M4 Mac Announcements

[Cmaier]

The Mac mini’s SSD uses a connector!

What a beauty this thing is! I’m so eager to get to my own teardown. I’m particularly interested in the board-to-board interconnects and how the layout is split between the two mainboards.

How is the SSD installed - Mac mini (2024)

Is the SSD soldered? - Mac mini (2024)

www.ifixit.com

Now we need OWC to reverse engineer the board and provide upgrade SSDs. Get moving, OWC.

 

[Nycturne]

Looking forward to your assessment. Over the next month I'm thinking of purchasing two M4 Minis. One to handle my security video cameras and home automation software that runs 24/7. And then another one as a dedicated X-Plane flight simulator computer that drives three 4k displays. That task is currently shared with my Mac desktop computer that I use for general stuff and photo editing/processing - and is kind of a pain.

I'm still assessing M4/M4Pro, CPU/GPU cores, RAM, and storage needs, which will be different for the above two uses. For both I'm thinking of going base storage and using a fast Samsung external SSD.

The M1 Mini I bought as a test machine before the 14/16” MBP was available is used as a small home server. Runs some simple stuff related to home automation (HomeBridge stuff) and a couple Minecraft servers. That would probably handle your security cameras and home automation just fine. So probably wouldn’t bother with an M4 Pro for that, IME. I’d normally say consider a refurb, but in this case, you’d only save 40$ to get a 16GB M2 Mini. And that 40$ is worth the extra perf, I think.

 

[KingOfPain]

The Mac mini’s SSD uses a connector!

It's even in the official repair guide (as #11; Mac mini (2024) Exploded View and Orderable Parts):

 

[MacPoulet]

Now we need OWC to reverse engineer the board and provide upgrade SSDs. Get moving, OWC.

A group from the other place (on the Mac Studio forums) have a working solution for the Mac Studio. Maybe they'll do the Mini too...

 

[dada_dave]

Now we need OWC to reverse engineer the board and provide upgrade SSDs. Get moving, OWC.

Funnily enough somebody did that for the Studio. They launched a kickstarter, I congratulated them for it on Macrumors (giles_polysoft) … and shit hit the fan. Apparently they had already tried posting about it, but MacRumors had deleted the post under the rules about self-promotion. Giles thanked me for congratulating him and then complained bitterly about the moderation earning him a suspension and all the posts, including mine, a deletion.

Now I can understand the rules about self-promotion. You don’t want people spamming the forum. On the other hand … this is the sort of thing that normally MacRumors would write up and it is of interest to the community (there are multiple threads about Apple SSDs and replacements, repairs, and upgrades). I felt kind of bad for him.

But yes hopefully Apple continues using this across their product line and we get 3rd party upgrades. Probably a step too far but Apple doing a MFI-like program to officially endorse and grow a 3rd party ecosystem for SSD slots would be nice.

A group from the other place (on the Mac Studio forums) have a working solution for the Mac Studio. Maybe they'll do the Mini too...

Beat me to it

 

[NotEntirelyConfused]

Looks like the SSD in the MBP M4 Pro is ~6% faster than the previous generation. I'd hoped they'd have gone for the faster NAND (twice as fast) that's currently on the market, but alas it doesn't look like it.

Yes, I found this disappointing. Especially because TB5, while a big (and somewhat surprising) improvement over TB4 for the Pro and Max, can't begin to support the performance of good PCIe5 SSDs. Really, for me personally, that wouldn't matter, but for some applications there is a significant difference between SSDs running at 7.5GBps and 12-14GBps.

 

[Altaic]

It's even in the official repair guide (as #11; Mac mini (2024) Exploded View and Orderable Parts):

View attachment 32671

Hmm, so the second board is the power supply. In the animation of the thermals it looked like the power supply was a smaller board below.

 

[MacPoulet]

Funnily enough somebody did that for the Studio. They launched a kickstarter, I congratulated them for it on Macrumors (giles_polysoft) … and shit hit the fan. Apparently they had already tried posting about it, but MacRumors had deleted the post under the rules about self-promotion. Giles thanked me for congratulating him and then complained bitterly about the moderation earning him a suspension and all the posts, including mine, a deletion.

Now I can understand the rules about self-promotion. You don’t want people spamming the forum. On the other hand … this is the sort of thing that normally MacRumors would write up and it is of interest to the community (there are multiple threads about Apple SSDs and replacements, repairs, and upgrades). I felt kind of bad for him.

But yes hopefully Apple continues using this across their product line and we get 3rd party upgrades. Probably a step too far but Apple doing a MFI-like program to officially endorse and grow a 3rd party ecosystem for SSD slots would be nice.



Beat me to it

Didn't realize that's what happened. Funny, MR had a huge scoop in their own damn forums and instead of reporting on it and celebrating it, they killed the thread. Incredible.

 

[NotEntirelyConfused]

Funny, MR had a huge scoop in their own damn forums and instead of reporting on it and celebrating it, they killed the thread. Incredible.

More like "typical". They have the worst forum moderation I've ever seen. It's really incomprehensively bad.

 

[casperes1996]

Funnily enough somebody did that for the Studio. They launched a kickstarter, I congratulated them for it on Macrumors (giles_polysoft) … and shit hit the fan. Apparently they had already tried posting about it, but MacRumors had deleted the post under the rules about self-promotion. Giles thanked me for congratulating him and then complained bitterly about the moderation earning him a suspension and all the posts, including mine, a deletion.

Now I can understand the rules about self-promotion. You don’t want people spamming the forum. On the other hand … this is the sort of thing that normally MacRumors would write up and it is of interest to the community (there are multiple threads about Apple SSDs and replacements, repairs, and upgrades). I felt kind of bad for him.

Funny because I didn't know they had those rules and I have promoted my app when I put it on the Mac App Store, as well as my podcast on the MacRumors Forums, and never gotten a slap on the wrist for it. And I know the mods have seen it cause they once moved one of the posts to a more appropriate forum; No issues with it other than thinking it was better fit for a different subform

 

[dada_dave]

Didn't realize that's what happened. Funny, MR had a huge scoop in their own damn forums and instead of reporting on it and celebrating it, they killed the thread. Incredible.

Yup.

More like "typical". They have the worst forum moderation I've ever seen. It's really incomprehensively bad.

True, though this is pretty bad even by their standards. Like even if I were a mod or administrator and followed those rules about self promotion, I would've deleted giles' self-post but then would have made an official, front page thread talking about the kickstarter and the history of the posters on Macrumors dosdude and giles_polysoft who had been providing the technical information about this topic for years. Then I would've allowed giles_polysoft to link to that in whatever internal forum post he wished. I would've made it a big deal that these kinds of conversations happen on the forums - it would've actually been good advertisement for Macrumors itself. Of course, I am not such a person, but, still, this was, as @MacPoulet wrote, a scoop with a really great connection to those forums. A lot of the time we can chalk off their decision making as them allowing forum drama and trolling for the advertising clicks, but here they had a win-win and ... cut off their nose to spite their face.

Funny because I didn't know they had those rules and I have promoted my app when I put it on the Mac App Store, as well as my podcast on the MacRumors Forums, and never gotten a slap on the wrist for it. And I know the mods have seen it cause they once moved one of the posts to a more appropriate forum; No issues with it other than thinking it was better fit for a different subform

... that makes their decision making here even more inexplicable.

 

[theorist9]

Geekerwan review of M4

The M4 Pro GPU, M4 Max GPU, and NVIDIA 4070 laptop GPU showed a notable consistency in relative performance in his rendering tests.

He compared these three using Cinebench 2024 GPU, Blender 4.2 GPU, Blender 4.2.3 GPU, 3DMark Steel Nomad Light GPU, and Baldur's Gate 3 (native on both MacOS and Windows). In every case, the 4070 laptop was about half-way between the M4 Pro and M4 Max.

When he looked at non-native games, performance dropped off markedly. On those, the M4 Max's performance was comparable to that of a 4060 laptop.

He also compared the M4 Max to a 4090 desktop for GPU compute on an LLM (he didn't explicitly say whether he was using a desktop or laptop 4090, but he showed a picture of a desktop 4090, and said it had 24 GB VRAM, which I believe is available on the desktop only). For models that could fit into the 4090's VRAM, the 4090 was ≈1.8x faster.

 

[theorist9]

Now we need OWC to reverse engineer the board and provide upgrade SSDs. Get moving, OWC.

I asked OWC if they'd be doing that for the Studio, which has had removable NAND since M1. They said they had no plans, which suggests this would be a tricky thing to do (and/or maybe too costly to provide sufficient price differentiation from Apple).

A group from the other place (on the Mac Studio forums) have a working solution for the Mac Studio. Maybe they'll do the Mini too...

They're charging 400 Euros (≈$430) for a 2 TB module, while Apple's upcharge is $600, so the savings isn't huge. Might make more sense if you wanted 8 TB, where it's 1100 Euros (≈$1,180) vs $1,800.

 

[dada_dave]

Geekerwan review of M4

The M4 Pro GPU, M4 Max GPU, and NVIDIA 4070 laptop GPU showed a notable consistency in relative performance in his rendering tests.

He compared these three using Cinebench 2024 GPU, Blender 4.2 GPU, Blender 4.2.3 GPU, 3DMark Steel Nomad Light GPU, and Baldur's Gate 3 (native on both MacOS and Windows). In every case, the 4070 laptop was about half-way between the M4 Pro and M4 Max.

When he looked at non-native games, performance dropped off markedly. On those, the M4 Max's performance was comparable to that of a 4060 laptop.

He also compared the M4 Max to a 4090 desktop for GPU compute on an LLM (he didn't explicitly say whether he was using a desktop or laptop 4090, but he showed a picture of a desktop 4090, and said it had 24 GB VRAM, which I believe is available on the desktop only). For models that could fit into the 4090's VRAM, the 4090 was ≈1.8x faster.

I was a little amused how he said the Mac's compatibility with Windows games was better than that of Snapdragon actually running Windows ... there is a report that with the Nvidia chip on its way later next year there is a continued push to improve Windows on Arm:

Nvidia ARM APU vs AMD Strix Halo on cards as Team Green is reportedly preparing APU for gamers and creators

Nvidia is allegedly preparing to go head-to-head with Strix Halo APUs in late 2025 or early 2026 with the release of an ARM-based APU on Windows. According to the latest leak from Moore's Law Is Dead, Team Green is planning to pitch the APU to gamers as well as content creators.

www.notebookcheck.net

Basically Nvidia saying "we're working on the hardware and yes we know Windows on ARM sucks and there is big push to change that". Also part of that article AMD is themselves preparing an ARM-based SOC "Sound Wave".

 

[theorist9]

He compared these three using Cinebench 2024 GPU, Blender 4.2 GPU, Blender 4.2.3 GPU, 3DMark Steel Nomad Light GPU, and Baldur's Gate 3 (native on both MacOS and Windows). In every case, the 4070 laptop was about half-way between the M4 Pro and M4 Max.

Based on this, while Apple seems to be able to compete price-wise for the first time at the entry level of the gaming market (with the base M4 Mini), that may not be the case at the midrange (at least not yet). Let's say the mid-range can be represented by a PC with a 4070 desktop GPU (≈$1,400). Since NVIDIA's desktop GPU's are much more powerful than their laptop GPU's, the former should equal or exceed an M4 Max in gaming performance (if other native games show similar comparative performance to Baldur's Gate). And the minimum to get an M4 Max will probably a $2k M4 Max Studio.

 

[dada_dave]

Based on this, while Apple seems to be able to complete price-wise for the first time at the entry level of the gaming market (with the base M4 Mini), that may not be the case at the midrange (at least not yet). Let's say the mid-range can be represented by a PC with a 4070 desktop GPU (≈$1,400). Since NVIDIA's desktop GPU's are much more powerful than their laptop GPU's, the former should equal or exceed an M4 Max in gaming performance (if other native games show similar comparative performance to Baldur's Gate). And the minimum to get an M4 Max will probably a $2k M4 Max Studio.

Indeed, base M4 mini review:



This is why I said I'd like a little bit, 20%, more oomph on the Pro/Max GPUs, but overall the situation is improving. We shall see what the M5x vs 5000 vs RDNA 4 situation is next year.

The M4 Pro GPU, M4 Max GPU, and NVIDIA 4070 laptop GPU showed a notable consistency in relative performance in his rendering tests.

He compared these three using Cinebench 2024 GPU, Blender 4.2 GPU, Blender 4.2.3 GPU, 3DMark Steel Nomad Light GPU, and Baldur's Gate 3 (native on both MacOS and Windows). In every case, the 4070 laptop was about half-way between the M4 Pro and M4 Max.

When he looked at non-native games, performance dropped off markedly. On those, the M4 Max's performance was comparable to that of a 4060 laptop.

He also compared the M4 Max to a 4090 desktop for GPU compute on an LLM (he didn't explicitly say whether he was using a desktop or laptop 4090, but he showed a picture of a desktop 4090, and said it had 24 GB VRAM, which I believe is available on the desktop only). For models that could fit into the 4090's VRAM, the 4090 was ≈1.8x faster.

Glad he pointed out that though Apple's memory may be considered expensive, getting high VRAM on discrete GPUs is outrageously so. For those who have workloads where that matters, Apple is indeed ironically the cost-effective solution. Not a statement you hear very often ...

In addition to him pointing out about Apple's superior (though not perfect obvs) compatibility with Windows games compared to Windows on Arm, I was also amused how he pointed out that Apple's automatic mode is more akin to "silent" mode on most PCs.

 

[dada_dave]

Cross posting from the other place after diving into firmware a bit, and this is what I've got:

M4 Macs
  Mac16,1   MBP 14” M4
  Mac16,2   iMac 24” M4 (2-port)
  Mac16,3   iMac 24” M4 (4-port)
  Mac16,4   DNE
  Mac16,5   MBP 16” M4 Max (384b & 512b)
  Mac16,6   MBP 14” M4 Max (384b & 512b)
  Mac16,7   MBP 16” M4 Pro
  Mac16,8   MBP 14” M4 Pro
  Mac16,9   Mac Studio M4 Max
  Mac16,10  Mac mini M4
  Mac16,11  Mac mini M4 Pro
  Mac16,12  MBA 13” M4
  Mac16,13  MBA 15” M4

M5 Macs
  Mac17,1   iMac 30” M5
  Mac17,2   iMac 30” M5 Pro

It seems that both of the variants of the M4 Max use the same firmware (perhaps some sort of chop or fusing) and thus do not have different designations. Also, it's likely the M5 and M5 Pro are in a later testing phase, but not others in that lineup.

To be clear, I’m certain about those M4 designations, and the M5 designations are an educated guess.

It seems there is a slight error in the list:

Identify your Mac mini model - Apple Support

Learn all the ways to identify your Mac mini model.

support.apple.com

Found M4 and M5 Mac identifiers

[NOTE: I’ve cleaned up my mess here, but for the sake of posterity, I’ve retained the “Mac16,15” information even though it is an Apple support error and should be Mac16,11. Use the link below to see if it has been corrected.] Okay, the "Identify your ..." pages are up for the new models, and...

forums.macrumors.com

The Mac Mini is 16,15 and 16,10. 16,15 did not originally appear in the list. If the original list is incomplete, then indeed Gurman is likely right that the M4 generation is going into every model.

 

[Altaic]

It seems there is a slight error in the list:

Identify your Mac mini model - Apple Support

Learn all the ways to identify your Mac mini model.

support.apple.com

Found M4 and M5 Mac identifiers

[NOTE: I’ve cleaned up my mess here, but for the sake of posterity, I’ve retained the “Mac16,15” information even though it is an Apple support error and should be Mac16,11. Use the link below to see if it has been corrected.] Okay, the "Identify your ..." pages are up for the new models, and...

forums.macrumors.com

The Mac Mini is 16,15 and 16,10. 16,15 did not originally appear in the list. If the original list is incomplete, then indeed Gurman is likely right that the M4 generation is going into every model.

That is... odd. I'll have to do some digging.

Edit: So, I know this may seem a bit outlandish, but I think it's a typo in their support article. Even in the newest 15.2 beta, it's Mac16,11. Also, try searching Mac16,15 on geekbench-- it's not there. I'll be receiving my Mac mini M4 Pro soon and I can check it in situ, but I don't think Apple's article is correct.

 

[Nycturne]

Picked up a 14” MBP with the nano texture after seeing it in person. Starting the data transfer, so it’ll be a bit before I can get some tests on my workflows.

 

[Cmaier]

Picked up a 14” MBP with the nano texture after seeing it in person. Starting the data transfer, so it’ll be a bit before I can get some tests on my workflows.

any issues with text fuzziness?