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Great news - that was a critical feature missing from the current minis (and available in the previous gen Intel models). I will buy one when they are available.
 
IIRC Thunderbolt used 8b/10b encoding (same as PCIe v2), so it takes 10 bits to transfer a single 8-bit byte, to handle the protocol overheads.

So you are probably getting 8500Mbps data transmission if you are transferring 850MB/s, which is quite decent.

Also, the SI units of kilo, mega, giga etc are in fact decimal units, not base-2 numbers such as 1024, 1,048,576 etc. (https://www.nist.gov/pml/weights-and-measures/metric-si-prefixes). Nearly all HDD/SSD manufacturers use this system because, no surprise, it is smaller and makes their product appear larger to anyone expecting a base-2 derived capacity.

The correct prefixes for the base-2 numbers are: kibi, mebi, gibi etc. ("bi" for "Binary Byte"), with memory/storage capacities written as KiB, MiB, GiB. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix . Note the "mebibyte" is abbreviated MiB, not MeB...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mebibyte

RAM is still produced in binary increments, unlike storage, so it's pretty common to see "GiB" specified, e.g. look at the spec of these AWS compute instance sizes: https://www.ec2instances.info
I don't use Thunderbolt. My 10Gbe Aquantia AQC-107s card is PCIe3 x4 based and so is the one in QNAP.
 
I am interested in this or at least 2.5 GB Ethernet as I would like faster home communications but I don't think that there are consumer routers at this speed yet. I would also have to upgrade other equipment at home - mainly desktops. I wouldn't mind doing that of course. What it would do is make a more convenient mixed-environment as I could run macOS or Windows on the desktop and VNC into the other operating system. It's slightly worse than okay right now at 1 GB but it would be very good at 2.5 GB.
 
The M1 has as many controllers as the intel but each one of them only supports a single port. So yes 2 controllers but only 2 ports.
“A single port”, I’m clueless about what this means?

No daisy chaining devices? (which would be a shame)
Is this also related to not being able to connect more than two screens (or one on macbooks)?
 
“A single port”, I’m clueless about what this means?

No daisy chaining devices? (which would be a shame)
Is this also related to not being able to connect more than two screens (or one on macbooks)?
It means that each physical port you see on the back of the mini has its own controller. Intel controllers support 2 physical ports.
 
I do photo and video work. 4K and above video will eat any and all bandwidth. I have a 16TB RAID0 array in a PC tower and use 10GbE to TB3 to my 16" MBP. On the tower I get 1.5GB/s reads so 10GbE is actually limiting my RAID array speeds on the mac but it's enough for streaming content into Adobe Premiere seamlessly

It also reminds me the only real gripe I have about these for use right now. I would buy one now if Apple had just a simple M2 slot to put drives in there. Video/music, as my wife is doing has a need of expandable space. She's using a PC now and we have a 500GB internal SATA just to put all the scratch and demo work.

I could make do attaching an external drive, of course. That won't get the same performance. Also messes with some of the footprint advantages of the MacMini. Frankly, I feel like there's no good reason to NOT engineer an M2 replaceable slot other than Apple doesn't want customers to have it. They charge more than twice the price of the device to put a 2TB drive in there now.
 
It also reminds me the only real gripe I have about these for use right now. I would buy one now if Apple had just a simple M2 slot to put drives in there. Video/music, as my wife is doing has a need of expandable space. She's using a PC now and we have a 500GB internal SATA just to put all the scratch and demo work.

I could make do attaching an external drive, of course. That won't get the same performance. Also messes with some of the footprint advantages of the MacMini. Frankly, I feel like there's no good reason to NOT engineer an M2 replaceable slot other than Apple doesn't want customers to have it. They charge more than twice the price of the device to put a 2TB drive in there now.
Yes, the Apple SSD prices are excessive compared to market prices. I just ordered an M1 Mini and the cost of going from 256GB to 512GB is as much as a 1TB NVMe that I bought last year.

Have you considered getting a Thunderbolt/NVMe enclosure for an external M2 drive? You should be able to get close to the internal storage speeds. This one claims up to 2800MB/s: https://www.amazon.com/Thunderbolt-...86527&sprefix=Thunderbolt+NVMe,aps,366&sr=8-3
 
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It also reminds me the only real gripe I have about these for use right now. I would buy one now if Apple had just a simple M2 slot to put drives in there. Video/music, as my wife is doing has a need of expandable space. She's using a PC now and we have a 500GB internal SATA just to put all the scratch and demo work.

I could make do attaching an external drive, of course. That won't get the same performance. Also messes with some of the footprint advantages of the MacMini. Frankly, I feel like there's no good reason to NOT engineer an M2 replaceable slot other than Apple doesn't want customers to have it. They charge more than twice the price of the device to put a 2TB drive in there now.

I have a 2 TB SATA3 SSD on my Windows desktop and it's the home NAS. I have been giving some consideration to adding a 2 TB NVMe to the system for more storage. I access the NAS from my iPhone, iPad and MacBook Pros and so I don't need to copy files around and will get much smaller storage on future devices. Access is limited by network speed but performance is decent for now. I do want to upgrade to a 2.5 GB network or even 10 GB but it would take a while for my devices to catch up to that, if ever.

So in your case, you could just set up your PC as a NAS for your Mac with 256 GB of SSD.

I'm thinking of the Mini with 16/256 or 512. The only thing that would take up significant space is my email archives at 10 GB but that should easily fit. I have other documents but all of the big files are on the NAS.
 
Yes, the Apple SSD prices are excessive compared to market prices. I just ordered an M1 Mini and the cost of going from 256GB to 512GB is as much as a 1TB NVMe that I bought last year.

Have you considered getting a Thunderbolt/NVMe enclosure for an external M2 drive? You should be able to get close to the internal storage speeds. This one claims up to 2800MB/s: https://www.amazon.com/Thunderbolt-Enclosure-Thunderbolt3-NVME-Drive/dp/B07N67P39W/ref=sr_1_3?crid=1JYCQQ0WAE71R&dchild=1&keywords=thunderbolt+nvme+40gbps&qid=1606086527&sprefix=Thunderbolt+NVMe,aps,366&sr=8-3

That enclosure is the same price as a 1TB Samsung M2 SSD, for instance.

We just needed to set up some Native Instruments files today for her music work. The MBPro she's using has a 250GB drive, and the download requires 204 GB free space on the drive which hosts the NI app to download the orchestra vsts.

We do have a USB-3 WD 4TB drive we are able to fool into running Native Instruments from, temporarily, so as to get the whole thing to install before copying back to the /app folder. (It only takes up 64 GB once installed.) This is a headache. And Apple is neither to blame, nor alone in their OEM specs this way, but it would go a long way to acknowledge that the PRO in pro users means they're going to need some i/o flexibility. Because Dell or Lenovo put out pro-level machines that let you pop in different drives with a simple screwdriver.
 
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So in your case, you could just set up your PC as a NAS for your Mac with 256 GB of SSD.
A NAS is a good solution for certain things. We have a computer connected to the TV with media shared throughout the house. I use the house server for copy/pasting large static files such as installation files.

But it's going to cost a lot to get the i/o throughput in the house up to a point where it's as fast as, say, locally-attached USB-3 drive which costs peanuts, relatively.
 
I am seriously considering replacing my 2010 MacPro with an M1 mini. Especially if they can come with a 10G ethernet.
You can get a USB-C -> 2.5G adaptor for $40 on amazon. You can't use both ports for video anyway so why not. If ~270MB/s is enough for ya.
 
Please Apple. 32GB RAM and 10GbE and I'll buy one right now.
More RAM is not going to happen with the M1 - the low power DDR4 they use with it maxes out at 16GB.

There is hope - to me it's fairly obvious they aren't done with the Mini with the silver color and higher end graphite mini still being sold.

Doesn't make waiting any easier though :)
 
Sure...if only the original screenwriter knew that a Parsec is a measure of distance and not time, which in the context of the quote seems unlikely: "..made the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs"

Some StarWars fans have found a different interpretation of this to correctly apply the meaning of the quote as distance, via a shorter route: https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Kessel_Run/Legends

FYI, "parsec"=parallax-second-of-arc, about 3.26 light years
To be fair, it’s unlikely that a long time ago, in a galaxy far away, that they were speaking English.
 
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linus is stupid about this stuff he is a windows guy and things he knows anything about apple while he doesnt know anything at all. see the video where he says the macbook air pro and mac mini use a ipad chip
Linus seems to be willfully ignorant, or I suspect, simply pandering to the prejudices of his Windows-centric followers.
 
Amazon's plan to offer M1-based instances in 2021 ("Apple M1 Chip – EC2 Mac instances with the Apple M1 chip are already in the works, and planned for 2021." https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/ne...-test-macos-ios-ipados-tvos-and-watchos-apps/ ) suggests the Mini will be available with 10 Gb ethernet at that time (unless Apple plans to produce custom devices just for Amazon). I believe the Apple-Intel instances Amazon just began offering use the Intel Mini with 10 Gb ethernet, so they'll probably want the same connection speed for their M1 instances.
 
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