Category Archives: Hardware

Stuff

Networking Macs

Macintosh

How to do it.

While the Apple TV 4K is a very capable streaming device, Greedy Timmy in Cupertino has seen to it that you cannot make it stream content from hard drives connected to other Macs in the home. Yes, Greedy Tim wants to sell you more hardware. Imagine!

This is irksome as my home theater has some 40tb of movies stored on hard drives connected to the Mac Mini in that location but the fact that I have an Apple TV 4K connected to the OLED TV in the living room does not mean I can access those movies for display on the TV. Frustrating.

However, there is a cheap solution which takes advantage of the very low used prices on 2014 vintage Mac Minis which are renowned for one thing. They are bog slow. You would not want to have to process your photographs on one of these tortoises, let alone manipulate much larger video files. But for my purpose, the streaming of movies, these machines are ideal and typically sell used on Amazon for $135-200.

I have two of these machines. One is in the home theater upstairs and has all those hard drives connected to it, routing the video and sound signals to the large projection screen using HDMI through an UST projector. It’s controlled using a Bluetooth mouse.

The second 2014 Mac Mini is connected using an HDMI cable to the downstairs OLED TV, and has nothing else connected. It’s also controlled using a Bluetooth mouse. While this second machine is the faster of the two shown above, the slower model is perfectly adequate for these purposes.

The third Mac, my workhorse Mac Mini M4 is the current very speedy device which took the place of the behemoth Mac Pro of 2010 in the home office. In the context of movies it’s used to rip DVDs for storage on those hard drives in the home theater, with the ripped movie conveyed to its destination over wi-fi.

You can see all three computers in the sketch at the introduction to this article.

While networking computers can be a black art (I really would rather not think about doing this with Windows) with Macs it’s relatively easy. The key is to set up the Sharing settings correctly – these are in System Preferences on the older Minis and in System Settings on the current Mac Mini M4.

Again, in my configuration I have three Mac Minis:

  • The Server Mac (2014 vintage) in the home theater where all the hard disk drive boxes are connected
  • The Remote Mac Mini M4 (2024 vintage) in the home office where DVDs are ripped and sent wirelessly to the storage drives in the home theater
  • A second Remote Mac Mini (2014 vintage) connected to a TV in the living room used solely to watch movies on that TV.

There are three steps to allowing files on one Mac (the “Server Mac”) accessible by another (the “Remote Mac”).

Step 1: On the Server Mac you need to make the drives visible on the network:


This is the (Server Mac) Mini with all the attached hard
drive storage in the home theater. You must give
access to those hard drives to other Macs in the
File Sharing panel. See “Shared Folders”.

Step 2a: On the Remote Mac you need to tell that Mac to join the network:


This is the (Remote Mac) Mini attached to the TV set.
It simply needs File Sharing turned on.

Step 2b: On the second Remote Mac which is used to rip DVDs:


This is the second (Remote Mac) Mini M4 in the office
used to rip movies and send them to the hard drives
attached to the Mac mini in the home theater.
Yes, the new interface is an abomination.

Step 3: Next you need to make those drives attached to the Server Mac visible to the Remote Mac(s):

To connect to the movie hard disk drives from a Remote Mac (meaning one not connected to those hard drives), on the Remote Mac open Finder->Go->Connect to Server and choose the remote disk drive(s):


Connecting to the hard drives from
a Remote Mac using Finder.

After choosing the Server Mac and clicking Connect, you will see all the drives connected to the Server Mac (the Mini to which all the hard disk drives are connected), thus:


Shift-click to choose all or
Command-click to chose individual drives.

Once you click OK all those drives will be accessible on your Remote Mac. This setting is non-volatile. Restart any of the Macs involved and the setting is preserved. Nice.

As having the home theater (Server Mac) Mini go down through a power cut risks corruption to the hard drives, that computer and all the hard drive boxes are connected to an APC UPS.

All the Minis and the Apple TV 4K streamers use either RF or Bluetooth for communications with peripherals like remotes, mice and keyboards so they can be hidden out of sight, so long as they are afforded adequate ventilation. In the case of the TV devices they nestle comfortably under the TV screen.


The Mac Mini and Apple TV 4K under the TV screen.

Those old Minis may not be speed demons but for routing video they are excellent and reliability is high. And if you power them through an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) they rarely go down.

The DVDpedia application used to catalog and run all those saved movies was profiled here. While Conor, the developer, has taken a hiatus he has nonetheless updated the application to run on Apple Silicon and you can download it here. I can confirm it runs fine on my Mac Mini M4 though the movie count flags are incorrect. Not a big deal. When first starting DVDpedia on a Remote Mac be sure to hold the Option key down before double clicking on the local (meaning on the remote Mac) DVDpedia application. When DVDpedia starts you will be asked for the location of the DVDpedia database and you should point to the database on the Mini which has all those hard drives connected. It’s under Library-> Application Support->DVDpedia->Database.DVDpd. That way any changes you make to the database either on a Remote Mac or on the Server Mac will be applied in the correct place. You only have to do this once.

The Rolleiflex 2.8D

Cameras

Not cheap, but most special.

The one thing the nutty retro film movement has succeeded in accomplishing – and it’s not great photography – is the wild escalation of the prices of some of the classic cameras of the 1950s and 1960s. Quite why anyone would waste time processing film with its poor quality and great fragility compared to digital images beats me. Yeah, I know. And LPs sound better too, right? Uh huh. Just go easy on the funny cigarettes.

The two ‘go to’ makers of the time were Franke & Heidecke – Rolleiflex – and Ernst Leitz – Leica. Both were German, needless to add, and that’s a good thing as the last thing you want in your camera maker is a sense of humor. (If you wanted large format the maker of choice was Linhof, sharing roots in the Fatherland).

When the highest quality images were required without resorting to cumbersome plate cameras the Rollei, with its large 6x6cm negatives (over 3 times the area of the 35mm alternative) was the choice of the most famous photographers of the time. Beaton, Capa, Lee Miller, Avedon, Arbus, Adams, Erwitt, Vivian Maier all used Rolleiflexes. Heck, Fred Astaire, trained by none other than Richard Avedon, used no fewer than three in Funny Face, and if you have not seen that then your have little interest in photography.

So my small Home Theater display of the great classics could not possibly be complete without a Rolleiflex from the peak film era and I opted for a 2.8D made in 1955. This took a good deal of searching as most cameras of that era have been beaten to death. Not this one:


The Rolleiflex 2.8D, manufactured
between Aug 1955 and Sep 1956.

It’s as near mint as these things get right down to the dual lens cap (bayonet the top part, snap closed the lower one), pristine leather case and the original instruction book. And the latter is wonderful. Read it without knowing anything about picture taking and you will be half way there by the time you are done. Why, even the self timer works, reflecting a repair by the previous owner.

Having offered supplication to the Market God (he responded favorably) I laid out a not inconsiderable amount of cash and the Rollei now adds a touch of class to the Home Theater which includes a Nikon F, a Minox B, a Contax II, a Bolex H16, a Calumet field camera and …. my first camera, the 1959 Kodak Brownie Reflex 620, given me by my parents when I was 8.


Alongside the Kodak Brownie.
The only thing these two share is the 6×6 film size.
Note the Leitz table tripod supporting the Rollei.

In operation the Synchro Compur shutter (1-1/500 and B) is almost silent, much quieter than the one in the contemporary Leica M3. You are limited to 12 exposures on a roll of 120 film which will ensure you waste none. And the exposure guide on the rear of the camera is beyond ingenious, far superior to the near useless ones which simply recite exposure values in later models.


The intuitive exposure guide.

You can couple the shutter speeds with the aperture values by a 90 degree twist of the front right dial between the lenses, or uncouple them if you want to separate the setting of the two variables. EVs never really caught on because 1 second at f/2.8 is a whole lot easier to remember than the fact that it’s EV3 at 100 ASA. Still, they are there if you want them, but you should probably dress eccentrically and affect a German accent when using them.

The Rollei is one of the truly great exemplars of the film era.

Mac Mini M4 – Part V

Mac Mini M4, Macintosh

Matching storage.

In Part IV I wrote about the French company named Polysoft which is providing upgraded storage for the Mac Studio computer, adding that I expect they will expand their offerings to include the Mac mini M4.

That may take a while as they will have to reverse engineer around Apple’s greed, but meanwhile another entrepreneurial outfit has produced an external SSD in a box with the same footprint as the Mini. TechRadar has the story and storage capacities from 512gb to a whopping 8tb will cost from $140 to $1000. That is extremely competitive when you look at Apple’s upgrade pricing – Greedy Timmy wants an additional $800 for just 2tb.


The Orico external SSD for the Mac mini M4.

Orico claims a throughput of 40Gbps which seems unlikely to me, but we should soon be seeing test data.

Mac Mini M4 – Part IV

Mac Mini M4, Macintosh

Expect storage upgrades soon.

In Part III I wrote:

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 for 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.

Well, here we are not a month after the release of the Mac Mini M4 than French company Polysoft has reverse engineered the NAND storage in the Mac Studio and will soon be offering 8tb upgrades for $1,160. Here’s Apple’s pricing – greed personified while Mr. Cook walks around the stage, hands prayerfully clasped in supplication to the god of money:


Mac Studio SSD upgrades.

And here’s the excellent article and related video from Cult of Mac explaining what Polysoft accomplished and it’s really magical:


Click the image for the article.

In contrast to much of the appalling dreck found on YouTube, Luke Miani’s presentation is articulate and involving.

The real volume for Polysoft’s business will be selling upgrade SSDs for the Mac Mini M4 because that’s where the money is. I would expect they should have a competitive offering in a quarter or two. And yes, Apple’s greed for upgrades to that machine is equally abundantly on display. Well done Polysoft. Vive La France!

Mac Mini M4 – Part III

Mac Mini M4, Macintosh

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 4gb 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 7 large ones (two of those in the GPU) 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 for 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.