5 ms·

He's comparing to a studio when he should compare to the mini for this performance. They are almost the same price at a 64gb RAM + 500gb storage config (CAD).

He's comparing to a studio when he should compare to the mini for this performance. They are almost the same price at a 64gb RAM + 500gb storage config (CAD). - Framework, Max+ 64GB: $2,861.16 - Apple Mini M4 Pro, 64GB: $2,899.00 Apple does charge way too much for integrated storage, but Apple is only a 25% premium at 2TB not double (if you compare to the mini instead of the studio). Plug in a NVMe SSD if you're building an Apple desktop.

dijit 1y ago
Not to defend Apple here, but it's also a bit apples to oranges (heh) because the power consumption is not easily comparable. I would hazard a guess and say: at that spec, if you're looking at 1Y TCO, the Apple could easily be cost competitive performance per dollar. Since they're in spitting distance of each other, just get the one you're most comfortable with. Personally I prefer Linux and I'm really happy that non-Apple machines are starting to get closer to the same efficiency and performance!
- ramesh31 1y ago
  You have to account for resale when it comes to TCO. Resale value for a non-Apple PC is essentially zero - i.e. no one will buy it, or you'll get pennies on the dollar if they do. Whereas there's a strong market for used Apple hardware, and you can easily recover 50% or more.
  - lucb1e 1y ago
    So you recover what you spent extra, per the article?
  - Aurornis 1y ago
    This is an exaggeration, or you're not comparing apples to apples. The used market for high performance PC gear is quite efficient. You're not going to get a high-end CPU or GPU from the past several years for pennies on the dollar. Likewise, the resale market for Apple products doesn't guarantee 50% or more unless you're only looking at resale value of very new hardware. For example, you can pick up an M1 Max MacBook Pro (not that old) for closer to 1/3 of the original price.
  - dismalaf 1y ago
    Do people actually buy used computers and sell them? Like, apart from graphics cards... Seems odd to me. Most computers I've ever had last for ~10 years, at which point resale value is definitely zero...
    - lucb1e 1y ago
      Similar with phones and tablets: yes, people do that, but it's not the common case. I've only ever sold computing devices within the first month of ownership, after realising I made a mistake in purchasing it (not a broken device, but just not meeting my needs), but on second-hand sites you can also see various people offering them up after 1 or 2 years because they want something shinier and the old system still has value. I've bought my current phone from someone like that, and as a student I also bought such a laptop
    - dijit 1y ago
      yeah, I buy preowned laptops fairly often to be fair.
    - prmoustache 1y ago
      I don't sell them but I buy exclusively used computers. All of them coming from the refurbishing market of business computers. From a purely financial perspective buying a computer or vehicle brand new is a very bad idea.
- Aurornis 1y ago
  > I would hazard a guess and say: at that spec, if you're looking at 1Y TCO, the Apple could easily be cost competitive performance per dollar. The two systems aren't that different in power consumption. The Strix Halo part has a 55W default TDP but I would assume Framework customized it to be higher. A comparable M4 Pro Mac Mini can easily pull 80W during an AI workload. Apple has a slight edge in power efficiency, but it's not going to make a massive difference.
- ajross 1y ago
  > if you're looking at 1Y TCO, the Apple could easily be cost competitive performance per dollar. Only if you're buying artesinal single source electricity sustainably sourced from trained dolphins. Average US electrical power is $.18/kWh per google. Figure the desktop draws 300W continuous (which it almost certainly can't), and that's 0.3 kW * 24 hr/day * 365.2425 days/yr == $473/year. So even if the mac was completely free you'd be looking at crossover in 5 years, or longer than the expected life of the device.
  - lucb1e 1y ago
    A device with no moving parts, only 5 years of expected life?! I understand if you say that high-performance users will want a newer system after 5 years, but I'd be very surprised if this 64GB RAM machine doesn't suffice for 98% of people, including those who want to play then-common games at default settings Good to have some concrete figures nonetheless of course, it's always useful as a starting point
    - ajross 1y ago
      First: it's not five years. It's five years if you posit that macs are magic and use no energy[1]. In practice they're 40-70% the consumption of a competing desktop (depends on usage and specific model, yada yada yada). So figure a few decades or thereabouts. But even so: I'm not sure I know a single new-device Apple customer who has a single unit older than five years. The comment about power implied that you'd make up the big Mac price tag on power savings, and no, you won't, not nearly, before you hawk it on eBay to buy another. [1] And also that you posit that the device is in a compute farm or something and pumped at full load 24/7. Average consumption for real development hardware (that spends 60% of its life in suspend and 90% of the remainder in idle) is much, much, much closer to zero than it is to 300W!
      - prmoustache 1y ago
        Also judging from the state of 5 and 10y old mac computers on the second hand market, you quickly realize they aren't very reliable machines.
- michelsedgh 1y ago
  Also the size difference
arp242 1y ago
Framework also charges quite a surplus on the SSD. For example "WD_BLACK SN7100 NVMe 2TB" is €229, but a more typical price is around ~€140, so that's about €90 extra. Don't know how that compares to Apple.
- mananaysiempre 1y ago
  Framework absolutely does fleece you on the SSD, so don’t buy SSDs from them if you’re price-sensitive. But compared to Apple it’s nowhere close: per Apple’s website, upgrading a current Mac Mini or Mac Studio from 512 GB to 2 TB costs $600. You can buy a WD_BLACK SN850X 8TB for that much money (or a WD_BLACK SN8100 4TB and still have a quarter of it left over, if you really want PCIe 5.0, but there’s no point at the moment).
  - arp242 1y ago
    I checked and it's €750 extra to get a 2TB here in Ireland (just to compare apples with apples wrt. Framework Desktop). Wahahaha, this is the most ridiculous thing I've seen.
zamadatix 1y ago
One note is the Mac Mini surprisingly has 3rd party SSD upgrades now as well. Both gauge the storage price a bit, so probably best to just go 3rd party for both unless you're going to stick with the base storage.
tracker1 1y ago
I'm not sure where you got $2861 for the Max+ Framework 64gb, unless you put two massively larger drives than the Mac Mini comes with... I got $2100 for the Max+ 64gb with the faster 2tb drive option. +400 to go to 128gb ram.
OldfieldFund 1y ago
Btw, you can buy a MacBook Pro Max M1 16" 64GB SoC RAM, 1TB SSD in excellent condition, with warranty, refurbished by Amazon with a brand new battery for $1,500 right now. Corporations are switching laptops on a 3-year cycle. Next year, there will be a flood of M2s, in 2 years, M3s, 3 years, M4s, nada, nada.

dijit 1y ago

Not to defend Apple here, but it's also a bit apples to oranges (heh) because the power consumption is not easily comparable. I would hazard a guess and say: at that spec, if you're looking at 1Y TCO, the Apple could easily be cost competitive performance per dollar. Since they're in spitting distance of each other, just get the one you're most comfortable with. Personally I prefer Linux and I'm really happy that non-Apple machines are starting to get closer to the same efficiency and performance!

ramesh31 1y ago
You have to account for resale when it comes to TCO. Resale value for a non-Apple PC is essentially zero - i.e. no one will buy it, or you'll get pennies on the dollar if they do. Whereas there's a strong market for used Apple hardware, and you can easily recover 50% or more.
- lucb1e 1y ago
  So you recover what you spent extra, per the article?
- Aurornis 1y ago
  This is an exaggeration, or you're not comparing apples to apples. The used market for high performance PC gear is quite efficient. You're not going to get a high-end CPU or GPU from the past several years for pennies on the dollar. Likewise, the resale market for Apple products doesn't guarantee 50% or more unless you're only looking at resale value of very new hardware. For example, you can pick up an M1 Max MacBook Pro (not that old) for closer to 1/3 of the original price.
- dismalaf 1y ago
  Do people actually buy used computers and sell them? Like, apart from graphics cards... Seems odd to me. Most computers I've ever had last for ~10 years, at which point resale value is definitely zero...
  - lucb1e 1y ago
    Similar with phones and tablets: yes, people do that, but it's not the common case. I've only ever sold computing devices within the first month of ownership, after realising I made a mistake in purchasing it (not a broken device, but just not meeting my needs), but on second-hand sites you can also see various people offering them up after 1 or 2 years because they want something shinier and the old system still has value. I've bought my current phone from someone like that, and as a student I also bought such a laptop
  - dijit 1y ago
    yeah, I buy preowned laptops fairly often to be fair.
  - prmoustache 1y ago
    I don't sell them but I buy exclusively used computers. All of them coming from the refurbishing market of business computers. From a purely financial perspective buying a computer or vehicle brand new is a very bad idea.
Aurornis 1y ago
> I would hazard a guess and say: at that spec, if you're looking at 1Y TCO, the Apple could easily be cost competitive performance per dollar. The two systems aren't that different in power consumption. The Strix Halo part has a 55W default TDP but I would assume Framework customized it to be higher. A comparable M4 Pro Mac Mini can easily pull 80W during an AI workload. Apple has a slight edge in power efficiency, but it's not going to make a massive difference.
ajross 1y ago
> if you're looking at 1Y TCO, the Apple could easily be cost competitive performance per dollar. Only if you're buying artesinal single source electricity sustainably sourced from trained dolphins. Average US electrical power is $.18/kWh per google. Figure the desktop draws 300W continuous (which it almost certainly can't), and that's 0.3 kW * 24 hr/day * 365.2425 days/yr == $473/year. So even if the mac was completely free you'd be looking at crossover in 5 years, or longer than the expected life of the device.
- lucb1e 1y ago
  A device with no moving parts, only 5 years of expected life?! I understand if you say that high-performance users will want a newer system after 5 years, but I'd be very surprised if this 64GB RAM machine doesn't suffice for 98% of people, including those who want to play then-common games at default settings Good to have some concrete figures nonetheless of course, it's always useful as a starting point
  - ajross 1y ago
    First: it's not five years. It's five years if you posit that macs are magic and use no energy[1]. In practice they're 40-70% the consumption of a competing desktop (depends on usage and specific model, yada yada yada). So figure a few decades or thereabouts. But even so: I'm not sure I know a single new-device Apple customer who has a single unit older than five years. The comment about power implied that you'd make up the big Mac price tag on power savings, and no, you won't, not nearly, before you hawk it on eBay to buy another. [1] And also that you posit that the device is in a compute farm or something and pumped at full load 24/7. Average consumption for real development hardware (that spends 60% of its life in suspend and 90% of the remainder in idle) is much, much, much closer to zero than it is to 300W!
    - prmoustache 1y ago
      Also judging from the state of 5 and 10y old mac computers on the second hand market, you quickly realize they aren't very reliable machines.
michelsedgh 1y ago
Also the size difference

arp242 1y ago

Framework also charges quite a surplus on the SSD. For example "WD_BLACK SN7100 NVMe 2TB" is €229, but a more typical price is around ~€140, so that's about €90 extra. Don't know how that compares to Apple.

mananaysiempre 1y ago
Framework absolutely does fleece you on the SSD, so don’t buy SSDs from them if you’re price-sensitive. But compared to Apple it’s nowhere close: per Apple’s website, upgrading a current Mac Mini or Mac Studio from 512 GB to 2 TB costs $600. You can buy a WD_BLACK SN850X 8TB for that much money (or a WD_BLACK SN8100 4TB and still have a quarter of it left over, if you really want PCIe 5.0, but there’s no point at the moment).
- arp242 1y ago
  I checked and it's €750 extra to get a 2TB here in Ireland (just to compare apples with apples wrt. Framework Desktop). Wahahaha, this is the most ridiculous thing I've seen.

zamadatix 1y ago

One note is the Mac Mini surprisingly has 3rd party SSD upgrades now as well. Both gauge the storage price a bit, so probably best to just go 3rd party for both unless you're going to stick with the base storage.

tracker1 1y ago

I'm not sure where you got $2861 for the Max+ Framework 64gb, unless you put two massively larger drives than the Mac Mini comes with... I got $2100 for the Max+ 64gb with the faster 2tb drive option. +400 to go to 128gb ram.

OldfieldFund 1y ago

Btw, you can buy a MacBook Pro Max M1 16" 64GB SoC RAM, 1TB SSD in excellent condition, with warranty, refurbished by Amazon with a brand new battery for $1,500 right now. Corporations are switching laptops on a 3-year cycle. Next year, there will be a flood of M2s, in 2 years, M3s, 3 years, M4s, nada, nada.