M4 Mini Announced and Available Now

[mikehalloran]

The only way I know is to buy a DisplayLink box. These are eGPUs over USB

Very cool. My fourth display is usually just for metering, so 100% reliability isn’t always needed. This might work fine for what I need. Thanks, Mike!

You're welcome.

My 2010 iMac did not have USB 3 and there were dire warnings that USB 2 performance would be compromised but I never saw any of that till the day I updated the macOS to 10.13.4 and it didn't work due to Apple's killing of eGPU—oops! Fortunately, rolling back to 10.13.3 brought it back and I used it till the day that iMac was replaced by my iMac Pro that supported multiple external displays right out of the box.

[bayswater]

OSX Daily did a review of the M4 Mini . One of the things they suggested is to spend your money on external SSDs for extra storage, rather than buy it at 10 times the market rate from Apple. Some here have been adamant that additional internal storage is essential but my experience with the 2018 Mini is closer to the OSX view. I've never used more than half of the 256G it came with (running DP, Mixbus, Logic, some CAD apps, and all the usual "office" apps) . All media, samples, etc on external Samsungs, and that has never been a problem with even large complex projects. I'm assuming the same experience on the new Minis unless there is a convincing argument to the contrary. Also, as with the 2018 Mini, it is claimed that using an external boot volume on a decent SSD is as fast as an internal boot drive, although there was an argument that the OS has to be installed on the internal drive for an external boot drive to work.

A bit of an unknown is RAM. I put 32G in the 2018 Mini and that seems to cover everything I've ever done. The new Macs are supposedly much more efficient with RAM. I've been pleasantly surprised at what I can do with my base model M2 Air with 8G RAM, so maybe the factory 16G in the M4 is good enough for most of us.

An odd comment from OSX is that the base model is fine for would be a bot email and browsing, but for anything else, you need the pros, etc. Again, the base model leaves pro Mac from 10 years ago in the dust, so I have to wonder why the base M4 is not sufficient for more than using the internet. Has Safari become so much more demanding?. Maybe not great for very high res video edits in near real time, but for audio? Maybe, the way Apple pricing works, I'd be better off with two base systems than with one upgrades M4 Mini.

Then there is the power button on the bottom What were they thinking?

[mhschmieder]

Supposedly, most people never turn off their computers and put them to sleep instead. I guess those people live in a mythical location where the power grid is reliable. I never have, and though my computer is on a ZeroSurge brick, back to back power events (a common occurrence here) can still put wear and tear on a computer (possibly why mine has become unreliable this year), so I don't leave things to chance.

I wonder how quickly I could canvas my computer for disc usage to see why so much is used? Every time I do a Get Info, I give up after an hour of it still trying to calculate disc space. I just know that more and more vendors make it extremely difficult (and some forbid it altogether) to redirect sample libraries or soft synth support files to an external drive.

Of course MOST of my data is on external drives, including projects and of course large sample libraries like VSL, and most are by now on SSD's vs. HD's. But I'll see if I can figure out my actual needs, as I keep a clean machine but there are ways things can accumulate over time anyway, even if the system is audited frequently as mine is. Maybe if I do a lot of lower drill-downs on Get Info, I can do my own math on where the culprits lie.

[mhschmieder]

On a separate note, does anyone know if stuff like computer monitors and keyboards go on sale during Black Friday or around this time? I'll wait a bit if so. I'm more nervous about the keyboard, as it appears that Apple may have canceled the Spanish language (and other language) variants.

To avoid more issues with Recovery Mode, I need a Magic Keyboard (apparently) and don't want to buy one for the third time (one got lost during a cross-country move at the time of the COVID pandemic, and I gave away the third one when I switched to Logitech). I've wanted a Spanish keyboard for some time and they're hard to find, with most of them being crappy quality, so this is a good way to kill two birds with one stone.

[HCMarkus]

For those worried about the "button on the Bottom"...

https://www.amazon.com/Switch-Suitable- ... r=8-2&th=1

[cuttime]

Solved

[HCMarkus]

Solved

What a concept!

[bayswater]

Supposedly, most people never turn off their computers and put them to sleep instead. I guess those people live in a mythical location where the power grid is reliable.
———-
I just know that more and more vendors make it extremely difficult (and some forbid it altogether) to redirect sample libraries or soft synth support files to an external drive.

My sympathies. I’ve been in one place for 23 years, and had one power glitch when a squirrel bit a transformer line. But I still turn the computers off.
———-
Who places that sort of restrictions on their wares? In the few cases where there was difficulty relocating, I found a symbolic link worked.

[mikehalloran]

One of the things they suggested is to spend your money on external SSDs for extra storage, rather than buy it at 10 times the market rate from Apple. Some here have been adamant that additional internal storage is essential but my experience with the 2018 Mini is closer

That's just silly. Although NVMe blades have come down in price, 10x is a ridiculous number.

The Mini M4 had USB 4/TB3/4 ports while the Mini M4 Pro has USB 4.2/TB5 ports. Unlike Windows, all are backward compatible to USB 2/1.1 skipping over USB 3.2 gen 2+2 (old 3.2) that Apple has never supported except as TB2 (needs the adapter).

USB 4 (TB3/4) housing with switchable fan and heatsink $99. Trust me on that fan if moving large chunks of data such as your Kontakt libraries—I leave it off otherwise.
https://www.amazon.com/ACASIS-Enclosure ... search_btf

TB5/USB 4.2 — gotta pre-order loaded from OWC and I don't see any empty yet from anyone. I'll save OWC's uhh... marketing for another day—2800 is still the max data speed for TB3/4/USB4.
https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/owc-envoy-ultra

All the blades below are at least NVMe4 x4 — they will run faster in a USB 4.2 enclosure when they become available. The new 8TB WD Black is about $250 less than the least expensive blade I found two weeks ago when researching this for someone.

Onboard minimum = 512GB

+ 512 to 1TB total — Apple $200; Crucial $40 + $99 USB4 box difference = $60

+ 1.5TB to 2TB total — Apple $600; Crucial 2TB (for 2.5TB total) $133 + $99 USB4 box difference = $368
or Envoy Ultra 2TB, TB5 @ $399 — difference = $201 — when it ships.

+ 3.5TB to 4TB total — Apple $1,200; Crucial 4TB (for 4.5TB total) $236 + $99 USB4 box — difference = $865
or Envoy Ultra 4TB, TB5 @ $599 difference = $601 — when it ships.

+7.5TB to 8TB total — Apple $2,400; WD Black 8TB (for 8.5TB total) $650 + $99 USB4 box difference = $1,651.
5TB—N/A so far. When it becomes available will be a lot more. There will be heat issues to solve before that happens—otherwise, OWC would be offering it.

Ok, absolute worst case is 3.2x.

None of this takes into account that the 8TB are using a pair of NAND running RAID 0 — nearly twice as fast as those using single NAND.

As for myself, I have 8TB storage onboard + an 8TB blade in one enclosure plus a 4TB blade in another.

Occasionally, I boot from one of my externals and it's like swimming in molasses compared to my System drive. Apple doesn't want us doing that and some apps will not load if booted from an external due to certain .kxt files failing to load—all MOTU Audio interfaces requiring drivers fall into that category (oddly enough MOTU MIDI units work just fine). Since testing is the only reason for me to boot from an external, I'm in no hurry for TB 5 and expect this machine to be good for a long, long time.

[HCMarkus]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/po ... e?ref=card

Take a good look at this ^

Aftermarket M1/M2 Mac Studio Internal SSD Upgrades! VERY Professionally developed and accomplished. It would be surprising if Polysoft Services doesn't move into Mac Mini SSDs as well.

EDIT: But of Course!

Now let's talk about last week's surprise: like everyone else, we were delighted to discover that the new Mac mini M4 offers a replaceable SSD module up to 2TB, and that the Mac mini M4 Pro offers a replaceable SSD module up to 8TB.

These modules are physically different from each other, and also different from our Mac Studio M1 and M2 modules, but they're almost identical electronically, so we're already planning to work on them, benefiting from our work on the Mac Studio modules !

Priority will obviously be to deliver modules for the Mac Studio, but we're already starting work on the Mac mini M4 modules.

* * *

Although NVMe blades have come down in price, 10x is a ridiculous number.

Gotta agree with that. But I also agree with Bays that, if care is used and adequate external storage is available, 256GB internal storage is workable. Especially for a desktop that is not going to be schlepped around like a laptop. That said, having sprung for 2TB internal in my Mac Studio, I enjoy not having to obsessively manage my internal storage space; there is always room for more, including my DropBox local file storage.

[bayswater]

Gotta agree with that. But I also agree with Bays that, if care is used and adequate external storage is available, 256GB internal storage is workable. Especially for a desktop that is not going to be schlepped around like a laptop. That said, having sprung for 2TB internal in my Mac Studio, I enjoy not having to obsessively manage my internal storage space; there is always room for more, including my DropBox local file storage.

Fair enough, but what’s a reasonable number in a general scenario? Apple charges about $1 per G of extra memory. For $200 I can get a 2G SSD. I can’t get RAM that will be as fast as the internal units installed by Apple but good enough for most if not all the extra stuff that clutters up a drive. All the pictures, AACs, Samples, and inactive project folders can go on external drives. On my current system, I’m using about half of the internal drive for the stuff I mentioned earlier. I don’t use that Mac for general computing, just Audio and CAD work. I could add PT, Cubase, Studio One and a few more VIs and still not have an issue with space. An occasional run of GrandPerspective before a backup identifies any large useless files, but even that doesn’t happen very often. I don’t consider that obsessive management.

[HCMarkus]

I don’t consider that obsessive management.

No offense intended Bays! Maybe improper word selection on my part, although the DropBox thing could get troublesome pretty easily.

[bayswater]

I didn’t take it that way so apologies back to you .

I have no experience with dropbox. I have a hosted domain with lots of space and traffic that seems to cover all those sorts of problems.

[mhschmieder]

Much to my surprise, Activity Monitor shows 38 GB of memory used (plus around 10 GB of cached files), before I launch Digital Performer or any plug-ins (which pushes it up a few more GB), with app memory accounting for most of that.

I do have three browsers open (on purpose, for these metrics) with lots of research tabs, but those still account for under 3 GB, and DP takes 4 GB when I launch it and open a few instances of VSL plug-ins and Superior Drummer. Everything else is OS stuff that is under 500 MB each, but I suppose it adds up.

The CPU is what gets hit hard by my constant multi-tasking and cross-referencing on multiple learning curves via browser research (not just for my job). DP takes about 10% of CPU and a fully-loaded Opera's renderer takes 40-60% (the browser itself takes about 1%), which isn't surprising given my extreme usage.

Opera is my preferred browser that I use for most stuff, unless I am doing a quick in-and-out session in which case I use Firefox, or forum use, which is all on Chrome and nothing else uses that browser in my workflow. But when I'm doing a shorter computer session and don't launch Opera but do launch Chrome, my system is slow anyway.

As for disc space, I found where the hogs are and they are unlikely to be able to be trimmed enough to be OK with a 1 TB internal drive, even though I am just over 1.1 TB currently. I found some stuff to clean that was a bit large, such as the Rhodes V8 demo (30 GB) and some stuff I deleted but somehow left debris (another 60GB or so).

The Users directory tree is 250 GB, probably some of which is redundant copies of Native Instruments stuff due to inconsistencies in how Komplete installs.

The Applications directory is 80 GB, some of which is due to Finale installing Garritan stuff there. The System directory is 10 GB; obviously the caches are not a factor.

The Library directory is the culprit, at 790 GB. 200 GB of that is the Audio folder for plug-ins, Arturia's folder takes 55 GB, and Application Support is 515 GB, with the following vendors that contribute more than 20 GB each: Virharmonic at 60 GB (their new Bohemian Cello/Violin versions do not allow external drive installation or redirection), 105 GB for VSL stuff, 84 GB for Steinberg (probably Groove Agent and other stuff I don't use), 20 GB for Camel Audio (legacy Alchemy libraries), and 52 GB for Avid. The latter can be deleted as I don't use any Avid products and thus don't need those versions of the audio plug-ins.

Anyway, it's evident that I wouldn't be able to make enough dent even with hours of housecleaning, for it to be safe to go with a 1 TB internal drive with room for growth.

I think these factors combine to mean that I need the M4 Pro, as I don't think the regular M4 specs go up high enough to match my needs. It may make sense anyway due to being future-proofed for TB5 support and some other little-publicized upgrades that are starting to show up in articles and reviews. I need to review the specs again.

[mikehalloran]

For those worried about the "button on the Bottom"...

And I thought that Apple had learned their lesson from the Jon Ivie years.

Although one can still clear the RAM cache with a reboot, the power switch has some important functions:

1. There are a number of reasons why TouchID can stop working or you may not buy a compatible keyboard till later. You can't enable or re-enable Touch ID without hitting the power switch twice except during initial setup.

2. Some updates including Kontakt do not load unless there's been a shut down and re-start. A reboot will not work in its place.

3. You must shut down before any of the following: Boot into the Recovery partition, Option Boot or Safe mode. The procedures are different for Apple Silicon than they were for Intel. Certain apps require reducing Security before they can be installed—this can only be done in the Recovery Volume. MOTU Audio and MIDI drivers are among the many that require this.

Having only one working arm, inaccessible power switches on Macs are world-class annoyances for me. At least it's no longer like my G5 where I'd be holding keys with my fingers and pushing the switch with my toe.