Comment by bsdpufferfish
3 months ago
Additional reasons:
- there is less alternative hardware I want to use. I want Apple Silicon processors, materials, and there just isn't much high quality competition.
- Because of inflation the Apple premium isn't as high as it used to be. You get a Mac mini or MacBook Air at very competitive prices (RAM is still painful).
- Linux Desktop software is more competitive and fills some of the roles that needed macOS before.
RAM and storage are both incredibly painful.
$200 to add 8GB RAM to the base 8GB (16GB total).
$400 to add 16GB RAM to the base (24GB total).
$200 to add 256GB storage to the base 256GB (512GB total).
$400 to add 768GB storage to the base 256GB (1TB total).
$800 to add 1768GB storage to the base 256GB (2TB total).
For comparison, a faster 2TB nvme PCIE4 SSD is a bit over $100.
Right, but you can add storage without soldering.
You can, but as someone who is currently juggling external SSDs to try to get a video project finished, I can tell you that you don’t want to.
Hence me yesterday looking at the 4TB upgrade price on the M3 MBP. Hoooooooly cow. I mean I’ll almost certainly get it on my next upgrade, but wow.
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Via USB/Thunderbolt or SD card you can. But you can't upgrade or replace your SSD in an Apple Silicon MacBook.
You can't add nvme that get the nvme level of performance.
Especially not at the level we'd be used to in any other serious isecase (eg. Split PCIe lanes into x4 and have a bunch of fast storage)
Apple silicon is unfortunately still at a premium. I was shopping around for used M1 mac minis and a 16gb model (minimum acceptable imo) was like $500-600 second hand. You can get an 8th or 9th gen off lease computer for like $100-200 that is close enough to the m1, sometimes with 16gb already in there with the option to add in 128gb, multiple drive bays, pcie, etc.
> I was shopping around for used M1 mac minis and a 16gb model (minimum acceptable imo) was like $500-600 second hand.
That's because a M1 mini with 16gb still has a lot of utility in it that hasn't depreciated significantly in the 2 years since it's been released. My M1 (8gb) is still happily sitting in a media consumption part of my day and is not showing any signs of age. I would be surprised if, for the role that it has, it becomes outdated in another 2 or 3 years... and wouldn't be surprised if it lasts another 2 or 3 beyond that.
If you spent $700 on it in 2020 at release, it is still working as well as it did on the day you bought it.
You may be seeing the premium from when it was bought being attached to the current used price - and there are less expensive ones available now - but the device, for what it was when I got it is still providing value and selling it used would mean I'd need to get a new one... at a similar price as what I'd sell it for.
> sometimes with 16gb already in there with the option to add in 128gb, multiple drive bays, pcie, etc.
I will note that for me, in the spot where it is, the "multiple drive bays, pcie, etc." represents a worse device as it doesn't sit nicely under a monitor on a small desk. Part of the choice of the Mac mini for me for that role was its form factor and quiet running.
There's still lots of utility in 9th gen intel PCs. And it's cheap to get extra utility. The resale value of the Mac mini is down to the brand cache and that there's not a glut of them on the secondhand market from businesses upgrading overtime.
You can also get PCs in a similar form factor to the Mac Mini but they still have RAM slots, M.2 slots and sometimes a 2.5" drive bay. You could get one that's powered off the USB C PD from the monitor requiring only a single cable and could be mounted on the back of the monitor (mount included!).
On a mini pc like a lenovo you can have an m2 ssd, a sata drive, and whatever you hook into the pcie expansion slot. the hp mini pcs actually have 2 m2 slots along with the ssd, so three internal bays and two sodimm slots in a 6.97 x 6.89 x 1.35 box, so its technically smaller than the mac mini.
$500 for a Mac is great! $100 for an Intel is great too. PCs used to cost thousands of dollars! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer_AT
9th gen intel? According to geekbench 6[0] the m1 is between 2x-5x faster with better battery life, so depending on your workload, it's quite possibly not close enough.
[0]: https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks/
I look at technical specs, not benchmarks.
https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-apple_m1-vs-intel_...
For example I5 9th gen vs M1 here. 9th gen has 2 fewer cores (although 9700 is the same, and 10th gen doubled the threads) and nearly the same clock speed. Graphically the M1 has more compute units but in the 8gb model the gpu is likely to be starved anyhow as it can only take on 8gb of the system ram. I5 listed here can take on 64gb for its igpu. 9th gen has better encoding abilities. Battery life, sure maybe, but I am talking about the mac mini here compared to an e.g. hp prodesk minipc. The 9th gen chip depending on what you have connected to the rest of the system could idle at like 6w.
A couple more for me:
- The icloud webapps are now pretty good, and icloud file storage and password management works well on windows these days
- Windows is also pretty good these days, and obviously if you want to run games, it's the easiest option.
Although I enjoy my macbook and iphone, I don't have a compelling reason to have MacOS on my desktop instead of windows. I think the only thing that I would like to have are clipboard sharing and Universal Control (share mouse and keyboard with macs and ipads), but there are cross-platform software solutions that are good enough
It wasn't too bad a few years ago but right now you can buy two Ryzen 7840U 64G/1TB with OLED display for the price of one similar specced MacBook.