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I recently bought a Mac mini M4 16 GB - mostly to run Immich. I assumed I needed a Linux box. After a lot of researched I was quite surprised that the mac was t

I recently bought a Mac mini M4 16 GB - mostly to run Immich. I assumed I needed a Linux box. After a lot of researched I was quite surprised that the mac was the cheapest option. So not always an Apple tax.

ramesh31 3mo ago
>" After a lot of researched I was quite surprised that the mac was the cheapest option. So not always an Apple tax." Apple has always been the most cost effective choice for the value you get going all the way back to the Apple II, it's just that the floor of that cost has always been high. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a just a fanboy one way or the other.
- Abishek_Muthian 3mo ago
  That's true only for the entry level macs. My M4 Mac Mini has the best Performance/value. But my workstation laptop with 32 cores, 96GB DDR5, Nvidia GPU costs lesser than Macs with lesser performance; not to mention I upgraded the RAM post purchase.
  - nok22kon 3mo ago
    RAM upgrade possibility has a downside though - very low RAM bandwidth, which is highly relevant today if you want to run local LLMs
  - nottorp 3mo ago
    It really depends what you factor in as value, because wintel laptops like you described tend to require noise canceling headphones when working on them.
    - Abishek_Muthian 3mo ago
      True, can't beat current Apple chips on power efficiency.
- oblio 3mo ago
  Hmmm, not always. Between at least 1998 and 2005, PCs were just better. Better CPUs.
- ProZsolt 3mo ago
  If you're happy with the base model, then Apple has a great value/price ratio, but there's nothing below it and any upgrade is really bad value for the money.
realusername 3mo ago
> After a lot of researched I was quite surprised that the mac was the cheapest option For Immich, the cheapest option will either be a NAS or a used laptop depending on the amount of data you need, I wouldn't buy a mac for that.
- Mashimo 3mo ago
  Maybe he wants really fast or large AI models inside immich? (I just run the defaults on my CPU, works for me)
  - realusername 3mo ago
    I'm not sure why you would need large AI models for Immich, the face detection is pretty cheap and will run on 10 year old hardware without a blip. I think the decision comes primarily on how much data you would like to store for Immich, if you want to go cheaply, a 100 bucks used laptop will do the job, if you have too much data, a NAS will be more suitable (and you are certainly not going to get a mac where you can plug multiple internal hard drives for the price of a NAS)
    - Mashimo 3mo ago
      Not for faces, but the CLIP model for the context search https://docs.immich.app/features/searching/ https://docs.immich.app/features/searching/ That needs to be in (v)ram for searches.
      - realusername 3mo ago
        That can be yeah but personally I wouldn't pay 3 times the amount you would pay normally just for that feature in particular.
        Mashimo 3mo ago
        Yeah, me neither. Fast enough for me on CPU.

ramesh31 3mo ago

>" After a lot of researched I was quite surprised that the mac was the cheapest option. So not always an Apple tax." Apple has always been the most cost effective choice for the value you get going all the way back to the Apple II, it's just that the floor of that cost has always been high. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a just a fanboy one way or the other.

Abishek_Muthian 3mo ago
That's true only for the entry level macs. My M4 Mac Mini has the best Performance/value. But my workstation laptop with 32 cores, 96GB DDR5, Nvidia GPU costs lesser than Macs with lesser performance; not to mention I upgraded the RAM post purchase.
- nok22kon 3mo ago
  RAM upgrade possibility has a downside though - very low RAM bandwidth, which is highly relevant today if you want to run local LLMs
- nottorp 3mo ago
  It really depends what you factor in as value, because wintel laptops like you described tend to require noise canceling headphones when working on them.
  - Abishek_Muthian 3mo ago
    True, can't beat current Apple chips on power efficiency.
oblio 3mo ago
Hmmm, not always. Between at least 1998 and 2005, PCs were just better. Better CPUs.
ProZsolt 3mo ago
If you're happy with the base model, then Apple has a great value/price ratio, but there's nothing below it and any upgrade is really bad value for the money.

realusername 3mo ago

> After a lot of researched I was quite surprised that the mac was the cheapest option For Immich, the cheapest option will either be a NAS or a used laptop depending on the amount of data you need, I wouldn't buy a mac for that.

Mashimo 3mo ago
Maybe he wants really fast or large AI models inside immich? (I just run the defaults on my CPU, works for me)
- realusername 3mo ago
  I'm not sure why you would need large AI models for Immich, the face detection is pretty cheap and will run on 10 year old hardware without a blip. I think the decision comes primarily on how much data you would like to store for Immich, if you want to go cheaply, a 100 bucks used laptop will do the job, if you have too much data, a NAS will be more suitable (and you are certainly not going to get a mac where you can plug multiple internal hard drives for the price of a NAS)
  - Mashimo 3mo ago
    Not for faces, but the CLIP model for the context search https://docs.immich.app/features/searching/ https://docs.immich.app/features/searching/ That needs to be in (v)ram for searches.
    - realusername 3mo ago
      That can be yeah but personally I wouldn't pay 3 times the amount you would pay normally just for that feature in particular.
      - Mashimo 3mo ago
        Yeah, me neither. Fast enough for me on CPU.