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Mac Mini M4 – Part III

Mac Mini M4

Performance.

My primary use for the Mac Mini M4 is for processing and printing still photographs from either my Nikon D800 (36mb lossless compressed RAW files) or from my iPhone 12 Pro Max (32mb Apple Pro RAW) using Lightroom Classic. If video processing is your focus I suggest your research what your applications of choice require in terms of machine hardware.

Apart from the dramatic size and weight comparisons –

  • Mac Pro – 54lbs, self contained.
  • Mini – 1.5lbs, drive enclosure 10 lbs, DVD reader/burner – 2lbs, the last two external

– the CPU and GPU comparisons are also striking:

  • The 2010 Mac Pro sports two 6-core 3.46gHz Intel CPUs, an Nvidia GTX980 2gb GPU and 80gbs of 1333MHz RAM.
  • The Mini uses a 10 core 4.4gHz CPU, a 10 core GPU, all Apple Silicon and 16gb of 7500MHz LPDDR5X RAM.

Both machines boot from SSDs and data storage is on traditional spinning disk HDDs.

CPU performance: The Geekbench comparisons are instructive:


Mac Pro on the right.

Simply stated the Mini is 42% faster on single core tasks but 27% slower on multi-core tasks. Now Adobe claims that Lightroom Classic is optimized for Apple Silicon and uses multiple cores when processing. Who knows? I find it hard to believe anything from this poor integrity business. The same one that sold me a ‘perpetual’ license for LR6 only to make sure it did not run on Apple Silicon.

Disk speed: The Mac Mini’s internal SSD is far faster than the SSD in the Mac Pro:



Mac Pro below.

This five fold speed increase contributes to the Mini’s fast start and application loading performance. LR takes 4 seconds to boot on the Mini (my picture catalog contains some 29,000 images) compared with a lengthy 20 seconds on the Mac Pro.

GPU performance: The Mac Pro used a very capable 4gb Nvidia GTX980 card which cost more back in the day than the Mac Mini M4! LuxMark comparisons show that the GPU in the Mini is 15% faster when rendering a complex scene:



Mac Pro below.

Performace with Lightroom: I’m no fan of subjective evaluations when it comes to processing speed but am finding that the Mini is pretty much identical in performance to the Mac Pro when processing images from the relatively large Nikon and iPhone files. With 1:1 previews you can fly through images by holding down an arrow key and when you cease the sharp preview pops up instantly. So the use experience is much the same, you have a minuscule box doing what a monster one did the past 15 years and power consumption is negligible by comparison (one small fan compared with 5 large ones and a power efficient CPU/GPU). The power supply section of the Mac Pro is alone maybe twice as large as the Mini, which also sports an integrated power supply unit which is tiny.

Security: Perhaps the greatest gain, as mentioned in the opening of Part I is the availability of up to date security to fend off the bad guys. Yes, Ivan and Boris, I’m looking at you. Cost wise, while Apple continues its habit of ripping you off on disk storage ($200 extra for 256gb more – really!) the sub-$1000 package price (I had to add external disk drive and DVD enclosures to the $745 base price of the 512gb Mini) is a fraction of what the Mac Pro cost for much the same performance. Based on just a few days’ experience the Mac Mini M4 is recommended. The new computer takes up negligible space, costs a fraction of the 15 year old Mac Pro and is equally speedy on most operations. On disk read/write operations the Mac Mini M4 is far faster.

Internal SSD upgrades: Early teardowns of the Mac Mini M4 disclose that the NAND storage resides on a removable card. However, components on that card make it impossible to simply plug in a larger storage one as the Apple design ties the card to your particular machine. However, hackers with micro-soldering skills have unsoldered the two existing NAND modules from the card, replacing them with much larger ones for very low cost, and things work well. So you can bet that an aftermarket business will shortly arise offering this service. When you realize that Apple charges $200 or the jump from 256gb to 512gb, and $600 more to go from 256gb to 1tb, there’s money to be made from competing with Apple’s greed. So if you want a 1TB drive or greater it might make sense to buy the base 256gb $600 Mac Mini and wait for the market to offer upgrades.

If you cannot wait but still want to avoid Apple’s gouging, buy an external Thunderbolt SSD of large capacity and make that the boot drive. This 1tb Thunderbolt 4 example sells for $150. For best performance, be sure to plug it into one of the three rear sockets as the front ones are not Thunderbolt capable.

Location: My M4 Mini hides in the rear of the keyboard tray. The DVD drive is at the monitor’s lower left, along with the camera CF/SD card reader. The disk drive enclosure is in the footwell of the desk:


It looks pretty ugly with cables sprouting out in all directions,
so hiding the M4 Mini at the back of the keyboard tray makes
sense. Ventilation is adequate.

The front connections include a mouse, keyboard and loudspeakers. The three rear Thunderbolt 4/USB-C sockets connect a laser printer, the disc drives, the DVD drive and the camera card reader, the latter two through a two into one splitter. Then there is the HDMI cable for the monitor and the power supply cord.

Time to upgrade: If you’re thinking of upgrading your Intel Mac to the M4 chip set now would be a good time to do that before Pig’s cretinous tariffs kick in on January 20, 2025.

Mac Mini M4 – Part II

Mac Mini M4

Migration pains.

Apple’s Mac laptops and desktops have seen four generations of CPUs. The original Macintosh used Motorola 68000 CPUs, the first ‘modern’ Macs used IBM’s G3/4/5 series, then came Intel and now it’s Apple Silicon.

When Apple decided to switch to Intel Steve disclosed that they had been working for two years on an ‘invisible’ app named Rosetta which would magically allow IBM configured applications to run seamlessly on the new Intel CPUs and his words were true. It was cleverly named Rosetta and kicked in invisibly when you fired up an IBM application. It never failed and the running speed of the many apps I used was fine.

Well, Apple crafted a new Rosetta for the Intel to Apple Silicon switch and …. it’s an absolute disgrace. It hardly works with any of my old apps, forcing me to upgrade (read: more cost, more complexity, more crappy unwanted ‘features’). The one old app which asked for installation of Rosetta was Lightroom, the first one I tried, which promptly shut down and refused to boot ever again. So I called it right in Part I – Adobe finally forced me to go with the subscription model. My $10 monthly gets me Lightroom Classic – the one I have been using for over a decade – and something called Lightroom Creative Cloud. Anyway, I ponied up, the LR interface came up and I hit Migrate to import my old LR catalog. 12 hours later I got this after many messages telling me my cloud storage was full and attempting to extort yet more money:


12 hours later.

I also got a huge file of error data telling me something about images not migrated. Blood pressure started spiking.

I fired up LR and, to my horror, found that the images were lumped together in one folder chronologically, all folder data lost. Meaning useless. Further, it appears that my images are stored in Adobe’s cloud. Seriously, are you going to trust this business with your art?

Then it occurred to me to check which version of LR this was, and the answer was v8. And yes, the interface is ghastly, pop ups everywhere, cryptic symbols in lieu of words. This is a disaster, I’m thinking. Blood pressure now through the roof. Wait a moment. LR Classic is now on version 14. I had used the wrong version of LR – the cloud one, not the local standalone! Back to the Adobe site, a quick download of LR Classic and 3 minutes later my old LR catalog and previews were converted and I was up and running in the familiar interface I have known since 2007 when the much missed Aperture was discontinued by Apple. Compliments to Adobe for a smooth conversion and a curse on the person who came up with the confusing naming of the two applications. Maybe they should call the cloud version LR Crappy?


A familiar interface.

The files reside on my local drives just as does the application, but cease paying Adobe and you can say hasta la vista to processing capabilities. Still all is up and running and even my several presets and plug-ins appear to be working. The old Photoshop (version CS5 in my case) is toast and I have to learn the many enhancements in LR since my old version 6 to see if PS is needed any more.

Helpful catalog information:



Migration in progress.

How about other commonly used applications?

Intuit Quicken 2007: Rosetta failure. Had to pay an annual subscription fee of $35 for the new version, conversion of the old data file was seamless and the new interface is ghastly. You cannot show more than one bank or credit card account on the screen simultaneously, but it otherwise works. Rosetta fail. $36 annually for the ‘upgrade’.

Steer Mouse: This is an essential utility to enable the programmable functions of the several buttons on my Logitech G500 wired mouse, now in use 11 years and as good as ever. These buttons allow me to jump to the desktop, fire up Mission Control or start a web browser and the application comes with great programmability. Rosetta fail. $20 for the upgrade. Needless to add Logitech ceased supporting its own product years ago.

Carbon Copy Cloner: Mike Bombich’s backup and recovery software is state of the art, has been around for ever and is quickly updated for Apple’s latest planned obsolescence efforts with its OS. Rosetta fail, so another $39 for the upgrade.

Keyboard and mouse connectivity: I am using these short connectors to attach my USB-A devices to the USB-C only Mac Mini M4. The spacing of the three USB-C sockets on the rear of the Mini is way too tight, so do not use those plug-type adapters. They are too thick and you are likely to break one or more of the rather fragile sockets. On my first attempt neither the Kensington keyboard or the mouse were recognized – panic – but pulling the connectors and reinserting them cured the problem. Phew! I have to say those sockets strike me as way too fragile and I would not recommend frequent plugging and unplugging,

Disk drive enclosure: The Terramaster enclosure is now fully populated with 3.5″ spinning and 2.5″ SSD drives. No adapter is required for the latter. Sitting on my desk 2 feet away I can just hear the HDDs working but now that it has been relocated in the footwell the noise is inaudible. The instructions state you should replace the removable side pieces on the removable trays but that’s impossible once the drives are screwed in place. Not a problem. Just leave them off. $170.


Fully populated drive enclosure.

DVD burner/reader enclosure: The OWC enclosure is OK, though the sharp edges could be better finished. It looks rather crude and is missing rubber feet on the base, meaning that the four protruding screws will mar your desktop. I added rubber feet. I think there are better designs out there but it’s not like it cost that much. On first plugging in the drive was not recognized but pulling the plug and reinserting it cured that. Seems like this is a common issue for me. Both the MKV (BluRay) and MDRP (regular DVDs) apps work fine. A rare Rosetta success.

Microsoft Excel: DOA. Rosetta fail. I’m no longer slaving for an honest crust on Wall Street so do not need the power of Excel. Apple’s free Numbers is adequate and reads the Excel .xlsw file just fine. $0. Ditto for Microsoft Word. I simply use Apple’s excellent Text Edit, which is free. For more advanced formatting I would use the free Apple Pages.

Apple Sequoia OS 10.15: One look at System Preferences – now named System Settings because all change is good, right? – and you can see what an absolute pig OS X has become. Too much of everything, useless features that few want or need, change for change’s sake. At least it has not yet locked up so I do not need to access the Mini’s power button which some idiot placed underneath the machine. Probably the same idiot who placed the charger socket for the (not so) Magic Moise on the underside. Steve must be spinning in his grave.

Lessons learned? Migration is hell and Rosetta is largely useless. Be prepared to pay for software upgrades for all your commonly used apps. And set aside a solid 8 hours because things will go wrong and you will have several setbacks. I’m already missing my Mac Pro …. if not its size and electricity demands.

In Part III I will address performance data.

Mac Mini M4 – Part I

Hardware, Mac Mini M4

Time to move on.


Tiny.

Apple’s planned obsolesence strategy has seen to it that my 2010 Mac Pro, a machine as reliable as a hammer, is now no fewer than six generations of OS out of date. That means that those nasty Russkie hackers can have at it to their hearts content and next thing you know my credit card will have run up $10mm in charges for caviar and vodka and yours truly will be out on the street.

But a strange thing happened. Apple just released the minuscule Mac Mini M4 at what can only be called a bargain price by Apple’s gouging standards, starting at $600 for the 16GB/256GB model. I paid Amazon $745 for the 16GB/512GB slightly upgraded version as I need a larger SSD to store all my applications and the 80GB of Lightroom preview files which load quickly from the SSD. (The picture files, much larger, reside on a slow, spinning disk drive, where speed is not required).

My Mac Mini M4 arrives tonight and because I will need to move the disk drives from the innards of the Mac Pro I had to procure an external drive enclosure as well as an enclosure for the BluRay DVD reader/writer. Along with a handful of cables the bill came to $1,000, one quarter of the investment in the significantly upgraded Mac Pro.

After doing some reading I have determined that the safest and fastest way to migrate apps from the Mac Pro is to use the Time Machine (sequential) back-up (using Migration Utility) which I always have running in the MP.

While the wi-fi here is fast and reliable I am going for a wired connection of the TM HDD to the new Mini. Wired connections do not go down.

So first I removed the TM HDD from the gorgeous MP (boy am I going to miss that machine). Here it is, all 54 lbs of it, as perfect an industrial design as Apple conceived, and actually Jony Ive’s first major effort at Apple, before he became obsessed with smallness and thinness to the detriment of ergonomics. 5 large fans, two 3.46GHz 6 core Intel CPUs, Blu Ray DVD, USB3 upgrade, super Nvidia 980GTX GPU and all of 80GB of RAM:


Not tiny.

The new Terramaster disk drive box:


Terramaster drive enclosure.

The other three bays will hold a 512GB SSD to back-up the Mini’s OS and applications, the main Data drive (a 2TB HDD – don’t need speed there) and another 2TB back-up Data drive. The OS/apps and Data drives are automatically cloned daily using Carbon Copy Cloner. Time Machine runs on its own schedule. I copy the photos to an SSD in my car monthly for ‘belt and suspenders’ safety. Of course, should both the home and garage burn down ….

All my photos and documents reside on the Data drive. The Terramaster is nicely made, the drives (either 3.5” or 2.5”) are easily installed, and it has two large and silent cooling fans. It will eventually be moved into the footwell of my desk, out of sight. It’s USB 3.1, so fairly speedy. Even though SSDs are now affordable I really do not need the speed and the old HDDs continue working well at no added cost. I will simply hard wire the Terramaster (USB-C) to the new Mini and have at it for migration.

Next I will remove the BluRay DVD reader/writer from the MP and install it in an OWC separate stand-alone enclosure. One of the nice things about the old MP is that all major peripherals are stored inside the enclosure. No more.

A major issue will be whether my (ancient) versions of Lightroom and Photoshop can have their perpetual licenses transferred from the MP to the Mini. The web is all over the place on this. Adobe is a very low integrity business so I may be finally forced into their subscription model – $20/mth for LR and PS. The advantage is that those latest versions are optimized for the Apple M series CPUs, meaning they run faster, and as we know LR is a real bear. Plus the apps have been significantly enhanced since my 9 year and 12 year old versions. The disadvantage is $240/year + tax and the revolting thought of sending Adobe money, however modest the sum.

The Kensington keyboard (I cannot stand Apple’s designs), Logitech mouse (ditto – the Apple mouse is an ergonomic disaster – what idiot placed the charging port on the underside of this already horrible design?), and Logitech speakers (the Mini has a coaxial socket for those), along with the BenQ monitor, all hard wired, will carry over to the Mini. I had to procure a bunch of USB-A to USB-C adapters because USB-C is all the Mini offers. As the monitor will be connected to the Mini using HDMI, whereas the Mac Pro uses Display Port, I can have both computers connected to the monitor during the conversion period and simply switch inputs when needed. Nice.

More in the next article as I contemplate the horrors of migration.

Fixing the LG OLED 65″ TV

Hardware

Don’t recycle it!

I wrote about this splendid TV some 7 years ago here.

Recently the sound became intermittent after some 15 minutes of use. I use an external amplifier and speakers and some tests confirmed these are working fine so the fault lies with the TV. Some digging disclosed that loss of sound or vision on warm up is nothing new with LG TVs of a certain age, and it appears the problem is attributable to the use of solder with too low a melting point, causing loss of electrical continuity. That’s either sloppy design or planned obsolescence. Your call.

So I determined to try fixing the issue, which means installing a new motherboard – there are two circuit boards in the TV, the motherboard and the power supply, both passively cooled. There are no fans. In addition to swapping in a new motherboard I decided to enhance the ventilation in the area of both circuit boards. I had noticed that, while waiting for delivery of the new board and leaving the rear panel off, that the sound intermittency problem did not occur, likely due to better ventilation.

Because the TV screen is extremely slim – thinner than an iPhone – it is very fragile, so I moved a cocktail table up to the TV table, covered the former with soft padding and tipped the tv forward onto the cocktail table, allowing access to the rear panel and the stand. Both have to come off and the power supply feed has to be removed – one screw, a small panel and a click fit connector. The stand is retained with four large screws which come off and then the screws holding the back panel can be removed. They are clearly marked with arrow symbols. The top of the rear panel is retained with a bunch of clips – ugh! – so the panel has to be gently popped off, one clip at a time working from one end with fingers inserted between panel and screen. Not a lot of fun. Then all is revealed:



The rear cover removed. The motherboard is at the top, the power supply at the bottom.

Measurements were then made to establish the positions of the two circuit boards and penciled grids were drawn on the rear cover:



Penciled grid in the motherboard area.



The grid in the power supply area. The opening is for the mains cable.

A Forstner bit is used to drill the holes. A regular drill bit will wander and the result will look awful, whereas the pointed tip of the Forstner bit allows precise placement on the grid intersections. Be careful not to drill in locations where there are spigots on the inside of the cover – which is why some holes appear to be ‘missing’.



Holes drilled with protective plastic mesh installed.

The mesh is glued in place using Permatex 80050 Silicone adhesive which the maker’s excellent data sheet states is good to 400F. 24 hours are required for a full cure. The purpose of the mesh is to prevent fingers being poked into the electronics. Do not use metallic mesh. Should it come unglued you’ll risk a short circuit. A check with a tele-thermometer with the cover off and the TV warmed up disclosed a temperature range of 88-108F for the motherboard and the PSU had one component at 143F, so the adhesive will do the trick. Don’t even think of using cyanoacrylate ‘superglue’ – it’s useless. Once the holes are made the penciled grid can be removed with isopropyl alcohol.

The motherboard is retained with 6 screws and the white retaining plate at right is removed and placed in position on the replacement board. There are five connectors, all ‘click’ captive and it took me a while studying these with a magnifying glass to determine how to release the connectors without breaking anything. The two ribbon connectors at top left are real bears and quite fragile, so study carefully before removal.



Old and new motherboards.

After testing the result at high volume for 3 hours – failure formerly occurred after 15 minutes – all is well.

Why DIY? Well you can risk taking this to the repair shop and it is a bear to move and very fragile, whereupon you will be charged $800 for the repair by someone who very much struggles with the English tongue, and then you will have to go through hell again getting the monster screen home. And then if the TV is faulty when you get home, guess whose fault it’s going to be? Or you can do it the American way, recycle the set and buy a new one. The original ran me $2,800 7 years ago, and a similar replacement (with more invasive advertising) is $1,600 today. Still not cheap, reflecting how hard it is to manufacture fault free large OLED panels. And OLED beats anything else into a cocked hat.



Reassembled.

I used TVPartsToday for the motherboard which cost $129 shipped. Their excellent service insists that you provide a picture of the bar code(s) on your existing motherboard before you can place an order as that means an exact match will be shipped. Mine was right the first time. Their site states that they have almost 8,000 parts in stock! By the way, if the TV simply refuses to turn on it’s likely the power supply board that is blown, and these are under $100.

The Nikon D800 in the studio

Nikon bodies, Nikon lenses, Photographs

There is no better bargain.

I have been taking studio pictures with my Novatron strobe outfit for almost three decades now with the cameras ranging from rangefinder Leicas, through Rollieflexes, and Canon and Nikon DSLRs. Autofocus in the DSLRs instantly obsoleted the film equipment which was sold. Maybe the lenses were better, but nailing focus every time beats optical quality in my book.

My Nikon DSLR journey started with a D700, then the D3x, the APS-C D2x, and finally the D800. The latter was introduced by Nikon in 2012 for $3,000 and I paid just $525 a few months ago for mine with 16k clicks. Clicks are not that important for a body designed to deliver 200,000 of them, but a USA legal import is. Nikon USA will refuse to service grey market imports. Check the serial number and look for the ‘Nikon USA’ sticker inside the battery compartment.



The all important sticker.

Suffice it to say that, with the introduction of mirrorless bodies and new lenses to fit, Nikon has comprehensively trashed the used value of every DSLR they ever made and most of the lenses which fit it.

Yes, the D750 and D780 and D810 and D850 have better low light sensors but that is of no use in the studio environment. With powerful strobes I’m mostly using ISO 200 or less.

Two things stand out in my D800 experience in the studio. Even in the low ambient light that I use with weak modeling lamps in the strobes, focus is nailed every time and as for absence of sensor noise it is simply extraordinary. Definition is like nothing I’ve ever seen and while I am strictly an SOOC guy, knowing that I can crop when needed is comforting.

Maybe a Phase One or a digital Hasselblad with a large medium format sensor will render more detail for the mega buck cost of entry, but as I have no interest in making billboard-sized enlargements, call me a happy camper. And keeping the additional $12,000 in my pocketbook is a benefit not lost on me.

Do I have a complaint? Of course. Just take a look what this little outfit weighs with the 28-300mm AFS zoom and loaded battery grip:



A waistline comparable with that of most Americans.
Can you spell ‘obese’?

I extolled the D800’s many virtues, weight aside, here, but as ever pictures speak louder than words. Here is Dutch, a gorgeous Hungarian Vizsla, in a recent studio session, SOOC naturally:



A beautiful hunting dog, descended from Hungarian royalty.


Sharp enough for you?

One final advantage. Even my ancient, non-subscription Lightroom v 6.4 from 2015, bought and paid for just once, happily processes D800 RAW files. Try that with your latest and greatest Nikon body, or pay the nasty people at Adobe a monthly fee of $20 in perpetuity – and good luck getting off that treadmill. It’s not for nothing that the US DoJ just sued them for shady subscription practices.