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So happy with my base M4 purchase for $499 when it released. I even snagged a 1TB replacement drive for $199 a year ago. Feels like I got the last train out.
by jdoe1337halo 1mo ago
So happy with my base M4 purchase for $499 when it released. I even snagged a 1TB replacement drive for $199 a year ago. Feels like I got the last train out.
- insane_dreamer 1mo agoI almost bought one for my kids back then and now seriously regret that I didn't. My son is using my old ~2011 Mac mini with Linux Mint on it. Slow but works.
- Waterluvian 1mo agoI feel that way about my GPU for normal gaming use. Now I’m afraid of it dying on me.
- KronisLV 1mo agoI’m currently hoping that my Intel Arc B580 doesn’t die on me cause even a 5060 Ti 16 GB has reached like 700 EUR price over here. I don’t think the prices will get better anytime soon. Same with my M1 Air for being on the move, even notebooks would be more expensive than they’re worth.
- drob518 1mo agoI’m milking my M1 Air, too. It’s still going strong, and I just can’t justify replacing it. Would love 64GB or more memory, though.
- garbageman 1mo agoI got an essentially free upgrade from an M1 air to an M4 air and let me tell you...there is zero difference in day to day usage. You've got another 5+ years of headroom at least.
- drob518 1mo agoYep, for cpu I’m sure that’s true. It isn’t often that I wish the M1 was faster. But I need more memory. 16 GB was fine five years ago, but it’s getting cramped for me now.
- Atotalnoob 1mo agoConsider underclocking/undervolt it a little, especially if you aren’t using the GPU to its full potential. It will last longer and hopefully the GPU prices will recover in a few years. I hope
- frollogaston 1mo agoI don't really care about gaming, but there's a PC I got for free a while back with a 2060ti that overheats if I don't peg the fans at 100% and keep the case open. Would be nice if that holds on.
- trq01758 1mo agoThis problem is solvable with a screwdriver, a bit of isopropyl alcohol, a cloth, new thermal paste and some time.
- frollogaston 1mo agoProbably, but I'd rather not mess with it unless it stops working as-is. I've done CPU re-pasting before but not GPU.
- paulcole 1mo ago[flagged]
- liquicity 1mo agoDownvotes are probably because it's obvious they are talking about the pricing, nothing to do with quality.
- timpera 1mo agoSame thing for me! Got it with the education discount when it came out in 2024 and, although I've been pretty disappointed with macOS, it's crazy to see that the price increased by $300 in less than 2 years, with no sign of the price increases slowing down. What will happen once people are priced out of buying computers? I find this worrying.
- iamacyborg 1mo ago> What will happen once people are priced out of buying computers? I find this worrying. I’m sure some kind capitalist will be happy to rent them a thin client linked to a computer in the cloud.
- datakan 1mo agoApple is already leasing phones/computers..........
- AISnakeOil 1mo agoYeah the era of the personal computer is over. Companies will prioritize components for cloud computing and lease us thin clients...
- WesleyJohnson 1mo agoMy take: this was done to pull consumers back into the cycle of upgrading to every new release. iPhones already do so much more than most people need. With the RAM price hikes, even though there was an influx of sales (according to a store rep) initially, I think Apple was expected a significant decline; people just choosing to stick with their current device to avoid paying the premium. Leasing not only allows Apple to keep "selling" people new devices, it will also mostly like accelerate the second-hand sales and resource recycling arms of the business. Consumers will be more willing to upgrade sooner and stay in perpetual payments vs having to buy out the device at lease end - and Apple gets back newer devices where the recycled tech is arguably more valuable.
- brightball 1mo ago
- dawnerd 1mo agoI wish I picked one up last fall when the stores were trying to clear them out. Now you can’t even buy them in person.
- rafaelmn 1mo agoI'm kind of lost on what to do with it. I have better workstation PCs, and I couldn't find a good way to turn it into a media center - it would be a great living room PC - but couldn't find a BT remote friendly solution last time I checked. Anyone has a solution for this ? I don't want to be using mouse/keyboard every time I sit on the couch - something that would let me stream something like jellyfin fullscreen with a remote ?
- vortep 1mo agoI recommend a combined keyboard+trackpad device. Compact, fully featured.
- finaard 1mo agoThere are various "air mouse" variants that properly work with MacOS as well. I have one with some media/navigation keys on the front, and a tiny keyboard on the back - kodi I can navigate just with the navigation keys, and if I want to do a bit more (but not get out the proper keyboard) I just flip it around, and can do that as well.
- pama 1mo ago> I'm kind of lost on what to do with it. Personal assistant (e.g. openclaw) in the mac ecosystem. You need external models to power it ofc, but cool to have all the Apple integration and local network in your assistant. The claw can be addressed in multiple ways and can command your local hardware if you so wish.
- throwaway85825 1mo agoYou can buy a remote sized kb/mouse for 10$.
- Gigachad 1mo agoSell it. Sounds like you have too many computers already and didn't need it.
- dottrap 1mo agoMaybe try a Steam Controller? I've used the OG one. I think the device itself registers as a keyboard. Its trackpad controls the mouse cursor and the triggers act as the various mouse clicks. If you are running Steam in the background, one of the buttons triggers an HUD keyboard, where the left trackpad types keys on the left side of the keyboard and the right trackpad for the right side of the keyboard. My guess is the new controller works the same way. Also, some media center software, such as Kodi, have gamepad support. So a gamepad will feel completely natural to control it without having to resort to using the mouse and HUD keyboard.
- Jhyrachy 1mo agoI was not in need of a mac mini then and I’m not in need now, but damn I hope my laptop will last a long time because FML the best price/performance minipc of the last few years got wrecked and the entire market is in shambles
- aorth 1mo agoMy personal laptop is a 2018 ThinkPad Carbon X1 Gen 6. It's eight years old now. Still running Linux pretty well, but I really need to figure out what to do for a replacement sooner than later...
- TheAtomic 1mo agoThe Framework laptop looks interesting
- NateEag 1mo agoMy 13" Framework is about four years old and is still plugging along fine. I may need to replace some parts at some point, but this far it's not been necessary. I'd love to have the 16", which didn't exist when I bought the 13", but thanks to Altman, hardware prices are insane these days. :/
- BobbyJo 1mo agoI got a 32gb M4 macbook air with the lower CPU core count, right before things got stupid. Can't even buy that skew now.
- frollogaston 1mo agoThe $750 Amazon special M4 Air was also insanely good.
- frollogaston 1mo agoWait, their website only shows preorders for M6 or M5 Pro, and they have nothing about the M4. So do they currently have zero Mac minis in stock?
- timpera 1mo agoYes. I looked just two days ago to purchase a M4 Mac mini (I had no idea they would refresh it), and estimated delivery times were '5-6 weeks', with the highest RAM configs unavailable. Other retailers still have some in stock though.
- rainsford 1mo agoI know it's at least a little irrational, but I am indescribably angry with the pricing trajectory of personal computing. I'm not all that young and for pretty much all my life the computers you as a random person could buy have consistently become massively more performant and massively cheaper over time. Even when the exponential performance increases started to taper off, every few years you could buy or build a new computer that was either cheaper or faster than the one you already had. That trend of the last several decades has been completely destroyed in the last year or so. Sure you can buy a new computer that might be slightly better than one a few years old, but it will be significantly more expensive to the point where an upgrade is almost certainly not worth it unless money is no object. Even replacing a computer from the pre-AI era would be virtually impossible at anywhere near what it cost you to buy it new unless it was verging on truly ancient by computer standards. Computers have always been a counterpoint to inflation everywhere else, but now that seems to be not only no longer true, but computer costs are inflating significantly worse than other goods. I find myself increasingly in favor of the movement against data centers. Not because I think data centers are bad on their own, but because of the hording of computing resources they represent and the impact that has on people trying to buy any sort of computing device for their personal use. The PC I built 2 years ago is basically irreplaceable at anywhere near the price I paid for it. That's a truly unacceptable state of affairs in personal computing.
- api 1mo agoIsn’t this just inflation? We are in a highly inflationary environment. Everything is going up in nominal terms.
- KennyBlanken 1mo agoInflation is a few percent a year roughly. Prices for hardware have skyrocketed. Ram has jumped anywhere from 2-4x in cost. NVMe drives are still going for 2-3x what they cost about 2 years ago. Just go look at one of the amazon price trackers to see how bad it is. TSMC, plus flash and memory manufacturers with their own facilities, have dramatically cut production of almost anything that isn't in demand for AI, plus Macs were just about the only way to get more than 16GB of 'VRAM' without spending multiple thousands of dollars, so Mac Minis and Studios with more than about 24GB of ram have been under months-long backorders, which is unprecedented. Tim Apple made is name in supply chain logistics. Even he can't logistic his way out of this. Making things worse, the RAM that Macs use is really fast stuff, nearly the speed of high end desktop GPUs. Supply for anything that isn't exactly what NVIDIA, Meta, OpenAI, Anthropic, and MS want has pretty much evaporated. And even that stuff has skyrocketed in cost because, essentially, the race has turned into who can hoard the most of TSMC's and NVIDIA's production capacity in a particular year. The pathetic thing is that it isn't even actual purchases in some cases. In some cases, it's OpenAI or Anthropic merely "promising" they will buy X% of a memory manufacturer's capacity. I can't wait for all of this to come crashing down.For all this hardware that is useless for anything else because of its density and power consumption - to absolutely crater in price and become e-waste.