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Comment by mittermayr | Hacker News Reader

There's also a new Mac Mini, which I found A LOT MORE interesting, given that its keyboard or batteries won't break:

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/01/apple-introduces-new-...

The lack of dedicated DisplayPort ports is fairly disappointing to me since their implementation is just "native DisplayPort output over USB‑C" and it doesn't support MST, so you can only do one displayport signal per port, even with a thunderbolt 4 hub with some bidirectional USB-C <-> Displayport cables.

MST wouldn't be supported even if it had a DisplayPort output. Apple explicitly did not support MST pre-M1 as well.

Yes, although that's a MacOS restriction, and MST is already used in MacOS to carry multiple streams to a single high-resolution monitor. And as Asahi Linux keeps getting more usable, I hope it can be a viable alternative, so Apple's hardware can be used without MacOS's arbitrary restrictions.

But it worked if you installed Windows instead. So the hardware supports MST

The Intel hardware supported MST. It's unclear about their ARM hardware (and the suspicion is not supported from people who've looked into it).

Check out DisplayLink. I'm using multiple monitors with M1 macbook air which officially only supports single external display. Works great so far.

I agree with your point though.

I used an M1 Air docked with displaylink for about 8 months. 1. The Displaylink software heats the machine lightly in the background, and it just gets worse with resolution. 2. The Adaptor is unreliable and can do some really wonky stuff around dock and undock due to Apple's locked USB policies. 3. The old series of Adaptors do not support 4K60, so if you plan on using it with a 4K display, you need to pony up on costs.

Assuming we see more ~$1600 sales on the M1 Pro 14 inch, that is easily $300 more computer than a $1299 M2 macbook pro.

Not to mention DisplayLink can be broken by MacOS updates. Tunneling video over USB was a clever hack back in the day, but with USB-C and TB3/USB4 docks, things are much less software-dependent.

DisplayLink is a daily source of frustration for me. If I disconnect my DisplayLink hub, and then plug it back in... I have to open and close my 13" M1 MacBook Pro a few times; restart the DisplayLink software; and sometimes reboot my computer before it will work again. For some reason, Zoom will just _hang_ after all of this. I just keep repeating the above until Zoom works again.

This is my employer provided MacBook Pro. I hate the experience so much that when it's time for a laptop refresh, I'm going to ask for the Windows option if they haven't upgraded their Mac offering to one that supports two monitors.

I love Apple products -- but I never understood how they could release a "Pro" laptop that supported only one external monitor.

Interesting as for me it mostly just works, I wonder if has to do with the dock as much as the software.

That wouldn't work with my desk and screen setup that uses MST. I use devices that do support MST but not displaylink like my Steam deck, or out the box Linux installs.

I'm not sure the downvoting is warranted. For what it's worth, I use display link every day (with an M2 MacBook Air) and it's fine. The refresh rate really suffers when driving two 4k monitors (as well as the built-in panel), but I've found it to be a reasonable workaround.

Of course, it's also helpful to know that others have had worse experiences.

I've had two displaylink docks fail on me. To displaylinks credit they sent me the second dock free after the first one failed.

USB4 supports DP 1.4a tunneling and DP 2.0 in DP "alternate mode". Agree with you, but I fear dedicated DP ports are dying.

I guess my main point is that, if we're going to move to displayport over USB-C, we (A) need Apple to put out official $100 cables, since I tried some cheap Amazon cables that didn't work and had to purchase some $60 moshi cables that I knew would work[0], and (B) they need a minimum of 5 ports since being limited to 1 peripheral port+3 monitors (2 over DP, one HDMI) on the mini is terrible. I know they want your mouse and keyboard to be bluetooth but no thank you.

0: https://us.moshi.com/products/usb-c-to-displayport-cable?var...

I've had very good luck with the CableMatters USB-C to DisplayPort cables! I've used a couple of them continuously for the last 3 years.

If you're the sort of person who needs 3 monitors on their Mini, I'm sure you can afford a Thunderbolt dock.

Four TB4 ports is plenty for 99% of people.

For your information: AmazonBasics cables are very reliable and reasonably priced. You can get an USB-C to DisplayPort cable from them for around 10 bucks and you should have a lot less trouble with it.

In my experience spending big on video cables is only necessary for large distance and bandwidth requirements (like HDMI at 2160p60 over 20 meters).

Cable Matters cables. I’ve ran them for years across several machines without issues.

They never really took off on laptops to begin with. However most PC GPUs are still majority DP despite USB C being tried as an easy connector for VR headsets and most monitors use a mix of DP/HDMI.

This obdurate refusal to support MST is indeed awful (and, actually, a minor one of the few reasons I mainly stopped using Macs).

But it is "just" a software problem, right? So they could come to their senses and change their mind.

It seems insane to me to keep putting DisplayPort ports on computers when we have USB-C, but it also seems insane to ship machines with crippled USB ports that don't support more than one monitor... so I wouldn't be surprised if they fix their OS in this regard.

(Apple being Apple though, the software fix might well "require" an M3 processor....)

I totally agree with you.

They are diversifying their laptop/desktop solutions like crazy. Even a Macbook Air can almost compete with the entry-level version of the Macbook Pro, which is great to be honest.

I heard they are exceptionally good.

Honestly, 7-900$ for a machine that will not get old very soon is not so bad, especially if you already own a screen (which due to WFH you kind of have to have together with a "decent" keyboard, etc.)

Very smart move, honestly.

"that will not get old very soon"

No idea how you can write that with straight fingers.

I’m still using a 2015 MacBook Pro, and it doesn’t feel slow. I’ve done no repairs or maintenance on it in all that time.

I tried the older 14" MacBook Pro for just over a month, and it's a world of difference going back to my late 2013 13" MacBook Pro.

I've been holding out for the new one and will be placing an order in a bit. :) The splurge will more than make up for the hours of life I'll save from browsing resource-heavy websites.

I updated to M1 MBP in 2020 because the 2015 MBP I had previously felt slow, and it got progressively worse with each macOS update.

I was using Blender on a 12 year old iMac until just a few weeks ago. Desktops don't seem to age as quickly as their portable counterparts (they are certainly less fragile).

Last year I went from an Intel Mac Pro (6,1 from 2013) that I used for 8 years to the M1 Studio. I expect to use that for many years to come.

I made the same jump. The MacPro was an awesome machine. In fact, it didn't feel slow to me at all and I wouldn't have upgraded if it weren't for the fact that they stopped supporting it in new OS releases, which means critical apps I use would be stuck at their current versions. (Plus, I assume they'll be dropping Intel support altogether soon, so I wanted to get on Apple Silicon for that.)

I felt exactly the same way. There was one app that was a little slow for me, though, and that was Lightroom. Definitely way faster on the Studio.

In the summer, I love my Studio way more, too, because it generates much less heat. In the Winter, I miss my Intel Pro. It really did heat up my office!!

Lifecycles for Macs are really long. If you don’t buy late in the product cycle, they are usually 6 year devices and work pretty well, with the exception of the butterfly laptops.

If you’re pushing the limits, the lifecycle doesn’t matter as you’ll replace annually or whatever anyway.

I was using a 2013 air up until two months ago

I still use a 2012 air. It has been demoted in the food chain (so no longer main laptop), but it’s mind blowing how well it still works for basic browsing. Maybe time I replace with a 14” MBP. If that one lasts another 11 years I’m happy.

My motivation for the new air was that I was tired of investing in replacement batteries for the 2013 air. Otherwise, it is pretty much fine for most tasks. Though, not having the fan constantly cranking is nice!

I was thinking about throwing some last gen parts into an old tower/PSU I have to build a desktop for inlaws since they are stuck on a 10year old hand down laptop. This is a good package at that price (599$) - power consumption is likely nothing, MacOS included in price, small and quiet - will comfortably browse the internet, play videos, etc. for the next 5+ years. I won't be able to repair it out of warranty so that's a bummer- but at such low price and their usage pattern I guess I can live with the risk.

Shame I can't buy an M2 Max on an ATX mobo.

I imagine a lot of the performance of the M1 and thereafter is a direct result of moving the memory closer to the die. The power efficiency, sure, that's all engineering, but super close and fast memory right next to the CPU is only one step away from AMD's 3D v-cache that has (had) the 5800X3D beating out newer 7000 series AMD chips.

I think the bigger factor is that the 3D v-cache is SRAM, which is why it needs a whole stacked die for just 64mb.

> I imagine a lot of the performance of the M1 and thereafter is a direct result of moving the memory closer to the die

I'm not sure why this Apple marketing point gets repeated so often. The M2 has the same memory support as current Intel chips: 128-bit LPDDR5 6400. Mounting the memory on the same package as the CPU might have some engineering advantages compared to socketed RAM, but it doesnt make the (industry standard) memory any faster.

IMHO the biggest advantage is the RAM->GPU VRAM pipeline, or at least, that was my experience before - whatever you want to send to the VRAM, it has to be in RAM first, and you have to wait until it gets copied, before you can use that RAM again. With unified memory it should not be necessary anymore (you just mark that part as input for GPU). Same should sort-of apply for iGPUs but I'm not 100% sure.

And given that the whole MacOS is built around various GPU-accelerated frameworks, it kind-of matters a lot.

ATX is just a formfactor, there's nothing preventing apple from releasing an ATX board with soldered-on memory - this is actually not even that unusual in the µATX formfactor.

It would be cool to get the SoC on a socket like the Pentium II was, and then have some NVMe slots, PCIe slots, and more I/O ports. This would also be better for the planet if it was a standard feature of each Macintosh and just the SoC got replaced. Unfortunately, Apple's Macintosh line doesn't work that way. The first Macs were all-in-one designs, the 90s saw some heterogeneity, and then the Macintosh line came back to an all-in-one design (except for the MacPro line and the G4 Cube). Today, the G4 Cube is like something out of an alternate universe. Not only was it upgradable, it was also incredibly easy to "open up".

Is this thing actually faster than a cheap Ryzen build for browsing? Like a 5600g that are super cheap now

Yes: https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/amd-ryzen-5-5600g https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/macbook-air-2022 (same chip as in the cheaper Mini; the Mini has a fan so it should run a _little_ faster there)

Though for web browsing both presumably fall solidly under "good enough".

If I was signing up for Tech Support for Relatives, though, I'd _definitely_ go with the Mac; you don't want to be getting phonecalls about Windows 12 or whatever in 2027.

Apples M chips are stupid fast at browsing the web because they have some native CPU instructions for JavaScript that x86_64 chips don’t.

They’re fast but that’s not usually why. ARM added some functions which could help with math-limited code:

https://community.arm.com/arm-community-blogs/b/architecture...

Most JavaScript isn’t dependent on that specific a feature for performance, however. In most cases what matters more is that they have great memory performance and handle branch-heavy code well.

Assuming you use Safari. For older relatives, probably not a bad assumption, but an important distinction to make nonetheless.

Mozilla also implemented it. I believe Chrome/v8 have as well, but I know there was some work there to avoid accidentally enabling it on older ARM chips which don't have support for it.

Actually, it's the reverse. The JS spec accidentally baked in the x86 description of int/float conversion.

This is done a LOT in JS because the JITs are actually using integers instead of floats all over the place for improved performance.

The ARM "JS" instruction just encodes the x86 semantics into hardware making the conversion several times faster than doing it in software.

M1 was faster than a 5600g, I think, but you can get a 5-series micro PC for cheaper than even the cheapest Mac Mini. For 'browsing' operations, I suspect it wouldn't matter much. There may be some advantage to using macOS vs. Windows, if this is aiding a family member... since I assume the IT support burden would be lower.

185W is nothing? My Haswell desktop with dedicated GPU, ssd and two spinning hard drives maxes at 140W

Where are you getting that number ? Just going on M2 MB Air battery lifetime I'd say you're an order of magnitude off.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201897

Mac mini (M1, 2020) Apple M1 chip, 16GB unified memory, 2TB SSD Power Consumption Idle Max 6.8 W 39 W

This is 16GB/2TB model, entry level spec should be even lower.

https://www.apple.com/mac-mini/specs/

That's sounds like the PSU spec. They could have clocked it significantly higher than laptop for perf but I expect it to be in the M1 Mac mini range power consumption wise.

I hear you, but in Europe it's around 700€, which also buys a pretty solid windows or linux laptop. If you're not locked in to mac, a comparably priced laptop with intel 12 gen CPU, 16GB RAM and a RTX 3050, which is arguably a lot more versatile machine. I think I would like Mac's more if they weren't so absurdly overpriced (approx. 25%+ over US prices) here in Europe.

The price difference between the US/Europe is mostly due to taxes. US prices don't have taxes included, European prices do.

Here in Austria we have 20% VAT, and US prices are typically without tax. So the 25% price difference is really just a 5% price difference, which is still shitty, but not as horrendous as you make it seem.

Also, the Mac mini is very special:

- tiny footprint without external power brick

- very high reliability

- completely inaudible for typical developer usage

- extremely low power usage (the 6 core Intel Mac mini was an exception)

It's the perfect home (or office) server. You can put it into a bookshelf or in a cabinet, it won't run hot, it won't disturb you with noise in the living room.... I just don't know of anything else that fits the bill.

The only shitty thing is that they are charging ridiculous prices for storage, and attaching external storage sucks because it ruins the tiny form factor, and also because the USB-C cables that come with SSD drives tend to easily disconnect in my experience.

But the tax in the US at least where I’m at is 6 or 7%, not 20.

Yes, but that difference isn't Apple's fault, only the 5% they add on top. Every product you buy in Europe is more expensive because of the higher VAT.

Sorry I misread your comment. I thought you implied that there was a 5% tax difference between the US and Austria

Except the mac will be faster and feel much snappier every day

In France the Mac mini starts at 581 euros before tax. That's $627, which is about 5% higher than the US price.

Apple silicon macbooks have one property that no windows or linux laptop will ever be able to give me. I use my MacBook to take notes in class, work on my CS homework, etc, so I spent most of my time in Firefox or VS Code. I charge my laptop once a week.

Base model in Sweden is 8495 Swedish Kronor or 814 US Dollars...

I'm likely going to order one of their Minis with the top CPU option and 32gb ram for audio production here. I've got an 2018 i7 model which is fine, but this one should set me for a _long_ time.

That's my setup and I was thinking exactly same; Mini M2 Pro with 32GB RAM would be perfect for me. Except that I don't have too many complaints with my current machine which I feel can easily work just fine for at least 2 more years.

I really just use my machine 95% as a tape machine with few plugins or edits. So as long as I can get 64 tracks of in/out reliably with 128-sample buffers (or lower) then I'm set. I just haven't tried that out in my new studio yet, as it's under construction. If I can do this, then I'll skip the upgrade for now.

I considered that as well, but price-wise you're now getting into Mac Studio territory, and it's not clear at all which of the two comes out on top.

So I'll wait for benchmarks. I can recommend the MaxTech channel on Youtube for this sort of stuff.

> given that its keyboard or batteries won't break

There's just soldered RAM and storage that can break and can't be replaced (without Apple robbing you).

Ah yes, ram and flash storage, the things famously known for breaking in modern compute hardware

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34412671

You’re right. That is the sub rosa win of the day. I had no idea. It makes me wish I had a reason to buy a new computer!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com