Ye Macce Threade

[Knuckledragger]

Everyone's favorite high-pitched, hyperactive, hypoglycemic, hyperborean tech dropper seems to quite like base M4 Mini:

 

[MexicanDragon]

I'm looking at going back to Android in the near future, I do belieb, so this came at a good time... since we're talking about our second favorite Canadian.

[Knuckledragger]

M4 Mini finally arrived today.  It only took AMZN a month to ship it. I've had a longstanding tradition of naming my Mac Minis (now 4 in number) after film directors.  Previous machines were Kubrick, Fellini and Ulmer.  The M4 is Kurosawa.

 

I'd say I forgot how much of a PITA it is to set up a new machine, but that'd be a lie.  I remember, and it always is one.  Google is reasonably painless.  Still haven't gotten my password manage up and running yet.  Steam initially locked up and refused to play nice, but after a force quit and restart it acted fine.  I have no real interest on gaming on this machine but I figured I'd give it a bash.  Tomb Raider 2013 works just fine and looks quite good.  It's not really my kind of game (I got it free with the GPU I bought in late '13 and played it for 38 minutes) but trying out again it seems ...fine.  The M4 plays it at 1080p constantly above 120FPS. 

The real headaches will be slsk, Transmission (torrent client), inheriting my Backblaze backup state and ...actually setting up Kurosawa s a server to replace Fellini.  I have to get my two Windows boxes to play nice with it as well.  This process should take well into next year.

[Knuckledragger]

"We have iMac at home."  A temporary system I cobbled together for my (sainted, octogenarian) mother from spare parts: a 2012 Mac Mini, 1920x1200 Lenovo monitor of about the same age), a Macally compact keyboard and a Microsoft Trackball Explorer that's now 25 years old and a bit of a collector's item.  It all works just fine.  This photo is actually a little out of date.  I've since replaced the trackball with a conventional mouse (mum did not like the trackball at all), added USB speakers, a webcam and a printer.  The Lenovo is actually a really good panel.  16x10 monitors were never really consumer products.  It's only 60Hz, but it's LED backlit and its color accuracy out of the box blows away every non-Apple display I've ever owned.  There's a reason I've hung on to it for over a decade now.   The Mini is an interesting story in that I bought it refurb'd from OWC and it was supposed to be a 2014 model.  They sent me a 2012 and by the time I figured it out, the return window had long closed.  This is only one of many examples of the precipitous drop in quality OWC has exhibited over the last decade.  Things are so bad that I'm scuttling my plans to buy one of their 8 bay enclosures because I just don't trust them.  I'm now looking at an equivalent (and cheaper) model made by by QNAP.

Also, observation: The base model M4 Mini is such a good deal, it utterly kneecaps the refurb'd market and does a lot of damage to the used one.  I spent several hours a few nights ago looking at the Minis for sale on various sites (including Apple's own) and nothing comes close to the price/performance of the base M4.

[Dusty Chalk]

https://www.apple.com/iphone-16e/

[Knuckledragger]

Today I did a significant update to "We have iMac at home."  Today at Chicken Alley I picked up a used Apple Thunderbolt display for $60.  It was pretty grimy and the power cord (which is permanently attached, because AAPL) showed signs of being yanked on.  Of course, the display didn't work at all, but it served to remind me that I already had one.  It's a slightly different model, I got it for $25(!) and it happens to work fully.  I spent an hour removing the monitor, speakers, webcam and USB hub (the Thunderbolt Display serves all of these functions) and got it working with the 2012 Mini.  

They work together seamlessly.  That Macally mini keyboard is awful.  Mum figured out something like 1/3 of the keys don't work properly with shift.  That's not a "bad keys" issue, it's "something is wrong with the chipset" one.  I've been shopping for decent third party Mac keyboards that are small sized and not crap.  The market is terrible.  I don't want crazy clicky Red switches.  I don't want to pay over $300 (Seriously, look at the price of an HHK these days.)  Keychron makes a lot of great models, and they are Al.. Out. Of. Stock.  Unless I want a $275 Bluetooth one. 

[Knuckledragger]

Apple unveils new Mac Studio, the most powerful Mac ever, featuring M4 Max and new M3 Ultra.

M3 Ultra maxed out:
Apple M3 Ultra chip with 32-core CPU, 80‑core GPU, 32-core Neural Engine
512GB unified memory*
16TB SSD storage
$14099 before tax.

Spoiler

*That's almost enough RAM for a mathematical modem of Brent's cranium.

 

[Knuckledragger]

So it turns out that this thing was a complete disaster.  The entire thing is plastic, including the drive sleds, rails and all mounting hardware.  The decidedly cheap MediaSonic ProBox enclosures I bought years ago are far more better built.  With that said, I'd be willing ti ignore the plastic nature of the QNAP here if it actually worked.  It (not so) randomly disconnected all 8 drives three times in less than day.  Two were while I was doing an rsync.  That could be catastrophic.  A friend of mine suspected it was a power issue.  I've got the two MediaSonic units back in action.  They have loud and annoying cooling fans as well as their police car like strobes:

Seriously look at this.  Can you imagine having TWO of these in your bedroom?  I covered the LED bars on both units with electrical tape.  As much as I mock the MediaSonics, they have been extremely reliable, working 24/7 for years on end.  Zero disconnects as well.

I'm now looking at two other options.  One model went up in price by 20% since yesterday (thanks, Donny!) and the other is ...the OWC Thunderbay 8 I probably should have gotten in the first place.  (To be fair to me, OWC is now owned by some vulture capital firm and their reputation has tanked in the last however many years.)

[Hopstretch]

Ooh whee, this judge is MAD! 

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.364265/gov.uscourts.cand.364265.1508.0_2.pdf

Not a lawyer, but I reckon the Apple VP of Finance may be headed for some jail time?

[Grahame]

 

"AI" sorry "Apple Intelligence" count over / under ?

Ironic , given their recent paper on the limits of LLM's / AI
https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/illusion-of-thinking

TLDR

https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/682693/apples-new-research-paper-says-ai-reasoning-isnt-all-its-cracked-up-to-be

Ask AI to summarize paper on AI?, sure!

https://www.perplexity.ai/search/summarize-the-following-articl-TFncTlcfTKSKzr_O59OjNQ#0

 

[Grahame]

[blessingx]

These were the big announcements according to Apple.  

Remember when these were cool?  

[TMoney]

iPad stuff seems long overdue. Now we just need to be able to run desktop apps and I can ditch my old MacBook. 
 

The rest of it seems mostly like a design and polish year which, honestly after the AI debacle, is fine by me.

[Grahame]

if you want a sarcastic passive aggressive summary of the the changes the first 6 minutes of this may fit the bill

 

 

[Grahame]

Or a sarcastic techy perspective?

 

 

[shellylh]

Just purchased a MacBook Air M4 24GB 512GB to replace my 2020 MacBook Pro M1 8GB RAM 256GB.  It'll be nice to have more RAM.  

[Pars]

If anyone was considering buying an M4 Mac Mini, you might want to reconsider. Read a poor experience/review of this on diyaudio, from a user who has an M2 Mini which he has been very pleased with (as am I of my M2 Mini). Here is the thread:

https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/macmini-m4-is-it-still-of-known-apple-quality.426147/

[morphsci]

Wow that was overly dramatic and just plain stupid. Please, before you post stupid bullshit, learn to use the interwebz. (Directed at the poster of the link Pars posted, not Chris)

[Knuckledragger]

Things have been so chaotic recently that I'm not sure I mentioned this or not: My M1 lappy had a major problem.  First one of the TB ports stopped working, then the keyboard began to fail.  I lost use of left arrow key, which was a nightmare.  I am constantly using arrow keys to highlight text.  I began to get the "MacOS doesn't recognize this keyboard" messages ...on a laptop.

I had the option to renew my AppleCare this past  February and didn't.  Big mistake.  It cost me three times that to get this machine fixed.  With that said, when one gives APPL nine hundred fucking dollars, they really deliver.  They sent me a super neat box to ship it out and got the machine back to me within 5 business days.

Here's the punchline.  It's an entirely/mostly new machine with my SSD in it.  I am on this laptop more or less constantly.  The only objects I own where I know the nicks and scratches better are things like my Canon EF 50mm F/1.8 Mk I that I've had for 20 years.

Apple is a weird as shit company and I could write a book about them.  It'd be titled "Why Apple Sucks Balls, But I Swear On Steve Jobs' Smug Grin, Windows And Android Are Worse At Every Fucking Turn."

[HiWire]

I have to agree.

There are lots of things wrong with Apple (and not just from 2025), but when things are working, Macs can be brilliant.

I've been contemplating the upcoming Window 10 shutdown with some trepidation - Microsoft gave users a lifeline with an extra year of support, using a Microsoft account (and their Backup cloud service), but that's a deal with the devil, where you hand them all your data. What could possibly go wrong?

I spent nearly half an hour looking at Microsoft Edge browser settings and I think it is sending a ton of private data to Microsoft. Many of the settings are extremely disturbing - it is using some kind of AI to "help" write your text and "accelerate" your browsing. Clearing your cache and cookies won't work any more, from what I can tell - I think it is retaining more information elsewhere, both on your system and in the Microsoft cloud.

Windows 11 has been getting more and more scary, with Microsoft ramming Copilot, OneDrive, Teams and other stuff users don't want into the operating system along with new terrifying bugs and increasing surveillance with every update. You can attempt to keep abreast of all the problems - PCWorld does a good job documenting the carnage:

https://www.pcworld.com/windows/news

Google just forced Gemini AI on Android users - you have to opt out if you don't want Gemini sending messages, initiating phone calls or setting timers on your behalf. They're also cutting battery power to the Pixel 6a phone battery. It's all sounding really dystopian.

On the Linux side, things are slowly getting better. It's still an arcane system for non-nerds, but each year the mainstream distros get easier to install and run for newbies. I wouldn't recommend stepping into Linux for non-hobbyists - I've installed Ubuntu and it's been mostly OK but you still need to know what you're doing and avoid running a new update version for over half a year. I was able to find software equivalents for many popular Windows and macOS apps, but I think Linux evangelists are misguided when they claim that it's a suitable desktop system for mainstream users.

Going back to Apple - it's apparent that they have a lot of strengths as a vertically-integrated company with a well-developed ecosystem, but the high price of their hardware and relatively small market share can cause problems for home and small business customers. The sad tale Pars posted above about the M4 Mac Mini could be a warning sign.

Edited Friday at 11:23 PM by HiWire

[grawk]

I don’t get the “Apple is expensive” rhetoric. They’re comparable in price and have better performance and features than other first tier manufacturers. 

[Knuckledragger]

The base model M4 Mini is basically the best deal in computing right now.  It's so good that it has more or less killed the used Mac market.  Except for a few exotics, it's difficult to sell Intel based Macs at all.  I'm seeing them pile up on the MV Stuff 4 Sale group.  No one is selling Apple Silicon models.

[HiWire]

It doesn't help that some of the late-model Intel Macs were serious dogs... I looked at an ailing 2017 MacBook (rebooted itself over and over) and they seem to be notorious for logic board failures. The 2019 16" MacBook Pro had a self-destructing SSD interface that fried data... not the kind of quality you'd want for spending $4,000 (and the butterfly-switch keyboards had enough problems that I had to bring a few into service).

AppleCare is a quandary - it's great if you can afford it, but it's so expensive that it's difficult to justify.

The current lineup is great for performance and battery life and the Mac Mini is one of the few inexpensive products. I think the base M4 is enough power for the vast majority of users - just get enough memory and storage for your needs.