Macworld January 2025

As someone who has reviewed Macs for a long time, I’m often asked for shopping advice and whether now is a good time to buy a Mac. It’s an excellent question since Apple has been fairly sporadic with its Mac releases. Macs are expensive and people want reassurance that they’re making a timely investment. No one wants to buy something, start using it, and realize they just could’ve stuck with what they already had. Nor does anyone want to make a purchase only to have something better come along in a short time. When it comes to Macs, the decision to buy a new one is rarely a quick and easy one, but with the release of the M4 Mac lineup, there’s less hedging than ever before. As I reviewed…

As the cavalcade of M4 Macs rained down upon us last week, it became clear that Apple has established a solid rhythm for updates to its processor line. So far, it’s been four years and we’ve seen four generations of Apple silicon chips, each more impressive than the last. In everything from computational and graphics capability to power efficiency, the era of Apple-made processors has proven to be a ground change for the company. But even such an astounding success comes with challenges. As Apple has increasingly carved out its own category in the PC market, the company has left behind many of its classic competitors. It’s rarely compared to old rivals like Dell or HP; even its biggest counterparts, such as Meta and Google, don’t care about the same…

Whenever Apple drops a new product, certain netizens rush to online corners like Reddit, Threads, and X to complain about the latest design choices. The case with the new Mac mini is no different. Despite the device featuring a competitively miniature, sleek build, many loud critics have fixated on the repositioned power button that now lives on its bottom side. It’s classic Apple—design something gorgeous and impressive, but all everyone wants to talk about is one head-scratching decision. I’m here to tell you that these complaints are completely baseless. Let me explain. HIDDEN BY DESIGN Believe it or not, the power button is mostly useless on modern Macs. Yes, you do need it to power it on when you first unbox it. However, if you’re operating your computer correctly, you’ll rarely…

The M4 Mac mini is…mini. It’s way more mini than the old mini, which wasn’t a very big desktop computer at all. At just 5×5 inches square and 2 inches tall, it’s less than a quarter the volume of the Mac Studio, which is also a small desktop computer, and only 1.33 inches bigger than the Apple TV 4K in length and width and not even an inch taller. But what does that really mean? How does that size compare to other everyday objects? Perhaps these photos will provide a better point of reference for just how mini Apple’s new Mac mini really is. Here’s something you may have already: A Magic Trackpad. Its footprint actually exceeds that of the new Mac mini (1). It’s thinner, of course, but just know that…

In September of 2023, Intel announced Thunderbolt 5, a new update to the Thunderbolt specification that doubles the bidirectional bandwidth to 80 Gbps (Thunderbolt 4 supports up to 40 Gbps). A feature called Bandwidth Boost provides up to 120 Gbps for video content. About a year later, the Thunderbolt 5 has made its Mac debut in the new Mac mini and MacBook Pro models that include the M4 Pro processor. Macs that have the regular M4 processor still support Thunderbolt 4. The standard is built on USB4 V2, DisplayPort 2.1, and PCI Express Gen 4 and is fully compatible with previous Thunderbolt versions. The increased performance is achieved using a new signaling technology called PAM-3 which should enable today’s printed circuit boards and passive cables (up to 1 meter) to achieve this…

WD’s G-RAID Mirror is an external enclosure housing two 3.5-inch hard drives. It provides up to 48TB of storage with the drives in striped (RAID 0) mode, or half that in mirror mode RAID 1. It also provides a Pro Blade SSD port for SanDisk’s modular NVMe SSDs. What you may not realize if you haven’t been around a 3.5-inch HDD in a while: They’re a whole lot faster than they used to be. In RAID 0, the G-RAID Mirror can deliver data at over 400MBps. This is not your father’s RAID box. G-RAID MIRROR FEATURES The G-RAID Mirror is a handsome, dark gray, Thunderbolt 3, two-drive external enclosure available in capacities up to 48TB/24TB (striped/mirrored). The unit measures 5.24×8.27×4.06 inches (13.30×21.00×0.21 centimeters). It can weigh up to 7 pounds (3.17…