Apple throws shade on pokey AI PCs, claims its maxed out M4 chips are 4x faster

With the arrival of its M4 silicon on the Mac this week, Apple wants the world to know that the silicon powering AI PCs is no match for its chips. In its launch announcement, Apple boasted its mid-range M4 Pro system-on-a-chip (SoC) – which can be had with up to 14 CPU cores (ten performance, four efficiency), and 20 GPU cores …

[HCV]

Mac Mini ports

the port selection has been cut back considerably

Not really, especially depending on what you're comparing it to.

My current Mini is the 2018 Intel, which has 6 USB-ish ports -- plenty for what I need.

Its successor, the M2 Mac Mini, cut that down to 4 USB-ish ports, which was kind of obnoxious, especially since it also only supports 2 monitors. So I've been holding off on upgrading.

The new M4 Mini, as you note, has 5 USB-ish ports, so that's one more than its immediate predecessor, and only one less than the Intel mini, plus it's back to supporting 3 monitors.

(All three also have an Ethernet port, an HDMI port, and a headphone jack).

I'd rather have USB-C by default than USB A going forward.

[John Robson]

Re: Mac Mini ports

Three displays, which is a bit of upgrade - though I'd still like to see more.

The power button on the bottom, and the increase in height beyond a rack unit, will annoy people who use alot of these machines - or those who run them in a rack at any rate.

USBc is the way these things are going - I've still got a bunch of things plugged in via USB_A, but those are all plugged into the thunderbolt dock on my desktop (some via a monitor hub)

[DS999]

Re: Mac Mini ports

Three displays, which is a bit of upgrade - though I'd still like to see more.

Exactly how many displays do you think it is appropriate to support on the entry level model? Where are the people (besides you, I guess) who are going to want to hook four monitors up to a $599 computer?

If people are running them in a rack are they touching power buttons at all? If you need to restart a computer that's wedged (regardless of who makes it) you want a true power cycle, not the "soft off" most power buttons perform. So you'll flip the switch on it (if you have separately switched outlets on the PSU strip powering them) or pull the cord wait a few seconds and plug it back in. As for the change in form factor, who says they have to be racked horizontally? Its 5.0", and three RU is 5.25". It is 2" tall, so nine of them would fit vertically in a standard rack. Looks like 50% better rack density than the previous model! Not that Apple cares about making rack mounting easy, they aren't designing for that.

Most people don't turn their PC "off" anyway, since sleep modes like hibernation are effectively "off" as far as power draw but allow wakeup via the keyboard.

[John Robson]

Re: Mac Mini ports

"Exactly how many displays do you think it is appropriate to support on the entry level model? Where are the people (besides you, I guess) who are going to want to hook four monitors up to a $599 computer?"

Maybe there aren't many of us, but it's a completely artificial limitation - that's what annoys me.

There is the graphics capability to drive:

"Up to three displays: Two displays with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz over Thunderbolt and one display with up to 5K resolution at 60Hz over Thunderbolt or 4K resolution at 60Hz over HDMI:

I run five displays (visual impairment means it's the best way I've found to arrange my work), but they total less than a single 6k display:

2*1080p (2Mp), 2*1440p (3.7Mp), 1 laptop monitor (3072*1920 is another 6Mp)

That's a total of ~17 million pixels, substantially less than just one 6k display (21 million)

It's not like the software can't handle the monitors, and it's not like the hardware isn't powerful enough either.

If they supported displayport daisy chaining it would be even better... but MacOS has never done that to my knowledge, despite the hardware being capable (I tested on my older mac by running linux).

In an events setting where you are doing projection and streaming then a mac mini works great, and the third display will benefit there*, but more displays would allow for more processing to be done - and again, it's not even touching the sides of what the hardware is capable of driving. Extra outputs would allow for subtitle displays, reduced projection displays for easier compositing...

* At the moment we use a USB DisplayLink adaptor for the third display, it looks awful compared with a real display output, but is Ok for OBS...

[DS999]

Re: Mac Mini ports

If it only has three display drivers that's all it can drive.

Surely you don't think a PC that can handle 4 4K displays can also handle 16 HD displays just because the number of pixels is the same?

[gfx]

Re: Mac Mini ports

I always turned off my mac mini 2011. Had it pointed backwards for easy access to the powerbutton. The macbook air m1 just get closed and wakes up again even a week later. Most windows laptops have emptied the battery by then.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Mac Mini ports

"I always turned off my mac mini 2011. Had it pointed backwards for easy access to the powerbutton."

The Mini I use for accounting is strapped to the underside of my desk and I can hit the button by feel with it mounted sideways so the cables are more neatly routed. People think I have 4 monitors on one computer, but 2 are for my production machine, one for the accounting computer and one I can connect up to the laptop so I can slide that out of the way.

I've really moved away from the "one computer to rule them all" motif. I have my Production Machine that is kitted out but draws a bunch of power so using it to commentard is somewhat expensive. The accounting software I've used for years (and have a perpetual license for) went to an online model especially for Mac as they couldn't keep up with Apple's changes and gave up. I have no need for any updates at this point so keeping what I have on an older machine keeps it nicely isolated, easy to back up and off when it isn't needed. The CAD desk on the other side of the room is where the Windoze box lives its unconnected life with my media management computer in the corner to store and dispense the content I have amassed. Horses for courses. Some of the services I use have really dived into bed with Google and especially want to have Google/M$/Chrome to operate at full feature so I got (for free) a box that should be good for Win10 that will have Chrome installed and that's it. When it gets infected through being connected to the internet, I can burn it down and build it back fairly quickly.

It's a whole mess of machines to get things done, but each has a purpose, I don't need to run a 1,000hp machine to do email (iMac 27" does that and web browsing). I don't need to pay more money and "share" my accounting online for no advantage and I can have multiple OS's running on appropriate hardware. (Ubuntu is a VM on my big production machine).

[doublelayer]

Re: Mac Mini ports

If you are flipping the power to the computer, you still have to turn it on after you restore the power. I don't think the Mac Mini auto-starts when power is connected. So yes, you will need to push that button. I don't think most users will need the button often enough that this would be a big problem, but I also don't see why it would have been a problem to put the button on any of the other sides.

[Dave 126]

Re: Mac Mini ports

> I also don't see why it would have been a problem to put the button on any of the other sides.

The smaller size of this Mac means there would be a chance of the user accidentally pressing the power button when trying to insert a cable or thumb-drive, if the power button were located on any of the sides. Such an event could very annoying, whereas lifting up the Mac to access the power button might only be slightly irritating.

If I needed to use the power button with great frequency, I could always just place the Mac on a book.

[doublelayer]

Re: Mac Mini ports

That might be a reason not to put it on the side with the ports, but they have blank sides where inadvertent presses would be much harder to manage. Even if I eliminate the back because you might press it accidentally (though the button on the back for all the other Mac Minis didn't do that) and the top so you can stack something on it, there are still three other sides where it could go.

[pogul]

Re: Mac Mini ports

> If you are flipping the power to the computer, you still have to turn it on after you restore the power. I don't think the Mac Mini auto-starts when power is connected.

It's very much a configurable option, not sure where you got your information from

I have a Mac mini late 2012 configured to come on when power cycled at the wall - I run Proxmox VE with various VMs and containers very happily.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Mac Mini ports

"Most people don't turn their PC "off" anyway, since sleep modes like hibernation are effectively "off" as far as power draw but allow wakeup via the keyboard."

I'd prefer a very solid Off switch. I suppose I can use the switch on a plug strip which I have for the audio system connected to my cheese grater. If I don't need audio, I just leave it off since it's a studio set up and if I'm batch rendering stuff overnight, there's no point in having it on or the monitors.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Mac Mini ports

"Three displays, which is a bit of upgrade - though I'd still like to see more."

At that point, the Studio might be a better choice.

For me, a very solid 2 monitors is minimum. If I were doing more video work and more complex work at that, I'd not only want another monitor, I'd want much more performance.

What I really don't like is the paltry amount of memory, the extreme pricing for more and no way to update later. Same for the SSD capacity. 256gb? Good grief, they must be specially made for Apple being so small by current standards. Again, Apple is going to the route of those SSD's being proprietary and not upgradeable without paying bloated Apple prices.

[Richard 12]

WTAF?

the power button has been relocated to the bottom of the machine.

The previous gen was bad enough by putting it at the back so it has to sit sideways to make it accessible, but that's truly insane.

Guess I'll wait. Maybe it's faster, but that mechanical design is abusive.

[Antony Shepherd]

Re: WTAF?

Probably the same designers who put the mouse charging port on the underside of the mouse.

[John Robson]

Re: WTAF?

I always mounted them backwards in a rack, so the ports and power switch are available together...

[PCScreenOnly]

Re: WTAF?

If you need an extender get one with a power option. I had to do that with my previous desk arrangement as the power for the laptop is in the usual place, but the laptop had to be lid down.

Not needed now, but it was bloody handy then

[Dave 126]

Re: WTAF?

Maybe Apple prototyped a 5" x 5" Mac Mini with a power button on the front, back or sides, and discovered that test users complained of accidently pressing the power button when inserting cables or dongles?

[Richard 12]

Re: WTAF?

Funny how that never happens with NUC format PCs. Do Apple users have differently shaped hands?

[VicMortimer]

Re: WTAF?

NEVER use a MacBook with the lid closed. It will slowly cook itself to death, because Apple has always been terrible at thermal management.

Apple officially "supports" it because it almost always happens after the warranty and AppleCare expires.

[Wonderdog]

To be fair, £599 for the mac mini isn't bad at all (by Apple standards), given its super neat (and has no external power brick!) and the base model finally ships with 16gb of memory - which has always been the biggest sticking point of the recent entry level macs.

Whacking a cheap external drive on a thunderbolt port and leaving the inbuilt drive for the OS should make these really attractive/capable little systems for casual video editing and productivity tasks.

Probably pretty decent for basic gaming as well (assuming there's a native MAC ARM build of your software available).

Might pick one up for the novelty.

[O RLY]

I am trading in a 4-year-old M1 mini for the a M4 mini. I'll use it for some of the dev stuff I do as well as media work. I have been reasonably pleased with the growth of the ARM software space in Steam or the App Store for games and Anaconda for Python/data science stuff. When I bought the M1, only about 75% of the python libraries and tools I needed worked through Anaconda, but now it's nearly everything.

[VicMortimer]

STOP TRADING IN APPLE PRODUCTS!!!!!!

You're destroying the used market and making it easier for Apple to get away with price gouging for new stuff.

Apple DOES NOT refurb trade-ins, they shred them. It's greenwashing because a 4-year-old computer has a LOT of useful life left in it.

[O RLY]

I am using "trading in" colloquially.

The M1 Mac will replace the ~14 year old Mac Mini attached to the TV, which will in turn will probably go to the garage to play music and media to my shop speakers.

About your PSA, good info. Apple quietly killed its refurb market.

[Marty McFly]

Darn things seem to be reproducing around here. Intel, M1, and M2 models currently in use for various tasks. M4 somehow got ordered the other day. None were for upgrades, all were for expansion of use cases.

Apple & MacOS certainly isn't perfect. But it sure is refreshing compared to the advertising & marketing platform previously known as Windows.

Good Gawd, does that mean I am required to use this icon?

[The Central Scrutinizer]

Apple wants the world to know.... that it sells over priced shiny shit that can't hold a candle to a properly specced X86 machine.

[Rich 2]

AI

So, what’s the performance like for non-AI stuff? That is, for something that’s actually useful?

[John Robson]

Re: AI

Judging by the M1 and M2 kit I've used... pretty good.

[ThomH]

Re: AI

All Apple's marketing department seems to have plucked from the aether on that is "the M4 Max CPU and GPU are up to 20% faster than the M3 Max", and for the cherry-picked task of "3D visualisation with Cinema 4D" Apple specifically claims the M4 Pro is "1.3x faster" (though they actually seem to mean 1.3 times _as fast_) as the M3 Pro. Or three times as fast as 2020's M1 Pro.

As the machines don't ship for a week or so, independent metrics are not yet available.

[ThomH]

Re: AI

A self-update: Geekbench scores have materialised.

Quick summary: in multicore scores, the 14-core M4 Pro gets essentially the same score as 24-core M2 Ultra, and seems to be almost 45% ahead (!) of the same-segment 12-core M3 Pro.

Meanwhile, the 16-core M4 Max is about 20% faster than the 14-core M4 Pro, becoming the new fastest processor that Apple has shipped.

Of course we didn't get an M3 Ultra so it's possible, or even probably likely, that an M4 Ultra will turn up in an updated Mac Studio and/or Mac Pro to take the crown within the next half-year or so, by when we'll all be speculating about the upcoming M5.

[UnknownUnknown]

Re: AI

A lot of tallk of the mechanics of bit size, memory size etc for LLM …. But no mention at all of the quality of the input data set…

.. so brute force and quicker to the GIGO result. Hoorah !!

[Anonymous Coward]

Got a proper case to plug that silicon into? Nope? Limited to laptop use it shall remain. (Saying that, the M2 Pro laptop we have is superb - apart from the proprietary connectors for everything).

How hard would it be for Apple to actually produce what professionals have been telling them they want, for years now?

[Mishak]

"proprietary connectors"

I'm not familiar with the M2 Pro - what connectors are you referring to?

[ThomH]

Re: "proprietary connectors"

There's exactly one proprietary connector on it: the MagSafe port which can be used for charging. As can any of the USB-C ports.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "proprietary connectors"

Never opened a case before then, yes?

[doublelayer]

Re: "proprietary connectors"

From their original comment, I'm guessing they're referring to internal connectors, but that doesn't answer the question because I don't know exactly what they're talking about. For instance, they used to have proprietary SSD connectors, but now they've gone one better and chosen no SSD connectors, just soldered drives. I'm also not sure what they want when they ask for "a proper case". Either they don't like the Mac Mini shape or they want to install Apple CPUs into other computers, which obviously is not going to happen.

[Richard 12]

Re: "proprietary connectors"

Cooling and rackmounting

In the professional computing use case, there's a few things you need:

Fixed mounting points - somewhere to out screws or bolts. Doesn't have to be 19" rack as one can bend steel to make adapters, but it can't just sit it on a shelf. Almost all machines similar to the Mac Mini have VESA mounting, for example.

Cooling systems designed for 24x7 usage at high load. Otherwise your lovely fast machine quickly overheats and becomes ludicrously slow or even shuts down while it cools.

It's been a very long time since Apple produced any hardware like this.

El Reg, it'd be interesting if you could manage to do a piece on how (eg) Github does their Mac runners. Do they take the boards out and use their own case and cooling?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "proprietary connectors"

Non standard drive connectors; which as you say are now soldered drives (bad to worse). Disk error? Chuck the motherboard. Smiley poop.

Regarding proper case, I’m talking about the distinct lack of a reasonably priced conventional tower. Like the G3/G4s were. With proper PCI express slots, standard nVMe etc.

Cheese grater Mac is nearly there apart from the reasonable priced line.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why?

[IGotOut]

What?

[Sir Lancelot]

Because…

[Anonymous Coward]

a 3.5mm headphone jack.

But all the Apple fans threw away their cabled headphones, didn't they?

[Martin an gof]

Has Apple fixed HDMI yet?

Always had trouble connecting Macbooks - of various vintages - to our projectors at work. Most of our projectors are on "long" leads (boosted or media converted) which work fine with laptops from Acer, Lenovo, HP, Dell etc. but plug into a Macbook's inbuilt HDMI socket and you are asking for trouble.

Just this last weekend, three speakers brought Macbooks. One came without HDMI at all and worked first time with a USB-C adapter. The others both had HDMI which didn't work - in one case with two different projectors in different rooms and required external adapters, one of those had USB-C while the other only had the "chunky" format Thunderbolt ports and for some reason I couldn't find my TB to HDMI adapter so had to dig out the VGA connection. Worked a treat.

I suspect that HDMI on a Mac simply doesn't supply sufficient power to run the inline electronics which make these long cables work but I don't know for sure.

M.

[Mishak]

Re: Has Apple fixed HDMI yet?

This is normally down to the HDMI driver chip not being able to drive into the capacitance on the cable. Everything should work up to 15m - but that depends on the quality of the cable.

Dropping the resolution and/or frame rate can help - I had problems with a Dell trying to drive 4K@30Hz at 0.5m, but it was ok with a lower resolution.

[Martin an gof]

Re: Has Apple fixed HDMI yet?

It's unlikely a purely capacitance issue as in general the connection is a short (5m or less) "normal" HDMI cable which connects to a boosted cable of some sort. In a couple of cases it's the boosted cable straight into the computer. I have had problems with 15m unboosted leads in computers / BluRay players other than Apple ones, certainly at higher resolutions and dropping the resolution can help, but the whole point here is to have something which is (as near as possible) plug-and-go, and apart from Apple devices doing the long-haul with a suitable boosted lead seems to do the trick.

I think the thing which is annoying me is that

• nearly all Macbooks have problems
• nearly all "other brands" are fine
• this includes some quite cheap external adapters

It's not always possible to drop the resolution either; if there is a slight glitch for some reason, the computer will re-evalutate the display (it thinks you have unplugged and re-plugged) and reset the display to the "optimum" value reported by the display.

Unfortunately I don't have a Macbook to play with - I could try replacing a self-powered cable with one which has external power and see if that makes a difference - so experiments are done in the 15 minutes before the presentation is due to start and the emphasis is less on diagnosing the underlying problem than on getting a picture at all!

M.

[Richard 12]

Re: Has Apple fixed HDMI yet?

Apple definitely have some longstanding HDMI issues.

Even on 1m HDMI cables the display often comes up weird or not at all. It's so bad that I always shut the machine down before connecting, which seems to usually avoid the trouble.

Looking at the forums, it's an extremely common issue.

[Martin an gof]

Re: Has Apple fixed HDMI yet?

Oh, thank goodness it's not just me!

We do have some "precious" types who insist I must have bad kit, but experience with Macbooks suggests otherwise. They do seem to have sorted out the problem with WiFi though where devices simply couldn't "see" our guest network. If simply turning WiFi off and on again didn't do the trick the only cure was a hard reboot, but WiFi mostly works these days. The HDMI thing is utterly annoying though.

M.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Has Apple fixed HDMI yet?

Guaranteed it's because you've got bad kit.

Apple HDMI is fine. You're using crap gear that breaks the spec. Just because you can get away with it using other crap gear doesn't mean your stuff is up to snuff.

Fix your shit.

[Richard 12]

Re: Has Apple fixed HDMI yet?

No, it's Apple.

Their own guide explicitly says "try turning it off, plugging it in and then turning it on again", despite HDMI being explicitly hotpluggable.

Worse, that's effectively impossible to do with most video projectors (and even some TVs) as they take several minutes to start up.

There are thousands of reports, across all the major display and projector manufacturers who literally wrote the HDMI specifications - and yes, using proper cables.

Shilling just makes you look bad. I see you're aware of this as you posted AC.

[Martin an gof]

Re: Has Apple fixed HDMI yet?

effectively impossible to do with most video projectors

Plugging together while everything was off, turning the display device on first and lastly turning on the computer used to be a good option in the days when practically every laptop had issues with external displays (obviously VGA in the olden days). Sometimes works with Apple kit. Is rarely, as you note, practical.

On the positive side, my newer (<10 years) projectors now keep the HDMI socket "active" even when they are in standby, so even if the projector is not actually on, the computer thinks it is. This can save a lot of trouble. My even newer projectors (<5 years) are also now either Laser or LED-lamped (or a combination), start up very quickly from cold and don't mind being turned off for short periods - something that was guaranteed to reduce the lifespan of a discharge lamp, which is why most discharge lamped projectors insist on a few minutes of cooling before allowing themselves to be turned back on.

However, if leaving someone alone in a room with a projector I will still insist that they use the "shutter" button, rather than switching the projector off, if they are breaking for coffee, even if on my very newest projectors (bought last year) it no longer literally closes a shutter in the light path, it actually turns the laser lamp off!

M.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Has Apple fixed HDMI yet?

"Just this last weekend, three speakers brought Macbooks. "

Macs are still the choice for producing lots of visual content. My big laptop case has an assortment of adapters and breakout boxes to plug into other people's display setups. Macs are more finicky when it comes to HDMI so I'm always prepared to go to Plan B if it doesn't hook up on the first go. That can be due to really long leads in a conference room or an AV install that went for the cheapest and lowest spec cable. I've never had an issue with a projector sat right on the table that I plug into directly.

What I don't like at the new Mac laptops that have F-all for ports. It means I have to carry around breakout boxes so I can plug in hardwired KB's, Mice, pointers, networking, etc. It's just one more thing to go wrong. (more like several more things).

[Zolko]

Marketing names

While I have no opinion on the CPUs themselves, I have a comment on the names they – Apple – give to their product range : Pro, Max, Ultra ... and this for CPUs but also for their phones. So here is a quiz: which model is better than the others: the Pro, the Max or the Ultra ? Which phone has the bigger screen : the Ultra or the Max ? Which has the more powerful CPU : the Pro or the Max ? Is the Ultra better than the Max ? But then, the Max isn't the maximum ! It looks like Barbieland: everything is awesome.

While I was an Apple fan, it has been long time I didn't buy an Apple product (~10 years and the MacBook Pro retina)

[SenileOtaku]

Sure, no problem, if you don't mind resigning yourself to their razorwire-topped walled garden, the one with armed guards in the towers ready to shoot anyone trying to escape.

[Handy Plough]

YAAAAWWWWWWNNNNNNN.

That is, to quote the great sage Vyvyan Basterd, the single most predictable and BORING thing that anyone could ever say whilst commenting on a thread about Apple.