Does anyone know if this Mac Mini can survive longer than a year? Apple's approach to hardware design doesn't prioritize thermal issues.
I've had an M1 Mac Mini inside a hot dresser drawer with a TV on top since 2020.
It doesn't do much other than act as a media server. But it's jammed pretty tight in there with an eero wifi router, an OTA ATSC DVR, a box that records HDMI, a 4K AppleTV, a couple of external drives, and a full power strip. That's why it's hot.
So far, no problems. Except for once when I moved, it's been completely hands-off. Software updates are done over VNC.
Yes, but you only really encounter that when pushing the CPU to 100% for more than a few minutes. The cooling is objectively terrible, but still easily enough for most users, that's the crazy thing.
maybe? as local LLM/SD etc get more common it might be common to push it. I've been getting my fans to come on and get burning hot quite often lately because of new tech. I get that I'm a geek but with Apple, Google and everyone else trying to run local ML it's only a matter of time.
After posting this I thought of a few possible use cases. They might never come to pass but ... Some tech similar to DLSS might come along that lets streaming services like youtube and netflix to send 1/10th the data and get twice as good an image but require extreme processing on the client. It would certainly be in their interest (less storage, less bandwidth, decompression-upscaling costs pushed to client) Whether that will ever happen I have no idea. I was just trying to think of an example of something that might need lots of compute power at home for the masses.
Another could be realtime video modification. People like to stream and facetime. They might like it even more if they could change their appearance more than they already can using realtime ML based image processing. We already have some of that in the various video conferencing / facetime apps but it's possible it could jump up in usage and needed compute power with the right application.
Apple's chips already have AI accelerators for things like content-based image search. They would never retroactively worsen battery life and performance just for a few more AI features when they could instead use it as selling point for the next hardware generation.
And if you regularly use local generative AI models the Pro model is the more reasonable choice. At that point you can forget battery life either way.
No, I'm saying if you have 640k you can't just download more RAM, and Apple wouldn't ever try to because that's a free new feature they can market in the next model.
Every Apple Silicon MacBook Air throttles after 5-10 minutes of sustained load because they have passive cooling - but the amount of load needed and the throttled speed is not noticeable to casual users.
You only notice throttling on the MacBook Air when doing things like video renders that use max power for an extended period of time.
Hopefully not? I honestly don't know. It's been around three years (whichever year it was they replaced Target Disk Mode) since I followed Apple news very closely.
It might be different post-Intel? I'm too lazy to dig up sources for Apple's past lost class action lawsuits, etc.
That Rossman guy, the internet-famous repairman, built his youtube channel on videos about Apple's inadequate thermal management. They're probably still archived on his channel.
Hell, I haven't owned a Mac post the year 2000 that didn't regularly hit temperatures above 90 celsius.
Why would you, or anyone, ever compare a line of Intel machines with a line of machines that have a vastly different architecture and power usage? It'd be like comparing Lamborghini's tractors and cars and asking if the tractors will scrape on steep driveways because you know the cars do.
On the other hand, it is comparing Apples to Apples.
The Gods didn't deliver specs to Apple for Intel machines locking the company to placement/grades/design/brands/sizes of chassis, fans, logic board, paste etc. Apple, in the Intel years, just prioritized small form factor, at the expense of longevity.
And Apple's priorities are likely still the same.
My concern is that, given cooler-running chips, Apple will decrease form factor until even the cooler-running chips overheat. The question, in my mind, is only whether the team at Apple who design chips can improve them to a point where the chips run so coolly that the rest of Apple can't screw it up (ie: with inadequate thermal design).
If that has happened, then... fantastic, that's good for consumers.
Jonny Ive left and Apple decided thinness wasn’t the only value.
100% Apple Silicon is that for computers. Very rarely do my fans whizz up. It’s noticeable when someone is using an x64 and you’re working with them because you will hear their computer’s fans on.
The work Apple has done to create a computer with good thermals is outrageous. Minimising distances for charges to be induced over.
I run Linux on my box. It’s great for what it does but these laptops are just the slickest computers I have ever used.
Never gets hot. Fans only come on during heavy compilation tasks or graphic intensive workloads.
That is encouraging to read, and hopefully it truly is the case that Apple has weened itself from its obsession with thinness.
Some of the choices Apple made after SJ's death left such an unpleasant taste in my mouth that I know have knee-jerk reactions to certain Apple announcements. One of those is that I experience nausea when Apple shrinks the form factor of a product. Hopefully that has clouded my judgement here, and in fact these Mac Minis have sufficient airflow to survive several years.
110 celsius heat... not good for lead-free solder... not good for computer.
This whole thread is starting to feel surreal to me. Pretty soon everyone will have me believing I dreamt up Apple's reputation for bad thermal management.
Well, when you don’t appear to know or care about the actual issues stemming from poor thermals (Intel relying too much on turbo clocks, toasty crotches, low battery life, noisy fans) and instead complain about made-up issues, yeah.
My frustration was with the totality of comments in the thread, not yours exclusively. I'd have no problem with any one reply in this thread, on its own. Apologies if I came across as rude.
There's nothing in a comment thread so cringeworthy and boring as a person trumpeting their own expertise, so I'll refrain, and leave off here.
In fact, the form factor is why I'm leaning toward taking a pass - I don't want a Mac Mini I would have to replace every 12 months.
* or rather, Apple doesn't target low enough temperatures to keep machines healthy beyond warranty