As of the current lineup, Mini is still stuck with 16 GB RAM and a disappointing number of ports.
Right, which is why the Mini exists.
> Mini is still stuck with 16 GB RAM and a disappointing number of ports.
Because people who need more are expected to buy the Studio.
entry studio: $2000
That's a pretty big gap. Basically it means you have to shell out $2000+ if you want to do video editing on any M1 mac. Buying a brand new computer to do video editing that has only 16GB RAM in 2022 is unjustifiable.
$2k+ is too much for most people especially young "creatives" that are making entertainment (videos). Lots of people here make hundreds of thousands a year but none of those people make that money doing video editing or working in entertainment.
16GB is plenty, and in fact the conversation when the M1 Macs were introduced was whether having 16GB vs. 8GB of RAM made a difference. (Mostly, it doesn't.)
https://www.4kshooters.net/2021/01/27/8gb-or-16gb-ram-for-vi...
MacOS on ARM handles memory differently, try it you might like it.
They can only print so many M1max chips at a time, they want to sell them in a high margin machine. Give em a year and the M1max will trickle down to the mini.
Wow, you sure have given me a lot to think about.
I already use the 16 GB 13". And while your comment is correct for most consumer applications regarding memory compression, it may not work that well in numerical computing on Python or C++ e.g. where a lot of RNGs are used or 2D/3D arrays are juggled. Just clarifying. Your statement is mostly true - but not always. Having a higher RAM machine could help definitely.
If you have pro needs, step up to the pro machine. $2k is paltry in this inflationary environment. Will pay for itself in productivity forthwith.
The only sense in which this claim is true is that macOS on Arm uses a 16KiB page size, while macOS on Intel uses a 4KiB page size. This is actually less space efficient (more wasted RAM due to partially filled pages), although it has performance benefits (N CPU TLB entries cover 4x as much RAM).
If you needed 32GB RAM to avoid swapping on Intel hardware, you still do. There isn't anything which profoundly reduces memory use. Arm Mac hardware does tend to perform lots better while swapping than Intel, which fools some into thinking it is using less memory, but it isn't.
(The reasons for the better performance: one, Apple put in a hardware accelerator block for the memory compression feature which allows macOS to sometimes avoid swapping to disk, so light swapping which only invokes the compression-based pager is faster. And two, the SSD controllers integrated into Apple Silicon are sometimes much faster than the SSDs in the Intel Macs they replaced.)
(For students looking to upgrade, $400 is a month's rent saved)
https://www.quora.com/Why-does-the-new-Mac-mini-with-Apple-M...
I also make no apologies for saying nice things about the current lineup, it's a clear improvement over 2016-2020 which I think was a step back in several ways.
Apple Studio | 20-Core CPU, 48-Core GPU, 32-Core Neural Engine! 64GB RAM! 10Gbit LAN = 3999$
I think the M1 is a nice product for 95% of people including iOS Devs.
Silent, „cheap“, cost effective, nice build server. If you need more power … well get the small studio or buy another one.
Renting from hetzner is also cheap. 49€ with really unlimited bandwith. 20 TB traffic in a month? No problem, nobody cares.
https://www.hetzner.com/de/dedicated-rootserver/matrix-apple