M chips are super expensive. They’re optimized for low clockspeed/idle efficiency and pay through the nose for cutting edge processes, whereas most gaming hardware is optimized for pure speed/$, with the smallest die area and cheapest memory possible, at the expense of power efficiency.
And honestly the CPU/GPU divide over traces is more economical. “Unified memory” programming isn’t strictly needed for games at the moment.
And, practically, Apple demands very high margins. I just can’t see them pricing a console aggressively.
The base Mac Mini is not super powerful. Physically, the silicon comparable to AMD Strix Point, which you’d find in any AMD laptop.
I am not trying to rag on Apple here: their stuff is fine. It’s ridiculously power efficient. It’d be beyond excellent for a handheld like the Steam Deck, or a VR headset.
…But a plug in gaming console? That’s more ‘M4 Pro’ silicon. And what they charge for that speaks for itself.
It is “cheap” because they are hoping that someone is stupid enough to pay the upgrades like $200 for 256gb of extra SSD. Or that it later leads to purchasing more Apple devices.
Charging $200 for having 256gb of extra SSD space on a $700 computer (cost for them: $2) is textbook definition of scam.
The price is actually good for the Mac mini but clearly they sat on a table for hours discussing how they can fuck the end user like “and for the SSD, let’s make a board that LOOKS LIKE a standard M.2 drive, has almost the same dimensions and connector, BUT we don’t include a controller on it, so it’s not electrically compatibile with existing drives and we can charge a 10000x markup on it”. And all the marketing managers in the room started clapping
M chips are super expensive. They’re optimized for low clockspeed/idle efficiency and pay through the nose for cutting edge processes, whereas most gaming hardware is optimized for pure speed/$, with the smallest die area and cheapest memory possible, at the expense of power efficiency.
And honestly the CPU/GPU divide over traces is more economical. “Unified memory” programming isn’t strictly needed for games at the moment.
And, practically, Apple demands very high margins. I just can’t see them pricing a console aggressively.
Good points. Mac mini is pretty cheap though, cheaper than most consoles.
The base Mac Mini is not super powerful. Physically, the silicon comparable to AMD Strix Point, which you’d find in any AMD laptop.
I am not trying to rag on Apple here: their stuff is fine. It’s ridiculously power efficient. It’d be beyond excellent for a handheld like the Steam Deck, or a VR headset.
…But a plug in gaming console? That’s more ‘M4 Pro’ silicon. And what they charge for that speaks for itself.
It is “cheap” because they are hoping that someone is stupid enough to pay the upgrades like $200 for 256gb of extra SSD. Or that it later leads to purchasing more Apple devices.
It’s a gateway drug
I love this Apple hater threads. You people are so unhinged about this stuff. It’s great!
Charging $200 for having 256gb of extra SSD space on a $700 computer (cost for them: $2) is textbook definition of scam.
The price is actually good for the Mac mini but clearly they sat on a table for hours discussing how they can fuck the end user like “and for the SSD, let’s make a board that LOOKS LIKE a standard M.2 drive, has almost the same dimensions and connector, BUT we don’t include a controller on it, so it’s not electrically compatibile with existing drives and we can charge a 10000x markup on it”. And all the marketing managers in the room started clapping
It’s the part where you have to resort to asserting that it works because people are stupid, that is hilarious. It’s so wonderfully reductionist.