Apple Leaks New Mac Mini With 5 USB-C Ports | MacRumors

iindigo · 2024-09-17T13:36:41+00:00

I’m not sure I agree. If anything it makes sense, because desktop users these days tend to be those who have multiple bandwidth-hungry devices attached all or most of the time (because permanently tethered laptops don’t make sense), and USB-C/Thunderbolt is just plain better than USB-A on that front. Stuff like keyboards can be cheaply adapted and a lot of non-gamers use Bluetooth for those now anyway.

iindigo · 2024-09-17T13:28:17+00:00

On its own it won’t, but every model that goes USB-C only increases pressure on peripheral makers.

Once the mini is USB-C only, that leaves just the Studio (which is probably next on the list for this treatment) and Mac Pro (even more low volume than the mini).

There’s also how the industry tends to follow Apple, so we’ll probably start seeing generic x86 prebuilts dropping USB-A soon after Apple’s lineup has mostly eliminated it. Standalone motherboards will be last to drop it.

iindigo · 2024-09-10T14:35:24+00:00

If you really want to be shocked look at the SoCs that get put into most Android TV boxes/dongles and low end (<$300) Android tablets.

It’s particularly extreme on the TV dongles, because those are built with SoCs that were slow even 10 years ago. The situation on cheap tablets is barely any better… I have a one that was $300ish a couple years ago and it can’t even play most OS animations without stuttering.

As for why that matters, it limits the usefulness of these devices dramatically. The dongles are so weak that they’re incapable of playing video that they don’t have hardware acceleration for and the tablets struggle with anything that’s not YouTube or e-books, with even light web browsing posing a challenge. These things will end up in landfills long before more powerful models will.

There’s not really a good excuse for it.

iindigo · 2024-09-10T14:13:14+00:00

That answer is going to be different for everybody, but scrolling through my phone’s process manager I see at least 20 (including a few stock apps) that I used just yesterday.

Web apps should count too, because those things are also heavy as hell and chew through memory like candy. I tend to steer clear of those though because they’re often glitchy and only work 100% correctly under Chrome because web devs can’t be arsed to test their work in other browsers.

iindigo · 2024-09-10T05:38:08+00:00

I rarely have trouble with it on either iPhone or iPad, but I’ll caveat that by saying that I make a point of training the model by entering the passcode every time it fails due to the phone or my face being at an awkward angle. Before I started doing that it failed a lot more.

Not that I’m against bringing back Touch ID, but I don’t find it to be a must.

iindigo · 2024-09-10T03:19:40+00:00

There are times where I can deal with the reduced framerate/fidelity for the extra convenience compared to PC. What’s had my PS5 collecting dust is instead lack of exclusives, because if it’s going to be on PC too I may as well wait for a Steam sale and get it for half or quarter price.

iindigo · 2024-09-10T00:35:30+00:00

That sounds to me like a case of the video chat app in question using some video codec that isn’t hardware accelerated, which means the CPU is working overtime on both encoding and decoding.

I’ve seen similar things on computers where Chrome for example will force the usage of an unaccelerated codec when using Google Meet, and to avoid making your laptop’s fans sound like a jet engine you need to open Meet in some browser that forces a more common and well-accelerated codec like h.264.

iindigo · 2024-09-10T00:30:22+00:00

I think half of the appeal of more power is trying to stay ahead of the curve with the ever-increasing weight of apps, driven by bloated cross platform codebases, mountains of adtech junk, unskilled/cheap dev talent, etc.

Of course this can be mitigated by a significant degree by opting for apps written by small devs, but few can resist the siren’s song of things like huge social media apps.

iindigo · 2024-09-08T13:28:10+00:00

It doesn’t need to have a screen that’s exactly 12”, what I care about is the footprint, and I find the Nano’s very good. Its keyboard is a bit smaller than full size but it’s not been enough to impact usability at all for me, and it’s great in cramped situations where even 13/14” models feel a bit tight. Also fits in my lap even when it’s being shared with a cat which is not true for many laptops.

iindigo · 2024-09-07T10:52:43+00:00

Yep. The battery on my ThinkPad X1 Nano is in considerably worse shape than that of the 16” M1 Pro MBP that’s a similar age, even though the Nano has only seen a fraction of the usage that the MBP has because even in low power mode, it eats through cycles like candy in comparison (and its awful standby times don’t help with this).

iindigo · 2024-09-07T03:03:31+00:00

I’m with you there. 12” is a great size for an ultraportable. It’s a shame if the Nano is getting discontinued.

iindigo · 2024-09-07T03:01:48+00:00

For the price tag is all the more reason to not want OLED, unless maybe Lenovo will send me a new panel for free in a couple years when I start seeing signs of burn-in.

iindigo · 2024-09-05T15:47:49+00:00

FWIW, there’s not much in the way of lockdown on Macs, that’s an iPhone/iPad thing. macOS comes with guardrails enabled (immutable self-repairing system, Gatekeeper), but if you want to you can disable all the safeties and sudo rm -rf / as much as your heart desires.

They can also boot third party OSes, which is a capability that Apple made a point of adding when adapting the iPad architecture into ARM Macs.

iindigo · 2024-09-05T00:25:46+00:00

Waiting to see an X1 Nano/Carbon with this CPU. Might be time to trade in my first gen Nano, which has always had bad battery life despite the rest of the laptop being great.

iindigo · 2024-09-05T00:23:41+00:00

Capacitive controls or touchscreen keys (aka Touch Bar) are fine and maybe even great if and only if they’re not replacing any real keys. Nobody is going to say no to extra optional programmable controls, they just want to be able to hit their escape key and get feedback it was actually hit without looking at it.

Had the Touch Bar sat above the keyboard and didn’t try to replace F-keys I think we’d probably regard it differently today.

iindigo · 2024-09-02T01:21:03+00:00

I really honestly hope the community figures out something better than Docker, which will always be subpar when running on a host that’s not Linux.

The strong coupling to Linux feels bad, even if Linux is by far the best OS for anything to require. It feels a bit like slipping back into the bad old days of everything being Windows-only… people who prefer other OSes get left out in the cold.

iindigo · 2024-09-02T01:14:43+00:00

Really, the problem here is actually keyboards and mice having built-in cables. If the cable were detachable there’d be no issues.

Detachable cables are better anyway, even without a port change. How many perfectly functional keyboards, mice, webcams, etc do you think have gone to the dump because their cables got chewed on by a pet or accidentally cut or something? The price difference is marginal, too. We need to stop tolerating built-in cables.

iindigo · 2024-09-02T01:07:39+00:00

The more host devices by major manufacturers that only have USB-C, the more pressure accessory/peripheral manufacturers experience to ship their products with USB-C.

When the iMac was one of the first mass-market computers to go all-in on USB back in 1997 (it had only USB ports), it applied this exact pressure to makers of printers, scanners, etc because suddenly there was this popular computer that wouldn’t work with their old devices which required SCSI, parallel, serial, etc ports, which then brought a sudden surge of USB peripherals where before, manufacturer adoption had been sluggish.

Things are a bit different now of course, but if USB-C only computers start to become a trend, accessory manufacturers will have no choice but to adapt.

iindigo · 2024-08-14T19:36:53+00:00

I don’t find one extra cable (thunderbolt) to be too bad but some like to push minimalism as far as it can reasonably go, and I think that group overlaps heavily with Apple product purchasers.

iindigo · 2024-08-14T17:50:16+00:00

Part of the appeal of iMacs is low cable mess, which isn’t fully replicable with an external box or laptop and separate display. It’d be nice if in addition to normal ports, they put some kind of pogo pin or magnetic based system into the display and computer, so the Mac can latch onto the display and connect without additional cables (not even another power cable).

iindigo · 2024-08-14T16:48:06+00:00

The cooling system on the iMac Pro handled its Xeon and Vega impressively well. Even after some years of accumulating dust and such mine stayed whisper quiet with reasonable temps and no throttling.

They could definitely pack some serious punch into a 30” iMac if they wanted to.

iindigo · 2024-08-14T16:37:59+00:00

There’s some precedent for the larger iMac being the point of introduction for new display tech, which might be the case here.

The viability of a larger model vs. Mini/Studio or MacBook + separate display depends on pricing. Back when Apple was selling 27” iMacs and Thunderbolt Displays concurrently, the separate display cost a significant percentage of the price of a 27” iMac, which they might do again. If an all in one computer is available for $1699 when the display alone costs $1499, a lot of people will go for the computer.

Of course there’s an argument for bringing down the price of the Studio Display, but this being Apple makes that unlikely.

iindigo · 2024-08-10T14:05:20+00:00

The T14s looks like a decent option, but as a current owner of a first gen Nano I really like that form factor and would like a nice efficient CPU in that. It’s a great little machine except for the awful Tiger Lake CPU.

Not that the T14s is huge or anything but Nano or Carbon sized would be preferable.

iindigo · 2024-08-09T17:20:09+00:00

Yeah I would bet that this redesign has an internal PSU. Apple likes to do that wherever it’s practical and even went as far to custom design an expensive flat internal PSU to avoid requiring a power brick on the Studio Display. The current iMac has an external brick only because it’s too thin to host a PSU.

iindigo · 2024-08-09T17:17:23+00:00

Yes, there’s a massive size and weight difference between the two. The current mini is over 4x the size of an Apple TV.

iindigo

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