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Apple Announces Redesigned Mac Mini With M4 and M4 Pro Chips, Two Front USB-C Ports, and More

For anyone reading this, just don’t conflate normal iCloud with Apple iCloud photos.

You cannot relocate where normal iCloud does it syncing so if you have a lot of data in iCloud, you cannot do the “put it all on externals route”

A definite shame they didn’t just also bump the base SSD to 512 which I have a feeling would cover a huge swath of people … which of course is exactly why they didn’t do it
 
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turbineseaplane said:
A definite shame they didn’t just also bump the base SSD to 512 which I have a feeling would cover a huge swath of people … which of course is exactly why they didn’t do it
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Yep. I lived with a 256GB for the last six years and had to cull it constantly, even with external drives. I'm happy to finally have some spare capacity. Though I still don't have room for my iTunes library on my internal drive.
 
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weaztek said:
Yep. I lived with a 256GB for the last six years and had to cull it constantly, even with external drives. I'm happy to finally have some spare capacity. Though I still don't have room for my iTunes library on my internal drive.
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Did the OS end up filling up space you weren’t expecting or what ended up creating this hassle of having to cull it all the time?

That’s exactly the kind of story that turns me off from ever going that route
 
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turbineseaplane said:
You cannot relocate where normal iCloud does it syncing so if you have a lot of data in iCloud, you cannot do the “put it all on externals route”
Click to expand...

Why not just use an external TB enclosure with an NVMe drive in it then, and boot 100% from the external drive? Perfectly possible, and likely not significantly slower (especially vs. a low capacity internal drive that's using half the channels of a bigger drive).

As a bonus, the internal drive will never get worn out / fail, which would brick the machine.
 
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turbineseaplane said:
Did the OS end up filling up space you weren’t expecting or what ended up creating this hassle of having to cull it all the time?
Click to expand...
Mostly batches of image files that I was working on. So I would need to swap those in and out of an external SSD. It was fine (no SSD issues), but it's preferable to have more open space on the drive for swaps, etc.
 
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mode11 said:
Why not just use an external TB enclosure with an NVMe drive in it then, and boot 100% from the external drive? Perfectly possible, and likely not significantly slower (especially vs. a low capacity internal drive that's using half the channels of a bigger drive).

As a bonus, the internal drive will never get worn out / fail, which would brick the machine.
Click to expand...

Main problem there for me is 100% reliability of the enclosure data/power connection
Love to hear long term thoughts from folks on this

I briefly tried it with an M1 Mini and one or two times had a micro interruption with the enclosure (which panic'd the Mac) and I was just like ..."nah.. this shouldn't be how desktop computing is"

The thought of having some critical render or download going and that happening to crash the whole thing -- even with just a split second interruption, just turned me off totally

 
drrich2 said:
I asked about this in another thread, and was directed to resources to explain some impracticalities with Apple Silicon Macs and booting from external drives.

IIRC, in a nutshell, yeah you can do it but there are some inconveniences along the way that may seem minor but could sour you on the idea over time.
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I just read through that short thread. @Fishrrman seemed to reckon it's not worth it with AS due to various minor inconveniences, but didn't mention what they were. There was some discussion about NVMe temps in enclosures, but I doubt that's an issue if you get an enclosure that's basically a heatsink. You'd be limited on bandwidth with TB anyway, so could get a 'slow' / cool NVMe drive, rather than a blazing fast (and hot) one.

I ran a 2013 iMac for years off a Samsung T5, and it worked perfectly - reliable and snappy; completely transformed the machine as the HDD was ponderous. I have no experience doing that with an AS Mac, though, so real-world feedback is useful. I'm willing to accept it's not worth doing, but it would be nice to hear specifics, as there may be workarounds (and certain issues may not be relevant to all users).

Kernel panics if the SSD is disturbed obviously sounds dodgy. I wonder whether a decent TB cable, plus sticking the enclosure to / underneath the desk might solve that one?
 
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turbineseaplane said:
Main problem there for me is 100% reliability of the enclosure data/power connection
Love to hear long term thoughts from folks on this

I briefly tried it with an M1 Mini and one or two times had a micro interruption with the enclosure (which panic'd the Mac) and I was just like ..."nah.. this shouldn't be how desktop computing is"

The thought of having some critical render or download going and that happening to crash the whole thing -- even with just a split second interruption, just turned me off totally
Click to expand...

Interesting. Were you using TB or USB-C?
 
mode11 said:
Interesting. Were you using TB or USB-C?
Click to expand...

I think I tried both (have to go back and check) -- bought and returned 3 different enclosures

I have to think this is much better now or we'd hear about it more, right?

Then again, it might be a tiny fraction of people actually running 100% off an external drive
 
mode11 said:
Kernel panics if the SSD is disturbed obviously sounds dodgy.
Click to expand...
Interesting you say that. My 2017 27" 5K iMac's Fusion Drive got dysfunctional and I moved to operating it off a Samsung T7 Shield 4-terabyte external SSD (USB-C, not Thunderbolt). It seems a bit snappier, but over time I eventually started getting periodic kernel panics and finding my Mac had rebooted (once in awhile it does so in front of me, a lengthy process). I went through getting rid of old 32-bit software, IIRC, that doesn't run anymore. The number of potential sources of kernel panics are beyond my skills and determination and sleuthing to track down. Just lately I don't seem to get as many (it had gotten to be almost daily), but it still happens occasionally.

I've wondered if it was due to running of the external SSD. Food for thought. I have not tried bumping or otherwise disturbing the SSD to see whether it triggers such.
 
turbineseaplane said:
I think I tried both (have to go back and check) -- bought and returned 3 different enclosures

I have to think this is much better now or we'd hear about it more, right?

Then again, it might be a tiny fraction of people actually running 100% off an external drive
Click to expand...

I think something like 95% of Mac sales are laptops, and I doubt many AS iMac owners are booting from an external drive. There may be a few mini and Studio owners who do, to circumvent the storage tax, especially as the latter likely need multi-TB external drives for their work files anyway.

If you tried multiple enclosures, it does sound like a AS / macOS issue. Then again, many enclosures use the same chipset, so if there is / was a specific glitch with e.g. a certain ASMedia chip, it may have impacted all the ones you tried.
 
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drrich2 said:
Interesting you say that. My 2017 27" 5K iMac's Fusion Drive got dysfunctional and I moved to operating it off a Samsung T7 Shield 4-terabyte external SSD (USB-C, not Thunderbolt). It seems a bit snappier, but over time I eventually started getting periodic kernel panics and finding my Mac had rebooted (once in awhile it does so in front of me, a lengthy process). I went through getting rid of old 32-bit software, IIRC, that doesn't run anymore. The number of potential sources of kernel panics are beyond my skills and determination and sleuthing to track down. Just lately I don't seem to get as many (it had gotten to be almost daily), but it still happens occasionally.

I've wondered if it was due to running of the external SSD. Food for thought. I have not tried bumping or otherwise disturbing the SSD to see whether it triggers such.
Click to expand...

I can't remember what OS I was running; probably Catalina. It was at work, so wasn't using OCLP or anything. The T5 was USB-C too. It was rock solid for me. I just stuck the T5 to the back of the iMac.

If it were me, I'd probably back up the T7, wipe it, install a fresh OS, then use Migration Assistant to reload your files and relevant apps. I did something similar recently with a MacBook, then followed it up with using the MacCleaner Pro trial (2 days) to decruft the rebuilt machine. I was moving between a MBA and a MBP (both 2012), so not the same hardware, but was much more stable afterwards. Also went from Catalina to OCLP Ventura.
 
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mode11 said:
I think something like 95% of Mac sales are laptops, and I doubt many AS iMac owners are booting from an external drive. There may be a few mini and Studio owners who do, to circumvent the storage tax, especially as the latter likely need multi-TB external drives for their work files anyway.

If you tried multiple enclosures, it does sound like a AS / macOS issue. Then again, many enclosures use the same chipset, so if there is / was a specific glitch with e.g. a certain ASMedia chip, it may have impacted all the ones you tried.
Click to expand...

All true

If I ever go down this road again, it will for sure be using TB and with lots of research and hopefully positive confirmation from some folks doing exactly what I'd be doing.
 
mode11 said:
I think something like 95% of Mac sales are laptops, and I doubt many AS iMac owners are booting from an external drive. There may be a few mini and Studio owners who do, to circumvent the storage tax, especially as the latter likely need multi-TB external drives for their work files anyway.

If you tried multiple enclosures, it does sound like a AS / macOS issue. Then again, many enclosures use the same chipset, so if there is / was a specific glitch with e.g. a certain ASMedia chip, it may have impacted all the ones you tried.
Click to expand...

Check this out!
This just peaked my interest in a base Mini + booting macOS fully off TB NVMe

 
turbineseaplane said:
Check this out!
This just peaked my interest in a base Mini + booting macOS fully off TB NVMe

Click to expand...

Whilst I’m not super hyped for AI, missing out on major features like this when booted from an external disk is not ideal. Doesn’t bode well for other features.

In related news, I found this whilst browsing: Reddit - best TB enclosures / drives for AS.
 
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