Mac mini M4 – The Essence of a Computer

November 20, 2024
3 min read

Rarely does a product come out that redefines the category, or makes you fall in love from the first sight. Maybe not surprisingly, but for me multiple such products were produced by Apple.

I’m not even talking about moving to the M1 processors. I’ve bought that MacBook Air and loved it to bits, but it was still the old design, only now it was fast as hell and the battery life was more than amazing.

For me, the first such device was the iPhone 4. It was the first Apple presentation I watched and when Steve Jobs showed it and explained I immediately fell in love with a design and Retina display. This new display changed the standard for phones and later all other screens.

Then came the iPhone X. I remember as I got it and took it out of the box, my wife, watching me, smiled and said, “we don’t experience such genuine love of technology, everything mostly is taken for granted”. I loved that phone.

More recently, it was the new iPad Pro with M4. It’s so thin and the display is just gorgeous. When I watch some high-quality content, it feels like I’m holding the movie or the TV show in my hands. Sure, there’s always room to grow (meaning to shrink, of course), but occasionally, I just hold it in my hands and look at how thin it is.

And now, during the week of Mac announcements, it was introduced. The new Mac mini. It is stunning. It just looks like a perfect computer. I know there are Raspberry Pis and Intel NUCs which are smaller or whatever. But the Mac mini looks so sleek, it feels just perfect. I wasn’t planing on buying one, but loved looking at it.

On Friday, November 8th, I went to the store to buy a USB-C Magic Trackpad, since it was day one of sales in our country. And just asked if they had the base Mac mini (I actually looked at availability on their website and knew they didn’t, but wanted to ask regardless). As it turned out, they actually had one in the back, and it was the first time in my experience and in the experience of the store employee that they’ve had a mistake on the website. She went to check and came back with the box in hand. I couldn’t say no. How anyone could?

So now, I’m the proud owner of this perfect computer. I have a couple of ideas how to use it, mostly headless, but I just can’t put it in the attic to connect to the router directly for better performance, I want to keep it on my desk. I mean, just look at this combo. Mac mini – the perfect computer.

Mac Perfect

October 29, 2024
1 min read

Instant buy.

Just look at this computer! I’ve been a fan of laptops powered by Apple silicon, my M1 MacBook Air is still a perfectly fine computer. I now have M2 MacBook Air and M3 Pro MacBook Pro for work. Since day one that chip changed my experience with mac. It is fast, it has an amazing battery life. And now the M series chips can offer incredible performance in such a small package. I’ve been waiting for an update to the Mac mini; I want to set one up as a home server that will last at least 10 years, and I feel like this is the one. It will probably be overkill, but fun as hell.

I’ve had a lot of questions for Apple recently, but sometimes they just deliver a perfect product.

Apple Event – November 2020

November 16, 2020
4 min read

It was another instalment of the beautiful commercial made by Apple, filled with amazing transitions and views of the Apple Park.

The presentation was short with a couple of minutes of recap by Tim Cook of all the products announced in the last 8 weeks.

This time there was a lot of background music when presenters were talking and I didn’t enjoy it, as it portrayed the ad vibe even more.

In the end they showed a bit with a PC guy from the old Mac vs PC commercials, it was OK. Judging by Twitter old-time Mac fans enjoyed it.

One More Thing — The Mac

Right at the beginning Tim Cook emphasised that One More Thing this time was relating to THE Mac. So, no AirTags, AirPods Studio or other devices.

I was surprised to learn that over 50% of Mac buyers are new to the system. On the other hand, with such a strong quarter for Mac, it is not a surprise that those weren’t only those who updated their computers.

They’ve made a commercial (yes, a commercial inside the commercial) showing many celebrities with Macs and a lot of those were with glowing logo. In black and white it was noticeable that they made focus on that, as it looked cool, but Apple doesn’t make such laptops anymore…

MacOS Big Sur

What they couldn’t show before is how macOS is better with Apple Silicon. It is more similar to the iOS and iPadOS in some regards. I know the internet is all about scores for CPU, but everyday little things are more important for the experience, especially on the types of machines Apple introduced. It launches apps instantly and more importantly it instantly wakes from sleep, just like iOS.

M1

This is the start of the next generation of Mac. First System on a chip for low-power Mac computers. It has 8-core CPU (4 High and 4 Low performance cores) and Apple says the High-performance core is the fastest core in the world right now.

All the new Macs

Apple introduced 3 new Macs, and they are similar to each other — MacBook Air, MacBook Pro and Mac Mini. For the first one it is a complete transition — you can’t buy Air with an Intel processor anymore. For the latter two it is the mainstream, low performance models, with Intel laptop and Mac mini still being sold as an option.

What they have in common is that all three have the same M1. You can choose up to 2 TB of SSD and 16 GB of RAM.

What is different is battery life in case of MacBook Pro and continuous performance. What that means is although the processor is the same because MacBook Air doesn’t have a fan and other two models do, they can not only reach the same speed as Air, but sustain it for longer periods of times.

It’s a shame that they didn’t update the camera in laptops. It is still the same 720p, very mediocre camera. Although the picture will be improved by the SoC thanks to Machine Learning.

Because Apple doesn’t sell any other display, it was funny how in every picture or video of people using Mac mini it was standing right on the stand of Apple XDR monitor, the stand for which costs $300 more than the computer itself.

I was blown away by the numbers provided regarding the battery life and am very optimistic about Mac lineup and will probably end up buying one of the laptops introduced (most probably MacBook Air). But of course the more exciting things will come out, when Apple will show iMac and Mac Pro with Apple Silicon inside. I can’t even imagine what will be possible with M1X (or whatever it will be called) where because of no thermal limitations there could be 16 cores and most of them would be High-performance.

Apple March Non-Event

March 19, 2020
4 min read

On March 18th Apple surprised everyone with the announcement of new and updated products.

It was rumored long ago that there was an Apple event planned for the end of March, but with the COVID-19 going around the globe everyone understood that it wouldn’t be possible to organize. So they’ve published the press release and it looks like either press only got the devices now or are still under embargo.

Let’s go through the products starting from the least important and moving to the most interesting one.

“Mac mini Also Updated Today”

The only update was the storage, it now starts at 256GB, which is the bare minimum today. As someone with the 256GB on all three of my Apple devices (iPhone, iPad and MacBook) I can’t understand how anyone would survive with less.

MacBook Air

Everyone was waiting for an updated keyboard making it’s way through the whole lineup and not just being in the 16” MacBook Pro, this day has come. With the new keyboard, 256GB storage as a base and a new (old) starting price of $999, this is again the best default computer there is. Except, we can’t be sure what a computer is right now…

iPad

Apple unveiled the new iPad Pro, of course it has a new chip, which is faster and more powerful. As a previous generation iPad Pro owner I can’t see how you would be able to see this, as the tablet is fast as hell still.

It has two cameras now, adding the 10MP Ultra Wide to the back, making it look like an iPhone 11. In a year, I am pretty sure that I didn’t take one photo with my iPad Pro. I know there are people who like to hold huge tablet in front of their face at schools and in touristy places, but I’m not one of them. I love editing photos on my 12.9” iPad Pro, but I would probably miss the shot before reaching for the iPad in my bag.

LiDAR Scanner is the weakest point in todays announcement, not from the technology point of view, but from the delivery. If you read everything Apple has provided, it just makes AR a bit better and promising a lot. Knowing Apple there should be a lot more information, either with the announcement of iOS 14 or more likely iPhone 12. It just made sense to include the hardware right now, but the software story is not yet ready.

Magic Keyboard and Trackpad Support

This is the biggest news, not only for me, but reading tweets for a was majority of potential or current iPad Pro users. Seeing videos, it looks like pointer support in iPadOS got much better. And the most interesting thing – it happened today, not in September with the release of iOS 14, but in March with iOS 13.4 (public release in a week).

The best news is that new keyboard with the trackpad is compatible with the now previous generation iPad. The worst news is the price – $299 for the 11-inch and $349 for the 12.9-inch. That is a lot of money, it is actually more than the price of the standard iPad itself. It looks nice, I’m sure the trackpad will be amazing, as Apple always excelled in making those and they now come in different colors. I’m not sure I would buy one yet, will try out pointer support first.

Pretty strong announcement from Apple, if they won’t surprise us again with the everyday announcements, I’m not sure this would be enough for the whole event, but it is more than enough for the press release.

I’m not in the market for a new iPad, as my previous generation 12.9-inch one is fast enough, screen and design didn’t change much and I don’t use cameras. Thankfully, Apple made the new Magic Keyboard for iPad compatible with the older models. Oh, and regarding the MacBook, I have one MacBook Pro already lying around not being used for months, so who need those, right?