this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2024
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The M2 Mac Mini is $599, or $499 if you can get the education discount. There is not a (new) Windows PC in that price range that has the same performance (especially performance-per-watt) and Thunderbolt 4. The M1 MacBook Air is getting a bit old, but it's on sale for $600-700 pretty often and will knock the socks off most PCs in that price range, especially in build quality.
Apple's pricing gets ridiculous when you try spec'ing up with certain memory or storage upgrades, sure, and most internal upgrades are a no-go. The base models of most of their computers are incredibly competitive, though.
At 600 you can get a computer with an actual graphics card. The only outstanding feature of the M1/2 macs is the very low power consumption, the rest is quite subpar.
A $600 PC with a dedicated graphics card is probably going to have a worse CPU than an M2 or M3 Mini, and probably no Thunderbolt. You would only be cross-shopping a PC like that with a Mac Mini if you were thinking of graphically-demanding productivity work, like video editing or Blender. If it's for gaming then the Mac wouldn't be in the running at all.
Except for their low draw and thus unmatched battery life on portable devices, the M chips are honestly not impressive performance wise. Not really the appeal, even tho Apple is trying tooth and nails to pretend that that's a selling point with their unlabeled graphs.
I mean if you really don't want a GPU (which IMO is a must, given proper hardware acceleration which makes up for any CPU short comings, but I digress), that leaves you with a much bigger budget for the CPU, and now it's no longer close enough to the M chips, but an absolute slaughter.