups I ran in the last 4 years.


If I was starting at this time I would get the Apple Studio display with a Mac Mini. But I am to far invested into 2 good monitors and a decent eGPU.

The just work thing is what I hate about the MM, It's what I miss about the iMac lineup.

As they say once you go Mini, you can never go back ;)
 
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Boil

macrumors 68040
Oct 23, 2018
3,480
3,176
Stargate Command
Placed my order for an M2 Pro mini with 1TB SSD on Friday. Due first week of March.

RAM allotment, and did you "future-proof" with 10GbE...?

At that point I’ll have gone through the 24-bit-to-32-bit-OS transition, the 68000-to-PowerPC transition, the System-7-to-System-X transition, the PowerPC-to-Intel transition, and now the Intel-to-Apple-Silicon transition.

Been on & off with Apple since the Apple ][ days, if given the choice I will choose Apple...!

With the processor in-house, maybe there won’t be so many transitions anymore.

Something, something, BeOS...?!? ;^p
 
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tubular

macrumors 65816
Oct 19, 2011
1,341
3,249
RAM allotment, and did you "future-proof" with 10GbE...?
I bought the base M2 Pro mini but bumped the SSD to 1TB. I couldn't talk myself out of the extra $400 needed to get to 32GB RAM, and the incremental cost for the extra 2 CPU cores and 3 GPU cores was too high. And I didn't upgrade the ethernet, because I don't really need to ship large files in a hurry and I don't see a case coming where I will.
 
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icemantx

macrumors 6502a
Mar 16, 2009
540
626
Currently mine is stuck an 8 hour drive away since yesterday :( well that means probably tomorrow.
Mine is finally in the air and on the way from Hong Kong to Anchorage and eventually Texas. My delivery date has changed from this Friday to next Monday due to the delay in HK 😡
 
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Easttime

macrumors 6502a
Jun 17, 2015
709
510
So tell me about passkeys on the 2018 mini: it cannot host Touch ID, which is what is needed when logging in with a passkey. So will an Apple Watch do the trick instead?
 

EugW

macrumors G5
Jun 18, 2017
14,998
12,963
BTW, even my 2010 27" iMac (Core i7-870) is faster than my 2014 Mac mini (Core i5-4278U), but my 2010 iMac is stuck on High Sierra. A very fast High Sierra, but High Sierra nonetheless. Mind you it was much harder upgrading the SSD in the iMac than it was in the Mac mini, and the drive in the iMac is much slower since it's limited to SATA II. I get <300 MB/s for the 2010 iMac, and around 800 MB/s for the 2014 Mac mini.

The 2014 Mac mini NVMe upgrade took literally just 10 minutes for the hardware install. Easiest upgrade ever.
I finally sold my 2014 Mac mini i5 / 8 GB RAM / 500 GB SSD / 1 TB HD, since as of last year I've been using an M1 Mac mini 16 GB / 1 TB. It seems these old Intel Mac minis still have some value.

That 2014 with NVMe SSD still runs Monterey quite well, even with just 8 GB RAM, and at least for lighter business or educational multitasking. Right now my sweet spot for my business usage with the M1 seems to be 16 GB, but I would usually have no problem with 8 GB too. However, eventually when I upgrade to an M4 Mac mini or whatever, hopefully the Mac mini will start at 16 GB. I'll probably get 24-32 GB though, just because. Or maybe I'll just get the Mac Studio.

However, I'm pretty sure the M3 Mac mini will start at 8 GB / 256 GB yet again. I'm betting spring 2024.
 

alien3dx

macrumors 68020
Feb 12, 2017
2,193
524
I finally sold my 2014 Mac mini i5 / 8 GB RAM / 500 GB SSD / 1 TB HD, since as of last year I've been using an M1 Mac mini 16 GB / 1 TB. It seems these old Intel Mac minis still have some value.

That 2014 with NVMe SSD still runs Monterey quite well, even with just 8 GB RAM, and at least for lighter business or educational multitasking. Right now my sweet spot for my business usage with the M1 seems to be 16 GB, but I would usually have no problem with 8 GB too. However, eventually when I upgrade to an M4 Mac mini or whatever, hopefully the Mac mini will start at 16 GB. I'll probably get 24-32 GB though, just because. Or maybe I'll just get the Mac Studio.

However, I'm pretty sure the M3 Mac mini will start at 8 GB / 256 GB yet again. I'm betting spring 2024.
it should allready default ram 16gb . it wanted custom too long to wait .
 
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theluggage

macrumors G3
Jul 29, 2011
8,032
8,476
However, I'm pretty sure the M3 Mac mini will start at 8 GB / 256 GB yet again. I'm betting spring 2024.
At some stage, Apple will be the only one using these ridiculously small RAM and flash chips and it will be cheaper for them to use larger chips. Oh, wait, that's already happened with flash so they're only populating one channel on the 256GB models and losing half the bandwidth rather than use two 128GB chips....
 

EugW

macrumors G5
Jun 18, 2017
14,998
12,963
At some stage, Apple will be the only one using these ridiculously small RAM and flash chips and it will be cheaper for them to use larger chips. Oh, wait, that's already happened with flash so they're only populating one channel on the 256GB models and losing half the bandwidth rather than use two 128GB chips....
I'd say that 90% of the market doesn't care about single or dual chips, or at least doesn't know enough to care. And 8 GB / 256 GB is still viable at the low end even in 2023. My daughter, son, and wife all use 250-256 GB machines.

I'm not saying that 8 GB / 256 GB is necessarily justifiable from the consumers' point of view at the usual price points Apple charges. I'm just saying that ignoring pricing for the moment, those SKUs actually make some sense in terms of performance and usefulness. And if we do consider pricing, the Mac minis are Apple's cheapest machines.

That's why I'm predicting the M3 Mac mini will again be 8 GB / 256 GB. In the coming year, this config can still make sense for students and teachers and people managing their recipe collections and the like. In three years with M4 though, all bets are off.

P.S. Up until a few years ago, I used to say that even 128 GB was enough storage. However, I've noticed of late that macOS is becoming more bloated so that it has a hard time managing with 128 GB on some setups, even when there isn't much user data stored. 256 GB doesn't solve the underlying problem, but gives enough breathing room so that Apple's mismanagement of the drive space can be masked.

Furthermore, what some people may not realize is that 256 GB base actually represents an increase. Before M2, you could buy some of the latest Macs with 128 GB in the education sector. I don't know if you can with the latest M2 models, but I haven't seen them. I believe even in education 256 GB is the minimum now with M2.

 
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EugW

macrumors G5
Jun 18, 2017
14,998
12,963
This is my 16 GB M1 Mac mini with moderate multitasking of business apps and general mainstream apps. What you'll see is 12 GB used, including some compressed memory, but no swap. On my 8 GB 2014 dual-core i5, what I'd get was all 8 GB used, with several GB compressed memory, and perhaps a couple of GB of swap. If the multitasking were low however, that swap would often be below 1 GB. For users who do only light multitasking like this, these 8 GB machines work fine.

Screenshot 2023-06-08 at 10.06.15 AM.png


With that 2014 Mac mini's NVMe SSD, I usually wouldn't notice swap slowdowns when the swap was less than 1 GB. However, when the swap got larger, I'd sometimes notice swap slowdowns.
 

Cape Dave

macrumors 68020
Nov 16, 2012
2,394
1,704
Northeast
I'd say that 90% of the market doesn't care about single or dual chips, or at least doesn't know enough to care. And 8 GB / 256 GB is still viable at the low end even in 2023. My daughter, son, and wife all use 250-256 GB machines.

I'm not saying that 8 GB / 256 GB is necessarily justifiable from the consumers' point of view at the usual price points Apple charges. I'm just saying that ignoring pricing for the moment, those SKUs actually make some sense in terms of performance and usefulness. And if we do consider pricing, the Mac minis are Apple's cheapest machines.

That's why I'm predicting the M3 Mac mini will again be 8 GB / 256 GB. In the coming year, this config can still make sense for students and teachers and people managing their recipe collections and the like. In three years with M4 though, all bets are off.

P.S. Up until a few years ago, I used to say that even 128 GB was enough storage. However, I've noticed of late that macOS is becoming more bloated so that it has a hard time managing with 128 GB on some setups, even when there isn't much user data stored. 256 GB doesn't solve the underlying problem, but gives enough breathing room so that Apple's mismanagement of the drive space can be masked.

Furthermore, what some people may not realize is that 256 GB base actually represents an increase. Before M2, you could buy some of the latest Macs with 128 GB in the education sector. I don't know if you can with the latest M2 models, but I haven't seen them. I believe even in education 256 GB is the minimum now with M2.

They will care when they get an OS update and that piddly assed amount of Ram won't cut it :)
 

EugW

macrumors G5
Jun 18, 2017
14,998
12,963
They will care when they get an OS update and that piddly assed amount of Ram won't cut it :)
Agreed, but FWIW, Ventura runs perfectly fine on 8 GB RAM for light usage (see above), and I'd guess Sonoma does too. But like I said, all bets are off three years from now.

And there also seems to be a good chunk of the population who never bother upgrading their OS after a certain point (aside from point updates and security updates).
 
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Cape Dave

macrumors 68020
Nov 16, 2012
2,394
1,704
Northeast
Agreed, but FWIW, Ventura runs perfectly fine on 8 GB RAM for light usage (see above), and I'd guess Sonoma does too. But like I said, all bets are off three years from now.

And there also seems to be a good chunk of the population who never bother upgrading their OS after a certain point (aside from point updates and security updates).
True that. I wonder what the price difference actually IS at the wholesale level that Apple buys. What, maybe $3.50? That would be really fun to know :)
 
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