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Insufficient ports and RAM. Pass. Better Silicon Macs are coming. Don't waste your money on the first generation models.
16Gb is still a good amount for a lot of people.

If you use RAM hungry apps together with GPU intensive apps then you might struggle...

Some people need 32GB ram for data crunching so obviously these machines aren’t for them.
 
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Not seeing any refurb Mac mini in UK refurb store yet, but usually lags a few days behind US store. Having bought from refurb before I continue to monitor what's available - these usually appear some months after release. The UK refurb store is currently listing machines that are up to 4 years old - guess there is a niche market for rose gold MacBooks which cost just £40 less than a refurb MBP m1...

I only just noticed that the M1 MBAs & MBPs had appeared in the refurb store. I’ll wait until the BA e-store has another offer on for increased Avios with Apple in any case, as it’ll be quite a decent number. My 2013 iMac is creaking and, for various reason, a new Mac Mini is what I’m after.
 
Not seeing any refurb Mac mini in UK refurb store yet, but usually lags a few days behind US store. Having bought from refurb before I continue to monitor what's available - these usually appear some months after release. The UK refurb store is currently listing machines that are up to 4 years old - guess there is a niche market for rose gold MacBooks which cost just £40 less than a refurb MBP m1...
Prob better deals on Amazon than Standard/Edu/Refurb for a change unless you want to go 16GB/1TB then Refurb comes into play @ £300 off for a 16GB/1TB.
 
Thinking hard about buying a new M1 Mac Mini (16 GB /512 SSD) to use with my 2016 Thunderbolt Display. I already have the necessary T3 to T2 adaptor.

Only thing holding me back is that this is a 1st gen product. I’ve also heard about Bluetooth issues.

Anyone have the setup I’m working with?
 
So what all Minis would be better for me? I am looking to buy a newer computer and was going to buy the base mini. I just use it for basic computer stuff and photo/video editing
If you only ever want to use your Mac on a desk then the MacMini is the best Mac for you. You can add a big monitor if you want, and 1 or 2 TB external drive is cheap if you need that, so its the best possible value. On the other hand, you can use a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro on the train. When you use a train again. Or in the garden. When the weather gets warmer.
 
I chose the 8GB/256GB M1 model for $599 and I think it's a great machine (Costco and Amazon had them on sale), this is how I'm using it.

I've got it driving three displays: a 27" 4k monitor, a 23" 1080p monitor (portrait), and a 12.9" iPad. I teach from home, so all the displays are great, I really only need the iPad as a second display because of its size (I can put it directly in front of me and below the 27" 4k). I could do without the third, but I just never bothered to disconnect it so I find a use for it use it, as you can see I have lots of windows open.

I run Zoom (dual monitor mode), Excel (1 or 2 windows), PowerPoint (2-3 windows), VLC, Safari (multiple windows and multiple tabs), Activity Monitor, and probably some other things too (Speedtest, Maps, etc.) and I'm constantly impressed by how well it runs.

Having only 256GB on Mac is like a 16 or 32GB iPhone. They really need to start Macs with at least 512GB or 1TB
I was more worried about storage than the RAM. Storage was pricey, another $200 to go from 256GB to 512GB, yikes! So I picked up a 1TB SSD Drive for $139.99 and love it. Considering that Apple wants $400 for 3/4 of a TB (the 256GB to 1TB upgrade is $400), this is a bargain at $140 and comes with an extra 256GB! It's not as convenient as built-in, but it's almost 1/3 of the cost and is 33% more (plus I've still got the 256GB that's built-in), I can suffer with it externally on my desktop easily enough (and move it to my next machine too).
 
Mac mini Pro? Think you'll be waiting for some time! There's never been a "Pro" model.
I'd wager when the remaining desktops are upgraded (iMac & Mac Pro) with the M1X or whatever the chip's called, :apple: will fork the lineup so the base models are M1 & the high end versions the M1X, a bit like i3, i5 & i7.
The top end mini having the same chip (but not overall highest core count) as the MP & they'll be graphical & core behemoths prob running an extra $500 for the privilege, it's in :apple:'s DNA.;)
 
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Counting the days. A scuff here, A knock there... All we're concerned with performance
 
I am really hoping that more 16/256 models will pop up soon. I bought an 8/256 on sale for $599, but I just don’t think 8GB of memory is quite enough for me. I am very absent-minded and constantly have ten thousand things going through my head at once, so I tend to have a ridiculous number of windows and tabs open at any given moment (along with whatever other applications I’m using). I noticed that I have been frequently hitting red on the memory pressure graph in Activity Monitor, which tells me that 8GB just isn’t cutting it.
 
If you only ever want to use your Mac on a desk then the MacMini is the best Mac for you. You can add a big monitor if you want, and 1 or 2 TB external drive is cheap if you need that, so its the best possible value. On the other hand, you can use a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro on the train. When you use a train again. Or in the garden. When the weather gets warmer.
I just want something to replace a Celeron desktop for general use and occasional photo and video editing
 
I just want something to replace a Celeron desktop for general use and occasional photo and video editing
The M1 mini would be an awesome replacement. Faster and quieter, and the price is pretty decent - you can keep your peripherals too most likely (unless you’ve got an old VGA monitor or something, which would require an adapter).
 
The M1 mini would be an awesome replacement. Faster and quieter, and the price is pretty decent - you can keep your peripherals too most likely (unless you’ve got an old VGA monitor or something, which would require an adapter).
I have a 22" 1080p monitor but I want an upgrade. But for the money of a new monitor and mini would I be better off buying a higher end but older imac or macbook? I also thought about the 2018 mini. I found the i7 with 512ssd for 700, seems like a great deal
 
256GB is plenty for me. Even with Logic and all of its additional content. I find more storage just leads to more clutter and crap I never actually use. Sure, I guess it's not great if you need to store lots of high res video or tons and tons of RAW photos, but comparing it to a 16GB phone is silly.
Get a network attached storage system for the $600 you'd pay Apple to get a 2 TB SSD. If you want something smaller then an external SSD which can easily be had for about 20% of the $600 Apple wants. It will be a little slower but compared to current machines, I doubt you'd notice it if it's in a Thunderbolt 3 compliant enclosure.
 
Nothing to come clean about, all that's happening is a bunch of people making inferences.

Apple never published the TBW rating for the SSD, and more-over, exceeding the TBW rating just means you've exceeded what the manufacturer guaranteed the drive to, it doesn't mean it suddenly dies. Plenty of SSD's out there with multiple petabytes of write on them that are still 99% healthy.

I have drives with over 4x the rated service hours on them, they work fine.

If manufacturers took the time to respond to every baseless claim, that's all they would be doing.
Please outline your evidence to support your claim the reports are baseless.
 
Nice deals if they continue to sell at these reduced prices in the future. I opted for a refurb Mba because I can use it as a desktop until Apple gives me compelling reasons to get an iMac. I wish they would let you use an iMac as a monitor for any system. Then it would give it that future proofing that justifies the price. Old iMac screen still look great but their usefulness without good gpu's just makes them more useless when you have better systems around, the screen still holds up though, I wish it could be recycled into a new use. Sure would keep it out of a landfill.
 
Or believed the hype that they were "much faster" than Intel Macs (they aren't) and rushed out to get them, only to discover that VMware didn't work, so they couldn't run that one Windoze app that they critically needed.

I'm telling clients to buy Intel Macs now while they still can, avoid the "new sexy" because it's nowhere close to as capable as an Intel Mac.

Meanwhile, I'm cursing Apple for doing something so stupid and not just adding AMD as a supplier, or even making their own x86 clone chip if they really couldn't get past the "not invented here" garbage.

These things are rapidly self-destructing their soldered SSDs.

I just thought of a product that hopefully somebody will decide to make! A bolt-on bottom that adds a centimeter or so to the height of a MacBook Pro, and give you a much larger battery, a couple NVMe sockets, a Thunderbolt hub, and space for more battery or an optical drive. Mac laptops are too thin now anyway.

Because the Intel is better.

Don't believe the M1 hype. It's real-world slower.
I guess it depends on your workflow because I just used a 16/256 M1 Mini to produce a 1440p livestream with multiple audio/video inputs, multiple NDI streams in and out etc.

To be fair, this was more taxing on the M1 than I was expecting, but it ran perfectly smooth for hours and most of the software/frameworks running were not ARM native.

The exact same setup could not run smooth on a 2018 Mac Mini with an i5 and 32GB of memory. A 6-core Intel MBP became a screaming fire beast of thermal throttling within 10 minutes trying to do this...

The M1 didn’t blink. Very impressive for an $800 computer.

Sure, if you need Windows, X86 VMs, this is not the platform for that yet. There is a reason Intel versions of 2 out of the 3 models they’ve transitioned are still available.
 
This tells me no one should buy an M1 Mini until they work the bugs out on the next model

So what does it tell you that the only Mac mini you can buy refurbished today is the intel Mac mini? That the M1's quickly sold out? I guess they are still working on those intel bugs.
 
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It actually funny and sad to see so many people hating on something they don't even own. Working heavily at home during COVID this past year, my poor 2013 maxed out MacBook Pro finally went out on me. Seeing that Apple is slated to release new 16" MBP's this year, I decided to pick up an 8-Core M1 Mac Mini with 16gbs of ram. The Mac mini is really fast compared to my old MBP. Renders out of Cinema 4D that would take my MBP 30 minutes to render out take 15 minutes to render on the Mac Mini. That's half the time which means I get my work done MUCH faster. I guess everyone has their own benchmark for what a "fast" computer means to them. I had a few issues migrating my files from High Sierra to Big Sur but once I got past that, I was up and running the same day I received my shipment. I'm normally the type to wait out first release of tech products but I'm confident that Apple knows what they're doing when it comes to computer technology so the Mac mini was a no brainer for me.
 
There is the m1 ssd wear issue that needs to be addressed. Even on 16gb models.
kernel_task counting like an ssd death timer. We should be able to control how
hard the ssd is used. Seems apple would rather constantly write to it and kill it.
There won't be much of a used market for these devices.
All the Youtube hype boys are silent on this cranking out their usual hype videos.
I think they owe an explanation for this or shut-up.
 
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