I am very happy with my Mac Studio M1 Max w/ 64 GB shared memory. This machine does all I need and will remain my daily desktop driver for the next years coming. Greetings from Germany, Thomas.
The prices that Apple charges for RAM and SSD upgrades are outrageous given the fact that Moore's law is still in operation. Moore's Law states that every 18 months either the cost of making a given chip halves or a chip of double the performance can be made for that price. Three years ago I was quoted £200 for a 1 Tb PC SATA SSD. Two years ago I bought a 2 Tb PC SATA SSD for £200. This year I bought a faster 4 TB PC NVMe SSD for £200. This shows that the price of flash chips is halving every 18 months and that Apple could double their base SSD storage every 18 months without it costing them anything. Both Apple and Nvidia have said that Moore's law no longer applies as a justification of them charging more for new generations of silicon. Apple and Nvidia's profits are soaring because they do not pass savings due to a very alive Moore's law onto their customers.
Yup, total click-bait. My 32GB M4 Mini processes my astronomical data from my telescope so much faster than my 96GB PC, that I still don't believe the numbers. :) This guy is obviously not a Mac person at all. I have both, but the Mac is used 90% of the time. Edit....come and see me in 5 years when I sell this for about 50% what I paid for it. Try that with a PC, not gonna happen. I sold my M1 Mini for literally 50% what I paid for it and it STILL runs the current MacOS with Apple Intelligence.
Well, the Mac mini isn't meant to be "the center of a power-house setup" (like a music studio). And that's obvious. But there are lots of applications, where it does the job quite nicely, even with 16 GB of RAM - and with your home folder on an external SSD (and cloud storage, or with a NAS). Now I have to watch the video about the NVMe drive …
Apple is a really smart company. It stops me from buying an Apple computer for decades. Apple want to sell their computers to rich people only, because they deserve to use so powerful computers.
I had purchased the Mac mini M4 Pro. My issue with it is the fan noise. When I encode an MKV file to .MP4 the fan kicks in right away and it doesn't stop until the encoding has finished. The encoding process was twice as fast as my old Mac mini M1 but the M1's fan never made any noise. I returned the M4 Pro.
@@daviddas Maybe the problem was with the Mac mini I received. The fan noise was definitely there. It's a powerful Mac mini but for now I am keeping my Mac mini M1.
So as a music composer I opted for the Mac mini pro with 64gb and 4tb, yes it’s expensive but if I opted for a lower spec ssd yes I could have saved maybe $400 BUT I now have a portable unit that I can store all my software VST3 on, I can then chuck it in my bag and use it on the road say a hotel room for example without having to worry about cables or m.2 drives failing. Is it my dream machine No, would rather have a M4 Studio absolutely but am not going to buy a M2 studio when we know the M4 is due soon but the main reason I am not waiting is that the same specs in the M2 studio is almost 2k more based on the same specs.
Power users should have enough common sense to buy the pro version or wait for the studio… click bait 👎 The upgrades are over priced but that is on everything Apple. I went to Temu and bought a 2 TB M.2 and a thunderbolt 4 enclosure for around $160. So in reality there is nothing wrong with the new Mac mini
My base model m1 8gb 256 does everything i need for audio recording and video production i can do 4k time lines in capcut just fine and its my main system i use nothing else except my cell phone.
Moving the Home folder to an external drive. You better know what you're doing. As something are disabled. As it looks for the internal drive first for certain application. Why there are little things that will trip you up..
I have M1 Mac Mini with 16GB RAM and 256GB SSD. I bought it mainly to try Logic Pro. I was thinking about upgrading M1 mini to M4 mini, but then for the same $600 I bought Lenovo IdeaCentre3 with Core i5-14400 CPU ($350 Black Friday sale), 64GB DDR4 RAM ($90), and 2TB Samsung 990 Pro ($150). BestBuy had those prices for at least a week or two before Black Friday. Now I'm running Cubase and Bitwig Studio on this PC. It is very quiet. You can always find some good deals on PC computers and parts (RAM, SSD, etc). PCs are upgradeable, you can run Linux on them. Also unlike MacOS, Windows supports very old peripherals. I have 10+ years old Canon scanner which still works in Windows 11 🙂
Right.. did it come with Windows Pro 64? How about Video\Audio editing software. Security lockout from hackers.Free OS upgrades etc... You can buy a cheap PC with a Laptop i5 Processor.. And that is just what you get. A cheap PC that you have to buy $500.00+ more software to make it useful. While most PC are used for Games to start with. So no cheap video cards for them. That is an extra $800.00+ base model. Which requires a full case PC and motherboard. 700 watt PSU. And when Apple offers you $300.00 trade in for that old M1 Mac Mini with 16gb. While you only paid $599.00 for it. Let me know how much they give at trade in after 5 years of using it..
My thoughts exactly! While I love my 2017 5K iMac...it's on it's last legs and I need to upgrade...it likely won't happen until next year anyway, so I'll wait for the updated Mac Studio...although an updatedin MacBook Pro is tempting. I'm currently using an M1 Max MacBook Pro from 2021 and it's still a work horse.
What?? "The former base line was really not enough to run a modern OS efficiently" th-cam.com/video/e8kq_rySa6k/w-d-xo.html You've lost me right there at that totally ridiculous statement. Or perhaps I imagined the past 4 years of using my M1 base model with Photoshop, Logic, video editing and finding it handled everything probably better than my old 5,1 cheesegrater mac (8 cores, 32gb RAM, Nvidia 970, Nvme drives) Anything you have to say after that I will never hear, because when you make a statement which is so incredibly incorrect, you can smell it 100 yards away, there's no point hearing you out on anything else.
Bit of a curve ball there. He also failed to mention the M4 iMac. Seems the chap is looking through the Windows at number 12. Funny how creators are avoiding talking about the M4 iMac? even worrying are those that claim it is slower than the Mac Mini with the identical processors - that is the Mac Mini you need to buy a Studio display for or risk a 4k one not looking good enough. The Mac Mini that has a single speaker. The mac mini without a webcam. The Mac Mini with its fan control at the bottom sucking in over time lots of dust and grime. That Mac Mini with the silly on off switch 3D designed in China and shipped via online stores. Meanwhile the iMac sits there happily, with 6 speakers, a 12mps webcam a Magic touch keyboard and mouse and has 4 USB C ports to power external drives or hubs, looking neat and tidy, just like my May 17 5k Retina 27" iMac. Strange World these creators live in.
Exactly. These videos are just silly to me. No one is going to buy a $600 Mac mini and upgrade it with $600 worth of upgrades for even a semi professional studio. It’s ridiculous. The Mac mini base model is not for studio professional facility work. And honestly, these videos are just comical entertainment at this point. I do TH-cam videos, myself and these kind of comparison videos are just silly. A better comparison would be the Mac mini Pro and the Mac studio, but the cooling system alone on the Mac studio and the dual video encoder for professional video editorsagain make even that silly unnecessary comparison in my opinion.
Mac Mini M4 Pro w. 512/64 is what I'm looking at for next summer. I only use my Mac Mini M2 pro for notation based apps so I don't need a monster computer. It still comes in cheaper than the M2 Studio Pro and Apple refurb prices are a complete joke in Canada just like their valuation for trade ins. Criminal actually.
Among the other valuable info in your review, I had a "Doh!" moment when I saw your computer screen. I SHOULD have been using the "color inversion" feature--and in the process, NOT destroying my eyesight--because the black background is so much easier on the retina. Do you have an opinion on the M4-PRO w/64G RAM? (i.e., is it overkill for an advanced hobbyist who uses LOTS of midi tracks, etc.?)
So, there's really NOTHING wrong with the new Mac Mini, it's just that pricing structure is very..... "Apple". I plan to upgrade my M1 Mac mini maybe next year, but i'm going to max out the RAM for music production purposes.
I got the M4mini Pro and it was a lemon…others who got the pro had the same experience. Not a great way to lure Windows users like me to their computer line. I returned it and got a base line with a few upgrades. Still, this totally destroys the mantra that hear from Mac-heads all these years that “Mac is the best”. Well, not if the computer doesn’t work.
Would you be willing to elaborate on what the issue was? I am also a windows user that is interested in Mac, and so far I have heard nothing but positive things about the M4 mini.
I'm surprised you didn't mention the maximum 64 GB RAM (or maybe you did, but you focused more on storage, which is much less of an issue). For composers, 64GB RAM is really the bare minimum, and not really future proofed (and I'm someone who prefers modeled instruments over sample-based ones).
@@daviddas For many use cases even 16GB RAM is enough or was enough a year ago, especially if you record external synths, like Yamaha MODX which have many good sounds, or if you play and record a guitar. The problem with the latest operating systems, either Windows or MacOS, is that now you need more RAM for the OS because of all these useless AI features. 6-12 months ago Windows 11 used about 4GB of RAM. After I upgraded to Windows 11 24H2 it started using almost 6GB.
The conundrum is that there are aspects of this entry-level Mac mini that outclass the current version of the pro machine (the Mac Studio), but the pricing is weird.
Why would anybody need this much power for word processing? On the other hand, there isn't enough GPU power for graphics-intensive work. I don't understand who this computer is for.
I'm sorry but assumption that m4 studios would be cheaper is your wishful thinking. The pricing of m4 studio will match the pricing of m4 max macbook pro. You will drop massive $$$ for extra graphic power and hardware encoders, you are not going to use as a musician.
I am very happy with my Mac Studio M1 Max w/ 64 GB shared memory. This machine does all I need and will remain my daily desktop driver for the next years coming. Greetings from Germany, Thomas.
The prices that Apple charges for RAM and SSD upgrades are outrageous given the fact that Moore's law is still in operation. Moore's Law states that every 18 months either the cost of making a given chip halves or a chip of double the performance can be made for that price. Three years ago I was quoted £200 for a 1 Tb PC SATA SSD. Two years ago I bought a 2 Tb PC SATA SSD for £200. This year I bought a faster 4 TB PC NVMe SSD for £200.
This shows that the price of flash chips is halving every 18 months and that Apple could double their base SSD storage every 18 months without it costing them anything.
Both Apple and Nvidia have said that Moore's law no longer applies as a justification of them charging more for new generations of silicon. Apple and Nvidia's profits are soaring because they do not pass savings due to a very alive Moore's law onto their customers.
All excellent points. I'm in that boat: using iMac Pro, tempted by the new Mac Mini, but will wait for updated Mac Studio.
Let me guess: nothing? (Click-bait?)
Yep.
Yup, total click-bait. My 32GB M4 Mini processes my astronomical data from my telescope so much faster than my 96GB PC, that I still don't believe the numbers. :) This guy is obviously not a Mac person at all. I have both, but the Mac is used 90% of the time.
Edit....come and see me in 5 years when I sell this for about 50% what I paid for it. Try that with a PC, not gonna happen. I sold my M1 Mini for literally 50% what I paid for it and it STILL runs the current MacOS with Apple Intelligence.
@@clipper99 And it does it on 40 watts...
Well, the Mac mini isn't meant to be "the center of a power-house setup" (like a music studio). And that's obvious. But there are lots of applications, where it does the job quite nicely, even with 16 GB of RAM - and with your home folder on an external SSD (and cloud storage, or with a NAS). Now I have to watch the video about the NVMe drive …
I got the base Mac Studio M2 a year and a half ago and it's been an absolute beast. External Thunderbolt NVMe SSDs work very nicely, as you say.
Apple is a really smart company. It stops me from buying an Apple computer for decades. Apple want to sell their computers to rich people only, because they deserve to use so powerful computers.
Then get a better job or go cut some grass.
You haven't mentioned the M4 iMac either.
I had purchased the Mac mini M4 Pro. My issue with it is the fan noise. When I encode an MKV file to .MP4 the fan kicks in right away and it doesn't stop until the encoding has finished. The encoding process was twice as fast as my old Mac mini M1 but the M1's fan never made any noise. I returned the M4 Pro.
Really interesting to hear. I hadn't heard anyone complain about the fan noise with the new Mini.
@@daviddas Maybe the problem was with the Mac mini I received. The fan noise was definitely there. It's a powerful Mac mini but for now I am keeping my Mac mini M1.
Maybe they'll fit the studio into the leftover old Mini chassis and I won't have to build a new monitor riser for my desk! 😉
So as a music composer I opted for the Mac mini pro with 64gb and 4tb, yes it’s expensive but if I opted for a lower spec ssd yes I could have saved maybe $400 BUT I now have a portable unit that I can store all my software VST3 on, I can then chuck it in my bag and use it on the road say a hotel room for example without having to worry about cables or m.2 drives failing. Is it my dream machine No, would rather have a M4 Studio absolutely but am not going to buy a M2 studio when we know the M4 is due soon but the main reason I am not waiting is that the same specs in the M2 studio is almost 2k more based on the same specs.
Do you mean a Mac Mini Pro or a Macbook Pro? You mention no need for cables so I guess you don't have the Mac Mini Pro you claim you have?
Power users should have enough common sense to buy the pro version or wait for the studio… click bait 👎 The upgrades are over priced but that is on everything Apple. I went to Temu and bought a 2 TB M.2 and a thunderbolt 4 enclosure for around $160. So in reality there is nothing wrong with the new Mac mini
My base model m1 8gb 256 does everything i need for audio recording and video production i can do 4k time lines in capcut just fine and its my main system i use nothing else except my cell phone.
Apple assumes you know UNIX. The command line in UNIX allows you to soft link a directory to an external drive. TADA! All fixed.
Most people have no idea how to use a Terminal Window to start with..
How much ram did Mozart require?
Truth.
Moving the Home folder to an external drive. You better know what you're doing. As something are disabled. As it looks for the internal drive first for certain application. Why there are little things that will trip you up..
I have M1 Mac Mini with 16GB RAM and 256GB SSD. I bought it mainly to try Logic Pro. I was thinking about upgrading M1 mini to M4 mini, but then for the same $600 I bought Lenovo IdeaCentre3 with Core i5-14400 CPU ($350 Black Friday sale), 64GB DDR4 RAM ($90), and 2TB Samsung 990 Pro ($150). BestBuy had those prices for at least a week or two before Black Friday. Now I'm running Cubase and Bitwig Studio on this PC. It is very quiet. You can always find some good deals on PC computers and parts (RAM, SSD, etc). PCs are upgradeable, you can run Linux on them. Also unlike MacOS, Windows supports very old peripherals. I have 10+ years old Canon scanner which still works in Windows 11 🙂
This is all true. If you are comfortable on Windows/Linux!
Right.. did it come with Windows Pro 64? How about Video\Audio editing software. Security lockout from hackers.Free OS upgrades etc... You can buy a cheap PC with a Laptop i5 Processor.. And that is just what you get. A cheap PC that you have to buy $500.00+ more software to make it useful. While most PC are used for Games to start with. So no cheap video cards for them. That is an extra $800.00+ base model. Which requires a full case PC and motherboard. 700 watt PSU.
And when Apple offers you $300.00 trade in for that old M1 Mac Mini with 16gb. While you only paid $599.00 for it. Let me know how much they give at trade in after 5 years of using it..
Do you reckon 48 gigs of ram with the Mac mini pro would be a good studio powerhouse for music engineering?
My thoughts exactly! While I love my 2017 5K iMac...it's on it's last legs and I need to upgrade...it likely won't happen until next year anyway, so I'll wait for the updated Mac Studio...although an updatedin MacBook Pro is tempting. I'm currently using an M1 Max MacBook Pro from 2021 and it's still a work horse.
I just bought a used M1 MacBook Pro with 64G of RAM in mint condition. GREAT computer so far!
What?? "The former base line was really not enough to run a modern OS efficiently" th-cam.com/video/e8kq_rySa6k/w-d-xo.html
You've lost me right there at that totally ridiculous statement.
Or perhaps I imagined the past 4 years of using my M1 base model with Photoshop, Logic, video editing and finding it handled everything probably better than my old 5,1 cheesegrater mac (8 cores, 32gb RAM, Nvidia 970, Nvme drives)
Anything you have to say after that I will never hear, because when you make a statement which is so incredibly incorrect, you can smell it 100 yards away, there's no point hearing you out on anything else.
Bit of a curve ball there. He also failed to mention the M4 iMac. Seems the chap is looking through the Windows at number 12. Funny how creators are avoiding talking about the M4 iMac? even worrying are those that claim it is slower than the Mac Mini with the identical processors - that is the Mac Mini you need to buy a Studio display for or risk a 4k one not looking good enough. The Mac Mini that has a single speaker. The mac mini without a webcam. The Mac Mini with its fan control at the bottom sucking in over time lots of dust and grime. That Mac Mini with the silly on off switch 3D designed in China and shipped via online stores. Meanwhile the iMac sits there happily, with 6 speakers, a 12mps webcam a Magic touch keyboard and mouse and has 4 USB C ports to power external drives or hubs, looking neat and tidy, just like my May 17 5k Retina 27" iMac. Strange World these creators live in.
Oh my god a cheap computer is not a powerhouse to run your entire high output studio! 🤯 earth shattering news😮
Exactly. These videos are just silly to me. No one is going to buy a $600 Mac mini and upgrade it with $600 worth of upgrades for even a semi professional studio. It’s ridiculous. The Mac mini base model is not for studio professional facility work. And honestly, these videos are just comical entertainment at this point. I do TH-cam videos, myself and these kind of comparison videos are just silly. A better comparison would be the Mac mini Pro and the Mac studio, but the cooling system alone on the Mac studio and the dual video encoder for professional video editorsagain make even that silly unnecessary comparison in my opinion.
Mac Mini M4 Pro w. 512/64 is what I'm looking at for next summer. I only use my Mac Mini M2 pro for notation based apps so I don't need a monster computer. It still comes in cheaper than the M2 Studio Pro and Apple refurb prices are a complete joke in Canada just like their valuation for trade ins. Criminal actually.
Among the other valuable info in your review, I had a "Doh!" moment when I saw your computer screen. I SHOULD have been using the "color inversion" feature--and in the process, NOT destroying my eyesight--because the black background is so much easier on the retina.
Do you have an opinion on the M4-PRO w/64G RAM? (i.e., is it overkill for an advanced hobbyist who uses LOTS of midi tracks, etc.?)
You get a Mac Studio for studio use ( hint the name is in the title ) DOH !
Hi David, thanks. And wow, the subliminal gated track behind your voice is spooky!!!!
So, there's really NOTHING wrong with the new Mac Mini, it's just that pricing structure is very..... "Apple". I plan to upgrade my M1 Mac mini maybe next year, but i'm going to max out the RAM for music production purposes.
I got the M4mini Pro and it was a lemon…others who got the pro had the same experience. Not a great way to lure Windows users like me to their computer line. I returned it and got a base line with a few upgrades. Still, this totally destroys the mantra that hear from Mac-heads all these years that “Mac is the best”. Well, not if the computer doesn’t work.
Would you be willing to elaborate on what the issue was? I am also a windows user that is interested in Mac, and so far I have heard nothing but positive things about the M4 mini.
i'm waiting for macbook air m4
I'm surprised you didn't mention the maximum 64 GB RAM (or maybe you did, but you focused more on storage, which is much less of an issue). For composers, 64GB RAM is really the bare minimum, and not really future proofed (and I'm someone who prefers modeled instruments over sample-based ones).
Good point but I would think 64GB+ RAM is only really needed for people who are doing large sample library work. Right?
@@daviddas For many use cases even 16GB RAM is enough or was enough a year ago, especially if you record external synths, like Yamaha MODX which have many good sounds, or if you play and record a guitar. The problem with the latest operating systems, either Windows or MacOS, is that now you need more RAM for the OS because of all these useless AI features. 6-12 months ago Windows 11 used about 4GB of RAM. After I upgraded to Windows 11 24H2 it started using almost 6GB.
Excuse me that's why you have different Macs for different work flows. Stop trying to make an entry level machine do pro work.
The conundrum is that there are aspects of this entry-level Mac mini that outclass the current version of the pro machine (the Mac Studio), but the pricing is weird.
32 Gigs of ram is far from on the small side for music production!
Why would anybody need this much power for word processing? On the other hand, there isn't enough GPU power for graphics-intensive work. I don't understand who this computer is for.
I'm sorry but assumption that m4 studios would be cheaper is your wishful thinking. The pricing of m4 studio will match the pricing of m4 max macbook pro. You will drop massive $$$ for extra graphic power and hardware encoders, you are not going to use as a musician.
Ummm... you have an 8-track player in your studio.
Cool huh
THANK YOU FOR NOTICING
@@daviddas I also noticed that you have John Denver and the Muppets in the player. I kid you not when I tell you that I grew up on that 8-track.
@@iocomposer crazy
Thank you for this review…excellent advice and I am now subbed and liked.