My downloads is slow on my new Mac Mini

[Proez]

Hi,

So I have a problem with the downloads being slow on my new M4 Mac Mini.

I have tested the speed on the computer and it says 200mb and good connection but as soon as I try downloading something.. for example from App Store that is like 1.5gb it takes 15-20min to download.

Appreciate any tips and tricks

/Michael

 

[ubinko]

You might be experiencing WiFi interference:

It was discussed in another post: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...is-video.2446672/?post=33664631#post-33664631

Conclusion: "wifi speed may be affected by the Mini's placement relative to metal, including enclosures and even a metal monitor stand."

 

[monkey6]

My M4 Mac Mini did the same thing, with both wired and wireless connection dropping quickly from 900s mps to 5 or 6 mps. I called Apple who tried a few things, like making sure I didn't have a VPN running, and then they told me to return it.

So for now I'm back to my limping along 2017 imac, who's internal hard drive died. But it's running off an external SSD just fine, and has that nice 5K display.

And wondering if I want to go back to the mini. I bought another Mac Mini from Costco (cheaper than Apple, and a 3 month return period vs Apple skimpy 14 days), but haven't opened the box yet. I'm not sure if I want to keep it. I found myself really irritated with the on/off button located on the underside of the mini. It just screams to me every time I use it: "Apple doesn't give a **** about design anymore. Or give a **** about its customers". And I can't bring myself to pay the overpriced ransom for the Apple Studio Display, don't know of an alternate monitor to try, so I used an old Dell monitor, which gives me a subpar experience.

The imac experience is just so much better, I find it difficult to move to the mini. Maybe if I could find a suitable monitor, I'd like it better...

 

[MagicBoy]

My M4 Mac Mini did the same thing, with both wired and wireless connection dropping quickly from 900s mps to 5 or 6 mps. I called Apple who tried a few things, like making sure I didn't have a VPN running, and then they told me to return it.

So for now I'm back to my limping along 2017 imac, who's internal hard drive died. But it's running off an external SSD just fine, and has that nice 5K display.

And wondering if I want to go back to the mini. I bought another Mac Mini from Costco (cheaper than Apple, and a 3 month return period vs Apple skimpy 14 days), but haven't opened the box yet. I'm not sure if I want to keep it. I found myself really irritated with the on/off button located on the underside of the mini. It just screams to me every time I use it: "Apple doesn't give a **** about design anymore. Or give a **** about its customers". And I can't bring myself to pay the overpriced ransom for the Apple Studio Display, don't know of an alternate monitor to try, so I used an old Dell monitor, which gives me a subpar experience.

The imac experience is just so much better, I find it difficult to move to the mini. Maybe if I could find a suitable monitor, I'd like it better...

I've used the power button twice. Once when it came out of the box and I powered it on. The second time when I permanently installed it and had to reroute the power cable.

As for connection issues - I'm using the Ethernet port. It won't help the WiFi signal being under a large monitor.

 

[MacCheetah3]

Some FYI/reminders:

Internet speed test and actual speed don’t seem to match up?

I’ve having this problem with my PC. On internet speed test says 512.23Mbps (download) and 926.79Mbps (upload). But when trying to download a game or any file larger than 1GB it doesn’t go up more ...

superuser.com

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/whats-the-point-of-1gbps-isp-speeds-anyway-q-for-it-experts.2380699/?post=31965157#post-31965157

In other words, even data centers have limits. For example, if 1,000 users with 100 megabits per second (Mb/s) connections were downloading something from the App Store (i.e., the same Apple data center), that’s 100,000 Mb/s or 100 gigabits per second (Gb/s) of bandwidth needed. Increase that to 10,000 users and the bandwidth need jumps to 1,000,000 Mb/s or 1,000 Mb/s or 1 terabit per second (Tb/s) or 125 gigabytes per second (GB/s). As you can see, the demand scales immensely. It’s not unimaginable for a data center to be accessed by hundreds of thousands if not millions of users at a moment.

And there’s always the base 2 vs. base 10 debate:

Base Ten For (Almost) Everything

It’s 2016 and Windows still displays drive and file sizes using base-2 size prefixes. My 1 TB SSD is shown as 916 GB, and a 449 million byte video file is shown as 428 MB. That is, Windows st…

randomascii.wordpress.com

Numbers - Data Representation - Computer Science Field Guide

An online interactive resource for high school students learning about computer science

www.csfieldguide.org.nz

Megabytes, Megabits, Gbps & TB: What you need to know

Confused about megabits and megabytes? We’ll explain what the difference is so you can keep them straight when it really counts.

www.highspeedinternet.com

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/8qkqv/comment/c0a4kju

Anyway...

When using Internet speed test sites, if possible, select a server that’s geographically significant away from your current location. Whether that’s another state, providence, territory, country, etc — a few away is even better. For further improved estimations, perform a few tests targeting different locations substantially away. Basically, speed test Websites by default select the closest server to you, creating an optimal scenario that typically doesn’t occur.

A nerdier/geekier associated explanation:

What is a hop ? Why does data travel in hops?

Lastly, if you want a comparison:

Download Test Files

Download speed test files to help diagnose problems.

xcal1.vodafone.co.uk

The “Large File” required about 25 seconds, spiking to ~12 megabytes per second (MB/s) or ~120 Mb/s (or ~96 Mb/s if we use base 2).
The “Extra Large File” download completed in about two minutes and five seconds with an observed average speed of ~8 MB/s (or about ~64 Mb/s .

I have a 300 Mb/s rated Internet connection, which was reaching that on default speedtest.net results and ~215 Mb/s when I did the more realistic method explained earlier.

TLDR: It’s “up to” when dealing with marketing. 😉

 

[Kenny99]

What have you done to troubleshoot the problem? Is the 200mb number download or upload speed (Speed Test is a good test for that) Ary you using WiFi or Ethernet? Are you downloading the file of copying from one drive to another?

 

[ubinko]

The imac experience is just so much better, I find it difficult to move to the mini. Maybe if I could find a suitable monitor, I'd like it better...

I had a similar experience when I first got my M4 Pro Mini - I was using an old 1440p monitor I had lying around and it felt like a huge step down from the iMac experience.

Once I found a decent monitor though, everything changed. I won't bog down this post with monitor recommendations, there are plenty of posts already on this topic. But if you want retina-like PPI at a reasonable cost, a 24", 4k or 27" 4k or 5K monitor would do the job. I would stick to monitors made for mac (i.e. LG, BenQ, etc.), so that basic stuff like brightness and volume, can be controlled via the keyboard.

 

[NewOldStock]

Mac Mini M4,Farming Sim 2025
Windows computer windows 11 same game.
My issue why is Mac slower to download the same file by almost 3/4 or more the speed of the windows 11 counter part?
Going through same router, same DNS on both machines.
Tried mac wired and wireless same slow issues. Significant speed issues of mac slowing down.
Replaced cat cable. Tried about everything?
Not using mac firewall settings.
I know this is not help desk but weird to me as other downloads from other places compared on mac and windows are exactly the same?
Server im getting Game files from for the mac versus the windows slowing me down on downloads?
Different Servers for their Os,s split into two different servers possibly?
Is that it maybe?
Bamboozled first time noticing this speed issue. Some files over 200 to 400mbs so i feel it..lol

The 2 server places one for mac and one for windows?
Mac server different than Windows for games?
Just learning.

 

[dmccloud]

Based on what you stated, there is no issue with either the Mac or your home network. If either of those were the issue, you would see differences across all downloads rather than this one example. The issue would lie with whomever published that title and where they are hosting the various builds of the game.