What do you think about the M2 compared to PC options? I'd like to buy a desktop for Windows-based apps, and have been considering a Mac Mini with Parallels. What are better alternatives?
Yep. The Mac Mini gives you more performance for your dollar, and opens up a world of peripheral choices, like a TV monitor or a mechanical keyboard.
But TBH the M1 and M2 family seem like a waste for programming workloads since they are so GPU heavy. Their niche is power efficient media manipulation.
Picked up a m1 mac mini on sale when the m2s came out, and its been a great desktop, runs dual monitors, runs linux in a vm, and the font rendering is amazing to use. It even runs world of warcraft. For a basic daily use PC its a fine machine.
But for windows NUCs, the amd ones are coming down in price and can do pc gaming.
Laptop wise, unless you needs osx, you can get a nice fully loaded gaming laptop much cheaper than a mac pro. But if you need OSX, that mac pros are damn fast and nice to use.
Too bad the apple watch didnt have android support, fitbits are just not as good.
I think I have to get one. To replace an obsolete HP Steam. I was gonna do the Mac Mini, but I don't think the M2 model is out yet. Just worry about Win ARM compatibility across remote desktop, citrix daas, etc ;)
The M2 Mac mini's RAM is integrated into the SoC package, which has some advantages (good memory bandwidth, no copying between CPU and GPU RAM) and disadvantages (expensive, non-upgradable DRAM tiers.) Internal flash storage is basically non-upgradable as well (though you can easily plug in external thunderbolt m.2 storage.)
It also doesn't currently run Windows natively, nor does it support eGPUs.
I'm not sure any Mac mini model was ever much of a competitor to cheaper PCs, but mini PCs have gotten a lot better over time, probably inspired somewhat by the Mac mini, while the mini has followed in the footsteps of other Mac models by adopting Apple Silicon and unified memory.
The mini is a perfectly decent Apple Silicon Mac, and compares favorably with the older intel Mac minis in terms of performance, but I'd spring for 16GB of RAM (at least) for my use cases.
I'm loving my M1 Mac mini. I use it mostly for recording and it's very nice for that.
I still have my big desktop, but if I was to start again I'd go Windows Laptop+ Mac Mini. Realistically I don't want to spend 2k on a laptop, it can ultimately be stolen , destroyed, might not last too long , etc.
But with a Mac Mini you buy into the Apple ecosystem at a fairly low price.
M1 Mac Mini. It's like 2-3x cheaper, and already great.. (I don't understand how the OS and apps on M1 are so much more responsive than a equivalent-multi-core Intel)
Don't game on macOS though, so use the leftover cash to buy a decent gaming PC (or get in line for a Steam Deck)
Both of these companies are huge in the mini PC space. Most people have never heard of them because all they do is mini PCs.
Minisforum latest 7940HS lines are better than M2. More powerful, fairly close on power efficiency, better GPU, cheaper, and without all the nonsense that comes with buying Macs. Their fully juiced model is $800 (and doesn't lock you in to a model that milks casb from you like a sow).
What bothers me is that there's no M2 Mac Mini. 16GB is a bit constraining for me and a 24GB M2 desktop would serve me for hopefully about the same time my current mini (late 2014) did. The current one is still quite snappy, but it's clear it is time for it to retire as my main personal Mac.
I know it's apples vs oranges for a lot of folk' applications, but boy does the updated M2 Mac Mini starting at $549 (at time of comment) seem like a steal.
M2 pro mini owner here too. That thing rips through everything I throw at it.
I think a lot of the 'mac pro' thinking from 15 years ago was you needed a 'big pro machine' to do serious work. Nowadays, these machines only eat up space, energy, produce noise and while they can be faster the returns are diminishing and you don't need it for a lot of serious tasks.
It's a bit of the Unix workstation vs PC market repeat. While some people will hold on to their 'big PC' as long as they can Apple (and hopefully others) will release vertically integrated small machines that offer serious performance and eventually will take over the market.
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