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76% Positive

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#mac#apple#more#years#mini#memory#don#pro#game#price

Discussion (149 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

jdoe1337haloabout 4 hours ago
So happy with my base M4 purchase for $499 when it released. I even snagged a 1TB replacement drive for $199 a year ago. Feels like I got the last train out.
rafaelmn10 minutes ago
I'm kind of lost on what to do with it. I have better workstation PCs, and I couldn't find a good way to turn it into a media center - it would be a great living room PC - but couldn't find a BT remote friendly solution last time I checked. Anyone has a solution for this ? I don't want to be using mouse/keyboard every time I sit on the couch - something that would let me stream something like jellyfin fullscreen with a remote ?
timperaabout 3 hours ago
Same thing for me! Got it with the education discount when it came out in 2024 and, although I've been pretty disappointed with macOS, it's crazy to see that the price increased by $300 in less than 2 years, with no sign of the price increases slowing down.

What will happen once people are priced out of buying computers? I find this worrying.

jorvi41 minutes ago
I don't really understand this dooming. All market forecasters, memory bulk purchasers and the memory producers themselves have stated multiple times, unequivocally that the shortage will get worse in 2027 and then as new fabs come online the shortage will taper off as 2028 progresses.

We've been through.. 4? 5? memory boom-bust-boom cycles already. Nothing is pointing to this one being any different, aside it probably becoming the mother of all busts since AI isn't adding much productivity and as businesses realize this, they'll stop paying top dollar for access meaning AI vendors cancel all their reserved fab capacity.

The fabs already exist at that point so it's less of a loss for the memory fabs to crank out memory chips and have the RAM OEMs sell them at bargain bin prices. No pseudo-cartel pricing possible either with CMXT becoming a major player. $50 for 32GB-64GB of DDR5 in 2029 here we come babyy

qurren16 minutes ago
> What will happen once people are priced out of buying computers?

If it persists for years people will have time to spin up more fabs and meet demand

iamacyborgabout 3 hours ago
> What will happen once people are priced out of buying computers? I find this worrying.

I’m sure some kind capitalist will be happy to rent them a thin client linked to a computer in the cloud.

datakanabout 3 hours ago
Apple is already leasing phones/computers..........
reaperducerabout 1 hour ago
I’m sure some kind capitalist will be happy to rent them a thin client linked to a computer in the cloud.

Maybe we'll see a return to the late 1990's, when companies would give you a free computer as long as you allowed it to constantly display an ad banner on the top of the screen.

brightballabout 3 hours ago
Capitalism will lead to:

- Lots of options competing on quality, price, user experience, user needs

- Every marketplace innovation that we talk about on this platform

So somebody might offer exactly that and if it's a good option, people will use it. If it's not, they'll use an alternative.

Government regulation will lead to:

- Giant entrenched companies that are difficult to disrupt thanks to insider connections

- Lack of competition, price increases, terrible customer service and pretty much everything that "anti-capitalists" today complain about in regards to capitalism.

sceptic123about 2 hours ago
Maybe they will have to use/repair/upgrade the ones they already own?
moominabout 1 hour ago
Problem with that is so few of them are repairable these days. Laptops just kind of fall apart over time.
dawnerdabout 2 hours ago
I wish I picked one up last fall when the stores were trying to clear them out. Now you can’t even buy them in person.
Waterluvianabout 4 hours ago
I feel that way about my GPU for normal gaming use. Now I’m afraid of it dying on me.
Atotalnoobabout 1 hour ago
Consider underclocking/undervolt it a little, especially if you aren’t using the GPU to its full potential.

It will last longer and hopefully the GPU prices will recover in a few years.

I hope

qurren15 minutes ago
I'm still running a 32GB V100 ...
KronisLVabout 3 hours ago
I’m currently hoping that my Intel Arc B580 doesn’t die on me cause even a 5060 Ti 16 GB has reached like 700 EUR price over here. I don’t think the prices will get better anytime soon.

Same with my M1 Air for being on the move, even notebooks would be more expensive than they’re worth.

drob518about 2 hours ago
I’m milking my M1 Air, too. It’s still going strong, and I just can’t justify replacing it. Would love 64GB or more memory, though.
Ambroosabout 4 hours ago
It's a bit of an emotional goodbye to the super cheap Mac Minis we got to enjoy for a while. I got some for family members, we had some serving as iOS/macOS build servers sitting in a closet at my last job, they were fantastic.

Not that they're a bad deal now, but at European prices of over €1000 for M6/16GB/256GB it's a psychological barrier that's been broken.

Dathuilabout 3 hours ago
When they discontinued the M4 with 16GB a few months ago I had literally just ordered one off Amazon which they promptly cancelled. It would have been 600 after exchange rate from GBP.

I can't justify a more than 2x price increase for what I'm guessing are marginal improvements. I want to replace my home lab but as it stands my underpowered NAS will have to continue as it has the past few years

glimsheabout 4 hours ago
If you adjust for inflation, is it a big change from the super cheap Mac Minis of the past? Probably still somewhat more expensive, but not as much as the nominal difference would imply.
petuabout 3 hours ago
Mac Mini M4 launched less than 2 years ago at $600 (US, $500 with edu discount; as low as $400 on general discounts). Now same config with M6 is $900.
leocabout 2 hours ago
And except at the beginning, the Mac Minis of the past weren’t famous for being cheap, but rather for being disappointingly, unattractively expensive and, over time, apparently increasingly forgotten by Apple.
ex1fm3taabout 3 hours ago
same spec, same chip. I tought Apple would at least bump the RAM
ameliusabout 3 hours ago
> but at European prices of over €1000 for M6/16GB/256GB it's a psychological barrier that's been broken.

We should be buying European solutions anyway. Different psychological barrier that was broken long before.

tiagodabout 3 hours ago
What's the European alternative to a Mac Mini?
ameliusabout 2 hours ago
smartmicabout 3 hours ago
> for always-on agentic computing

Don’t know, but this as main ad headline feels almost like a threat to my personal home computing needs

ActorNightly10 minutes ago
Don't worry, there are exactly zero Apple chips that are good for any sort of local inference right now. Unified ram is fast for ram, but dogshit slow compared to actual dedicated VRAM on graphics cards.
PinguTSabout 4 hours ago
What I am missing in all of those benchmarks, how does the M6 compares to the M5 Pro.

I don't care how the M6 compares to the M1, even when the M6 2.3x compared to M1 in Excel spreadsheet. That is no measurement even in accounting. The dead time is not the Excel.

I am to only one?

rcarmoabout 3 hours ago
The big difference you're not looking at is the memory bandwidth. The M5 Pro has nearly twice the one of the M6:

170GB/s memory bandwidth Configurable up to 32GB unified memory

307GB/s memory bandwidth Configurable up to 64GB unified memory

That is also the factor you want to take into account for AI inference, of course.

redox9915 minutes ago
Both are still very low for AI btw.
Zyloklotoabout 3 hours ago
Last time the benchmark numbers from apple were stupid and they still are.

I just wait for practical real live numbers with real stacks i use.

And btw. they reduced the memory bandwdith on the M4 in comparision to its previous version by 40gb/sec or so, you need to wait to see.

toasterlovin42 minutes ago
Upgraded my work machine from an M1 MBP to an M4 Mac Mini a couple of years ago. I do a lot of work in Excel with large sheets. The performance improvement was very noticeable and appreciated!
speedpingabout 4 hours ago
It basically means that every meaningful comparison produced an embarrassing improvement multiplier
zamadatixabout 4 hours ago
Benchmarks from the manufacturer are just marketing as well. Wait for independent 3rd party reviews.
nicoburnsabout 4 hours ago
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/08/apple-introduces-m6-a...

Says 1.2x for multithreaded and doesn't specify (I presume smaller) for single-threaded. That's compared to M5 not M5 Pro, so M5 Pro is likely significantly faster.

atonseabout 3 hours ago
After watching a video about how the filesystems are > 2x faster (and testing this myself in my mac mini vs a linux machine), I feel like Apple is leaving a lot on the table, and I hope that they get APFS to be as fast as the linux filesystems.

Because otherwise a lot of this hardware (including their blazing fast SSDs) is wasted. Cuz my M1 mac mini is awesome otherwise.

TheJoeManabout 3 hours ago
I took a peek into APFS a bit ago [1] because I (stupidly) yanked a usb SSD before it was unmounted and corrupted it. Reading the documentation, it seems to have many "cool" features which just aren't fully exposed/utilized in the OS, and there is a lack of API tooling.

For example: it is copy-on-write, and my corruption happened in the superblock checkpoint. There is no built-in command in Disk Utility to "mount" an older checkpoint (and accepting a small amount of dataloss). Also the "First Aid" command allegedly runs volume repair top-down when it is recommended to do it inside-out.

[1] https://www.ntfs.com/apfs-structure.htm

kridsdale1about 1 hour ago
Claude was super helpful at walking me through the APFS CLI tool to do some more advanced stuff that’s not in the GUI.
snazzabout 1 hour ago
Is APFS that much slower than ZFS or btrfs (more comparable Linux file systems) or just ext4? Btrfs is noticeably slower than ext4, but at least all the Mac and Linux file systems are way faster than file operations on Windows :)
djfdat22 minutes ago
Here's a very recent video benchmarking APFS vs ZFS, btrfs, and XFS+: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wVNFaFDIn8
abricqabout 4 hours ago
> Up to 2x faster gaming performance with ray tracing in Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition when compared to Mac mini with M4.

Interesting that Apple quotes performances when playing Cyberpunk 2077 ! Maybe they will want to care more about gaming ?

And while i'm at it, I was wondering a few weeks ago if I should try this game on my M3 pro. Anyone has played it on Apple and has feedback ?

VCFundedGenYerabout 3 hours ago
Apple does this thing where they pick a very old game and then boast about how well it runs. It's so bizarre.

Not like Mac gaming is good anyway...they have "Game Porting Toolkit" but it's not free and open like Proton so nobody will use it unless Apple pushes them. Removing Rosetta doesn't help either.

wpmabout 3 hours ago
In fairness, Cyberpunk 2077 might be 5 years old but it is the modern day "Can it run Crysis". It is absolutely still a hard game to run.
rxyz20 minutes ago
Cyberpunk is THE PC benchmark game since it released
datakanabout 3 hours ago
Cyberpunk isn't old to macOS, they just released the native version a few months ago.
thewebguydabout 3 hours ago
Apple also just can't give up the idea of selling games through the AppStore either and you end up with situations like with AC: Shadows where it was ported, but you must buy the macport via the app store. Your copy on steam does not include the mac port, so if you wan to play on both your Windows/Linux desktop and Mac, you have to buy it twice. So stupid.
mathisfun123about 2 hours ago
> Game Porting Toolkit" but it's not free and open like Proton so nobody will use it unless Apple pushes them.

I don't know what this means - game porting toolkit is free

bodge5000about 3 hours ago
From what I've seen they do care quite a bit about gaming, but not to the point where they're willing to actually do much about it, so I wouldn't expect a proton style compatibility layer anytime soon unfortunately
LetsGetTechniclabout 3 hours ago
You can get Proton through CrossOver at least. I haven't done much testing but I know some people use it to do some basic gaming.
andrewingramabout 4 hours ago
I play quite a few games on my Mac Mini via Crossover, but rarely anything particularly graphically intensive. Though I do see occasional buzz about improvements in the game porting toolkit leading to significant perf improvements when they make their way into Crossover.
mcphageabout 4 hours ago
> Interesting that Apple quotes performances when playing Cyberpunk 2077 ! Maybe they will want to care more about gaming ?

They include game metrics in their marketing often, because they know their customers care about gaming. But no—for whatever reason, it never translates into Apple caring about gaming. I don't get it, but that's the way it has been for a long time.

wlesieutreabout 4 hours ago
With the “game mode” and “game porting toolkit” in recent history, I think there’s one person at Apple who cares about gaming and every couple of years he escapes from the basement where they keep him locked up and manages to sneak something into the release branch

They’ve also said when they pull Rosetta for intel compatibility, it will still be available for old games to use, which is a huge improvement from their usual stance of “that game studio that hasn’t existed since 2008 should dust off their code and update it to our new architecture.”

efficaxabout 4 hours ago
they've done a bunch to make macs a better gaming platform, including the very nice game porting toolkit (https://developer.apple.com/games/game-porting-toolkit/) which you can use yourself to run pc games on the mac. All macs since m1 have very nice gpus that can handle most games made today, and the newer ones can run the latest AAA ones with good detail. At this point it's more that game publishers/studios don't care about the mac
swozeyabout 4 hours ago
cp2077 sits permanently at 60fps and looks great on my m1 max 64gb. I used to play it on my 4090, but once I figured out how to do redmods on macos I quit using it and play it on my mac to save power (I'm 100% solar powered and barely generate 600w, 4090 consumes 500+). In apples infinite wisdom they don't support egpus, so my 4090 egpu will never work with my mac, which was a really disappointing thing to discover.
russelgabout 3 hours ago
It could work but that would require NVIDIA to release an arm64 macOS driver. Safe to say this will never happen.
deadbunnyabout 2 hours ago
Do we need a 3rd top level discussion on this?
Insanityabout 2 hours ago
The M-chips are insanely powerful. So powerful for my regular use that I'm still on M1-generated devices and don't really need to update. Perhaps in a few years when both local-running LLMs are good enough on regular consumer hardware there'll be a good reason to upgrade.

As a disclaimer though, I haven't even tried to really run local models on the M1 as I also have a 'gaming PC' that can run them fine.

xutopiaabout 2 hours ago
I feel much the same. I feel like the next time I upgrade I could splurge a bit more and get a really bigger CPU and storage to be even more productive with.

However the main reason I would upgrade is to run LLMs locally and RAM prices are making this a no-go. One day if RAM comes down to earth I'll upgrade. If not I'll stick to this old machine for a long time.

ActorNightly9 minutes ago
> Perhaps in a few years when both local-running LLMs are good enough on regular consumer hardware there'll be a good reason to upgrade.

I mean, local LLMs already are really good if you own Nvidia Cards, not sure what you are waiting for. 2x3090 will blow any current Mac out of the water in tok/sec

matt-pabout 3 hours ago
2.5Gbe as standard is nice.
wpmabout 3 hours ago
About damn time, Gigabit ethernet started shipping on desktop Macs over 20 years ago.
matt-pabout 2 hours ago
Eh, for what? Most people use it only for 'internet' and 1G full duplex is generally still enough for that. Happy for 2.5G though :)
brynetabout 3 hours ago
I'm curious what 2.5GbE chipset they used.
muroabout 4 hours ago
Double the price of the base m4 mac mini in February :(

(it was late in it's lifecycle and there were frequent sales)

markstosabout 1 hour ago
I see that my old M1 Mac Mini with 16 GB memory and 1 TB drive has held value over time, selling for $600 to $700.

A new Mac Mini with that much ram and storage costs about double now.

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stuff4benabout 3 hours ago
Which is more important for AI/LLM stuff, the number of GPU cores or the amount of unified memory? I can choose from a Mini with the M5 Pro 18CPU/30GPU and 64GB RAM or a Studio with a M5 Max 18CPU/40GPU and 48GB RAM for roughly the same price
weliabout 2 hours ago
They affect different things. You want more powerful models -> more memory. You want the models that run to be faster -> more gpu cores.
cpuguy83about 2 hours ago
Larger model -> more memory

It depends on what model(s) you want to run.

mthomsabout 2 hours ago
Memory bandwidth is one of the most important factors. The Max machines typically have higher bandwidth than Pro (you should look up these exact models to verify though). Having said that, you could run bigger models with 64GB.

I went with a 64GB M2 Max a few years back even though it stretched my budget and I'm glad I did. I'm not sure what I'd pick in this case. Tough call.

HelloUsernameabout 3 hours ago
Related? "Apple to skip high-end M6 Mac chips in favor of AI-focused M7 line" june 2026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48676795 380 comments
kotaKatabout 3 hours ago
Not really. It's Gurman, once again throwing darts at the wall to see what sticks like a desperate roach begging for subscribers to his bullshit newsletter of guesses and predictions he'll flip in a month the opposite direction for even more clicks and bait.
sceptic123about 2 hours ago
Is the "Water Project" intended as a sly dig or some kind of nod to AI water use concerns?
kuuuzyaabout 4 hours ago
Wow. Is OpenClaw still alive? Would their users spend so many for the new Mac mini?
rxyz19 minutes ago
Large majority of users moved to Hermes Agent
ameliusabout 3 hours ago
How many tokens per second would you even get on them?
kennywinkerabout 3 hours ago
Afaik most openclaw users aren’t running their llm locally - just using a mac mini as an always-on sandbox for agents.
copperxabout 3 hours ago
Cool, like a $5 VPS?
xhkkffbfabout 3 hours ago
A sandbox with access to iMessage. Can't have your agent texting with green boxes.
simonhabout 3 hours ago
OpenClaw was originally designed to run on a Mac, but using remote LLMs accessed via API. Running the LLM locally on beefier hardware came later.
mandarinclipsabout 3 hours ago
I really want to buy one for coding/dev work, but it's just too expensive. Not sure if the M4 MacBook will get a price cut anytime soon.
Zyloklotoabout 3 hours ago
You will not feel a difference in coding/dev work between M1 to M6 in a relevant manner.
user43928about 2 hours ago
Two years ago maybe, when I wrote code by hand.

Today development work is limited by compile times and test run times, particularly with UI tests in the iOS simulator.

Hardware on the development machine finally maters.

eknkcabout 3 hours ago
I have an M1 and M4 Max at office. I feel the sluggishness of M1 now, after years it finally started to show its age.
coredog64about 3 hours ago
Have been considering a used M1 but I'm concerned that I'm going to get flash storage that's been thrashed to within an inch of it's life by someone running it as a poorly configured inference host.
Zyloklotoabout 3 hours ago
There are sooo sooo many students and normal people using these devices or corporate laptops never seen inferencing or anything like this, its so hard to trash the storage of them, i wouldn't worry about it.
mandarinclipsabout 3 hours ago
Where's a reliable place to buy a used Mac? I'm afraid of ending up with a broken unit.
mandarinclipsabout 3 hours ago
Yeah, I know. The problem is that used prices right now are almost the same as what they used to cost brand new. Prices have gone up way too much.
nodesocketabout 3 hours ago
I also can feel a speed/sluggishness difference between my M1 Max MacBook Pro and my M4 Pro (14 core).
jtbayly8 minutes ago
Honest question: Which one feels faster?
jbverschoorabout 2 hours ago
Very well timed for John Ternus's first quarter.
tonymet44 minutes ago
I’m still not convinced by the value of local models. It feels like ray-tracing where we are driving up the compute cost for a high cost and fringe benefit.
meeritaabout 3 hours ago
I will buy a Mac mini, 64GB RAM + 2TB. That will replace my current MBP M1 Pro with 16GB (4 years old). For serious upgrade I will wait the M7 Line.
mythz38 minutes ago
Considering doing exactly this, hopefully by the time M7 Ultra is out, the RAM Apocalypse will be over.
manishmicrosaasabout 2 hours ago
glad that i purchased mac studio this January
drewg123about 2 hours ago
I'm so sick of "up to 2x faster" ...THAN WHAT? ON WHAT WORKLOAD? How can I reproduce these claims?

I really miss when vendors would run the SPEC benchmark suite and performance was quantitative, and not qualitative.

numbsafariabout 2 hours ago
… from the fine print:

“Results are compared to previous-generation Mac mini systems with Apple M4, 10-core CPU, 10-core GPU, 32GB of unified memory, and 2TB SSD.”

drewg123about 1 hour ago
Running what workload? How can I reproduce it?
mytecabout 1 hour ago
There is more detail in the footnotes found here: https://www.apple.com/mac-mini/
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napoluxabout 3 hours ago
So I guess M5 Pro is better, right?
sf1tzpabout 2 hours ago
I guess so. It's slightly cheaper to buy 2x 32GB M6 minis than opt for 64GB sku (which is only available with the M5 Pro chip)...
haujuabout 1 hour ago
hmm waited for this, but the price... puuh
snigacookieabout 1 hour ago
Sigh. I had the m4 in my cart yesterday and now it is gone.
nodesocketabout 3 hours ago
Upgrading to 48GB memory is $600…. Gut punch. I have a M4 Pro (top cpu skew 14 cores). Any idea the performance gain to M5 Pro? I feel like they holding off releasing M6 Pro because a new studio is dropping soon as well.
benatkinabout 3 hours ago
No 8GB option? Oh the horror.
revolvingthrowabout 2 hours ago
~75% higher price for some extra GPU power and small CPU boost compared to M4? Eh. It's pretty far from M4's value, which was a no-brainer recommendation for people who wanted a tiny box sitting somewhere on their desk.
FinnLobsienabout 3 hours ago
Not a surprise with John Ternus taking the reigns as CEO in a week, who was previously SVP of hardware engineering.

I can't hate a direction where Apple becomes more about building great computers rather than trying to force more and more subscriptions. I do wish they would fix many of the long-standing OS and native app problems.

steveBK123about 3 hours ago
I do worry that at this point it's no longer just Apple's problem to solve. They need to figure out a way to take the rest of the industry with it. Maybe if their standards are high enough everyone else will look bad by comparison.

My daily driver personal machines are incredible pieces of kit, but everything is always getting worse because majority of software is some SaaS living in the cloud, or even if on-desktop is constantly updating slop.

Why does it take 10 seconds for my streaming music app to open when my machine is 10-20 cores, 32GB+ RAM, high bandwidth NVMe storage, and I am connected to gigabit fiber internet? The thing is autoplaying videos, and has about 10 different panes clearly owned by different product managers that hate each other. Half the time its pushing me some pop-up dialog I don't care about.

Winamp in 1998 took about 2 seconds to load.

FinnLobsienabout 2 hours ago
I agree with you, but I also think sadly most consumers don't really care about this. The reason the internet is in the state it's in is because most people tolerate it.

Most people simply don't care about using well-made software so long as it gets the job done because they don't even look at other options. I suppose this is how carpenters feel when they see ubiquitous IKEA furniture.

KJs6ZxELzQM37Oabout 3 hours ago
The "up to" and "Yx" compared to three generations ago specs from Apple. Never change.
Octoth0rpeabout 3 hours ago
I think there's a valid argument for this pattern when you know most people are on 3-ish year upgrade cycles. Also, if you compare against the most recent generation, you risk creating buyer's remorse for recent purchases.
thewebguydabout 2 hours ago
I'd imagine most are on longer than 3 years for computers. Most (non developers) I know hang onto their laptops and computers until they die or get spec constrained, and that ends up being around ~6 or 7 years, so in this case the comparison to the M1/M1 Max makes sense, as for the next couple years that's going to be the cohort that's looking to upgrade.
writtenoneabout 2 hours ago
Now if only it would come with Linux instead of MacOS!

Apple's software holds the hardware back, and it's ugly (especially liquid glass!)

post_breakabout 4 hours ago
So the price just went up by another $100 am I reading that right?
linguaeabout 4 hours ago
Yup. Yesterday it was $799 for the base Mac Mini M4, a $200 increase from the original MSRP before June’s price hikes.

I paid $499 for my M4 back in April with the academic discount since I predicted the next generation base model would cost more. Sadly my prediction was correct: $599 to $899 is steep. I understand why; the prices of DIMMs, GPUs, and SSDs have also skyrocketed. But $899 for a base Mac Mini is painful, even if the alternatives on the current market are also painfully expensive.

matt-pabout 4 hours ago
Faster CPU and Ethernet is certainly worth $100. Sucks though, I agree.
jdoe1337haloabout 4 hours ago
Era of cheap compute is over I'm afraid
orpheaabout 3 hours ago
No, it's not. We do have to live through this long and harsh winter, though.
c16about 3 hours ago
I really want a mini for running local models, but there's no way I'm buying one for the next few years. I'm planning on waiting for models to get better and more powerful, as well as for hardware prices to come down.
vlucasabout 4 hours ago
Over for now, or at least a little while until production ramps up to our new reality (~5 years minimum is likely).
HumblyTossedabout 2 hours ago
Pretty much. Everyone seems to think prices will come back down, but I don't agree.
gib444about 3 hours ago
Just got to wait for the wealth to trickle down to make it cheap again

/s

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