15 ms·

What's crazy is that the M4 Pro is in the Mac mini, something so tiny can handle that chip. The Mac Studio with the M4 Max will be awesome but the Mini is remar

What's crazy is that the M4 Pro is in the Mac mini, something so tiny can handle that chip. The Mac Studio with the M4 Max will be awesome but the Mini is remarkable.

carlgreene 2y ago
I am still astounded the huge change moving from an Intel Mac to an Apple Silicon Mac (M1) has had in terms of battery performance and heat. I don't think i've heard the fans a single time I've had this machine and it's been several years. Nor have I had any desire to upgrade.
- cloudking 2y ago
  M3 Pro user here, agree with the same points. It's nice to be able to actually have your laptop on your lap, without burning your legs.
  - mh- 2y ago
    Hey, I can have my Intel MBP on my lap without burning my legs (or making me feel nauseated). As long as I don't open Chrome, Safari, Apple Notes, or really any other app...
    - Etheryte 2y ago
      Sometimes even not opening any apps is not enough if Spotlight decides that now is the time to update its index or something similar. Honestly nuts looking back at it.
      - 0x457 2y ago
        I remember when macOS switched to evented way of handling input and for some reason decided that dropping keyboard events is okay...anyway if spotlight was updating its index, then unlocking your laptop with a password was impossible.
  - _hyn3 2y ago
    ARM processors have always been good at handling heat and low power (like AWS Graviton), but what laptop did you have before that would overheat that much during normal usage? That seems like a very poor design.
    - ddingus 2y ago
      My 2010 i7 MBP would do that under heavy loads. All aluminum body, with fans, and when that CPU really had to work it put out a lot of heat. Compiling gcc multi thread a few times would be enough.
      - MBCook 2y ago
        Not only that, they seemed to get hotter with each subsequent generation. My 2015 could get hotter than my 2010. I think my work 2019 gets hotter still. I think the Intels were hotter than my G4, but it’s been too long and the performance jump was worth it. Got an M1 Air, it blows them all out of the water (even 2019, others aren’t a surprise). And it does it fanless, as opposed to emulating a jet engine. And if you really push it, it gets pleasantly warm. Not possibly-burn-inducingly hot.
        ddingus 2y ago
        My experience is the same. I only owned one Intel MacBook Pro. Was the only one I needed thankfully. Missed the whole port reduction and power bar mess. I love my M1 Air. It is the first general purpose computing hardware that felt like a real advance. I measured that two ways: How much closer to my mobile is it? How much faster is it? The Air feels like a Mobile Computer if that makes any sense. One USB port expander to serve as a dock of sorts later and it makes for a great desktop experience. When using it on the go, it has that light, powerful feel much like running my phone does. Great machine. It is easily my favorite computer Apple has ever made, 8 bit greatness and an older age aside.
        MBCook 2y ago
        Same. Easily the best computer I’ve owned in the last 25 years in terms of satisfaction/niceness.
  - _dain_ 2y ago
    you still shouldn't have it on your lap though. it's bad for your posture.
    - theshackleford 2y ago
      Not for everyone. It turns out by following standard ergonomic guidelines I was doing more damage. I have to actually look way down at monitors, even on my desk. It has to be well below eye height, basically slammed.
- wing-_-nuts 2y ago
  I do wonder if PC desktops will eventually move to a similar design. I have a 7800x3d on my desktop, and the thing is a beast but between it and the 3090 I basically have a space heater in my room
  - Cthulhu_ 2y ago
    It would make sense, but it depends heavily on Windows / Linux support, compatibility with nvidia / amd graphics cards, and exclusivity contracts with Intel / AMD. Apple is not likely to make their chips available to OEMs at any rate, and I haven't heard of any 4th party working on a powerful desktop ARM based CPU in recent years.
  - jwells89 2y ago
    It would be nice. Similarly have a 5950X/3080Ti tower and it’s a great machine, but if it were an option for it to be as small and low-noise as the new Mini (or even the previous mini or Studio), I’d happily take it.
    - heelix 2y ago
      For what it is worth, I'm running that with open loop water cooling. If your chassis has the space for it, my rig won't even need to turn on fans for large amounts of the day. (Loop was sized for a threadripper, which were not really around for home builders) Size is an issue, however :)
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - philistine 2y ago
    I sincerely believe that the market for desktop PCs is completely coopted by the gaming machines. They do not care one whit about machine size or energy efficiency, with only one concern in mind: bare performance. This means they buy ginormous machines, incredibly inefficient CPUs and GPUs, with cavernous internals to chuck heat out with no care for decibels. But they spend voriously. And so the desktop PC market is theirs and theirs alone.
- mdasen 2y ago
  > Nor have I had any desire to upgrade I never thought I'd see a processor that was 50% faster single-core and 80% faster multi-core and just shrug. My M1 Pro still feels so magically fast. I'm really happy that Apple keeps pushing things and I'll be grateful when I do decide to upgrade, but my M1 Pro has just been such a magical machine. Every other laptop I've ever bought (Mac or PC) has run its fan regularly. I did finally get fan noise on my M1 Pro when pegging the CPU at 800% for a while (doing batch conversion of tons of PDFs to images) - and to be fair, it was sitting on a blanket which was insulating it. Still, it didn't get hot, unlike every other laptop I've ever owned did even under normal usage. It's just been such a joyful machine. I do look forward to an OLED MacBook Pro and I know how great a future Apple Silicon processor will be.
  - spiderfarmer 2y ago
    My best Apple purchases in 20 years of being their customer: The Macbook M1 Pro 16 inch and the Pro Display XDR. When Steve Jobs died I really thought Apple was done, but their most flawless products (imho) came much later.
    - eastbound 2y ago
      Yeah, don’t forget the 10 dark years between the Butterfly Keyboard Macbook Pro 2016, the Emoji Macbook Air, until the restoration of the USB ports… around 2022. That was truely the dark age of Apple.
      - jamiek88 2y ago
        Those were the Ive Unleashed years. Unbridled control over all design in one hyper opinionated guy was an error well resolved.
        robotresearcher 2y ago
        The first guy did alright.
      - 2y ago
- _mlbt 2y ago
  It still blows my mind how infrequently I have to charge my M3 Pro MacBook Pro. It is a complete game changer.
- JansjoFromIkea 2y ago
  If it's a M1 Macbook Air there's a very good reason you've never heard a fan! Blows my mind how it doesn't even have a fan and is still rarely even anything above body temperature. My 2015 MBP was still going strong for work when I bailed on it late last year but the transition purely on the heat/sound emitted has been colossal.
  - philistine 2y ago
    Factorio: Space Age is the first piece of software that my M1 shows performance issues with. I'm not building xCode projects or anything, but it is a great Mac. Maybe even the greatest.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - collinvandyck76 2y ago
      There's a known issue on arm macs with external monitors that messes with the framerates. Hopefully it gets fixed soon because pre-space age factorio was near flawless in performance on my m2.
      - philistine 2y ago
        What! That's exactly what I'm doing. Woah, I can't wait for the inevitable fix, those guys have been releasing patches like crazy.
        collinvandyck76 2y ago
        There's a few threads on the technical help forums that are tracking this -- I've subscribed to them because I'm super excited about them getting around to fixing it! :)
  - alpaca128 2y ago
    It's not just that; at times I pushed all CPU cores to 100% in the M1 Mini and even after 30+ minutes I couldn't hear the fan. Too bad the Macbook Airs got nothing but a literal aluminium sheet as cooling solution.
- jihadjihad 2y ago
  I've got a coworker who still has an Intel MacBook Pro, 8-core i9 and all that, and I've been on M chips since they launched. The other day he was building some Docker images while we were screensharing and I was dumbfounded at how long it took. I don't think I can even remember a recent time when building images, even ones pushed to CDK etc., takes more than a minute or so. We waited and waited and finally after 8 minutes it was done. He told me his fans were going crazy and his entire desk was hot after that. Apple silicon is just a game changer.
  - grahamj 2y ago
    For sure. I had one of those for work when I got my personal M1 Air and I couldn't believe how much faster it was. A fanless ultraportable faster than an 8-core i9! I was so happy when I finally got an M1 MBP for work because as you say Docker is so much faster on it. I feel like I don't wait for anything anymore. Can't even imagine these new chips.
    - MBCook 2y ago
      Same situation for me. I’m going to be very happy when it’s time to replace my Intel MBP at work. It’s rarely loud, but boy it likes to be warm/toasty at the stupidest things.
  - rahkiin 2y ago
    Oh I know the feeling… when using ict-managed windows laptops at work
  - moondev 2y ago
    Sounds like they were building an aarch64 image, building an x86_64 image on Apple Silicon will also be slow - unless you are saying the M* builds x86_64 faster than an i9?
    - robotresearcher 2y ago
      Are you saying it's faster to build a binary with native architecture? Why is that?
- voisin 2y ago
  Do you have an Air or Pro?
- huijzer 2y ago
  > I don't think i've heard the fans a single time I've had this machine and it's been several years. Yes I agree. I sometimes compile LLVM just to check whether it all still works. (And of course to have the latest LLVM from main ready in case I need it. Obviously.)
- dzhiurgis 2y ago
  16” M1 still perfectly good machine for my work (web dev). Got a battery replacement which also replaced top cover and keyboard - it’s basically new. Extended applecare for another year which will turn it into fully covered 4 year device.
- Aurornis 2y ago
  > I am still astounded the huge change moving from an Intel Mac to an Apple Silicon Mac (M1) has had in terms of battery performance and heat The battery life improvements are great. Apple really did a terrible job with the thermal management on their last few Intel laptops. My M1 Max can consume (and therefore dissipate) more power than my Intel MBP did, but the M1 thermal solution handles it quietly. The thermal solution on those Intel MacBooks was really bad.
  - Tagbert 2y ago
    Those MacBooks were designed when Intel was promising new, more efficient chips and they didn’t materialize. Apple was forced to use the older and hotter chips. It was not a good combination.
    - microtherion 2y ago
      Another factor might be that Intel MacBook Pros got thinner and thinner. The M1 MBP was quite a bit thicker than its Intel predecessors, and I think the form factor has remained the same since then.
      - 0x457 2y ago
        Yes, but I had about every generation of intel MPB - it never was as good at it as M1 MBP.
      - Tagbert 2y ago
        The 2012-2015 MBPs were slimmer than the previous unibodies but a lot of that was due to dropping the optical and spinning hard drives. The thermals were not a particular problem. Where that did become a problem was with the 2016 redesign that introduces the wedge-shaped case. The design of that would have been locked in 2-3 years earlier. From what I have read, when the case designs were being worked on Intel was promising Apple that their next generation of chips would be on a smaller processor node and would run cooler so that defined the thermal envelope of the new MBPs. Unfortunately, as we all saw, Intel’s production stalled for 5-6 years and the only chips they could produce were power hungry and hot. That caused problems for those thinner MBPs. Apple seems to have taken that to heart when they designed the cases for the Apple Silicon MBPs and those have excellent cooling (and more ports).
- varispeed 2y ago
  On extremely heavy workloads the fans do engage on my M1 Max, but I need to get my ear close to the machine to hear them. Recently my friend bought a laptop with Intel Ultra 9 185h. It roared fans even when opening Word. That was extraordinary and if it was me making the purchase I would have sent it back straight away. My friend did fiddle a lot with settings, had to update BIOS and eventually the fan situation was somewhat contained, but man I am never going to buy Intel / AMD laptop. You don't know how annoying fan noise is until you get a laptop that is fast and doesn't make any noise. With Intel is like having a drill pointed to your head that can goes off at any moment and let's not mention phantom fan noise, where it gets imprinted in your head that your brain makes you think the fans are on, but they are not. Apple has achieved something extraordinary. I don't like MacOS, but I am getting used to it. I hope one day this Asahi effort will let us replace it.
  - jltsiren 2y ago
    When I play Baldur's Gate 3 on my M2 Max, the fans get loud. You need a workload that is both CPU-heavy and GPU-heavy for that. When you are stressing only the CPU or the GPU but not both, the fans stay quiet.
  - kristianp 2y ago
    I have an i7 12th gen thinkpad and the fans would often be audible when I first got it with Windows 11. Then I installed linux. Now the fan is only audible when something has gone wrong and a process (usually chrome) is pinning a core.
- hhejrkrn 2y ago
  Lol ... You were not around for the ppc -> Intel change ... Same thing happened then ... Remarkable performance uplift from the last instruction set ... And we had Rosetta which allowed compatibility... The m1 and arm took power efficiency to another level .... But yeah what has happened before will happen again
  - nl 2y ago
    I was around for that. The thing then was it was just Apple catching up with windows computers which had had a considerable performance lead for a while. It didn't really seem magical to just see it finally matched. (Yes Intel Mac's got better then Windows computers but that was later. At launch it was just matching) It's very different this time because you can't match the performance/battery trade off in anyway.
    - GeekyBear 2y ago
      Intel chips had better integer performance and PowerPC chips had better floating point performance, which is why Apple always used Photoshop performance tests to compare the two platforms. Apple adopted Intel chips only after Intel replaced the Pentium 4 with the much cooler running Core Solo and Core Duo chips, which were more suitable for laptops. Apple dropped Intel for ARM for the exact same reason. The Intel chips ran too hot for laptops, and the promised improvements never shipped.
      - majormajor 2y ago
        The G5 in desktops was more competitive but laptops were stuck on G4s that were pretty easy to beat by lots of things in the Windows world by the time of the Intel switch. And Photoshop was largely about vectorized instructions, as I recall, not just general purpose floating point.
        GeekyBear 2y ago
        Yes, and when it became clear that laptop sales would one day outpace desktop sales, Apple made the Intel switch, despite it meaning they had to downgrade from 64 bit CPUs to 32 bit CPUs until Core2 launched. The Apple ecosystem was most popular in the publishing industry at the time, and most publishing software used floating point math on tower computers with huge cooling systems. Since IBM originally designed the POWER architecture for scientific computing, it makes sense that floating point performance would be what they optimized for.
- jki275 2y ago
  I went from an i9 MBP to an M1 Max earlier this year. I can't even describe it. Blows my mind.
- hcarvalhoalves 2y ago
  Last year I bought an M1 Pro used, but the last MPB I had was an early 2015. I just didn't bothered upgrading, in fact the later Intel models were markedly worse (keyboard, battery life, quality control). The Apple Silicon era is going to be the PowerPC prime over again.
mortenjorck 2y ago
Indeed, the $1599 M4 Pro Mac mini beats the current $3999 M2 Ultra Mac Studio on GeekBench 6 multi-core: https://www.macrumors.com/2024/10/31/m4-pro-chip-benchmark-results/ https://www.macrumors.com/2024/10/31/m4-pro-chip-benchmark-r...
- philistine 2y ago
  Back in the early 90s, when Apple was literally building their first product line with the Mac, they would come out with their second big honking powerhouse Mac: the Macintosh IIx. It blew everything out of the water. Then they would come out with their next budget all-in-one machine. But computing was improving so fast, with prices for components dropping so quickly, that the Macintosh SE/30 ended up as impressive as the Macintosh IIx with a much lower price. That's how the legend of the SE/30 was born, turning it into the best Mac ever for most people. With how fast and impressive the improvements are coming with the M-series processors, it often feels like we're back in the early 90s. I thought the M1 Macbook Air would be the epitome of Apple's processor renaissance, but it sure feels like that was only the beginning. When we look historically at these machines in 20 years, we'll think of a specific machine as the best early Apple Silicon Mac. I don't think that machine is even out yet.
  - drcongo 2y ago
    I think that machine is this M1 Pro MBP I'm using right now, and will probably still be using in 20 years.
    - nxobject 2y ago
      I look forward to seeing you at a conference in 20 years' time where we'll both be running Fedora 100 on our M1 MacBook Pros.
      - gessha 2y ago
        I hope the SSDs lasts long enough for you folks (the only thing + money that hold holds be back from snagging one of those)
thomassmith65 2y ago
Does anyone know if this Mac Mini can survive longer than a year? Apple's approach to hardware design doesn't prioritize thermal issues*. In fact, the form factor is why I'm leaning toward taking a pass - I don't want a Mac Mini I would have to replace every 12 months. * or rather, Apple doesn't target low enough temperatures to keep machines healthy beyond warranty
- ezfe 2y ago
  I'm not sure why you think it would be worse than a MacBook Air which literally has no fan
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - thomassmith65 2y ago
    Are the new MacBook Airs the ones that have throttling issues due to heat?
    - alpaca128 2y ago
      Yes, but you only really encounter that when pushing the CPU to 100% for more than a few minutes. The cooling is objectively terrible, but still easily enough for most users, that's the crazy thing.
      - nox101 2y ago
        maybe? as local LLM/SD etc get more common it might be common to push it. I've been getting my fans to come on and get burning hot quite often lately because of new tech. I get that I'm a geek but with Apple, Google and everyone else trying to run local ML it's only a matter of time.
        nox101 2y ago
        After posting this I thought of a few possible use cases. They might never come to pass but ... Some tech similar to DLSS might come along that lets streaming services like youtube and netflix to send 1/10th the data and get twice as good an image but require extreme processing on the client. It would certainly be in their interest (less storage, less bandwidth, decompression-upscaling costs pushed to client) Whether that will ever happen I have no idea. I was just trying to think of an example of something that might need lots of compute power at home for the masses. Another could be realtime video modification. People like to stream and facetime. They might like it even more if they could change their appearance more than they already can using realtime ML based image processing. We already have some of that in the various video conferencing / facetime apps but it's possible it could jump up in usage and needed compute power with the right application.
pxmpxm 2y ago
Here's the geekbench link https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/8593555 https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/8593555 How/where are they getting 128gb of ram? I don't see that as an option for any of the pre-orders pages. Still pretty impressive, I get 1217/10097 with dual xeon gold 6136 that doubles as a space heater in the winter.
- abhinavk 2y ago
  Switch to M4 Max 16-core CPU, it will unlock 64 and 128GB options for memory.
  - pxmpxm 2y ago
    Mac minis aren't available with set up - seems only macbook pro?
    - abhinavk 2y ago
      There are no Mac mini SKUs with M4 Max CPUs. Only base M4 and M4 Pro.
djmips 2y ago
Is it crazy? The chip itself is small. I'm not up on the subject but is it unusual? Are we talking power draw and cooling adding greatly to the size? I guess the M4 Pro must have great specs when it comes to running cool.

What's crazy is that the M4 Pro is in the Mac mini, something so tiny can handle that chip. The Mac Studio with the M4 Max will be awesome but the Mini is remarkable.

carlgreene 2y ago

I am still astounded the huge change moving from an Intel Mac to an Apple Silicon Mac (M1) has had in terms of battery performance and heat. I don't think i've heard the fans a single time I've had this machine and it's been several years. Nor have I had any desire to upgrade.

cloudking 2y ago
M3 Pro user here, agree with the same points. It's nice to be able to actually have your laptop on your lap, without burning your legs.
- mh- 2y ago
  Hey, I can have my Intel MBP on my lap without burning my legs (or making me feel nauseated). As long as I don't open Chrome, Safari, Apple Notes, or really any other app...
  - Etheryte 2y ago
    Sometimes even not opening any apps is not enough if Spotlight decides that now is the time to update its index or something similar. Honestly nuts looking back at it.
    - 0x457 2y ago
      I remember when macOS switched to evented way of handling input and for some reason decided that dropping keyboard events is okay...anyway if spotlight was updating its index, then unlocking your laptop with a password was impossible.
- _hyn3 2y ago
  ARM processors have always been good at handling heat and low power (like AWS Graviton), but what laptop did you have before that would overheat that much during normal usage? That seems like a very poor design.
  - ddingus 2y ago
    My 2010 i7 MBP would do that under heavy loads. All aluminum body, with fans, and when that CPU really had to work it put out a lot of heat. Compiling gcc multi thread a few times would be enough.
    - MBCook 2y ago
      Not only that, they seemed to get hotter with each subsequent generation. My 2015 could get hotter than my 2010. I think my work 2019 gets hotter still. I think the Intels were hotter than my G4, but it’s been too long and the performance jump was worth it. Got an M1 Air, it blows them all out of the water (even 2019, others aren’t a surprise). And it does it fanless, as opposed to emulating a jet engine. And if you really push it, it gets pleasantly warm. Not possibly-burn-inducingly hot.
      - ddingus 2y ago
        My experience is the same. I only owned one Intel MacBook Pro. Was the only one I needed thankfully. Missed the whole port reduction and power bar mess. I love my M1 Air. It is the first general purpose computing hardware that felt like a real advance. I measured that two ways: How much closer to my mobile is it? How much faster is it? The Air feels like a Mobile Computer if that makes any sense. One USB port expander to serve as a dock of sorts later and it makes for a great desktop experience. When using it on the go, it has that light, powerful feel much like running my phone does. Great machine. It is easily my favorite computer Apple has ever made, 8 bit greatness and an older age aside.
        MBCook 2y ago
        Same. Easily the best computer I’ve owned in the last 25 years in terms of satisfaction/niceness.
- _dain_ 2y ago
  you still shouldn't have it on your lap though. it's bad for your posture.
  - theshackleford 2y ago
    Not for everyone. It turns out by following standard ergonomic guidelines I was doing more damage. I have to actually look way down at monitors, even on my desk. It has to be well below eye height, basically slammed.
wing-_-nuts 2y ago
I do wonder if PC desktops will eventually move to a similar design. I have a 7800x3d on my desktop, and the thing is a beast but between it and the 3090 I basically have a space heater in my room
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  It would make sense, but it depends heavily on Windows / Linux support, compatibility with nvidia / amd graphics cards, and exclusivity contracts with Intel / AMD. Apple is not likely to make their chips available to OEMs at any rate, and I haven't heard of any 4th party working on a powerful desktop ARM based CPU in recent years.
- jwells89 2y ago
  It would be nice. Similarly have a 5950X/3080Ti tower and it’s a great machine, but if it were an option for it to be as small and low-noise as the new Mini (or even the previous mini or Studio), I’d happily take it.
  - heelix 2y ago
    For what it is worth, I'm running that with open loop water cooling. If your chassis has the space for it, my rig won't even need to turn on fans for large amounts of the day. (Loop was sized for a threadripper, which were not really around for home builders) Size is an issue, however :)
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- philistine 2y ago
  I sincerely believe that the market for desktop PCs is completely coopted by the gaming machines. They do not care one whit about machine size or energy efficiency, with only one concern in mind: bare performance. This means they buy ginormous machines, incredibly inefficient CPUs and GPUs, with cavernous internals to chuck heat out with no care for decibels. But they spend voriously. And so the desktop PC market is theirs and theirs alone.
mdasen 2y ago
> Nor have I had any desire to upgrade I never thought I'd see a processor that was 50% faster single-core and 80% faster multi-core and just shrug. My M1 Pro still feels so magically fast. I'm really happy that Apple keeps pushing things and I'll be grateful when I do decide to upgrade, but my M1 Pro has just been such a magical machine. Every other laptop I've ever bought (Mac or PC) has run its fan regularly. I did finally get fan noise on my M1 Pro when pegging the CPU at 800% for a while (doing batch conversion of tons of PDFs to images) - and to be fair, it was sitting on a blanket which was insulating it. Still, it didn't get hot, unlike every other laptop I've ever owned did even under normal usage. It's just been such a joyful machine. I do look forward to an OLED MacBook Pro and I know how great a future Apple Silicon processor will be.
- spiderfarmer 2y ago
  My best Apple purchases in 20 years of being their customer: The Macbook M1 Pro 16 inch and the Pro Display XDR. When Steve Jobs died I really thought Apple was done, but their most flawless products (imho) came much later.
  - eastbound 2y ago
    Yeah, don’t forget the 10 dark years between the Butterfly Keyboard Macbook Pro 2016, the Emoji Macbook Air, until the restoration of the USB ports… around 2022. That was truely the dark age of Apple.
    - jamiek88 2y ago
      Those were the Ive Unleashed years. Unbridled control over all design in one hyper opinionated guy was an error well resolved.
      - robotresearcher 2y ago
        The first guy did alright.
    - 2y ago
_mlbt 2y ago
It still blows my mind how infrequently I have to charge my M3 Pro MacBook Pro. It is a complete game changer.
JansjoFromIkea 2y ago
If it's a M1 Macbook Air there's a very good reason you've never heard a fan! Blows my mind how it doesn't even have a fan and is still rarely even anything above body temperature. My 2015 MBP was still going strong for work when I bailed on it late last year but the transition purely on the heat/sound emitted has been colossal.
- philistine 2y ago
  Factorio: Space Age is the first piece of software that my M1 shows performance issues with. I'm not building xCode projects or anything, but it is a great Mac. Maybe even the greatest.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - collinvandyck76 2y ago
    There's a known issue on arm macs with external monitors that messes with the framerates. Hopefully it gets fixed soon because pre-space age factorio was near flawless in performance on my m2.
    - philistine 2y ago
      What! That's exactly what I'm doing. Woah, I can't wait for the inevitable fix, those guys have been releasing patches like crazy.
      - collinvandyck76 2y ago
        There's a few threads on the technical help forums that are tracking this -- I've subscribed to them because I'm super excited about them getting around to fixing it! :)
- alpaca128 2y ago
  It's not just that; at times I pushed all CPU cores to 100% in the M1 Mini and even after 30+ minutes I couldn't hear the fan. Too bad the Macbook Airs got nothing but a literal aluminium sheet as cooling solution.
jihadjihad 2y ago
I've got a coworker who still has an Intel MacBook Pro, 8-core i9 and all that, and I've been on M chips since they launched. The other day he was building some Docker images while we were screensharing and I was dumbfounded at how long it took. I don't think I can even remember a recent time when building images, even ones pushed to CDK etc., takes more than a minute or so. We waited and waited and finally after 8 minutes it was done. He told me his fans were going crazy and his entire desk was hot after that. Apple silicon is just a game changer.
- grahamj 2y ago
  For sure. I had one of those for work when I got my personal M1 Air and I couldn't believe how much faster it was. A fanless ultraportable faster than an 8-core i9! I was so happy when I finally got an M1 MBP for work because as you say Docker is so much faster on it. I feel like I don't wait for anything anymore. Can't even imagine these new chips.
  - MBCook 2y ago
    Same situation for me. I’m going to be very happy when it’s time to replace my Intel MBP at work. It’s rarely loud, but boy it likes to be warm/toasty at the stupidest things.
- rahkiin 2y ago
  Oh I know the feeling… when using ict-managed windows laptops at work
- moondev 2y ago
  Sounds like they were building an aarch64 image, building an x86_64 image on Apple Silicon will also be slow - unless you are saying the M* builds x86_64 faster than an i9?
  - robotresearcher 2y ago
    Are you saying it's faster to build a binary with native architecture? Why is that?
voisin 2y ago
Do you have an Air or Pro?
huijzer 2y ago
> I don't think i've heard the fans a single time I've had this machine and it's been several years. Yes I agree. I sometimes compile LLVM just to check whether it all still works. (And of course to have the latest LLVM from main ready in case I need it. Obviously.)
dzhiurgis 2y ago
16” M1 still perfectly good machine for my work (web dev). Got a battery replacement which also replaced top cover and keyboard - it’s basically new. Extended applecare for another year which will turn it into fully covered 4 year device.
Aurornis 2y ago
> I am still astounded the huge change moving from an Intel Mac to an Apple Silicon Mac (M1) has had in terms of battery performance and heat The battery life improvements are great. Apple really did a terrible job with the thermal management on their last few Intel laptops. My M1 Max can consume (and therefore dissipate) more power than my Intel MBP did, but the M1 thermal solution handles it quietly. The thermal solution on those Intel MacBooks was really bad.
- Tagbert 2y ago
  Those MacBooks were designed when Intel was promising new, more efficient chips and they didn’t materialize. Apple was forced to use the older and hotter chips. It was not a good combination.
  - microtherion 2y ago
    Another factor might be that Intel MacBook Pros got thinner and thinner. The M1 MBP was quite a bit thicker than its Intel predecessors, and I think the form factor has remained the same since then.
    - 0x457 2y ago
      Yes, but I had about every generation of intel MPB - it never was as good at it as M1 MBP.
    - Tagbert 2y ago
      The 2012-2015 MBPs were slimmer than the previous unibodies but a lot of that was due to dropping the optical and spinning hard drives. The thermals were not a particular problem. Where that did become a problem was with the 2016 redesign that introduces the wedge-shaped case. The design of that would have been locked in 2-3 years earlier. From what I have read, when the case designs were being worked on Intel was promising Apple that their next generation of chips would be on a smaller processor node and would run cooler so that defined the thermal envelope of the new MBPs. Unfortunately, as we all saw, Intel’s production stalled for 5-6 years and the only chips they could produce were power hungry and hot. That caused problems for those thinner MBPs. Apple seems to have taken that to heart when they designed the cases for the Apple Silicon MBPs and those have excellent cooling (and more ports).
varispeed 2y ago
On extremely heavy workloads the fans do engage on my M1 Max, but I need to get my ear close to the machine to hear them. Recently my friend bought a laptop with Intel Ultra 9 185h. It roared fans even when opening Word. That was extraordinary and if it was me making the purchase I would have sent it back straight away. My friend did fiddle a lot with settings, had to update BIOS and eventually the fan situation was somewhat contained, but man I am never going to buy Intel / AMD laptop. You don't know how annoying fan noise is until you get a laptop that is fast and doesn't make any noise. With Intel is like having a drill pointed to your head that can goes off at any moment and let's not mention phantom fan noise, where it gets imprinted in your head that your brain makes you think the fans are on, but they are not. Apple has achieved something extraordinary. I don't like MacOS, but I am getting used to it. I hope one day this Asahi effort will let us replace it.
- jltsiren 2y ago
  When I play Baldur's Gate 3 on my M2 Max, the fans get loud. You need a workload that is both CPU-heavy and GPU-heavy for that. When you are stressing only the CPU or the GPU but not both, the fans stay quiet.
- kristianp 2y ago
  I have an i7 12th gen thinkpad and the fans would often be audible when I first got it with Windows 11. Then I installed linux. Now the fan is only audible when something has gone wrong and a process (usually chrome) is pinning a core.
hhejrkrn 2y ago
Lol ... You were not around for the ppc -> Intel change ... Same thing happened then ... Remarkable performance uplift from the last instruction set ... And we had Rosetta which allowed compatibility... The m1 and arm took power efficiency to another level .... But yeah what has happened before will happen again
- nl 2y ago
  I was around for that. The thing then was it was just Apple catching up with windows computers which had had a considerable performance lead for a while. It didn't really seem magical to just see it finally matched. (Yes Intel Mac's got better then Windows computers but that was later. At launch it was just matching) It's very different this time because you can't match the performance/battery trade off in anyway.
  - GeekyBear 2y ago
    Intel chips had better integer performance and PowerPC chips had better floating point performance, which is why Apple always used Photoshop performance tests to compare the two platforms. Apple adopted Intel chips only after Intel replaced the Pentium 4 with the much cooler running Core Solo and Core Duo chips, which were more suitable for laptops. Apple dropped Intel for ARM for the exact same reason. The Intel chips ran too hot for laptops, and the promised improvements never shipped.
    - majormajor 2y ago
      The G5 in desktops was more competitive but laptops were stuck on G4s that were pretty easy to beat by lots of things in the Windows world by the time of the Intel switch. And Photoshop was largely about vectorized instructions, as I recall, not just general purpose floating point.
      - GeekyBear 2y ago
        Yes, and when it became clear that laptop sales would one day outpace desktop sales, Apple made the Intel switch, despite it meaning they had to downgrade from 64 bit CPUs to 32 bit CPUs until Core2 launched. The Apple ecosystem was most popular in the publishing industry at the time, and most publishing software used floating point math on tower computers with huge cooling systems. Since IBM originally designed the POWER architecture for scientific computing, it makes sense that floating point performance would be what they optimized for.
jki275 2y ago
I went from an i9 MBP to an M1 Max earlier this year. I can't even describe it. Blows my mind.
hcarvalhoalves 2y ago
Last year I bought an M1 Pro used, but the last MPB I had was an early 2015. I just didn't bothered upgrading, in fact the later Intel models were markedly worse (keyboard, battery life, quality control). The Apple Silicon era is going to be the PowerPC prime over again.

mortenjorck 2y ago

Indeed, the $1599 M4 Pro Mac mini beats the current $3999 M2 Ultra Mac Studio on GeekBench 6 multi-core: https://www.macrumors.com/2024/10/31/m4-pro-chip-benchmark-results/ https://www.macrumors.com/2024/10/31/m4-pro-chip-benchmark-r...

philistine 2y ago
Back in the early 90s, when Apple was literally building their first product line with the Mac, they would come out with their second big honking powerhouse Mac: the Macintosh IIx. It blew everything out of the water. Then they would come out with their next budget all-in-one machine. But computing was improving so fast, with prices for components dropping so quickly, that the Macintosh SE/30 ended up as impressive as the Macintosh IIx with a much lower price. That's how the legend of the SE/30 was born, turning it into the best Mac ever for most people. With how fast and impressive the improvements are coming with the M-series processors, it often feels like we're back in the early 90s. I thought the M1 Macbook Air would be the epitome of Apple's processor renaissance, but it sure feels like that was only the beginning. When we look historically at these machines in 20 years, we'll think of a specific machine as the best early Apple Silicon Mac. I don't think that machine is even out yet.
- drcongo 2y ago
  I think that machine is this M1 Pro MBP I'm using right now, and will probably still be using in 20 years.
  - nxobject 2y ago
    I look forward to seeing you at a conference in 20 years' time where we'll both be running Fedora 100 on our M1 MacBook Pros.
    - gessha 2y ago
      I hope the SSDs lasts long enough for you folks (the only thing + money that hold holds be back from snagging one of those)

thomassmith65 2y ago

Does anyone know if this Mac Mini can survive longer than a year? Apple's approach to hardware design doesn't prioritize thermal issues*. In fact, the form factor is why I'm leaning toward taking a pass - I don't want a Mac Mini I would have to replace every 12 months. * or rather, Apple doesn't target low enough temperatures to keep machines healthy beyond warranty

ezfe 2y ago
I'm not sure why you think it would be worse than a MacBook Air which literally has no fan
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- thomassmith65 2y ago
  Are the new MacBook Airs the ones that have throttling issues due to heat?
  - alpaca128 2y ago
    Yes, but you only really encounter that when pushing the CPU to 100% for more than a few minutes. The cooling is objectively terrible, but still easily enough for most users, that's the crazy thing.
    - nox101 2y ago
      maybe? as local LLM/SD etc get more common it might be common to push it. I've been getting my fans to come on and get burning hot quite often lately because of new tech. I get that I'm a geek but with Apple, Google and everyone else trying to run local ML it's only a matter of time.
      - nox101 2y ago
        After posting this I thought of a few possible use cases. They might never come to pass but ... Some tech similar to DLSS might come along that lets streaming services like youtube and netflix to send 1/10th the data and get twice as good an image but require extreme processing on the client. It would certainly be in their interest (less storage, less bandwidth, decompression-upscaling costs pushed to client) Whether that will ever happen I have no idea. I was just trying to think of an example of something that might need lots of compute power at home for the masses. Another could be realtime video modification. People like to stream and facetime. They might like it even more if they could change their appearance more than they already can using realtime ML based image processing. We already have some of that in the various video conferencing / facetime apps but it's possible it could jump up in usage and needed compute power with the right application.

pxmpxm 2y ago

Here's the geekbench link https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/8593555 https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/8593555 How/where are they getting 128gb of ram? I don't see that as an option for any of the pre-orders pages. Still pretty impressive, I get 1217/10097 with dual xeon gold 6136 that doubles as a space heater in the winter.

abhinavk 2y ago
Switch to M4 Max 16-core CPU, it will unlock 64 and 128GB options for memory.
- pxmpxm 2y ago
  Mac minis aren't available with set up - seems only macbook pro?
  - abhinavk 2y ago
    There are no Mac mini SKUs with M4 Max CPUs. Only base M4 and M4 Pro.

djmips 2y ago

Is it crazy? The chip itself is small. I'm not up on the subject but is it unusual? Are we talking power draw and cooling adding greatly to the size? I guess the M4 Pro must have great specs when it comes to running cool.