I have the option of buying a 16Gb/256Gb M4 mac mini for around $700 or an M1 Max MBP with 32Gb/1Tb for $850.

Which do I choose?

Edit, thanks for the quick answers, I'm going to go MBP as I think the extra multicore horsepower and storage would be more beneficial for music production over the Mini.

In terms of raw performance, where do the M4 and M5 chips stack up to previous generations? I heard the M4 was a massive jump so would that put it close or at the level of like an M1 Max or M3 Pro?

Also for those who have the M5 pro and M5 Max? How much faster are they and is it truly worth buying even the base M5 with the price hike or should I buy the older generations? Like what is the lowest you would go in 2026 knowing that you’d use it well into the future? M1? M2? M3? M4? And pro and max generations of each. Thanks!

M3 air 16/512
M2 pro 16/512
They are aboat 100 different the expansive is a m3

i need help - how to fix this?

This is making me mad. When I open activity monitor to check memory usage there's hundreds of things under 100mbs that I don't know what they are and I don't know if they're safe to close.

That’s subtleties - autocorrect strikes again

I spent a long time trying to figure out why Safari wouldn’t start up with the tabs I had open when I closed it. All the website searching showed the same settings that weren’t working for me. Finally one site also had the line, “be sure you close the app properly using command q”. I had been right clicking the icon and selecting quit there. So is the right click not a proper way to quit an app? I’d rather red x the app, then shut down the Mac, but that does the same as right click quit.
Although I had to rant a little, the real question is how are you supposed to learn stuff like this other than trial and error? Knowing that 2 ways to quit produce different results is not intuitive.

Edit: I did know the red x didn’t quit the program. The dot under the icon made it obvious that the program was still running, which is how I found the right click quit option.
Edit 2: but apparently I didn’t understand that it did close the window.

I'm looking to get a new 2026 MacBook Air, and I came across the option to trade in an old device.

I have a 13-inch early 2015 MacBook Air (very old, i know) that still works normally, just a poor battery life. When I entered the serial number it said "Your device is ready to recycle.". Does this mean it can only be recycled and not traded in for value?

I was also thinking of selling it on a third-party website, but I honestly don't know how anyone would want this old of a device.

Should I recycle it or try and sell it?

So many posts from people spilling everything on their computers. Enough is enough. It’s exactly the same response over and over. A dozen or more a day.

Would the mod be open to just creating an automod respond and then closing the post? It’s really not adding anything to the sub expect showing peoples ignorance.

The response is always the same - there’s no discussion or new knowledge coming out of these posts.

Thanks.

Hi everyone, I have an M2 Pro Mac Mini I'm interested in selling and I wanted to archive its drive to my NAS, so that in the future I can access the contents fully and easily. I already have a Time Machine backup on an external HDD, but it's less convenient to access and I don't trust it to keep working forever, so I would rather have the files on my NAS.

At first I tried to simply copy the contents of the latest Time Machine snapshot to the NAS, using Finder, it's about 260k files (390GB), so I expected it to be slow; but after 6 hours it had only copied 6 GB and it threw an error too. So, I've tried looking at other approaches: I tried using shared disk (in recovery mode) to copy the contents of the Mac's SSD to my MacBook Air over thunderbolt (and later move it to the NAS). To my surprise, this was even slower! Finder was stuck preparing the copy for hours and the "copying N files..." number wasn't going up, so I gave up doing that. I suspect the issue is that the shared disk shows up as a network drive over SMB and not as a mounted drive (which was the case with target disk on Intel Macs, right?). SMB probably adds a lot of overhead.

So I tried making an image of the Mac's HD using disk utility on the Air, it started working but it was going at 1.3MB/s, so, not great. I also tried different image formats but the speed didn't improve. This is very weird since it's a transfer between two internal SSDs connected over thunderbolt, but whatever, it's probably SMB's fault.

Does anyone know what the best approach would be? I know I could set up a Time Machine volume on my NAS, but it seems unnecessary at this point, since I need read access to the files.

To not waste our time, here's a few other things I tried to no avail: making an image of the Mac's HD from recovery mode; making an image of the Time Machine drive; using rsync instead of Finder; Airdrop over cable (insisted on using wifi).

If anyone can help I'd really appreciate it.

This mba has already been giving me issues since 2023 i think. I didnt really get around to fixing it as i was busy. has anyone had the same problem with these older macs? I feel like its a battery problem, but the charger light indicator turned green after charging for a while. any help would be appreciated, thank you!

btw, its on a macos catalina patcher (dosdude1)

Hi!

So I've had a 2018 8GB MacBook Pro that's on its last legs and I've been planning to upgrade.

I'm conflicted between buying a 2021 M1 Pro with 32GB RAM and 1TB Storage (88% battery health) for $1,250 AUD vs an M4 Base Chip 24GB RAM 1TB Storage (95% Battery) for $2,100 AUD.

It's a steep price difference and although I would like to pay less, I am concerned the M1 is 5 years old now. I had my last laptop for 8 years so I would like a new purchase to also last me 8 years at minimum. That said, I am aware I'm going to be paying almost 1k more for less RAM and not a Pro chip.

Is the almost 1k difference made up for in longevity and specs? My usage is running Docker and VMWare simultaneously for work. I also do hobby 2D Unity development on the side.

So 8 months ago, my 4 year old Mac Air M1 died on me. Won’t charge, won’t turn on, nothing. I used to try plugging it once a month hoping it would start but no. Until a couple weeks ago, it miraculously turned on. It brought me so much joy. It worked like a charm just like it used to for a week. Until I was gone on a work trip for a week. When I come back, voila, turned on again! 2 days later it died again. This has been quite an emotional roller coaster. It was today that I finally found the motivation to open it up and with the help of few YouTube videos and ChatGPT, I was able to narrow it down to this one issue. As soon as I unplug the cable attaching the separate board right under the power button (in the pic), the laptop turns on. Charges fine, works perfectly. The battery health is also at 85%. One of the screws is a bit rusted but I can assure that this hasn’t ever gotten near water.

Now what should be the way to go forward. I want to take your opinions. It has served me well.

I am a regular user of Windows and Mac. The one feature that I miss in Mac is the alt+tab navigation of windows. The closest is using 3 fingers and sliding up to view and select a window. But I find this tedious and slower compared to the Windows navigation - as I lose my current window too. Also, if there are multiple Word docs open/ or multiple instances of any app, I have to scroll right using 2 fingers to find the one that’s open. Command + ‘(backtick) - displays only the open apps. Any suggestions to make the navigation easier?

I have a m1 2020. I’m trying to clear up some storage but it’s near impossible doing it all myself. What’s a good FREE app?

I popped off a key to clean off some debris and now i cannot place it back in. It snaps into place but there’s no pop up and stays stuck inside. I don’t have an apple authorised store near me for the next couple of weeks.

What should I do next? </3

I have heard macbooks last more than decades functioning properly in terms of everything performance, battery life and other.
But it does not seem it will be true in my case, I have bought my mac in 2020 been using it since. But i have to repair it twice in the mean time and i seems i need to repair it again.
First time, i was using it normally and it turned black screen, i have taken it to repair center, they repaired it, they told it was due to dust in hinge, the flex gate was damaged. After since i was cleaning hinge every week.
Second time, i kept it in shut down for around 10 days, i was out of the city. When i came back it didn't turned on. Went for repair, but repair guy can't figured it out exactly which ic is damaged, and moved everything in the board, but luckily another guy came and he fixed it.
Now, this time when i pull ma display above 80 degree the display is showing lines, but if i close the lid and open it around 80 degree it works perfectly fine.

I use it with care, I never dropped it. How do you guys keep your laptop perfect for so long like 10 years or more?

So, i am thinking possibly it will mess up in future after repair too. And i was thinking of selling it, around $350 and switch to macbook air m5?
What do you suggest, should i stick with this mac till it dies or sell this and take new one?

I use my Mac mini to do some light video editing. A trackpad would be so helpful but I don't want to fork out $150 for a magic trackpad. Would a non-apple track pad get the job done or are they laggy and not worth the trouble?

Guys can someone help me?

Hey everyone..

So as far as you know macos now and then has some feature that the devs forgot to implement..

So I’m looking for a way or a thirdy which i can scroll horizontally or vertically on trackpad so I can see other menu bar’s icons behind the notch..

Already have too many apps running and there is no way except something messy like bartender or other apps to do this..

I encountered this on a local business' website today. The terminal command it provides appears to be base64 encoded to obfuscate it. Anybody experienced anything like this? Googling for this shows nothing.

EDIT: As people in the comments point out, it's a variation of the ClickLock malware. It doesn't appear to be the main version, though. This is modified.

I investigated it a little.

1. The command is base64 encrypted, and when unencrypted, it tells Terminal to download a shell script from a compromised website.

2. That shell script is also base64 encrypted. When unencrypted, it installs a launchctl shell script and has another load of base64 crap.

3. When that's unencrypted, it's tries to run an AppleScript -- which is again obfuscated by referencing every letter as "(ASCII character 46) & (ASCII character 112)" etc. I asked Claude to figure this out (I lack the skills to create something like a Perl or Python script to do so), and Claude said it was a blockchain-hosted C2 (EtherHiding) feeding a macOS osascript dropper -- so this component also would download presumably the payload components.

That's as far as I got. This is as close as any malware as I'd like to get, and I feel a little dirty. I already use apps like KnockKnock to monitor persistence locations, but I'm giving my Mac a good sweep now just to make sure everything's OK.

I've had my 14" MBP for 3.5 years now and it's still brilliant. I don't know if Apple realised the M chips perform well for a very long time and result in no need to upgrade lol.

I can't see myself upgrading until the laptop dies, because there is no noticeable performance slow down or degradation in battery life even after 3.5 years