Bro as a PC enthusiast who works for Apple you have no idea how happy I was when we saw this was happening. I can FINALLY stop feeling embarrassed for every person who buys a base level Mac, now that they're all 16 gigs of ram
Did you know you can buy two Mac Minni M4's with 16GB RAM and 256GB SSD for less than the price of a single M4 Mac Mini with 32GB RAM and 512GB SSD. Apple really is living on another planet (posted from my MBP M1 Max)
Apple are experts at selling the "same product" to different people at different prices. That's what it is. Home users don't need more than a base model. If you need more you are either: * Rich enough that you want more just because you can or * A professional - your company pays for your computer. Computer prices are irrelevant for a company, they will pay you more in salary often in just a month. Yes, it's stupid. but it's how the world works. Consider this: - Apple wants everyone at home to have a Mac. The more people have a mac the higher chance that companies adopt mac - Apple knows companies aren't price sensitive on computers. This is where they make their money. - People often spend decades using the same PC platform and it takes a lot to make them switch over. Locking consumers in with the apple ecosystem is a great way of ensuring a large part of the population is competent at macos and macos only
@@Mixa_Lvbut the base spec is honestly really good, as long as you have a NAS or a cloud service for your photos (Let's be honest, no one can game on a Mac, so storage for that isn't important)
@@Mixa_Lv yeah those prices hurt. I think If I were to buy one I would go with 24GB of ram and then just buy external SSD's if needed. The speed over thunderbolt should be perfectly fine.
The power ain't wild on its own though, it's good, just not wild, i wish everyone would stop this bs. The power is wild for its wattage and heat. So it's the wild EFFICIENCY that sets it apart. qualcomm is getting close now but not there yet, but yes for a good while it was the only thing that had that kind of efficiency.
The M1 iMac “Facebook machine” you speak of is so absurdly powerful I run all my professional software on it. No, it can’t handle 4K HDR Premier Pro or advanced 3D but it handles Photoshop, Toonboom Harmony and Storyboard Pro (industry standard hand-drawn animation software) like a dream. Just sayin’ the top-of-the-line Intel MacBook Pro I had prior could barely run Photoshop. The upgrade is huge and so is the value for digital artists
Top of the line Intel circa 2018 can handle PhotoShop what are you on man? That's like saying Intel can't run Windows 😂. Try again. You don't need to make up sht in order to prop up the ARM machines, they're good everyone knows this.
@@ShaferHartdepends on what you’re doing in photoshop. Sure, my old MBP could *run* Photoshop, as in it could manipulate photos, but it couldn’t keep up with the demands of digital painting/drawing. This, ofc, wasn’t just intels fault. Apple’s heat control in those old chassis was awful, and the company tended to shy away from seriously powerful GPU’s, which harmed performance in what I was trying to do. Anyway, suffice to say I promise im not being dramatic: I spent LESS money on my M1 iMac than I did on my expensive Intel MBP from two years prior, and it absolutely destroys the old machines performance 🤷♂️
This is exactly what I thought. I know these guys are biased because they edit videos all day long and need the extra processing power, but an M1 iMac has far more than enough processing power for the average person that simply calling it a Facebook machine is just absurd.
@@Frank72364 What??? Non expandable storage is a massive problem. It is pathetic that you are unable to upgrade or add storage. The power button is whatever.
@@LinhLe-rs7fr Ye no. Base mac? Impossible to beat price wise. But if you upgrade the ram to 24 gigs AND the ssd to 512 or heavens forbid, 1 tb you can definitely get a better one from custom parts. 400 dollars is a big difference for such a small upgrade.
Thing is for how freaking tiny it is, and how just "plug and play" and power efficient. Plus extremely high speed connectors... It could be worth spending a little more on it than you'd on a PC. I've even seen a guy carry an (old) Mac Mini in his backpack with a keyboard and mouse - plugging it in at uni into the monitors there - effectively having a cheap ghetto MacBook
My friend’s Mac kernel panicked every day for a week. He returned it, got a new one, same thing, returned got a new one, same thing, and then eventually, just gave up. He got a PC with a 7800XTX and a 7950X3D and he loves it
@@ThatRandomDude914let me guess, your friend's Mac is a 2010 2015 era with samsung SSD and installed macOS on it, just try an M series Mac and see it for yourself if it ever kernel panics
I believe the base Mac mini is simply the best entry level computer in the world, the single core scores are off the charts, nothing on the market even comes close to it. And the fact it's so small and light you can literally just tape it to the back of a TV is a huge plus in my book. I ordered one as a new HTPC for my living room, I thought about getting a bit more storage and RAM as future proofing but when I saw the prices I said NOPE, 16GB is enough for an HTPC and I got myself an external 2TB SSD instead.
$200 to upgrade to 512gb or buy a usb4 enclosure and a 1tb pcie3/4 ssd also around $200. Since it's a desktop machine it's really not too bad to go that route.
@@azenyr Yes I get that but if you’re a creative in music, photography or video production. Your choices are Windows or Mac. Linux doesn’t support industry apps everyone uses let alone exclusives like FCPx or Logic Pro.
Basically either get the base model, or just don't bother. IMO the drawback of 256 gigs of stoarge can just be fixed with a couple SSDs taped to the sides.
I got M1 mini base model and no way in hell I would've paid those storage upgrade prices. I bought some some USB-C dock that had SATA drive port and slapped 1tb drive there.
yeah that's what I would do (probably not taped though XD). For my use case I would want 24Gi of memory and $200 more is definitely a bummer ;-; I have an 16in M1 Pro MacBook Pro with 16Gi of RAM and 512Gi of storage and am hitting yellow memory pressure and using about 1-2 Gi of swap.
Doing so, would ruin some of the selling points. Esthetics, size and weight. Would you really pay extra for a really portable laptop, that stopped being easily portable, and looked like a DIY-hackjob?
The fact that a mac is going to be a good value is good for competition. Im daily driving an iPad m4 though, because the display, for less than 1k, is unmatched but its great to see more competition for sub 1k computers.
Btw, you can use an external Thunderbolt SSD (or M.2 NVME + Thunderbolt enclosure) and move all the data, photos, and apps on it without any issues and with great speeds too. I'm using an M1 mini as a server with everything stored externally.
I use a TB4 external SSD to store photos, it makes it really easy to move between my mac studio at home and laptop during travel. Backups onto a NAS, I don’t trust flash storage :)
11:57 yeah, this is where any hope of a desktop build being cheaper goes out the window. My PCs cost went up $170 when I started speccing for thunderbolt...
@@kiddy1992 Sure, but what do these cards require? A compatible motherboard with a thunderbolt header. If you check the manual you'll find that only a small set of motherboards are supported (depending on the manufacturer). So your motherboard selection goes from "literally all of them" (cheapo) to "only those with a recent chipset and a thunderbolt header" (not cheapo)
Yeah, i was actually on their website looking to buy one. Then i got slapped with $400 price tag on a moderate amount of storage. And all my intent to buy blew away.
@@z0bi_ There are thunderbolt 5 ports and mac finally allows installing apps to external drives so you're able to run an external nvme at gen 4 speeds without the apple premium
@@z0bi_ The real play is to just upgrade the RAM (if anything), and buy an external SSD for your actual storage needs. Especially now that MacOS (finally) allows you to change your default app install location to external drives.
After 30 years of Windows/PC I am now on a Macbook Pro M4 Pro and I am amazed by this machine. Build quality, responsiveness of the OS and the overall performance. What amazes me most is: Open the lid, work, zero boot/wake up time. I wont go back
Why would that even be a thing, either? You need apples to apples (no pun intended) performance-matched core count, not just straight up basic core count...
@@cipatonalli6 performance cores 😂😂 the base model only has 4 so I'm getting the M4 Pro 14 core model so I can have 10 performance cores with logic pro 11 😊
Upgrade prices are ridiculous!! Though, since it has Thunderbolt ports, I think you could buy the base model and an external drive to compensate the lack of storage. That’d be a better choice imo, these chips are amazing!
nah, then the size factor becomes an issue. The form factor is lost if you need externals. Just takes away from portability. The UM890Pro is exact same size and I can have 4TB and 96GB ram and i don't need any external drives. For people that deal with large files, its crucial. I need AT LEAST 2TB. Apples upgrades are ridiculous.
@@ColinPatrickWeissIf you need an external monitor, keyboard, mouse, cables, and power cord, then packing a little m4 enclosure is hardly a deal breaker.
As someone with a home NAS, and at work as well - we have storage servers. The only thing(s) I have on my machines are programs I use, and files I work on / work with. 256 has been enough space for my machines for the better part of the last 10 years :D On my work laptop it is a bit running out as I should do a clean up on the version managed source code (I only have about 60gb of free space on that machine :D ) I wonder about others but for me, with proper space budgeting - 256 gb is perfectly livable. Also you can add a 1tb external SSD or a HDD for that matter and just.... Use it as a bank storage. For what? 100 bucks maybe?
I oversee all of the live production and creative teams at my church, and we have fully moved over to Mac Mini’s simply because of the price to performance ratio. PC cannot compete with that at a large scale.
The base model mac mini with a 10G port is a great value for developers that need to support Apple products. Outside of that, the value proposition relies on ecosystem buy-in (which makes this an AMAZING deal for those who already use Apple products for their other devices).
Legit point. I have 7 open currently and there's two I could easily just close already. If someone claims they need to have like 20 open pages all the time.... 😆
Thinking of getting one, a base one. I have a Synology server, so space is never an issue. As someone who got for Christmas a TI99-4A in 1981, and also has been using PCs and Macs for way over 40yrs, I know that these Mac minis are little monsters.
OK , I hate Apple's pricing for RAM and Disk too ... BUT... This is not Apple building anything for US ... the enthusiasts and professionals watching and reading comments here. That $1800 USD machine you are speccing out is not going to fit in the chassis of the Mac Mini, and your $600 build didn't either ... in fact many of the individual components are larger than the entire Mac Mini chassis. And the power budget will be insane compared to the Mac, which will run full power around 30w and idle close to 0.5w. I suspect idle on your desktop builds will be closer to the full power use of a Mac Mini. Those features have value too. Depending on the user, those features may significantly outweigh the added power of a 4070 and 64GB RAM. The M4 Mac Mini as a standalone computer will exceed the needs of the vast majority of all people. I am making it my stock recommendation for all non-technical/non-gaming users. My upgrade will be to 10Gb networking, and I recommend a NAS to them rather than any onboard storage. (If they want a laptop ... I'll be recommending the M4 Macbook Air as soon as it comes out - though the M3 is a good option if they can't wait.) Of course ... that isn't a machine that works for ME, and I doubt it will work for anyone reading this channel's comments... but it is a hell of a machine.
If we're going to be comparing Apples to (PC) oranges, let's talk component speed. The base model M4 has Geekbench performance roughly on par with an Intel Core i7 14600K (3,828/14,991 vs 3,146/16,453) and the M4 Max handily outperforms a Ryzen9 9950x (4,060/26,675 vs 3,434/21,399). When it comes to RAM, Apple's integrated memory in the base model M4 maxes out at 120 GB/s and the M4 Max can hit 546(!) GB/s. The burst transfer rate for DDR5 maxes out at 64 GB/s. That's half the speed of Apple's SLOWEST M4! I can't find SSD throughput ratings for the the M series, but I'm going to bet it similarly beats SATA and NVMe. I'm not going to try and say Apple doesn't gouge for it's RAM and SSDs because they absolutely do, but let's not try and claim commodity memory and storage can directly compare, either. How much would you have to spend to get comparable raw performance out of a home-built? (and how much more power would it draw than the mini?)
As a Mac user of 30 years and a PC user for the past 7, I can say the PC will need a lot more IT expertise to keep it running and troubleshooting. About 4 times per year the PC will just stop working overnight!! The last time my PC died it took an IT specialist, 2 days, and $500 to fix. No matter what I did, it would not get past the boot screen. I’m a video producer not an IT specialist.
@@Realist-m9cwhat the hell do you do to your pc if it goes down 4 times a year?! I think theres primarily a user induced issue rather than a general one...
@@Kaospojken94 I don’t know, it’s obviously a hardware/ software issue but the machine runs for 8 - 10 hours every day. So it’s probably doing better than most PCs. I use Davinci, Lightroom, Affinity, Lightwave etc. Like most PCs it has random problems that can take several hours to fix. It’s not fun. Sure my Macs have had crashes but a restart usually fixes it.
Well MacBook ssds are definitely reliable. My launch day M1 Air still runs perfectly fine today, and my home server 2018 Mac mini SSD runs perfectly fine too
Yeah Apple’s upgrade pricing makes it easier to match a PC. $200 to add 8gb ram for a total of 24gb. $200 to go from 256gb to 512gb storage. So at $1000 you can get a mini PC, Ryzen 12C/24T, 32gb ram and 1tb SSD. That said, OEMs should be pressuring Microsoft to get their act together. I am so tired of MS’s bs, and I’ve gotten too old to muck around with Linux all day. So yeah I did order a Mac Mini.
The storage/RAM costs are high. It’s fast, but doesn’t justify costs for the average consumer. IMO, that money is better spent on 10GbE and decentralized storage at that cost.
You can find it online.. here vs alternatives around a grand. ua-cam.com/video/8Uuu046EE28/v-deo.html To sum up, Mac Mini 4 is a very potent little fellow while consuming way less wattage and way more silent. The base Mac Mini4 is very attractive priced, if you need such a device and can make do with the 16GB and 256GB HDD, if you cant.. it gets outwatered very fast, while climbing Apples priceladder. Single core performance R24 = 180 Geek4 4000 Aint to shabby.
Reztepc for Rossmann, but this isn't even remotely true. Apple is one of the MANY companies who treat their good customers like shit and focus their attention to potential new buyers. Think phone providers, just to mention one category. New contract? Here's a free iPhone99, one year of free everything and a second subscription for another family member for $1.50. Subscribed since 10 years? Here's a contract adjustment: you didn't ask for it, it adds features you won't ever need, and it costs 20% more.
In the Philippines, the base-spec M4 Mac Mini is Php37k. That's one or two paychecks for me, even if I include a decent 120hz IPS monitor, USB dock, 1TB NVMe SSD and cheap external enclosure, and mouse + keyboard. And for something that isn't gonna leave the house anyway, that is a screamer deal. Even paying Apple's BS pricing to upgrade the RAM to 24GB still puts me well in the black. I've had an A1932 Air for six years. This is the perfect time to upgrade. And for Php70k to 95k on the 16GB 13in M3s, I'd be hard-pressed to find a Windows laptop that can get close in performance and battery life but with more ports, upgradeable RAM + SSD and half-a-day battery life in a slim form factor. If it wasn't for the fact that my workplace has Windows-only programs and that I play games, the M3 Air 16GB would be an instant buy.
Can't Framework laptops get you what you want on the laptop-side? Framework promises and delivers upgradability and repairability. There are already three motherboards for their 13-inch model. They can have ANY RAM up to 64 GB.
Is apple just cheaper in other countrys than here in germany. I just baught a high quality Thinkpad X13 G4 with a ryzen 7 7840u 32gb ram and 512gb storage for slightly less than the base m1 macbook air. Im using it under linux and get around 10h battery life while doing the programming for my cs classes or game dev in godot. For the same price of the base m3 macbook air 15 if you only look only at price to performance you can get a 4070 laptop with an ryzen 7 or even ryzen 9hx processor. This wont give you good battery life but will be much faster then the macbook air. A 4070 can even keep up with the m3 max gpu depending on the workload.
Well that's exactly the problem: I have literally like 2-3 apps I could run on Mac, rest is Windows-only. Not to mention Windows tablets are still a thing fortunately, at the same time ipadOS is kinda better than iOS, but still isn't full MacOS. Basically almost all Mac users I know use it for sound production.
@@RusticRonnie I'm not saying it's not. This is a better choice than buying a large internal SSD. Just buy an external SSD. You don't need as much ram as on PC because of the Mac's unified memory.
The prices are absolutely grotesque as you add RAM . . . but it is worth pointing out that isn't a totally "apples to apples" comparison. That is shared VRAM and it does help out on the GPU side of things, too. If you buy a GPU with a fixed amount of RAM, it's topped out.
Why are we comparing a computer where the manufacturer buys the components in bulk and at wholesale cost vs. PC Part Picker where all components are sold at retail cost i.e. each component is sold at a significant markup for profit? Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to look for either a pre-built computer or find wholesale prices of these components?
The magic mouse charging is such a non issue. 2 minutes of charge gets you 8h. 1 minute gets you 4. 30 seconds gets to 2. You seriously want to say that you're constantly so busy you can't afford 30 seconds to charge your mouse? You charge everything else why not that.
your flaw in comparing SSD upgrade pricing is comparing what you can get on parts open market. Dell and HP and Lenovo all charge an arm and a leg for SSD, and ram for that matter, upgrades too.
Most of the time folks who need more can just open the Dell and add more though. Not possible on a Macintosh. But at least now Apple is building in enough for most folks.
@@Demopans5990only if you live in the past. Sadly most windows computers have soldered RAM these days, and it's becoming more the same for storage too.
I went from a 16gb ~2019 intel mac pro to a 16gb m1 mac pro and I was impressed just how much better the machine handled ram usage. The swapping performance seems to be much better on the new platform. It still doesn't make sense how much they charge for larger amounts of ram, but capacity is not the only thing that matters.
but it's unified memory, which means you can do more with less. apps that take advantage of this don't have to constantly move data from cpu to gpu mem. so it's just not comparable
just invert the mac mini, you get the power button on top and you improve the thermals because hot air rises and convection can help the fans exhaust the hot eair.
Can confirm. I bought an m3 macbook pro and it's killer. Plus the unix background makes it easy with some linux xp. Im so fed up with Microsoft - windows recall was the last straw. Now i only use my big tower for super heavy computation, or stuff like VR, games with friends, etc. I never thought I'd be saying this, ive used windows for ages, but again the recall feature was the last straw. Let the free market do its thing! Also... Where has windows been in the laptop space? They have no real flagship, for _years_
Linus swatting away Luke building a NUC is insane. That is the actual, REAL competitor to the 599USD mac mini. You can get really decent (oler/used) NUC, RAM, SSD for around 600USD.
And it's faster ram too. M4's ram bandwidth is at 120gb/s meanwhile (assuming wikipedia is correct from a quick google search) an 8000mt/s ddr5 stick will get you about 64gb/s. Each tier you go up it doubles in bandwidth (so the pro will be double of base, max is double of pro, etc)
Which would be the same on a PC with integrated graphics which is what you would need to even barely reach the price of the base Mac Mini. It's not like you're getting a dedicated GPU *and* the rest of the PC for under $600 brand new.
V. Happy with the Thunderbolt 5 addition. Not because it's useful on an apple silicon device (aside from displays), but because other brands may 'compete' by also including it.
I have hat two screens for years my 2011 mac ran two screens and it wasn’t the first mac to do so by any stretch of imagination. My M1 mac is currently driving two displays.
@@luigichierico2321 You and I both know that the astronomical performance results they're claiming are going to require a chunky desktop or game console type heatsink to have a prayer of maintaining that instead of thermal throttling in minutes.
The storage is because they need the photos app to sell iCloud subscriptions. The kicker is the iCloud subscription is itself a good deal for how well it works
Because he too is willing to turn a blind eye to the human rights abuses in China and seems not to care that Apple products are in part made with slave labour.
@@RoastBeefSandwich Absolutely. Apple really missed the mark for a while, especially for pros, with the thermal issues on Intel chips, keyboard problems, and limited ports. But the Apple Silicon chips have been a game changer, allowing for powerful, portable machines with impressive performance and battery life. For the vast majority of people, a base Mac mini or a base MacBook Air is a great deal if you are okay with the lower storage.
In case anyone is wondering, the hardware is more than capable for games. It's always been a software issue, and that's more complicated now that the CPU architecture in Macs is no longer x86. You can however use Crossover for certain games. I once tried BeamNG Drive (a VERY demanding game) on a base M2 Mac mini and discovered that it was very playable even at 1440p. Mind you, the Mac had to emulate both x86 and Windows, meaning there was probably a 20% performance hit on top of it all. You could imagine how impressed I was, especially considering the Mac was doing this all in total silence. That's right: it has one fan and its RPM never climbs beyond resting RPM, so the computer was inaudible even under load. It was glorious.
I'm definintely not trying to defend those outrageous price jumps on the Mac, but you definitely don't need anywhere near as much RAM on Apple products because everything is all designed to work together. It's how iPhones got away with 6GB for so long, even on Pro models, and were outperforming phones with much higher RAM counts from any number of manufacturers. I have the absolute base model M2 Macbook Air (8GB / 256GB), and I use it for video editing, Photoshop, some Xcode here and there, obvious things like browsing and document etc, and I've never come close to either filling the storage (I also use a NAS) or even maxing out the memory.
@@lbgstzockt8493 well it almost doubles performance, and every modern x86 cpu (exept the latest gen intel ones) uses it. I"m sure it has some disadvantages, but multi-core performance improves greatly. Just look at benchmarks.
@@Mecrommulticore improves, but only if you have software that can make use of that many threads (… not adobe *cough*) and it worsens single core performance.
@@Noine14159145 yes, but my point is that 10 cores without hyperthreading/smt can not be set equal to 10 cores with hyper threading. You can not say "oh, this one has 10 cores tho, you need at least 10 cores to be equal, 6c/12t is less". He wasn't saying you need faster cores, but that you need more, which is just not fair.
@@Mecrom The main drawbacks I am aware of are that it makes software and hardware more difficult to design and optimize and that it takes away area on the die which could be used for more cache, more cores or larger core internals.
I've loved my mac minis over the years. Just a nice form factor for the person who doesn't want any fuss. I switched to Mac because I just got tired of fixing my home computer after fixing computers at work all day. There are some drawbacks to Apple, but nothing that's deal breaking.
The match I found is the Neptune HX99G, with the closest spec that has both RAM and SSD packed coming in at US$730. That or the EM680 for US$620 but both are sale prices on Minisforum's website. I reckon they're pretty good for games and more than a capable as a set-it-forget-it home PC, but I'd be pleasantly surprised if those Minisforum boxes can get within 90% of the base M4 Mac mini.
This is extremely dependent on the workload imo. I've deployed a pretty good handful of mini pc's from the big names like minisforum and beelink. While I do love them, if you're going to be doing any considerable amount of work or gaming then I strongly recommend against them. I think currently they are best used as a general do-all home/work pc for casual users and older people. It's really awesome be able to take $400 and upgrade your older parents to a modern system with good price to performance.
One can easily pick up a Minisforum UM890 Pro for $479USD as a barebone. That's probably a machine someone looking for a PC that sits on the desk below a monitor would buy anyway.:)
@@dorian6021 I know. but every option in shop at minisforum included more that 16GB RAM and 512Gb Storage. So I think it would be possible to get exactly that with the remaining budget up to $599USD. :) I wanted to stay within the initial budget Linus stated for the challenge
Software Support is so so, too. I would miss tons of tools and free software that i even get on Linux. And even gaming has become much better on Linux thanks to Steam OS.
The base is hard to argue against, but if you need more of anything it's difficult to justify the price. A few months ago I put together a NUC 14 Pro Core Ultra 5 (125H), with a 512GB M.2 and 32GB RAM, with Windows it was 1/3rd less than a similarly equipped M4 Mini. Granted 32GB of RAM is probably overkill but that wasn't the expensive part.
More Chrome than anything else. It's memory usage algorithms are garbage even comparing to other mainstream Chromium-based browsers like Brave for example (I was running this one with 700+ tabs in 8 windows on a 4 GB RAM device - and it never crashed).
Remember upgradable ram and storage on macs? Long time ago! Those mini PCs seem to look pretty neet and it seems like the new mac mini is even based on the Beelink ser8 and ser9 design!
EU should force Apple to bring back user upgradable SSD and Memory. I most likely am going to buy Mac mini but those upgrades are insane. It makes no sense. You can literally buy second Mac mini with the price of 16GB memory and 256GB SSD from Apple.
@@blargghkip I don't see how a chipset with baked in RAM can't support an interface for more RAM, even if it's a bit slower. Like, just prioritize the faster internal RAM when filling it up.
As a Macbook Air M2 user I can tell you that 16G memory is MINIMUM if you don't like your SSD to be used as swap space. Even at 16G, you will most probably run into SSD swapping after a couple of days light usage of web browsing, messaging and word processing. I have to reboot to clear the memory usage. I don't see such issue on old intel mac. Not sure what had happened to apple silicon's macos memory management nowadays. It seems that the entry level mac's low price is more of a "lure" to let you pay much more money in future mac purchase for more memory and storage.
it it a Facebook browsing machine at 8+256, it's like a go kart you can drive really really fast but in can only carry a normal weight average height 5'10 human. you can also say it's like putting a v12 engine on a unicycle. you can theoretically go 400+kph but either your wheel will come off of you will smack your head backwards. incase you do manage to reach that speed you can't brake or else you will become a human flatbread. so buying any apple silicon base model and trying to use it for anything more than a ChromeOS alternative is far fetching.
@@ambhaiji Your analogy doesn't make any sense at all. It's ok for one or two apps simultaneously. But it can obviously run cores at full for days on, so your analogy...It's garbage.
@@ambhaiji I love dunking on Apple too, but that is just false. The base M1 with 8/256 beats pretty much every price comparable system in every metric.
@@lbgstzockt8493 except it doesn't I could build for less than $600 a pc with 6 cores 64gb ram + 8gb dedicated vram of a RTX 3050 and a 1TB ssd, I could run a media and download server ,pihole, wireguard vpn, home finance manager plus more in it while playing games, while also having 100 web tabs are open in the back no sweat. your base mac will shit itself before doing half that because it will go into your ssd for help for RAM space without any control on your part whether you want that or not an become the equivalent of a Pentium 4 from 2003 for the rest of these apps that are trying to work from your storage drive cosplaying as RAM. base model Macs are the equivalent of trying to pull a box by sticking a chewing gum to the side and pulling using the gum, where a trolley and a rope will cost you $1200-6000+. EDIT: I can 1,000,000% guarantee you that a Intel Mac Pro that can have 1.5TB of RAM can do much much much more than an Apple Silicon Mac Pro that only has a max of 192GB, they made a Tower sized mac with exactly the same internals as the maxed out Mac Studio and charges +$3000/3500 for that. They are making fun of their customers in public for the world to see and then you come in trying to defend any part of them is absolutely hilarious for me.
Not necessarily, the base model may be worth it if you don’t upgrade. Upgrade pricing for storage, etc., is considered unreasonably expensive and outrageously overpriced by nearly everyone that reviews it and the general public. Apple’s business model is to use predatory pricing and price gouging to ensure they keep their $3trillion valuation, that’s how they got there and how they intend to stay there now and going forward. It’s ok to make a profit but Apple wants customers to practically “mortgage their house”, just to upgrade
Who's the target audience for the base model though? My grandma is perfectly happy with her 300€ sff. People who have their own nas don't buy into the apple ecosystem. Businesses buy laptops. Everyone else needs more memory/storage. So that leaves people who are already fully trapped in icloud i guess?
I administer a lot of Linux servers so I just ssh into everything, 8gbs of ram is honestly fine for that, my servers all have a ton of ram. Windows can ssh into stuff these days but the battery life on windows laptops is terrible…. So $800 m1 air is amazing for my use case
Hobbyist creators, now that the ram isn’t a total joke, as a musician, the base model is both usable in stuff like Ableton…. but actually AFFORDABLE too
What in the world do you mean by “people who have their own nas don’t buy into the apple ecosystem.”? Also, when what I would consider to be a “normal” user needs more storage, they are more often than not going to buy an external HDD/SSD as those are 1) Cheap 2) Available at literally any big box store, and 3) Easy to understand. Ideal? No, but the base model is still more than good enough for most people. I do think the $200-300 range for SFF Windows PCs is a good value for people too, but I’ve encountered QC issues (failed ports, failed SSD, etc.) in that realm where a Mac is just not going to have those kinds of problems.
"People who have their own nas don't buy into the apple ecosystem" - I'm an industry professional, do have a NAS and a Windows gaming PC, but literally all my other compute is Apple: work laptop, personal laptop, iPhone.
Why wold you pick big desktop components against mac mini? I got ryzen 8845hs mini pc, 64GB ddr5 5600, 2TB patrot 4600 lite ssd for about 700 usd worth of local currency with 27 percent local tax included. Similar minipc buth with ryzen 6850h and 4800 ddr5 modules for about 600 usd worth of taxed local money. (gmktec m7 and k8 plus, 2 usb4 40, oculink, 2 ram slot, 2 m.2)
"about 600 usd worth of taxed local money" "I was able to get better components for the same money as long as you ignore exchange rates, and therefore ignore the prices!" bruh
@@JamesR624 Yeah, my prices are including our extreme taxes here, mac mini price does not have tax in it. I bought one barbone M7 for 240 actual usd + taxes, an other one for 200 euros + taxes, and K8 plus was 380 euros barbone, but ssd and ram sourced locally. If you think north america is expensive, come to europe.
there's one problem, the CPU, that's 2,3k vs 3,6k of M4 in geekbench single core and 11k vs 22k in multi core. 64GB of ram is useless if the CPU is twice too slow for a given task. I use it for music production, so it's either enough or not enough
More than half of that price was the storage upgrade alone. You should consider adding external storage on the 3 40Gbit ports, which is then maybe 80 bucks more for an external case. Also pretty sure those mainboards didn't have even one 40GBit port, those are more like 300+.
Bro as a PC enthusiast who works for Apple you have no idea how happy I was when we saw this was happening. I can FINALLY stop feeling embarrassed for every person who buys a base level Mac, now that they're all 16 gigs of ram
Next up is the 256gb of storage which is excusable on the mini but not the air.
At least it has increased from the paltry 128 gb 5 years ago.
Like in Cupertino? Or at an Apple Store?
@@mjbakedbeans It's not excusable ANYWHERE
@@jothain it is if you're eligible for the student discount and can snag one for 500$. Even at 600 I'll let it slide, not a penny more though
Did you know you can buy two Mac Minni M4's with 16GB RAM and 256GB SSD for less than the price of a single M4 Mac Mini with 32GB RAM and 512GB SSD. Apple really is living on another planet (posted from my MBP M1 Max)
Their pricing really has become indefensible for upgrades.
$1 less right?
Classic apple ladder pricing strategy, the base model is cheap and affordable but once you upgrade anything it becomes expensive immediately
This is not true in their Australian pricing, but it's damn close. 2x base models is about $100 more than a single upgraded one.
Apple are experts at selling the "same product" to different people at different prices. That's what it is. Home users don't need more than a base model. If you need more you are either:
* Rich enough that you want more just because you can
or
* A professional - your company pays for your computer. Computer prices are irrelevant for a company, they will pay you more in salary often in just a month.
Yes, it's stupid. but it's how the world works. Consider this:
- Apple wants everyone at home to have a Mac. The more people have a mac the higher chance that companies adopt mac
- Apple knows companies aren't price sensitive on computers. This is where they make their money.
- People often spend decades using the same PC platform and it takes a lot to make them switch over. Locking consumers in with the apple ecosystem is a great way of ensuring a large part of the population is competent at macos and macos only
$600 is an amazing price for something as small and compact and powerful as a Mac Mini. The power of the M4 chip is wild too
it's $500 if u r student. also there will be many deals on 3rd party like bestbuy
The base model price is good, the added cost for upgrading memory and storage is ridiculous. $200 for every 8GB added ram and the 2TB SSD costs $800.
@@Mixa_Lvbut the base spec is honestly really good, as long as you have a NAS or a cloud service for your photos (Let's be honest, no one can game on a Mac, so storage for that isn't important)
@@Mixa_Lv yeah those prices hurt. I think If I were to buy one I would go with 24GB of ram and then just buy external SSD's if needed. The speed over thunderbolt should be perfectly fine.
The power ain't wild on its own though, it's good, just not wild, i wish everyone would stop this bs. The power is wild for its wattage and heat. So it's the wild EFFICIENCY that sets it apart. qualcomm is getting close now but not there yet, but yes for a good while it was the only thing that had that kind of efficiency.
The M1 iMac “Facebook machine” you speak of is so absurdly powerful I run all my professional software on it. No, it can’t handle 4K HDR Premier Pro or advanced 3D but it handles Photoshop, Toonboom Harmony and Storyboard Pro (industry standard hand-drawn animation software) like a dream. Just sayin’ the top-of-the-line Intel MacBook Pro I had prior could barely run Photoshop. The upgrade is huge and so is the value for digital artists
It can handle 4K HDR easily if you use a proper NLE like Davinci Resolve or FCPX. Premiere is garbage on a mac by comparison.
@@77dris Premiere pro is an NLE
Top of the line Intel circa 2018 can handle PhotoShop what are you on man? That's like saying Intel can't run Windows 😂. Try again. You don't need to make up sht in order to prop up the ARM machines, they're good everyone knows this.
@@ShaferHartdepends on what you’re doing in photoshop. Sure, my old MBP could *run* Photoshop, as in it could manipulate photos, but it couldn’t keep up with the demands of digital painting/drawing. This, ofc, wasn’t just intels fault. Apple’s heat control in those old chassis was awful, and the company tended to shy away from seriously powerful GPU’s, which harmed performance in what I was trying to do. Anyway, suffice to say I promise im not being dramatic: I spent LESS money on my M1 iMac than I did on my expensive Intel MBP from two years prior, and it absolutely destroys the old machines performance 🤷♂️
This is exactly what I thought. I know these guys are biased because they edit videos all day long and need the extra processing power, but an M1 iMac has far more than enough processing power for the average person that simply calling it a Facebook machine is just absurd.
$800 for 2TB is just so silly. You could build out an 8TB NVMe raid for that price!!! That’s including a really good raid box with sleds.
Apple SSDs stay more expensive than gold
you could... but will you?
Then...just do that, and use one of the three Thunderbolt 4 ports or built-in 10 GbE to connect to it?
@@lowlymarine451 exactly this. thunderbolt exists for a reason
I just built out a 14tb Nextcloud with backups and redundancy, for around $800 for the whole system.
Apple hates two things expandable storage and power buttons and they're making it everyone else's problem.
And repairs
Tbh that is only a problem to those who ”hate” Apple and who have never used any Apple device.
@@Frank72364 What??? Non expandable storage is a massive problem. It is pathetic that you are unable to upgrade or add storage. The power button is whatever.
@@venimxyou would be surprised how little of a problem that is to most people
@@shiroishii7312i have only ever known apple users who have that exact problem, me included.
I love the slow realization that the mac is not a good deal at any level above the base model.
not exactly but 500ssd + ram upgrade is competitive. have in mind the CPU is quite a lot more powerful than most.
@@LinhLe-rs7fr Ye no. Base mac? Impossible to beat price wise. But if you upgrade the ram to 24 gigs AND the ssd to 512 or heavens forbid, 1 tb you can definitely get a better one from custom parts. 400 dollars is a big difference for such a small upgrade.
@@andrzejgrumpyt327
For the price of the upgrade, you can get a second Mac...
Mac compute cluster
Thing is for how freaking tiny it is, and how just "plug and play" and power efficient. Plus extremely high speed connectors... It could be worth spending a little more on it than you'd on a PC.
I've even seen a guy carry an (old) Mac Mini in his backpack with a keyboard and mouse - plugging it in at uni into the monitors there - effectively having a cheap ghetto MacBook
@@Murvhuh, almost like a laptop?
"I'll be a Mac. You'll be a PC...."
"...sorry, I bluescreened."
"GOTTEM!"
XD
My friend’s Mac kernel panicked every day for a week. He returned it, got a new one, same thing, returned got a new one, same thing, and then eventually, just gave up. He got a PC with a 7800XTX and a 7950X3D and he loves it
@@ThatRandomDude914sounds like a friend problem to me
@@wandrinsheep silicon one or intel one?
@@ThatRandomDude914let me guess, your friend's Mac is a 2010 2015 era with samsung SSD and installed macOS on it, just try an M series Mac and see it for yourself if it ever kernel panics
@@ThatRandomDude914 hackintoshed it?
I believe the base Mac mini is simply the best entry level computer in the world, the single core scores are off the charts, nothing on the market even comes close to it. And the fact it's so small and light you can literally just tape it to the back of a TV is a huge plus in my book.
I ordered one as a new HTPC for my living room, I thought about getting a bit more storage and RAM as future proofing but when I saw the prices I said NOPE, 16GB is enough for an HTPC and I got myself an external 2TB SSD instead.
Why? HTPC is the dumbest idea ever.
$200 to upgrade to 512gb or buy a usb4 enclosure and a 1tb pcie3/4 ssd also around $200. Since it's a desktop machine it's really not too bad to go that route.
@@bryo4321 I even do it with my macbook - 4TB nvme and a thunderbolt enclosure. Done.
And suddenly you have a mac mini with 20 dongles attached to it to compensate for the lack of storage and ports, and still be lacking in RAM
@@azenyr So buy a PC then and live with the inefficiency and Windows, some people want the opposite. You have a choice.
@@whatcouldgowrong7914 the thing is, I dont live with windows. I main linux. So im with you in hating Windows.
@@azenyr Yes I get that but if you’re a creative in music, photography or video production. Your choices are Windows or Mac. Linux doesn’t support industry apps everyone uses let alone exclusives like FCPx or Logic Pro.
Basically either get the base model, or just don't bother.
IMO the drawback of 256 gigs of stoarge can just be fixed with a couple SSDs taped to the sides.
I got M1 mini base model and no way in hell I would've paid those storage upgrade prices. I bought some some USB-C dock that had SATA drive port and slapped 1tb drive there.
yeah that's what I would do (probably not taped though XD). For my use case I would want 24Gi of memory and $200 more is definitely a bummer ;-;
I have an 16in M1 Pro MacBook Pro with 16Gi of RAM and 512Gi of storage and am hitting yellow memory pressure and using about 1-2 Gi of swap.
OR just don't buy it
@@sunbleachedangel if you need ultra small and powerful computer there’s no options sadly
Doing so, would ruin some of the selling points. Esthetics, size and weight. Would you really pay extra for a really portable laptop, that stopped being easily portable, and looked like a DIY-hackjob?
The fact that a mac is going to be a good value is good for competition.
Im daily driving an iPad m4 though, because the display, for less than 1k, is unmatched but its great to see more competition for sub 1k computers.
Btw, you can use an external Thunderbolt SSD (or M.2 NVME + Thunderbolt enclosure) and move all the data, photos, and apps on it without any issues and with great speeds too. I'm using an M1 mini as a server with everything stored externally.
Sounds very handy instead of making the whole thing $40 more expensive and come with a 1tb drive raking in a bit more profit per sold base unit.
@@jepulis6674 Sorry if i misunderstood ur comment, but upgrading to 1tb costs 400 dollars from apple
I use a TB4 external SSD to store photos, it makes it really easy to move between my mac studio at home and laptop during travel. Backups onto a NAS, I don’t trust flash storage :)
Can one install AAA games on external SSD?
@@accesswireless189you can install and play them from external on windows. Idk about Mac tho
11:57 yeah, this is where any hope of a desktop build being cheaper goes out the window.
My PCs cost went up $170 when I started speccing for thunderbolt...
How? just get an expansion card. Don't try to use a motherboard. I just checked, they're like 80 bucks for a 2 port TB4 card
@@kiddy1992 Sure, but what do these cards require? A compatible motherboard with a thunderbolt header. If you check the manual you'll find that only a small set of motherboards are supported (depending on the manufacturer).
So your motherboard selection goes from "literally all of them" (cheapo) to "only those with a recent chipset and a thunderbolt header" (not cheapo)
It's the first time i've actually even considered buying a mac.
Yeah, i was actually on their website looking to buy one. Then i got slapped with $400 price tag on a moderate amount of storage. And all my intent to buy blew away.
@@z0bi_ There are thunderbolt 5 ports and mac finally allows installing apps to external drives so you're able to run an external nvme at gen 4 speeds without the apple premium
Yep , base models across all their products are this way , if wanna a pencil with ur ipad extra 100$ , u wanna just extra 250 gb , extra 200$ .
@@z0bi_ The real play is to just upgrade the RAM (if anything), and buy an external SSD for your actual storage needs. Especially now that MacOS (finally) allows you to change your default app install location to external drives.
@@z0bi_ I believe you can use a external storage device to fix that problem, the memory was the issue that was truly unfixable before.
After 30 years of Windows/PC I am now on a Macbook Pro M4 Pro and I am amazed by this machine. Build quality, responsiveness of the OS and the overall performance. What amazes me most is: Open the lid, work, zero boot/wake up time. I wont go back
"I'm just trying to help you........ you need a 10 core CPU"
"Oh f--"....
Yeah that was hilarious.
Why would that even be a thing, either? You need apples to apples (no pun intended) performance-matched core count, not just straight up basic core count...
@@xshadowinxbc core count is the new MHz race.
Only 6 cores are performance ones ...
@@cipatonalli6 performance cores 😂😂 the base model only has 4 so I'm getting the M4 Pro 14 core model so I can have 10 performance cores with logic pro 11 😊
0:23 a Mac a day to make a doctors pay lol
Needs*
…yeaaano, just no.
If only Apple would allow you to replace the NVME. Would be god tier then.
The Nvme is a whole system. Controller(CPU), ram, etc. The nand on Apple controlled by the SOC itself. It’s designed to be too much efficient.
@@maou5025Do they have options for self-serve data recovery when the rest of the system is dead? This is not about upgrades and repairability.
@@maou5025wrong.
@@mahir7h no, it should be encrypted and require the original SOC. So far only apple can do.
@@jacobpipers He's not wrong. Apple's 'drives' are just NAND. the SSD controller is integrated into the SOC for some god forsaken reason.
Upgrade prices are ridiculous!! Though, since it has Thunderbolt ports, I think you could buy the base model and an external drive to compensate the lack of storage. That’d be a better choice imo, these chips are amazing!
nah, then the size factor becomes an issue. The form factor is lost if you need externals. Just takes away from portability. The UM890Pro is exact same size and I can have 4TB and 96GB ram and i don't need any external drives. For people that deal with large files, its crucial. I need AT LEAST 2TB. Apples upgrades are ridiculous.
@@ColinPatrickWeissIf you need an external monitor, keyboard, mouse, cables, and power cord, then packing a little m4 enclosure is hardly a deal breaker.
They arent ridiculous. Its apple and only apple has the tech that they use.
As someone with a home NAS, and at work as well - we have storage servers. The only thing(s) I have on my machines are programs I use, and files I work on / work with.
256 has been enough space for my machines for the better part of the last 10 years :D
On my work laptop it is a bit running out as I should do a clean up on the version managed source code (I only have about 60gb of free space on that machine :D ) I wonder about others but for me, with proper space budgeting - 256 gb is perfectly livable.
Also you can add a 1tb external SSD or a HDD for that matter and just.... Use it as a bank storage. For what? 100 bucks maybe?
linus: we're not actually competing
also linus: i win
I oversee all of the live production and creative teams at my church, and we have fully moved over to Mac Mini’s simply because of the price to performance ratio. PC cannot compete with that at a large scale.
Can confirm. Base M2 Mac Mini here, running a 1080p/60fps stream at 9000 kb/s with zero dropped frames. ~12% CPU Utilization. Absolutely spectacular.
Windows can’t compete but Linux can
@@06howea1not really
@@06howea1I bet you download more ram whenever your pc gets slow right?
@@06howea1 Not for live production and creative work.
The price of storage is crazy. Just buy the base and stick on a fast NVME in an enclosure for the extra storage.
Dosdude has a video upgrading the storage on his Mac studio. Kickstarter is up for producing those drives
post up the link for it
@redesignedlife777
ua-cam.com/video/HDFCurB3-0Q/v-deo.html -video of the install (pretty complicated since he puts the NAND on blank drives himself)
The base model mac mini with a 10G port is a great value for developers that need to support Apple products. Outside of that, the value proposition relies on ecosystem buy-in (which makes this an AMAZING deal for those who already use Apple products for their other devices).
I would love for macs to become good (and affordable) for gaming. I'm so tired of the PC eco-system and the amount of issues everything has.
Hot take: If you have too many tabs open for 16gb of RAM, you need to close some tabs and learn to use bookmarks.
Legit point. I have 7 open currently and there's two I could easily just close already. If someone claims they need to have like 20 open pages all the time.... 😆
Too many tabs? Nope bloated webpages. Infinite scrolling on social media says hello.
I’ve had 150 open over 5 tab groups before when doing academic research, which was fine on safari with 8GB RAM
No, I don't. You do you and I'll use my much more convenient workflow.
@@hks-lion Copying data is a thing..
Apple always wants you to get up a tier. You add storage and memory and then Mac Studio becomes viable. The same is with iPads and iPhones.
Thinking of getting one, a base one. I have a Synology server, so space is never an issue. As someone who got for Christmas a TI99-4A in 1981, and also has been using PCs and Macs for way over 40yrs, I know that these Mac minis are little monsters.
OK , I hate Apple's pricing for RAM and Disk too ... BUT...
This is not Apple building anything for US ... the enthusiasts and professionals watching and reading comments here.
That $1800 USD machine you are speccing out is not going to fit in the chassis of the Mac Mini, and your $600 build didn't either ... in fact many of the individual components are larger than the entire Mac Mini chassis.
And the power budget will be insane compared to the Mac, which will run full power around 30w and idle close to 0.5w. I suspect idle on your desktop builds will be closer to the full power use of a Mac Mini.
Those features have value too. Depending on the user, those features may significantly outweigh the added power of a 4070 and 64GB RAM.
The M4 Mac Mini as a standalone computer will exceed the needs of the vast majority of all people.
I am making it my stock recommendation for all non-technical/non-gaming users. My upgrade will be to 10Gb networking, and I recommend a NAS to them rather than any onboard storage. (If they want a laptop ... I'll be recommending the M4 Macbook Air as soon as it comes out - though the M3 is a good option if they can't wait.)
Of course ... that isn't a machine that works for ME, and I doubt it will work for anyone reading this channel's comments... but it is a hell of a machine.
As I RECALL Macs never left.
20:25 i think Linus may be referring to Dosdude1. Absolute legend and og in the Mac space
the issue is apple stil shafting europe with it costing way more here, 600 pounds is not 600 dollars
If we're going to be comparing Apples to (PC) oranges, let's talk component speed. The base model M4 has Geekbench performance roughly on par with an Intel Core i7 14600K (3,828/14,991 vs 3,146/16,453) and the M4 Max handily outperforms a Ryzen9 9950x (4,060/26,675 vs 3,434/21,399). When it comes to RAM, Apple's integrated memory in the base model M4 maxes out at 120 GB/s and the M4 Max can hit 546(!) GB/s. The burst transfer rate for DDR5 maxes out at 64 GB/s. That's half the speed of Apple's SLOWEST M4! I can't find SSD throughput ratings for the the M series, but I'm going to bet it similarly beats SATA and NVMe.
I'm not going to try and say Apple doesn't gouge for it's RAM and SSDs because they absolutely do, but let's not try and claim commodity memory and storage can directly compare, either. How much would you have to spend to get comparable raw performance out of a home-built? (and how much more power would it draw than the mini?)
As a Mac user of 30 years and a PC user for the past 7, I can say the PC will need a lot more IT expertise to keep it running and troubleshooting. About 4 times per year the PC will just stop working overnight!! The last time my PC died it took an IT specialist, 2 days, and $500 to fix. No matter what I did, it would not get past the boot screen. I’m a video producer not an IT specialist.
@@Realist-m9cwhat the hell do you do to your pc if it goes down 4 times a year?! I think theres primarily a user induced issue rather than a general one...
When Linus talks about the 10 core CPU, he doesn't (want) say that 4 of them are efficient..
@@Kaospojken94 I don’t know, it’s obviously a hardware/ software issue but the machine runs for 8 - 10 hours every day. So it’s probably doing better than most PCs. I use Davinci, Lightroom, Affinity, Lightwave etc. Like most PCs it has random problems that can take several hours to fix. It’s not fun. Sure my Macs have had crashes but a restart usually fixes it.
@@cipatonalli efficient in M4 means still faster than cheapo AMD or Intel
This was hilarious. “And you’re gonna need…”😂
meanwhile PC mfg are still offer systems with base 8 and 4GB ram...
All PC's over $600 have 16gb
Yea but those cost like $250 new and can still be upgraded later by the user
@@azenyr Less so these days, since a few will solder it on.
Many manufacturers are offering pc builds with 8gb of ram and celeron processors for $500-$600
@@Typhon888this is false
Slowly PCs have no sense anymore (if you are not gaming)
I am a longtime PC user, just started with Macs last two years, really enjoying using them
Also the SSD storage is PCIE Gen 4 as well compared to the one Luke picked as PCIE Gen 3.
So what if it is Gen 4 if you can't remove it, replace it or do anything with it. If it dies you essentially have a $600+ brick.
Well MacBook ssds are definitely reliable.
My launch day M1 Air still runs perfectly fine today, and my home server 2018 Mac mini SSD runs perfectly fine too
As a typical user you aren't going to be able to tell the difference anyways unless you are constantly transferring data.
@@PerfectPilot No they ain't, just because you are the 1% the 99% is still there.
@ so that means 99% of people’s SSD’s have failed..
Yeah Apple’s upgrade pricing makes it easier to match a PC. $200 to add 8gb ram for a total of 24gb. $200 to go from 256gb to 512gb storage. So at $1000 you can get a mini PC, Ryzen 12C/24T, 32gb ram and 1tb SSD.
That said, OEMs should be pressuring Microsoft to get their act together. I am so tired of MS’s bs, and I’ve gotten too old to muck around with Linux all day. So yeah I did order a Mac Mini.
Honestly the price makes it a really compelling offer, it’s hard to find a Windows based PC in this price range that offers similar performance.
The storage/RAM costs are high.
It’s fast, but doesn’t justify costs for the average consumer.
IMO, that money is better spent on 10GbE and decentralized storage at that cost.
I would love to see a comparison between the M4 Mac Mini and similarly priced mini PCs from Minisforum, GEEKOM, etc
You can find it online.. here vs alternatives around a grand.
ua-cam.com/video/8Uuu046EE28/v-deo.html
To sum up, Mac Mini 4 is a very potent little fellow while consuming way less wattage and way more silent.
The base Mac Mini4 is very attractive priced, if you need such a device and can make do with the 16GB and 256GB HDD, if you cant.. it gets outwatered very fast, while climbing Apples priceladder.
Single core performance
R24 = 180
Geek4 4000
Aint to shabby.
"It's only at Apple that the more money you give them, the shittier they treat you."
- Louis Rossmann
Reztepc for Rossmann, but this isn't even remotely true. Apple is one of the MANY companies who treat their good customers like shit and focus their attention to potential new buyers.
Think phone providers, just to mention one category. New contract? Here's a free iPhone99, one year of free everything and a second subscription for another family member for $1.50. Subscribed since 10 years? Here's a contract adjustment: you didn't ask for it, it adds features you won't ever need, and it costs 20% more.
you can't beat Mac mini's energy efficiency with custom built PC
In the Philippines, the base-spec M4 Mac Mini is Php37k. That's one or two paychecks for me, even if I include a decent 120hz IPS monitor, USB dock, 1TB NVMe SSD and cheap external enclosure, and mouse + keyboard. And for something that isn't gonna leave the house anyway, that is a screamer deal. Even paying Apple's BS pricing to upgrade the RAM to 24GB still puts me well in the black. I've had an A1932 Air for six years. This is the perfect time to upgrade.
And for Php70k to 95k on the 16GB 13in M3s, I'd be hard-pressed to find a Windows laptop that can get close in performance and battery life but with more ports, upgradeable RAM + SSD and half-a-day battery life in a slim form factor. If it wasn't for the fact that my workplace has Windows-only programs and that I play games, the M3 Air 16GB would be an instant buy.
Yeah if you don't mind, or like, MacOS, these new ones are incredibly powerful.
Can't Framework laptops get you what you want on the laptop-side? Framework promises and delivers upgradability and repairability. There are already three motherboards for their 13-inch model. They can have ANY RAM up to 64 GB.
I'd love to run Framework now that they have an AMD board but they don't ship here and importing is too brutal a price hike.
Is apple just cheaper in other countrys than here in germany. I just baught a high quality Thinkpad X13 G4 with a ryzen 7 7840u 32gb ram and 512gb storage for slightly less than the base m1 macbook air. Im using it under linux and get around 10h battery life while doing the programming for my cs classes or game dev in godot. For the same price of the base m3 macbook air 15 if you only look only at price to performance you can get a 4070 laptop with an ryzen 7 or even ryzen 9hx processor. This wont give you good battery life but will be much faster then the macbook air. A 4070 can even keep up with the m3 max gpu depending on the workload.
Well that's exactly the problem: I have literally like 2-3 apps I could run on Mac, rest is Windows-only.
Not to mention Windows tablets are still a thing fortunately, at the same time ipadOS is kinda better than iOS, but still isn't full MacOS.
Basically almost all Mac users I know use it for sound production.
Apples and oranges. M4 Pro with 14 core/20 core GPU comes standard with 24 GB of ram and 512 GB SSD for around $1500. A bit more enticing!
$1500 is still alot of money for a good PC too though
@@RusticRonnie I'm not saying it's not. This is a better choice than buying a large internal SSD. Just buy an external SSD. You don't need as much ram as on PC because of the Mac's unified memory.
The prices are absolutely grotesque as you add RAM . . . but it is worth pointing out that isn't a totally "apples to apples" comparison. That is shared VRAM and it does help out on the GPU side of things, too. If you buy a GPU with a fixed amount of RAM, it's topped out.
It's faster LPDDR5 RAM, that usually is an Issue for performance in integrated GPUs.
My parents are getting their iMac tomorrow and I’m super excited on their behalf.
Why are we comparing a computer where the manufacturer buys the components in bulk and at wholesale cost vs. PC Part Picker where all components are sold at retail cost i.e. each component is sold at a significant markup for profit?
Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to look for either a pre-built computer or find wholesale prices of these components?
pre-built computers aren't much cheaper (if at all) than pc part picker if you know what you're doing
because the debate used to be 'its cheaper to build your own' vs pre built, well let's compare DIY reality to apple reality.
prebuilts are more expensive, believe it or not.
I said the same thing. But then, you’ll never even get close.
Really just want a high end touch screen imac, touch screen macbook air, and a mac pro that can take whatever videocards
As long as Linux is useless to digital artists I do not blame any artists for using Macbooks over PCs
America is so back, Linus. America is so back. 🇺🇸 🎉
Yet, Apple still fucked up the magic mouse... Again
no one said you have to use Apple's mouse or keyboard. And if you buy the mini, you won't get either anyway. So your comment is a moot point.
Who cares
The magic mouse charging is such a non issue. 2 minutes of charge gets you 8h. 1 minute gets you 4. 30 seconds gets to 2. You seriously want to say that you're constantly so busy you can't afford 30 seconds to charge your mouse? You charge everything else why not that.
@thecwwshow8036 you cared enough to comment 🙄
Wow you have to plug it in on the bottom to charge it for like half an hour once a month, so terrible god I can’t believe it
That pc shopping exercise was exactly what i wanted to see.
your flaw in comparing SSD upgrade pricing is comparing what you can get on parts open market. Dell and HP and Lenovo all charge an arm and a leg for SSD, and ram for that matter, upgrades too.
Which is trivially bypassed with an off the shelf screwdriver
Most of the time folks who need more can just open the Dell and add more though. Not possible on a Macintosh. But at least now Apple is building in enough for most folks.
@@Demopans5990only if you live in the past.
Sadly most windows computers have soldered RAM these days, and it's becoming more the same for storage too.
You can buy a 4TB external SSD at about the same price as +256GB on the Mac Mini.
I went from a 16gb ~2019 intel mac pro to a 16gb m1 mac pro and I was impressed just how much better the machine handled ram usage. The swapping performance seems to be much better on the new platform. It still doesn't make sense how much they charge for larger amounts of ram, but capacity is not the only thing that matters.
They never made an M1 Mac Pro.
I’m pretty sure the M2 Mac Pro has a higher minimum amount of memory than 16 gigs.
And as mentioned they never made an M1 version.
Luke’s SSD is probably older and on sale, the Mac has a brand new SSD made with current gen tech at a pathetic 256gb
but it's unified memory, which means you can do more with less. apps that take advantage of this don't have to constantly move data from cpu to gpu mem. so it's just not comparable
just invert the mac mini, you get the power button on top and you improve the thermals because hot air rises and convection can help the fans exhaust the hot eair.
Can confirm. I bought an m3 macbook pro and it's killer.
Plus the unix background makes it easy with some linux xp.
Im so fed up with Microsoft - windows recall was the last straw.
Now i only use my big tower for super heavy computation, or stuff like VR, games with friends, etc.
I never thought I'd be saying this, ive used windows for ages, but again the recall feature was the last straw.
Let the free market do its thing!
Also... Where has windows been in the laptop space? They have no real flagship, for _years_
The thumbnail made me laugh, thanks
Linus swatting away Luke building a NUC is insane. That is the actual, REAL competitor to the 599USD mac mini. You can get really decent (oler/used) NUC, RAM, SSD for around 600USD.
12:36 The witch who just threw a potion in my face:
And what's worse about that Mac Mini vs the PC, is that because the GPU is onboard, it's sharing that 16gb of RAM.
Not comparable to PC
And it's faster ram too. M4's ram bandwidth is at 120gb/s meanwhile (assuming wikipedia is correct from a quick google search) an 8000mt/s ddr5 stick will get you about 64gb/s. Each tier you go up it doubles in bandwidth (so the pro will be double of base, max is double of pro, etc)
Which would be the same on a PC with integrated graphics which is what you would need to even barely reach the price of the base Mac Mini. It's not like you're getting a dedicated GPU *and* the rest of the PC for under $600 brand new.
with with Mac mini high memory bandwidth you will hardly get any bottleneck from that sharing.
V. Happy with the Thunderbolt 5 addition. Not because it's useful on an apple silicon device (aside from displays), but because other brands may 'compete' by also including it.
1:30 Super silly how it's only now Apple decided to make 2 screens a reality for their computers.
I wish iMac had better CPU options and it could work as a screen wth video in
I have hat two screens for years my 2011 mac ran two screens and it wasn’t the first mac to do so by any stretch of imagination. My M1 mac is currently driving two displays.
I wish apple made a gaming console. Their apple tv stories are pretty good, their computer are powerful, all they need is a nice controller...
Apple Pippin.
Dualshocks are natively supported on MacOS for years.
@retrocomputing yea but still a gaming console isnt a computer, plus it would probably bring many games to mac os and their metal architecture
Am I the only one who sees it as absolutely insane that their top end chip is only available in such a thermally constrained environment as a laptop?
I'm surprised they didn't announce new Mac Studios and Mac Pros. Those are still using M2 MAX/ULTRA chips.
As far as I know they don't have thermal problem.
@@luigichierico2321 The M2 Max on the MacBook pro does run every slightly slower iirc compared to the Mac Studio with an M2 Max chip.
@@luigichierico2321 You and I both know that the astronomical performance results they're claiming are going to require a chunky desktop or game console type heatsink to have a prayer of maintaining that instead of thermal throttling in minutes.
@@doctorcoke5072 100%.
The storage is because they need the photos app to sell iCloud subscriptions. The kicker is the iCloud subscription is itself a good deal for how well it works
Linus is slowly turning in to a mac guy!
Apple is building some of the best hardware in years. Their software is a mess, hopefully they're working on it. But the hardware is world class.
Because he too is willing to turn a blind eye to the human rights abuses in China and seems not to care that Apple products are in part made with slave labour.
@@RoastBeefSandwich iMac's are having serious display issues.
@@jothain I have heard of that but I am unsure how widespread the issue is. Concerning though for sure.
@@RoastBeefSandwich Absolutely. Apple really missed the mark for a while, especially for pros, with the thermal issues on Intel chips, keyboard problems, and limited ports. But the Apple Silicon chips have been a game changer, allowing for powerful, portable machines with impressive performance and battery life. For the vast majority of people, a base Mac mini or a base MacBook Air is a great deal if you are okay with the lower storage.
In case anyone is wondering, the hardware is more than capable for games. It's always been a software issue, and that's more complicated now that the CPU architecture in Macs is no longer x86. You can however use Crossover for certain games. I once tried BeamNG Drive (a VERY demanding game) on a base M2 Mac mini and discovered that it was very playable even at 1440p. Mind you, the Mac had to emulate both x86 and Windows, meaning there was probably a 20% performance hit on top of it all. You could imagine how impressed I was, especially considering the Mac was doing this all in total silence. That's right: it has one fan and its RPM never climbs beyond resting RPM, so the computer was inaudible even under load. It was glorious.
$18 for 256GB….Apple charges $200…LMAO
Reason why their high end machines offer such poor value
Well technically, they charge nothing for 256, they charge $200 for 512
I'm going to put mine in my desk upside down.
you dont need to shut down A Mac that often
I'm definintely not trying to defend those outrageous price jumps on the Mac, but you definitely don't need anywhere near as much RAM on Apple products because everything is all designed to work together. It's how iPhones got away with 6GB for so long, even on Pro models, and were outperforming phones with much higher RAM counts from any number of manufacturers.
I have the absolute base model M2 Macbook Air (8GB / 256GB), and I use it for video editing, Photoshop, some Xcode here and there, obvious things like browsing and document etc, and I've never come close to either filling the storage (I also use a NAS) or even maxing out the memory.
He did the right thing: he went for a NUC but no NUC is better than the mini.
10-core, forgetting that there is no hyperthreading, aka 12 threads vs 10
Hyperthreading is not some magic tool that doubles your performance. If it were that easy everybody would do it.
@@lbgstzockt8493 well it almost doubles performance, and every modern x86 cpu (exept the latest gen intel ones) uses it. I"m sure it has some disadvantages, but multi-core performance improves greatly. Just look at benchmarks.
@@Mecrommulticore improves, but only if you have software that can make use of that many threads (… not adobe *cough*) and it worsens single core performance.
@@Noine14159145 yes, but my point is that 10 cores without hyperthreading/smt can not be set equal to 10 cores with hyper threading. You can not say "oh, this one has 10 cores tho, you need at least 10 cores to be equal, 6c/12t is less".
He wasn't saying you need faster cores, but that you need more, which is just not fair.
@@Mecrom The main drawbacks I am aware of are that it makes software and hardware more difficult to design and optimize and that it takes away area on the die which could be used for more cache, more cores or larger core internals.
I've loved my mac minis over the years. Just a nice form factor for the person who doesn't want any fuss. I switched to Mac because I just got tired of fixing my home computer after fixing computers at work all day. There are some drawbacks to Apple, but nothing that's deal breaking.
if you allowed minisforum mini pcs this would not even be a competition.
The match I found is the Neptune HX99G, with the closest spec that has both RAM and SSD packed coming in at US$730. That or the EM680 for US$620 but both are sale prices on Minisforum's website. I reckon they're pretty good for games and more than a capable as a set-it-forget-it home PC, but I'd be pleasantly surprised if those Minisforum boxes can get within 90% of the base M4 Mac mini.
I'm not a fan of Apple but some Chinese board that you need to chase down for maybe a bios update isn't really serious.
This is extremely dependent on the workload imo. I've deployed a pretty good handful of mini pc's from the big names like minisforum and beelink. While I do love them, if you're going to be doing any considerable amount of work or gaming then I strongly recommend against them. I think currently they are best used as a general do-all home/work pc for casual users and older people. It's really awesome be able to take $400 and upgrade your older parents to a modern system with good price to performance.
One can easily pick up a Minisforum UM890 Pro for $479USD as a barebone. That's probably a machine someone looking for a PC that sits on the desk below a monitor would buy anyway.:)
@@dorian6021 I know. but every option in shop at minisforum included more that 16GB RAM and 512Gb Storage. So I think it would be possible to get exactly that with the remaining budget up to $599USD. :) I wanted to stay within the initial budget Linus stated for the challenge
Has anyone considered that the storage isn’t that bad considering it’s speed? It’s an overprice, but why not use an external drive to augment it
256GB base storage at this day and age is Criminal for even the lowest level of users
Software Support is so so, too. I would miss tons of tools and free software that i even get on Linux. And even gaming has become much better on Linux thanks to Steam OS.
Love the MacMini, Ordered mine on Monday here in the UK…. This’ll be my third Mini and this one is phenomenal value.
The base is hard to argue against, but if you need more of anything it's difficult to justify the price. A few months ago I put together a NUC 14 Pro Core Ultra 5 (125H), with a 512GB M.2 and 32GB RAM, with Windows it was 1/3rd less than a similarly equipped M4 Mini. Granted 32GB of RAM is probably overkill but that wasn't the expensive part.
17:08 Okay, but that's a "Chrome is a bloated resource hog and so are most social media websites" problem. Not a RAM problem.
More Chrome than anything else. It's memory usage algorithms are garbage even comparing to other mainstream Chromium-based browsers like Brave for example (I was running this one with 700+ tabs in 8 windows on a 4 GB RAM device - and it never crashed).
People like dosdude1 is going to make a lot of money upgrading these base 256gb ones
Remember upgradable ram and storage on macs? Long time ago! Those mini PCs seem to look pretty neet and it seems like the new mac mini is even based on the Beelink ser8 and ser9 design!
i thought this too hahaha
I seldomly forget Linus and friends are Canadian
EU should force Apple to bring back user upgradable SSD and Memory. I most likely am going to buy Mac mini but those upgrades are insane. It makes no sense. You can literally buy second Mac mini with the price of 16GB memory and 256GB SSD from Apple.
User upgradeable memory isn't possible since it's baked into the chipset. Their locking down of the SSDs is absurd though.
@@blargghkip I wouldn't be surprised if that design choice was made for that exact reason.
@@blargghkip
I don't see how a chipset with baked in RAM can't support an interface for more RAM, even if it's a bit slower. Like, just prioritize the faster internal RAM when filling it up.
The SSD is upgradable.
@@mcflydiz Only if you get your hands on that special form factor SSDs.
As a Macbook Air M2 user I can tell you that 16G memory is MINIMUM if you don't like your SSD to be used as swap space. Even at 16G, you will most probably run into SSD swapping after a couple of days light usage of web browsing, messaging and word processing. I have to reboot to clear the memory usage.
I don't see such issue on old intel mac. Not sure what had happened to apple silicon's macos memory management nowadays.
It seems that the entry level mac's low price is more of a "lure" to let you pay much more money in future mac purchase for more memory and storage.
Bro really called an M1 computer a "Facebook browsing machine" 💀💀💀💀💀
it it a Facebook browsing machine at 8+256, it's like a go kart you can drive really really fast but in can only carry a normal weight average height 5'10 human.
you can also say it's like putting a v12 engine on a unicycle. you can theoretically go 400+kph but either your wheel will come off of you will smack your head backwards. incase you do manage to reach that speed you can't brake or else you will become a human flatbread.
so buying any apple silicon base model and trying to use it for anything more than a ChromeOS alternative is far fetching.
@@ambhaiji Your analogy doesn't make any sense at all. It's ok for one or two apps simultaneously. But it can obviously run cores at full for days on, so your analogy...It's garbage.
@@ambhaiji I love dunking on Apple too, but that is just false. The base M1 with 8/256 beats pretty much every price comparable system in every metric.
@@lbgstzockt8493 except it doesn't I could build for less than $600 a pc with 6 cores 64gb ram + 8gb dedicated vram of a RTX 3050 and a 1TB ssd, I could run a media and download server ,pihole, wireguard vpn, home finance manager plus more in it while playing games, while also having 100 web tabs are open in the back no sweat.
your base mac will shit itself before doing half that because it will go into your ssd for help for RAM space without any control on your part whether you want that or not an become the equivalent of a Pentium 4 from 2003 for the rest of these apps that are trying to work from your storage drive cosplaying as RAM.
base model Macs are the equivalent of trying to pull a box by sticking a chewing gum to the side and pulling using the gum, where a trolley and a rope will cost you $1200-6000+.
EDIT: I can 1,000,000% guarantee you that a Intel Mac Pro that can have 1.5TB of RAM can do much much much more than an Apple Silicon Mac Pro that only has a max of 192GB, they made a Tower sized mac with exactly the same internals as the maxed out Mac Studio and charges +$3000/3500 for that. They are making fun of their customers in public for the world to see and then you come in trying to defend any part of them is absolutely hilarious for me.
@@lbgstzockt8493 every metric except ram and storage lol
Things not only get complicated, they get outrageously expensive
Worth it tho
Not necessarily, the base model may be worth it if you don’t upgrade. Upgrade pricing for storage, etc., is considered unreasonably expensive and outrageously overpriced by nearly everyone that reviews it and the general public. Apple’s business model is to use predatory pricing and price gouging to ensure they keep their $3trillion valuation, that’s how they got there and how they intend to stay there now and going forward. It’s ok to make a profit but Apple wants customers to practically “mortgage their house”, just to upgrade
one note though the 16gb is shared with the GPU. so about 12gb.
Yes, that's how integrated graphics has pretty much always worked.
@@RoastBeefSandwich but the comparison was to a pc at the same price with a DEDICATED GPU, witch gives you a minimum of 12gb more ram
@@spiderenigma2803 because AMD and Intels integrated graphics aren’t as good as M4’s.
@RoastBeefSandwich Well Apple better have good integrated gpus, since you can't slot a 3rd party one in.
For many workloads, this unified design is great. I wish we got more memory without the price hike though but that's always been Apple's thing.
Linus - now you need to make a video if base Mac mini with 256Gb is a valid option when using either iCloud or external storage! That would be cool
Who's the target audience for the base model though? My grandma is perfectly happy with her 300€ sff. People who have their own nas don't buy into the apple ecosystem. Businesses buy laptops. Everyone else needs more memory/storage. So that leaves people who are already fully trapped in icloud i guess?
I administer a lot of Linux servers so I just ssh into everything, 8gbs of ram is honestly fine for that, my servers all have a ton of ram. Windows can ssh into stuff these days but the battery life on windows laptops is terrible…. So $800 m1 air is amazing for my use case
Hobbyist creators, now that the ram isn’t a total joke, as a musician, the base model is both usable in stuff like Ableton…. but actually AFFORDABLE too
What in the world do you mean by “people who have their own nas don’t buy into the apple ecosystem.”? Also, when what I would consider to be a “normal” user needs more storage, they are more often than not going to buy an external HDD/SSD as those are 1) Cheap 2) Available at literally any big box store, and 3) Easy to understand. Ideal? No, but the base model is still more than good enough for most people.
I do think the $200-300 range for SFF Windows PCs is a good value for people too, but I’ve encountered QC issues (failed ports, failed SSD, etc.) in that realm where a Mac is just not going to have those kinds of problems.
"People who have their own nas don't buy into the apple ecosystem" - I'm an industry professional, do have a NAS and a Windows gaming PC, but literally all my other compute is Apple: work laptop, personal laptop, iPhone.
People wanting to use Garageband, Logic Pro, Lightroom, Photoshop. Basically, me.
Base M4 Pro mini is looking right for me. 8 performance:4 efficiency sounds a lot better than 4 performance:6 efficiency with the base M4.
Why wold you pick big desktop components against mac mini?
I got ryzen 8845hs mini pc, 64GB ddr5 5600, 2TB patrot 4600 lite ssd for about 700 usd worth of local currency with 27 percent local tax included. Similar minipc buth with ryzen 6850h and 4800 ddr5 modules for about 600 usd worth of taxed local money. (gmktec m7 and k8 plus, 2 usb4 40, oculink, 2 ram slot, 2 m.2)
"about 600 usd worth of taxed local money"
"I was able to get better components for the same money as long as you ignore exchange rates, and therefore ignore the prices!"
bruh
@@JamesR624 Yeah, my prices are including our extreme taxes here, mac mini price does not have tax in it. I bought one barbone M7 for 240 actual usd + taxes, an other one for 200 euros + taxes, and K8 plus was 380 euros barbone, but ssd and ram sourced locally. If you think north america is expensive, come to europe.
there's one problem, the CPU, that's 2,3k vs 3,6k of M4 in geekbench single core and 11k vs 22k in multi core. 64GB of ram is useless if the CPU is twice too slow for a given task. I use it for music production, so it's either enough or not enough
I’ll get the RAM upgrade for future proving and it’s honestly a really good deal. Storage just slap some stuff outside and you’re fine.
Continues to laugh in Linux.
no one cares btw, this product is not at all aimed at linux users.
I'm a linux user too but why are you chiming in?
No one gives af about Linux. It's a shittier Mac os with constant troubleshooting and workarounds.
@@whitegoodman7465 terrible bait
More than half of that price was the storage upgrade alone. You should consider adding external storage on the 3 40Gbit ports, which is then maybe 80 bucks more for an external case.
Also pretty sure those mainboards didn't have even one 40GBit port, those are more like 300+.