unironically yes. i donate computing power to use my pc as a heater for a good 30% of the year, because its impossible to keep the house properly warm due to the shit insulation. course, i also like low wattage in summer because once again... bad insulation.
@@huckleberryfinn6578 Yeah and what people ALWAYS miss is that these prices are before taxes even in the US, so people don't buy it at 599$ (depending on state ofc but still)
@@huckleberryfinn6578 Actually not. It's a larger relative increase in most of Europe. But who cares tbh, nobody should buy anything but the base model anyway.
Why time I can, I always just tell people to max out their memory and just install MacOS on an NVMe SSD in a decent USB/thunderbolt enclosure. Why pay a kidney for storage?
@@shapelessed "@daveied Woah, 128 gigabits of ram... A total of 16GB!": Actually, 128 gb = 128 gram bits. Whatever that is. 128 Gb would be 128.000.000.000 bits, which is 119.2 GiB. I suppose deveied ment 128 GiB.
@@TheRealJonsMind if Apple treats their customers this bad being anti-consumer; why should we believe them when they say they treat their suppliers and supply chain well?
Marketing in a nutshell: create a product that is genuinely incredible not only in performance but also in value at $600. Emphasize your marketing on how good it is for $600. Create variants that people actually want to buy (if they want to future proof themselves at least) for at least twice as much, if not more, at which point the value is no longer the same and thus you get incredible profit margin, whilst the user enjoys a computer that is remarkable at $600 for the price of $1200.
So much this. Quinn's plead for Apple to "do the right thing" is simply naive here. It's not that they only want to squeeze money out of buyers because they can, at this point I think this upgrade pricing model is literally the core of their business model. It's how they make most of the money. A reasonable pricing model would NEVER produce absurdities such as an addition of mere 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage costing as much as the entire computer costs including those same 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. As you say: create a deceivingly tempting product that appears as great value, but undercut it just enough that most people will want an upgraded version, at which point the value proposition collapses, but ultimately it doesn't even matter because you created a new press release cycle in which all the tech dudes say how your new product is an amazing value product and, to quote MKBHD: "one of the best deals in tech". I don't need to tell anyone how influential and instrumental MKHBD is when it comes to people forming opinions, and obviously, he's not the only person saying the same thing. I'd totally get those upgrades if it was like $900 for 32GB + 512GB over $600 for the base model. Still too expensive but not an outright ripoff. But double the price of the base model? Not a chance in hell.
@@NineteenEightyFiveyeah, but not with historical comparisons. Next video should be Quin showing how to move the home directory to an external drive, and going over the reasons to do that (on a non-portable machine) instead of just using external storage, and instead of booting from the external drive directly. And he could go over using a 10 Gbps enclosure vs a much hotter USB4 enclosure.
@@ahgflyguy That isn't a requirement though, we can see how bad the price is by comparing it to similar upgrades now, in the current times, alongside speed/quality etc. That was a nice touch, and I enjoyed watching this as any other snazzy labs vid they're pretty good, but let's not crap on other youtubers for not including all the same points about the product pls.
Instead of trying to build a custom made PC, why not buy a minipc like the Aoostar Gem 12 that for $579 comes with a Ryzen 7 8845HS, 32 GB Ram and 1 TB SSD and has an Oculink port that can be connected to an external egpu? The M4 processor might be a better chip, but the above mentioned machine has a way more functional base storage (256 GB SSD on the Mac Mini is simply not enough today). Plus the expandability of the Aoostar with another SSD is reasonably priced and it becomes a powerhouse if you connect a desktop egpu.
The last Mac to stick with the hard drive was actually not the Mac mini. It was the 21.5 iMac, which still came with a default option for a hard drive until 2021 and that didn’t change until the introduction of the M1 iMac.
the criminal part about that though is that Apple continued to sell the awful 2017 21.5" dual core iMac (18,1) until October of 2021, six months *after* the M1 iMac was introduced. why apple didn't just kill it off back in 2019 beats me.
I look forward to you showing us how it's done - Oh wait you already did ! :) Now a way to hack a third party off the shelf SSD for those of us without your skills would be sweet.
I stuck with the base unit with a Thunderbolt 4 enclosure and a 4TB Crucial Gen 4 drive. All I need and it's plenty powerful enough. You gotta be a fool to pay for a single "upgrade" from Apple.
Unlike with a MacBook, with a Mac Mini you can at least do one little trick - Install MacOS on an external SSD. Any middle of the road NVMe SSD + a decent USB/thunderbolt enclosure will do just fine and not cost a kidney! I know right? You can keep both of them!
why install MacOS on an external ?, you can't buy a Mac with no SSD. 256 GB is plenty enough for MacOS. Put your data, your user folder and eventually apps on the external.
if I were going to get one today, I'd go low end w/32gb RAM, $999, use the 256 ssd as the boot drive, and go external ssd 2tb (sandisk / samsung / etc) for $150 - save ~$650.. enough to buy another base mini :)
What disappoints me the most is the 64GB RAM option is restricted to the M4 Pro chip. I’m a developer and honestly the base M4 cpu compute is more than powerful enough for development workloads but I ended up returning my 32GB model because with all my development tools running I was hitting swap constantly with the RAM maxed out. Writing hundreds of GB in just a couple of hours. That isn’t good enough. But if I want more RAM I’m forced to buy the M4 Pro which is a very expensive upgrade for more cpu power I don’t need. I need more RAM not more CPU power 😢 saving a few seconds on compilation isn’t worth the price it costs to go up to the M4 Pro. Most of the times my tools are sitting idle while I’m thinking how to solve a problem. The chip isn’t running at full speed 99% of the time like it is for things like video exports.
@@bradhaines3142no. You are either looking for volume sales or high margin sales. Why would apple sell a product for $500 to 100 people when they can sale a product for 2000 to 50? The goal isn’t to dominate the market by total user base but by profits. That’s why the iPhone which has 16% of worldwide market share consumes 85% of worldwide smartphone profits. Apple positions itself as a lifestyle brand. Its prices have been set accordingly. Granted they use better materials in some cases, they don’t need every person to buy it. That’s why they keep flashing to the world’s most valuable company. If Nvidia wasn’t killing it in AI hardwares, it would be apple by a good stretch always
And if you live in a capitalist society, take a paycheck or generate income, so do you. And you will seek the most that the market will bear for whatever it is you contribute.
I would literally buy several Mac Minis and iMacs if the pricing on storage and RAM was reasonable. Unfortunately, the needs always require those upgrades and selling a new computer with less than 1TB of storage is laughable. Until Apple stops scamming with their storage and memory pricing i can't justify buying any of these.
I got the base Mac mini m4 with the education discount and at 499 before tax, it’s an insane deal. I can add storage via thunderbolt nvme enclosure. The 16gb ram is enough for what I use it for (writing, TH-cam, Stata and R, and listening to music via roon). It’s a steal at 499.
But did you really need an m4 for those purposes? E.g, why not get a cheaper laptop so you also have the benefit of portability, while also having upgradeable ram and interal expandable storage options?
You can do all that with a chromebook ffs. 256 gb storage is absolute lunacy and the way the media has swallowed this garbage is hilarious. External drives are never the same as internal drives.
@@r.s.w.k4569I also have a windows gaming pc that has 64gb of ram and three different ssd’s two of which are nvme pcie 4. I’m not apple pilled, I just like the new Mac mini.
at least the ram isn't 8GB anymore. the apple tax is insane, but i can use the machine. just picked up an M3 MBA after literal years of waiting for 16GB to not cost extra. storage i can somewhat work around, albeit not prettily, soldered ram i cannot.
I got the 16 inch M4 MacBook Pro to replace my M1 14 inch Pro. I really wanted the bigger screen more than anything. The M1 was more or less fine for what I do. I bought the base config which has 512 GB of storage, which I thought "oh that's plenty!". Baldurs Gate III, ALONE, takes 155 GB. I guess I had never really thought about it (I play it on my M2 Pro Mini with 1 TB plus externtal storage), but 256 GB is in no way sufficient for a desktop, and I question if 512 is enough. 1 TB should be standard. It can't possibly cut into their margins that much to go 512 (or even 1 TB). It just provides a bad user experience and will put off first time users from Apple forever.
You’re right, on the pro model storage is the only limiting factor that holds the product to be industry leading. However don’t worry about Baldur, the game is so poorly optimized you’ll get an awful experience. Not buying it saves you 155go lol
I love my MacBook Air but yeah the upgrade pricing is insane. One quick amazon search and I was able to find laptops half the price for twice the specs.
You’re assuming they haven’t hardware bound them to the machine. Look at iPhones, they can’t be fixed with none Apple parts without features being disabled.
You have to look at this from the perspective of the chief bean counter. Timmy has to eat like the rest of us, not to mention he has hungry fat cats meowing for seconds.
did a similar calculation, because I intended to get my sister a Mac Mini, but stopped making sense literally with just one upgrade…. great video Snazz
What if I buy a base model and a 2TB external Thunderbolt SSD? Should solve the storage problem and RAM is enough 👀 I can run programs off of SSD right?
@@franzpleurmann2585 I believe apple Inteligence will still work with apps on external drive. Apple Intelligence won't work if you put the OS on external drive.
Yes, you can. You can also pay Apple some money for iCloud if you have a good wifi connection and offload a lot of your stuff to it, or use OneDrive. My work portable laptop is an original M1 MacBook Air with only 256GB and 8GB. I use OneDrive to store all of my work and it’s not a problem. It automatically removes things that you are not using from the local drive.
so happy I decided to build a new PC instead of switching to a mac mini with the new m4 pro. windows is annoying, but at least I didn't pay £400 for 48gb ram and £600 for 2tb storage
I looked at getting an upgraded M4 Mac Mini but just bought the stock configuration and with the money I saved on the ram and ssd upgrade I was able to buy a Ferrari SF90 Stradale.
For $600 you can build a more balanced computer. You don't need much processor speed. For me, the Ryzen 5 3600 still feels like a super computer. You can put 7500 or go down to AM4 and buy 5600 and you'll have money left over for a more up-to-date video card and... and yes, SSD capacity is not a problem at all. At today's prices, even if you save, you buy as much as you need, not as much as you can afford. I've had 4 PCs since 2002 and none of them were more than $600. It's true that it's hard to beat Apple's energy efficiency. In my country electricity is relatively cheap, but even for me this is a factor.
Modern PCs require from 60w at lighter loads to 300w at max gaming loads. Thats basically less than a dollar of electrical costs a month where I live. And if you install a cheap solar setup (which costs less than a m4 pro macbook), even that is avoided. You will pay much more if you buy something that isnt repairable or unupgradeable.
The entry level mac mini is basically being offered at cost factoring in R&D for miniaturization and OS development. The upgrade pricing subsidizes this mac. They could start at $799 for 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD and shrink the delta of subsequent upgrades, but that makes the entry level less affordable. They could shrink the margins, but that would likely kill the mac mini line.
On a 2018 Mac mini a memory upgrade from 8 to 32 GB had cost me around 100 USD because I was able to upgrade it myself. Now I don’t have that option because apple solders the RAM to the board.
@@akiko009 Most likely, the chips are sourced from Chinese recycling operations. Though so long as the chips used are MLC or TLC, there isn't really any problem. QLC is the one that falls over and dies with writes
Ive been waiting 20+ years to move to Apple, but the value prop has never bee worth it. As you go up in price and performance, you get more out of x86.
Stop comparing upgrade prices. Spec up the machine to what YOU need and then compare THAT price to what you can get from PC part picker. Make your decision based on that. The fact that a base model exists for super cheap is irrelevant if it can't do what you need it to do.
I remember when I was getting my EE degree in the late 90s I had to take a microcontroller course. I remember the teacher talking about how a washing machine company would sell a no frills base unit for a low price but then they could spend an extra $10 to $20 on a microcontroller and LEDs to make a fancier control and charge the customer an extra couple of hundreds of dollars for the deluxe model.
I feel like the 800 version with 1tb is still on par with an equivalent pc and you can get external thunderbolt enclosure drive, but yeah it's braindead scam pricing otherwise.
You brought up the lenovo ram upgrade, on the slim 7x going from 16 to 32gb is..... Under 70$. Yea. Apple should stop destroying the (in this case excellent) value of its machines by crippling one spec at at time and requiring ridiculous upgrade pricing. Especially since you now can't change anything after the fact even though you should be able to and these computers should just have nvme slots, they don't, which creates more ewaste. Good job Apple, youve just offset all those apple stickers you removed from boxes.
Apple thinks it's like a premium car manufacturer. The base model is ABC but wait. If you want the go-faster stripes, that's double the price to XYZ. Consumerism rules our wallets, and if Apple sold just the base units, you wonder what margin those base model units hold compared to any upgrade.
If Apple is generous enough, there will be plenty of customers who willing to paid for 2TB SSD upgrade even if they know they only need 1TB because it's soldered but still reasonable to upgrade. It's a win-win.
The average consumer, even ones who needs more processing power, don't know their way around a PCB, let alone a bios menu. Paying someone else to do something will always be costly; plumber, painter, or PC builder. I tried some other pre-builts, and they basically matched Apple with some upgrades. Ex: Dell has 16 to 32 GB upgrade at $186 instead of $200, so aPpLe tAX. Apple Tax is such an overrated excuse, given that its not just Apple.
What's funny when you did the recording for the "$1892.50" pc was that the 7800X3D was still priced at near scalper level due to bad stock, check now and that cpu is now in stock and back to earth on amazon for $349
Hi Quinn! Do you think the base model configurations are being sold at a loss with the usury price upgrades being a necessity for subsidizing them? Great video by the way, exceptionally helpful perspectives in several dimensions: time, product lines and platforms
I think this is a good take. They have far lower margins on the base model then they don't have to raise base price and deal with the "apple is raising prices omg".
You can easily get a Mini PC like a Beelink SER8 from china for *less* than a base Mac Mini which performs roughly the same or better with 32GB of DDR5 ram, 1TB of ram and all the ports you could dream of.
Well, selling my 2021 14” M1 Max MacBook Pro to buy an equivalently configured M4 Mini means I’m buying the Mini for about $390. What would Apple give me for a trade-in for my MacBook Pro? Nothing!
Not only is the rtx 3050 a bad value on its own, the one you got is even worse. The rtx 3050 6Gb has so many other cut down elements that it’s basically a 3040 in performance
Size, power consumption, OSX. Typing it on a Windows machine, but I have 2 Macs I use for work next to me too during the week. For what I work on OSX is just a better choice. Sure, I have my 4080s on right now, but I am happy my mac doesn't pull as much as my gaming machine 8-10 hours for 5 days a week. It's $0.27 per kWh here. And yes, once the gaming PC is running the AC is working harder too.
I would love to use a Mac again, but the upgrade prices make it completely not worth it. It is insane that upgrading to a 512 GB SSD costs $200 when you can buy a faster, high quality 2TB SSD for less than that.
The perfect holiday gift for the Mac masochist in your family! I just bought a Crucial brand 32gb kit on Amazon for $100. But saw some others for as low as $70!
4:22 I don’t understand why this sentiment still exists about Apple Silicon when the numbers speak otherwise. Is it smashing the top of the line Nvidia GPUs? No, at least not yet. But considering the stark difference in their power budget-where Nvidia’s GPUs consume about 5 times that of Apple’s at peak power-Apple’s integrated GPUs are in their own league. They don’t need to be connected to power(for laptops) to realize their full potential-unlike their Windows counterparts where performance drops by half, becoming considerably slower than Apple’s GPUs. At this point, such statement is a myth! Great video, btw.
Maybe I’m not understanding it but I feel like storage is the smallest issue compared to the ram, can’t you just buy a good ssd and an enclosure and connect it via one of the ports? It wouldn’t be internal and likely a bit slower but otherwise it would still be quite small all considered. Ram is a pain given you can’t easily upgrade either way, but I feel like everyone’s taking about storage like it’s the end all be all
You should buy a thunderbolt or USB external SSD and using to expand the storage. You can DIY it and use a high quality and fast SSD. You can even use it as a boot drive!
Unfortunately, you can't add RAM via USB. External drives add cables and devices to the desk and aren't practical for notebooks. For the older ones, there are these small USB-drives that hardly stick out but it looks like Apple removed USB-A. The funny thing is that building a better PC that matches the price of the Mac mini is super easy: 32G RAM, 2TB SSD and we have 2079€.
Defeats the idea of a SFF if you have loads of cables and extra boxes hanging out the back . Even velcro-ing a small M.2 enclosure to the case is ridiculous.
@@jochenkraus7016Having cables or external devices on a desktop computer isn’t really an issue unless you’re really ocd about that stuff, most people aren’t.
Dang I installed a 256GB SSD in my G4 iMac and a 128GB SSD in my G4 Cube total cost with SSD adapters for both $98. And maxed the ram for both $38. Yea I still live in 2005. That Apple is dead and the current pricing scheme will never go away, we shall always have the Apple Tax.
Cant blame apple overcharge for memory as they realllly quick and high bandwidth but for storage part can they just give us an fxxking standard m2 slot ???? 😂
I am OS agnostic. I use Windows, MacOS and Linux. Most of my storage is off-system. I have a huge NAS and backups, with almost nothing being held locally on a single system. Internal storage is not the best place to keep data.
Well…a lot of corporate IT departments could install the base Mini because their users have access to 10 Gb, 25 Gb, or 100 Gb SAN or storage solutions, and that’s where the users store their data.
It’s funny, I was on a trip when the M4 released and I was already planning on buying a base M2 MacBook Air to replace my 2015 model. I don’t need any fancy upgrades since I have a real desktop at home, I only needed a new processor and efficient battery life so I was amazed when they told me I could get the 16gb model for the same price I would’ve paid the 8gb one week before. I know my use case it’s not normal but for me it works perfect
I just picked one up using EDU pricing 500 and from delaware (no sale tax) and i love it. havent had a mac desktop since a 2009 imac. i still do run macbook pros but always ran PC desktop. this is great for grandparents, parents, even small business owners.
The thunderbolt argument is less "Nobody cares about Thunderbolt other than Cupertino cultists" but rather it's usually not needed if you have PCIe/M.2 slots and everything else. Honestly people think they need super high speed USB ports way more than they actually do. Enumerate your USB devices and I'd bet almost all, if not all, of them are USB 1.1/2.0. I know I personally have no USB3+ devices connected to my main desktop. As a whole the industry goes "my device doesn't need the bandwidth of USB3+ so why would I make it speak USB3+." Which is particularly annoying since things like webcams can cause problems with hubs since they eat the entire USB2 bandwidth, which runs on separate data lines, and there's no transaction conversion between USB2 and later standards (although technically a Thunderbolt hub could do it if they put a PCIe USB controller in). One of the main use cases for USB4/Thunderbolt 4/5 bandwidth is external storage. Ironically this solution (using TB4 to NVMe enclosures) to the Apple tax problem is often rejected. That said I do agree that Apple really needs to adjust their pricing since there are many absurd scenarios in their pricing ladder currently (Mac Studio being $100 cheaper than a similarly configured Mac Mini while getting the Max chip as another example prior to the M4 upgrade). For those who use internal expansion Thunderbolt/USB4 can be a bit of a downgrade since the PCIe lanes that would otherwise be available get eaten by the controller. This is leading to situations where depending on your use case AMD's "new" chipsets with their USB4 requirement can be seen as a downgrade since you no longer have the option of using those 4 lanes for something else. (Often true even on boards that had USB4 on 600 series since they often moved the controller from the PCIe 3.0 lanes of the chipset to using 4 of the CPU lanes.) You can kind of get the lanes back with external enclosures, but if my memory serves there's protocol overhead not to mention the cost. I know I'm probably sounding like I'm saying "640k ought to be enough for everyone" but really the point is that things have trade offs. An ATX tower lacking Thunderbolt is different than a NUC/laptop lacking Thunderbolt in terms of coverage of various use cases.
8:25 The last MBPs without retina already had USB 3.0, although they also came in 2012 but earlier in the year. Also, in the picture you have a 15” MBP pre retina, albeit it can be a 2012 pre retina model.
Hey Quinn great video but I don’t think u believe your conclusion that “we as consumers will not stand this further much longer”. Do you remember how long Apple had 128gb SSDs as standard? Until there is a price increase of the base price of the computer to $699 (and similar across the line)I believe the base storage will be 256gb. In my opinion 256gb is honestly enough especially in a desktop where you tell your boomer relatives if they are storing any media or files just save to an external disk that’s always plugged in. 128gb was not enough even back then 256 imo is still barely reasonable.
40 watts under max load? How am I supposed to stay warm all winter?!
Exactly! Haha
Especially when you're in Regina Canada
its a laptop cpu with proper ventilation figures
unironically yes. i donate computing power to use my pc as a heater for a good 30% of the year, because its impossible to keep the house properly warm due to the shit insulation.
course, i also like low wattage in summer because once again... bad insulation.
And those prices are even crazier outside the US.
its cheaper at my place though
Tbf, it's mostly because of taxes.
@@huckleberryfinn6578 Yeah and what people ALWAYS miss is that these prices are before taxes even in the US, so people don't buy it at 599$ (depending on state ofc but still)
@@huckleberryfinn6578 Actually not. It's a larger relative increase in most of Europe.
But who cares tbh, nobody should buy anything but the base model anyway.
Just don’t worry about the RAM. You can always download more.
Why time I can, I always just tell people to max out their memory and just install MacOS on an NVMe SSD in a decent USB/thunderbolt enclosure. Why pay a kidney for storage?
Yes i just download 128 gb of ram last night im never going to buy ram ever again
@daveied Woah, 128 gigabits of ram... A total of 16GB!
@@shapelessed "@daveied Woah, 128 gigabits of ram... A total of 16GB!": Actually, 128 gb = 128 gram bits. Whatever that is. 128 Gb would be 128.000.000.000 bits, which is 119.2 GiB. I suppose deveied ment 128 GiB.
16GB is plenty for everyone who isn't a scientist or an 8K video editor.
Think hell would freeze over before Apple ever gave us better pricing on upgrades.
why are you waiting for Apple to do something that they don't do?
Buy a PC and go on with your life. Crocodile tears in your direction.
Hell will definitely freeze over before i give Apple any of my money. PCMR.
@@TheRealJonsMind if Apple treats their customers this bad being anti-consumer; why should we believe them when they say they treat their suppliers and supply chain well?
Marketing in a nutshell: create a product that is genuinely incredible not only in performance but also in value at $600. Emphasize your marketing on how good it is for $600. Create variants that people actually want to buy (if they want to future proof themselves at least) for at least twice as much, if not more, at which point the value is no longer the same and thus you get incredible profit margin, whilst the user enjoys a computer that is remarkable at $600 for the price of $1200.
So much this. Quinn's plead for Apple to "do the right thing" is simply naive here. It's not that they only want to squeeze money out of buyers because they can, at this point I think this upgrade pricing model is literally the core of their business model. It's how they make most of the money. A reasonable pricing model would NEVER produce absurdities such as an addition of mere 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage costing as much as the entire computer costs including those same 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
As you say: create a deceivingly tempting product that appears as great value, but undercut it just enough that most people will want an upgraded version, at which point the value proposition collapses, but ultimately it doesn't even matter because you created a new press release cycle in which all the tech dudes say how your new product is an amazing value product and, to quote MKBHD: "one of the best deals in tech". I don't need to tell anyone how influential and instrumental MKHBD is when it comes to people forming opinions, and obviously, he's not the only person saying the same thing.
I'd totally get those upgrades if it was like $900 for 32GB + 512GB over $600 for the base model. Still too expensive but not an outright ripoff. But double the price of the base model? Not a chance in hell.
Nice to see someone review this product correctly.
This was a great video but most major reviewers have pointed out how overpriced the upgrades are
I've actually done a review on it on my page as well.
@@NineteenEightyFiveyeah, but not with historical comparisons. Next video should be Quin showing how to move the home directory to an external drive, and going over the reasons to do that (on a non-portable machine) instead of just using external storage, and instead of booting from the external drive directly. And he could go over using a 10 Gbps enclosure vs a much hotter USB4 enclosure.
Don't be a sheep. I've seen your exact comment in other videos too. Everyone is recommending the base model.
@@ahgflyguy That isn't a requirement though, we can see how bad the price is by comparing it to similar upgrades now, in the current times, alongside speed/quality etc. That was a nice touch, and I enjoyed watching this as any other snazzy labs vid they're pretty good, but let's not crap on other youtubers for not including all the same points about the product pls.
Instead of trying to build a custom made PC, why not buy a minipc like the Aoostar Gem 12 that for $579 comes with a Ryzen 7 8845HS, 32 GB Ram and 1 TB SSD and has an Oculink port that can be connected to an external egpu?
The M4 processor might be a better chip, but the above mentioned machine has a way more functional base storage (256 GB SSD on the Mac Mini is simply not enough today). Plus the expandability of the Aoostar with another SSD is reasonably priced and it becomes a powerhouse if you connect a desktop egpu.
I like this presentation style. It’s giving Technology Connections
Enjoyed it really much
Not even close to Technology Connections, the best tech show on TH-cam
The last Mac to stick with the hard drive was actually not the Mac mini. It was the 21.5 iMac, which still came with a default option for a hard drive until 2021 and that didn’t change until the introduction of the M1 iMac.
Well, last Mac line
the criminal part about that though is that Apple continued to sell the awful 2017 21.5" dual core iMac (18,1) until October of 2021, six months *after* the M1 iMac was introduced. why apple didn't just kill it off back in 2019 beats me.
I guess I'm probably the only one who looks at this situation as a fun challenge...
I look forward to you showing us how it's done - Oh wait you already did ! :) Now a way to hack a third party off the shelf SSD for those of us without your skills would be sweet.
@@julian.morgan My friend at Polysoft Services is already on it... He's already done it for the Mac Studio.
Just get an external ssd and move your home folder onto it.
I stuck with the base unit with a Thunderbolt 4 enclosure and a 4TB Crucial Gen 4 drive. All I need and it's plenty powerful enough. You gotta be a fool to pay for a single "upgrade" from Apple.
Unlike with a MacBook, with a Mac Mini you can at least do one little trick - Install MacOS on an external SSD.
Any middle of the road NVMe SSD + a decent USB/thunderbolt enclosure will do just fine and not cost a kidney! I know right? You can keep both of them!
why not just use the external ssd for everything else and leave macos on the internal storage
Doesn't that disable parts of the OS?
@@plythbirdsome apps don’t allow you to install on external storage drives unless you do some hacky stuff like symlinks
why install MacOS on an external ?, you can't buy a Mac with no SSD. 256 GB is plenty enough for MacOS. Put your data, your user folder and eventually apps on the external.
If you do that you can no longer use Apple Intelligence nor can you install third party kexts like (Tuxera NTFS or OpenZFS).
if I were going to get one today, I'd go low end w/32gb RAM, $999, use the 256 ssd as the boot drive, and go external ssd 2tb (sandisk / samsung / etc) for $150 - save ~$650.. enough to buy another base mini :)
What disappoints me the most is the 64GB RAM option is restricted to the M4 Pro chip. I’m a developer and honestly the base M4 cpu compute is more than powerful enough for development workloads but I ended up returning my 32GB model because with all my development tools running I was hitting swap constantly with the RAM maxed out. Writing hundreds of GB in just a couple of hours. That isn’t good enough. But if I want more RAM I’m forced to buy the M4 Pro which is a very expensive upgrade for more cpu power I don’t need. I need more RAM not more CPU power 😢 saving a few seconds on compilation isn’t worth the price it costs to go up to the M4 Pro. Most of the times my tools are sitting idle while I’m thinking how to solve a problem. The chip isn’t running at full speed 99% of the time like it is for things like video exports.
Apple is all about profit margins. That will NEVER change.
I’d hope every single publicly traded entity will exist solely for profit margins 😅
Why should it? They're a business, not a charity.
understandable but wouldnt value drive sales? few people buy something knowing theyre getting a bad deal. if they dont buy that wont help profits.
@@bradhaines3142no. You are either looking for volume sales or high margin sales. Why would apple sell a product for $500 to 100 people when they can sale a product for 2000 to 50? The goal isn’t to dominate the market by total user base but by profits. That’s why the iPhone which has 16% of worldwide market share consumes 85% of worldwide smartphone profits. Apple positions itself as a lifestyle brand. Its prices have been set accordingly. Granted they use better materials in some cases, they don’t need every person to buy it. That’s why they keep flashing to the world’s most valuable company. If Nvidia wasn’t killing it in AI hardwares, it would be apple by a good stretch always
And if you live in a capitalist society, take a paycheck or generate income, so do you. And you will seek the most that the market will bear for whatever it is you contribute.
Apple could easily price the base model at $999 and charge $200 for 32GB RAM and 512 GB SSD.
Then people will complain more.
Apple is acting like a drug dealer...want a hit, it's a cheap $599...need more? empty that wallet....
I would literally buy several Mac Minis and iMacs if the pricing on storage and RAM was reasonable. Unfortunately, the needs always require those upgrades and selling a new computer with less than 1TB of storage is laughable. Until Apple stops scamming with their storage and memory pricing i can't justify buying any of these.
Same here, i want one but i boycott for the scam prices
Getting it for $499 with a student or workplace discount really pushes this over the edge! Which is what I did.
Same! I still have my .edu email but it didn’t ask for verification.
I got the base Mac mini m4 with the education discount and at 499 before tax, it’s an insane deal. I can add storage via thunderbolt nvme enclosure. The 16gb ram is enough for what I use it for (writing, TH-cam, Stata and R, and listening to music via roon). It’s a steal at 499.
But did you really need an m4 for those purposes? E.g, why not get a cheaper laptop so you also have the benefit of portability, while also having upgradeable ram and interal expandable storage options?
You can do all that with a chromebook ffs. 256 gb storage is absolute lunacy and the way the media has swallowed this garbage is hilarious. External drives are never the same as internal drives.
@@askeladden450I have a MacBook Air M3. The computers have different use cases for me.
@@askeladden450 laptops cheaper than 499? i doubt that they are any good.
@@r.s.w.k4569I also have a windows gaming pc that has 64gb of ram and three different ssd’s two of which are nvme pcie 4. I’m not apple pilled, I just like the new Mac mini.
at least the ram isn't 8GB anymore. the apple tax is insane, but i can use the machine. just picked up an M3 MBA after literal years of waiting for 16GB to not cost extra. storage i can somewhat work around, albeit not prettily, soldered ram i cannot.
I got the 16 inch M4 MacBook Pro to replace my M1 14 inch Pro. I really wanted the bigger screen more than anything. The M1 was more or less fine for what I do.
I bought the base config which has 512 GB of storage, which I thought "oh that's plenty!".
Baldurs Gate III, ALONE, takes 155 GB. I guess I had never really thought about it (I play it on my M2 Pro Mini with 1 TB plus externtal storage), but 256 GB is in no way sufficient for a desktop, and I question if 512 is enough. 1 TB should be standard.
It can't possibly cut into their margins that much to go 512 (or even 1 TB). It just provides a bad user experience and will put off first time users from Apple forever.
You’re right, on the pro model storage is the only limiting factor that holds the product to be industry leading. However don’t worry about Baldur, the game is so poorly optimized you’ll get an awful experience. Not buying it saves you 155go lol
Maybe the idea is to annoy users slightly so they will upgrade.
Adjusted for inflation I think it’s technically cheaper now lol
Yes but components are cheaper now by more than the inflation
@@m89hu Are you sure about that?
I suppose this is sarcasm, because the alternative is so bad I can't spell it here.
Adding an external SSD for the storage of all your documents is way cheaper than upgrading internal storage.
I love my MacBook Air but yeah the upgrade pricing is insane. One quick amazon search and I was able to find laptops half the price for twice the specs.
Just gonna wait until the ssd boards are reverse engineered and available and I'll max the storage of one out for cheaper than their prices
You’re assuming they haven’t hardware bound them to the machine. Look at iPhones, they can’t be fixed with none Apple parts without features being disabled.
Or purchase a 40Gbps SSD enclosure to connect a regular M.2. That machine is meant to be an octopus of dongles any way
It's already being worked on right now by the people who did the studiodrive (polysoft).
@@devonglide1830only if the parts don't actually work
@@ziokalco it is a cheaper option, but such a case cost up to 80 €
You have to look at this from the perspective of the chief bean counter. Timmy has to eat like the rest of us, not to mention he has hungry fat cats meowing for seconds.
did a similar calculation, because I intended to get my sister a Mac Mini, but stopped making sense literally with just one upgrade….
great video Snazz
The ending nearly made me jump out of my seat. You can’t jumpscare someone like that man.
What if I buy a base model and a 2TB external Thunderbolt SSD? Should solve the storage problem and RAM is enough 👀 I can run programs off of SSD right?
You can but certain features of macOS wont work anymore like intended (Apple Intelligence for example).
@@franzpleurmann2585 I believe apple Inteligence will still work with apps on external drive. Apple Intelligence won't work if you put the OS on external drive.
You have to be really rich or a clown to use Apple products
@@K4miSamasurely all windows machines are cheap and all user smarts … ( look at you, big IQ right? )
Yes, you can.
You can also pay Apple some money for iCloud if you have a good wifi connection and offload a lot of your stuff to it, or use OneDrive.
My work portable laptop is an original M1 MacBook Air with only 256GB and 8GB. I use OneDrive to store all of my work and it’s not a problem. It automatically removes things that you are not using from the local drive.
so happy I decided to build a new PC instead of switching to a mac mini with the new m4 pro. windows is annoying, but at least I didn't pay £400 for 48gb ram and £600 for 2tb storage
Same for me. Despite knowing M4 is a better chip, I would value ram and storage more than cpu for my work.
I looked at getting an upgraded M4 Mac Mini but just bought the stock configuration and with the money I saved on the ram and ssd upgrade I was able to buy a Ferrari SF90 Stradale.
For $600 you can build a more balanced computer. You don't need much processor speed. For me, the Ryzen 5 3600 still feels like a super computer. You can put 7500 or go down to AM4 and buy 5600 and you'll have money left over for a more up-to-date video card and... and yes, SSD capacity is not a problem at all. At today's prices, even if you save, you buy as much as you need, not as much as you can afford.
I've had 4 PCs since 2002 and none of them were more than $600.
It's true that it's hard to beat Apple's energy efficiency. In my country electricity is relatively cheap, but even for me this is a factor.
Modern PCs require from 60w at lighter loads to 300w at max gaming loads. Thats basically less than a dollar of electrical costs a month where I live. And if you install a cheap solar setup (which costs less than a m4 pro macbook), even that is avoided. You will pay much more if you buy something that isnt repairable or unupgradeable.
That 2012 MacBook in the CNET vid is not the late 2012 retina. By the way… 🤔
The entry level mac mini is basically being offered at cost factoring in R&D for miniaturization and OS development. The upgrade pricing subsidizes this mac. They could start at $799 for 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD and shrink the delta of subsequent upgrades, but that makes the entry level less affordable. They could shrink the margins, but that would likely kill the mac mini line.
On a 2018 Mac mini a memory upgrade from 8 to 32 GB had cost me around 100 USD because I was able to upgrade it myself. Now I don’t have that option because apple solders the RAM to the board.
Remember that students can get the base Mac mini for $499- an absolutely killer deal
hate to agree really, but thats the truth. well, i will just buy the base mini and use external drive for the home folder and apps
My local apple shop in Thailand offer 3rd party upgrade Macmini m4 to 2TB at around 250 USD
Great deal. But you need to be careful to make sure the chips they use are fresh and not used...
Is this in BKK? Can I have the shop name and address? Thx
@@akiko009
Most likely, the chips are sourced from Chinese recycling operations. Though so long as the chips used are MLC or TLC, there isn't really any problem. QLC is the one that falls over and dies with writes
Ive been waiting 20+ years to move to Apple, but the value prop has never bee worth it. As you go up in price and performance, you get more out of x86.
yeah their current upgrade pricing is an insult. That M4 is pretty cool but when hampered by the storage and ram choices its hard to go that route.
But the software is locked into the Apple playpen. Asahi save us. You also need a nas to keep this thing usable.
Stop comparing upgrade prices. Spec up the machine to what YOU need and then compare THAT price to what you can get from PC part picker. Make your decision based on that. The fact that a base model exists for super cheap is irrelevant if it can't do what you need it to do.
More people on the internet need to be able to criticize Apple for its flaws and at the same time praise them for some of their clear advancements
I remember when I was getting my EE degree in the late 90s I had to take a microcontroller course. I remember the teacher talking about how a washing machine company would sell a no frills base unit for a low price but then they could spend an extra $10 to $20 on a microcontroller and LEDs to make a fancier control and charge the customer an extra couple of hundreds of dollars for the deluxe model.
I bought the base M4 and will just use an external drive for everything.
I feel like the 800 version with 1tb is still on par with an equivalent pc and you can get external thunderbolt enclosure drive, but yeah it's braindead scam pricing otherwise.
5:54 What is this graph? Something is not right 😅
You brought up the lenovo ram upgrade, on the slim 7x going from 16 to 32gb is..... Under 70$. Yea. Apple should stop destroying the (in this case excellent) value of its machines by crippling one spec at at time and requiring ridiculous upgrade pricing.
Especially since you now can't change anything after the fact even though you should be able to and these computers should just have nvme slots, they don't, which creates more ewaste. Good job Apple, youve just offset all those apple stickers you removed from boxes.
Apple thinks it's like a premium car manufacturer. The base model is ABC but wait. If you want the go-faster stripes, that's double the price to XYZ. Consumerism rules our wallets, and if Apple sold just the base units, you wonder what margin those base model units hold compared to any upgrade.
MINISFORUM Venus Series UM790 Pro Mini PC AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS DDR5 32GB 1TB PCIe4.0 SSD
-600$
If Apple is generous enough, there will be plenty of customers who willing to paid for 2TB SSD upgrade even if they know they only need 1TB because it's soldered but still reasonable to upgrade. It's a win-win.
Peak programmed obsolescence ! Those businessmen are genius ! Or not ...
I don't care how many Apple PCs are sold. Until they get those prices to a normal state, I will continue to stay away.
Its sad because if they would price these things more reasonably it could actually be a really cool option
The average consumer, even ones who needs more processing power, don't know their way around a PCB, let alone a bios menu. Paying someone else to do something will always be costly; plumber, painter, or PC builder. I tried some other pre-builts, and they basically matched Apple with some upgrades. Ex: Dell has 16 to 32 GB upgrade at $186 instead of $200, so aPpLe tAX.
Apple Tax is such an overrated excuse, given that its not just Apple.
Maybe consider adding the 10Gbps ethernet and nothing else.
If the people who buy that configuration "don't know any better" then even the base model is a scam.
“…we’re not gonna tolerate this for much longer.”
Yes you will and you know it.
You almost shat yourself making this video
😂😂
Just the usual Apple shenanigans
...and this will only get worse because people will continue to give Apple their money.
@@gabe_0xApple don't make bad products. But good products and services simply are not their main focus
@@null_geodesic I did watch the video. That base model looks like a great product! I was referring to their predatory hardware upgrade practices.
You forgot about the most important aspect. If you go with the home build you are stuck with Windows shit or Linux...neither come close to MacOS.
trillion dollars company... still doing .. that type of things.. woaw.
What's funny when you did the recording for the "$1892.50" pc was that the 7800X3D was still priced at near scalper level due to bad stock, check now and that cpu is now in stock and back to earth on amazon for $349
Hi Quinn! Do you think the base model configurations are being sold at a loss with the usury price upgrades being a necessity for subsidizing them?
Great video by the way, exceptionally helpful perspectives in several dimensions: time, product lines and platforms
I think this is a good take. They have far lower margins on the base model then they don't have to raise base price and deal with the "apple is raising prices omg".
That’s what happens when get the guy that ran Compaq into the ground to run your company, he’ll run it into the ground as well. 🙄
He made it more profitable
You can easily get a Mini PC like a Beelink SER8 from china for *less* than a base Mac Mini which performs roughly the same or better with 32GB of DDR5 ram, 1TB of ram and all the ports you could dream of.
With a worse CPU/GPU
Well, selling my 2021 14” M1 Max MacBook Pro to buy an equivalently configured M4 Mini means I’m buying the Mini for about $390. What would Apple give me for a trade-in for my MacBook Pro? Nothing!
Please I beg if you're reading this do not ever buy a new 3050 pls get a used 5700xt or something like that PLEASE
Not only is the rtx 3050 a bad value on its own, the one you got is even worse. The rtx 3050 6Gb has so many other cut down elements that it’s basically a 3040 in performance
RAM situation is bad, but SSD can at least be mitiigated with external drives thanks to those numerous ports
It could be worse. Apple still ships 64GB base iPads. 😂
Cant believe that the M4 is that efficient, its mind blowing that kind of performance on that really tiny cube
I can be productive AND play Apex on my breaks... Oh wait.
Honestly, I don’t know a better Mac-leaning tech channel on YT. Quinn, another great job.
Size, power consumption, OSX.
Typing it on a Windows machine, but I have 2 Macs I use for work next to me too during the week. For what I work on OSX is just a better choice. Sure, I have my 4080s on right now, but I am happy my mac doesn't pull as much as my gaming machine 8-10 hours for 5 days a week.
It's $0.27 per kWh here. And yes, once the gaming PC is running the AC is working harder too.
Proof Mkbhd is compromised
I would love to use a Mac again, but the upgrade prices make it completely not worth it. It is insane that upgrading to a 512 GB SSD costs $200 when you can buy a faster, high quality 2TB SSD for less than that.
The perfect holiday gift for the Mac masochist in your family! I just bought a Crucial brand 32gb kit on Amazon for $100. But saw some others for as low as $70!
lol. You’ve demonstrated in this video consumers will put up with it for over a decade. Apple’s not going to change.
4:22 I don’t understand why this sentiment still exists about Apple Silicon when the numbers speak otherwise. Is it smashing the top of the line Nvidia GPUs? No, at least not yet. But considering the stark difference in their power budget-where Nvidia’s GPUs consume about 5 times that of Apple’s at peak power-Apple’s integrated GPUs are in their own league. They don’t need to be connected to power(for laptops) to realize their full potential-unlike their Windows counterparts where performance drops by half, becoming considerably slower than Apple’s GPUs.
At this point, such statement is a myth! Great video, btw.
Your clip of a retina 2012 is a unibody
Maybe I’m not understanding it but I feel like storage is the smallest issue compared to the ram, can’t you just buy a good ssd and an enclosure and connect it via one of the ports? It wouldn’t be internal and likely a bit slower but otherwise it would still be quite small all considered. Ram is a pain given you can’t easily upgrade either way, but I feel like everyone’s taking about storage like it’s the end all be all
5:06 I don’t know Snazzy, you haven’t seen MY search history…
Would've been cool to see you compare it to a $600 Windows mini PC from the likes of minisforum or GMTek, etc.
Other channels already did this. M4 wins on all tests. But, mini pc with that price comes with bigger ram and storage.
You should buy a thunderbolt or USB external SSD and using to expand the storage. You can DIY it and use a high quality and fast SSD. You can even use it as a boot drive!
Unfortunately, you can't add RAM via USB. External drives add cables and devices to the desk and aren't practical for notebooks. For the older ones, there are these small USB-drives that hardly stick out but it looks like Apple removed USB-A.
The funny thing is that building a better PC that matches the price of the Mac mini is super easy: 32G RAM, 2TB SSD and we have 2079€.
@@jochenkraus7016 you can also use an Nvidia GPU and get CUDA. Which if you need it, is a big deal.
Defeats the idea of a SFF if you have loads of cables and extra boxes hanging out the back . Even velcro-ing a small M.2 enclosure to the case is ridiculous.
@@jochenkraus7016Having cables or external devices on a desktop computer isn’t really an issue unless you’re really ocd about that stuff, most people aren’t.
Dang I installed a 256GB SSD in my G4 iMac and a 128GB SSD in my G4 Cube total cost with SSD adapters for both $98. And maxed the ram for both $38.
Yea I still live in 2005. That Apple is dead and the current pricing scheme will never go away, we shall always have the Apple Tax.
Cant blame apple overcharge for memory as they realllly quick and high bandwidth
but for storage part can they just give us an fxxking standard m2 slot ???? 😂
I am an apple fan and I think these prices are trash. Crazy, right? I also like some android phones. Holy crap.
I am OS agnostic. I use Windows, MacOS and Linux. Most of my storage is off-system. I have a huge NAS and backups, with almost nothing being held locally on a single system. Internal storage is not the best place to keep data.
That grrr in his voice @ 6:43. I felt that.
If we could clone dosdude1 50,000 times and have him run the genius bars this wouldn’t be a problem
Well…a lot of corporate IT departments could install the base Mini because their users have access to 10 Gb, 25 Gb, or 100 Gb SAN or storage solutions, and that’s where the users store their data.
It’s funny, I was on a trip when the M4 released and I was already planning on buying a base M2 MacBook Air to replace my 2015 model. I don’t need any fancy upgrades since I have a real desktop at home, I only needed a new processor and efficient battery life so I was amazed when they told me I could get the 16gb model for the same price I would’ve paid the 8gb one week before. I know my use case it’s not normal but for me it works perfect
A Trillion dollar company worries about the right to repair and the ability to upgrade a computer you Purchased. Shameful
I just picked one up using EDU pricing 500 and from delaware (no sale tax) and i love it. havent had a mac desktop since a 2009 imac. i still do run macbook pros but always ran PC desktop. this is great for grandparents, parents, even small business owners.
Base + ext ssd 🎉
The thunderbolt argument is less "Nobody cares about Thunderbolt other than Cupertino cultists" but rather it's usually not needed if you have PCIe/M.2 slots and everything else. Honestly people think they need super high speed USB ports way more than they actually do. Enumerate your USB devices and I'd bet almost all, if not all, of them are USB 1.1/2.0. I know I personally have no USB3+ devices connected to my main desktop. As a whole the industry goes "my device doesn't need the bandwidth of USB3+ so why would I make it speak USB3+." Which is particularly annoying since things like webcams can cause problems with hubs since they eat the entire USB2 bandwidth, which runs on separate data lines, and there's no transaction conversion between USB2 and later standards (although technically a Thunderbolt hub could do it if they put a PCIe USB controller in).
One of the main use cases for USB4/Thunderbolt 4/5 bandwidth is external storage. Ironically this solution (using TB4 to NVMe enclosures) to the Apple tax problem is often rejected. That said I do agree that Apple really needs to adjust their pricing since there are many absurd scenarios in their pricing ladder currently (Mac Studio being $100 cheaper than a similarly configured Mac Mini while getting the Max chip as another example prior to the M4 upgrade).
For those who use internal expansion Thunderbolt/USB4 can be a bit of a downgrade since the PCIe lanes that would otherwise be available get eaten by the controller. This is leading to situations where depending on your use case AMD's "new" chipsets with their USB4 requirement can be seen as a downgrade since you no longer have the option of using those 4 lanes for something else. (Often true even on boards that had USB4 on 600 series since they often moved the controller from the PCIe 3.0 lanes of the chipset to using 4 of the CPU lanes.) You can kind of get the lanes back with external enclosures, but if my memory serves there's protocol overhead not to mention the cost.
I know I'm probably sounding like I'm saying "640k ought to be enough for everyone" but really the point is that things have trade offs. An ATX tower lacking Thunderbolt is different than a NUC/laptop lacking Thunderbolt in terms of coverage of various use cases.
8:25 The last MBPs without retina already had USB 3.0, although they also came in 2012 but earlier in the year. Also, in the picture you have a 15” MBP pre retina, albeit it can be a 2012 pre retina model.
Hey Quinn great video but I don’t think u believe your conclusion that “we as consumers will not stand this further much longer”. Do you remember how long Apple had 128gb SSDs as standard? Until there is a price increase of the base price of the computer to $699 (and similar across the line)I believe the base storage will be 256gb. In my opinion 256gb is honestly enough especially in a desktop where you tell your boomer relatives if they are storing any media or files just save to an external disk that’s always plugged in. 128gb was not enough even back then 256 imo is still barely reasonable.