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Apple Silicon M1 Mac Mini vs. Intel Mac Mini Buyer's Guide
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There are countless number of industry-specific programs that have not been tested. Even something as basic as Matlab needs a upcoming patch to support Rosetta 2.
There is theory, and then there is reality. Even apps ported over for Apple Silicon need time to be tested.
For system administrators of large organizations, there is no way they're touching M1 for at least another year.
Five years from now, we will look back on these first gen M1 machines and compare them to the first gen intel machines - faster than the previous generation, but still crippled. Remember the Core Solo mini? Remember 32bit only processors in the first gen intel machines? I feel these will end up looked back upon just as fondly with its limited ports and 16gb max RAM.
The intel machines didn't start getting 'good' until the 2nd or 3rd generation. I feel these will be the same.
The intel machines didn't start getting 'good' until the 2nd or 3rd generation. I feel these will be the same.
still cant beat the tried and TRUE Mac Pro 5.1 12 core 3.46GHZ. I own one and will never sell until I build an AMD Threadripper 36 core
CP Mac Pro 5,1 - 3.46GHz 12 Core, 96GB RAM vsCP Mac Pro 5,1 - 3.46GHz 12 Core, 96GB RAM
| CP Mac Pro 5,1 - 3.46GHz 12 Core, 96GB RAM | CP Mac Pro 5,1 - 3.46GHz 12 Core, 96GB RAM | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Geekbench 3 Score | 2556 | 2556 | |
| Geekbench 3 Multicore Score | 28449 | 28449 |
Where the i9 promptly throttles due to inadequate cooling and ends up being no better than i7.
Here are some i9s for you
It also makes me wonder if whatever SoC shows up in the 16” MBP will show up in a higher-end Mini.
The cooling on the Mini seems utterly overkill for the M1 based on the benchmarks.
You can't really compare Geekbench 3 scores vs the current 5 scores. They don't compare.
Sorry but you're comparing Geekbench 3 scores with Geekbench 5. The M1 destroys that old dual Xeon: https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/4665579
The article states you cannot connect 3 monitors to the MM M1 but only 1 up to 6k. I thought or read somewhere that you can connect 2 4k monitors, one through HDMI and one through a TB port. So that's why I ordered, with a 2K dual screen setup. Is the article incorrect?
Hope this just Apple experiment, I wish Apple upgraded it with M2 or whatever it called with beefier memory config and graphics. (without too much price gap)
Mini is desktop after all, no need use battery efficient chip, high powered one should be fine, since there's fan to keep thermal business good.
Previous minis 2028/2020 are more expandable and more 'pro' compared with current M1 version. Many of 5,1 folks choosing 2018 mini because of expansion and cheapest headless machine. Taste aside, space gray is also looks more cool.
Mini is desktop after all, no need use battery efficient chip, high powered one should be fine, since there's fan to keep thermal business good.
Previous minis 2028/2020 are more expandable and more 'pro' compared with current M1 version. Many of 5,1 folks choosing 2018 mini because of expansion and cheapest headless machine. Taste aside, space gray is also looks more cool.
My MacBook Pro 16 with a i9 has never throttled, with adequate air flow movement, under and around the laptop. It has never got over 74.00 Celsius for Both the Intel i9 and the AMD 5500M and I have 8gb ram for the GPU.
It can support two displays. One via Thunderbolt which can be up to 6K, and one via HDMI which can be up to 4K.
The only thing refraining me from selling my 2014 mini and getting this one is losing the Windows 10 Bootcamp partition. Is the only thing.
My 2010 Mini is limited to 16GB. Who'd have thought 10 years later that a brand new Mini would still have such a small memory limit?
@dogslobber, Apple has only launched their low end mobile Mac CPU and stuck it in the Mini so they have a machine for iOS developers to use.
I'm sure once they have their high end mobile and/or desktop CPU they will also drop it in the Mini so you have a higher performance/larger memory option.
I'm sure once they have their high end mobile and/or desktop CPU they will also drop it in the Mini so you have a higher performance/larger memory option.
Personally, I think the Mini should be the size of an Apple TV by now.
But then I was also promised jetpacks.
The color thing... it's funny, but when I got my MacBook Pro in 2016 I was like, "Yes, Space Gray!" I ended up going back to silver. All my old stuff was silver, lol. And I just liked it better. I was the only guy on the dev team using silver so that was nice I guess.
I'm happy silver is back.
Is it? I mean, you have got to be hooking up some really high end stuff to need more than two. Thunderbolt monitors can be daisy chained (too bad there are so few options) but Thunderbolt itself can be split to multiple DisplayPorts. If you need more than three monitors (the HDMI port is there) and have enough disk I/O to saturate the other port I feel like this is the wrong machine in the first place, lol.
Worst case here is you have to get a TB to multi DisplayPort adapter and deal with one monitor on HDMI. You can daisy chain the disk stuff unless your I/O needs are basically nuts.
The cross section between the population who wants those features and the population who wants an M1 Mini are pretty insignificant. So while there is a clear theoretical difference, how many people are actually in need of four Thunderbolt ports on a Mini?
(Interesting. I just looked at the MacBook Pro M1 and it's only got two Thunderbolt 3 ports. Looks like that's a limitation of the M1 since the controller is on the CPU—or I guess on the SoC itself. That's more of a bummer on the laptop. I really, really like having ports on both sides. I'm glad Apple didn't simply not bother adding ports at least.)
Part of me is considering replacing a laptop entirely with a Mini. There's just so much less that can go wrong with the machine and in years of using a laptop, 95% of the time it's at a desk at the office or at my house. Since COVID, it's always at my house!
I'm seriously considering the combination of an iPad Pro + Mini instead of a laptop.
The only thing stopping me at this point (besides no need to upgrade or replace a year old computer) is man... is TouchID ever handy for 1Password. I can have a fiendishly long password and not have to use it constantly. If I could authenticate via the iPad (FaceID would be even better) that would rule—or even use the Watch to authenticate. My understanding is that those APIs are private to Apple, at least for the time being.
The death of the eGPU is interesting. I have one. It's honestly more expensive and more work than it's worth on a laptop. The BlackMagic is superior from a connectivity standpoint (you can chain Thunderbolt through it) but it was always an issue because you can't just replace the GPU. I really wanted it to work better than it ever did. (Also, Windows support never worked right without a ton of work.)
I'm happy silver is back.
Is it? I mean, you have got to be hooking up some really high end stuff to need more than two. Thunderbolt monitors can be daisy chained (too bad there are so few options) but Thunderbolt itself can be split to multiple DisplayPorts. If you need more than three monitors (the HDMI port is there) and have enough disk I/O to saturate the other port I feel like this is the wrong machine in the first place, lol.
Worst case here is you have to get a TB to multi DisplayPort adapter and deal with one monitor on HDMI. You can daisy chain the disk stuff unless your I/O needs are basically nuts.
The cross section between the population who wants those features and the population who wants an M1 Mini are pretty insignificant. So while there is a clear theoretical difference, how many people are actually in need of four Thunderbolt ports on a Mini?
(Interesting. I just looked at the MacBook Pro M1 and it's only got two Thunderbolt 3 ports. Looks like that's a limitation of the M1 since the controller is on the CPU—or I guess on the SoC itself. That's more of a bummer on the laptop. I really, really like having ports on both sides. I'm glad Apple didn't simply not bother adding ports at least.)
Part of me is considering replacing a laptop entirely with a Mini. There's just so much less that can go wrong with the machine and in years of using a laptop, 95% of the time it's at a desk at the office or at my house. Since COVID, it's always at my house!
I'm seriously considering the combination of an iPad Pro + Mini instead of a laptop.
The only thing stopping me at this point (besides no need to upgrade or replace a year old computer) is man... is TouchID ever handy for 1Password. I can have a fiendishly long password and not have to use it constantly. If I could authenticate via the iPad (FaceID would be even better) that would rule—or even use the Watch to authenticate. My understanding is that those APIs are private to Apple, at least for the time being.
The death of the eGPU is interesting. I have one. It's honestly more expensive and more work than it's worth on a laptop. The BlackMagic is superior from a connectivity standpoint (you can chain Thunderbolt through it) but it was always an issue because you can't just replace the GPU. I really wanted it to work better than it ever did. (Also, Windows support never worked right without a ton of work.)
I'm sure everyone has by now seen the empty space inside the new mac mini. Whilst this space is wasted and agree with the criticism on the whole - this is not very apple way of doing things - the engineer inside of me actually likes this approach from apple. It's a huge change for them - whack our amazing chip inside of a cheap mac mini case and drop the price by £100. I'd like to see more of this from apple!!!
Do they really need to care about looks and stuff now that they can literally sell purely on performance alone? Assuming MacOS suits the buyers needs
Do they really need to care about looks and stuff now that they can literally sell purely on performance alone? Assuming MacOS suits the buyers needs
I agree. And the intel mini has user-swappable memory, one could buy an entry-level mini and upgrade the memory with 3rd party modules... without voiding the warranty.
There are more and more ARM-based software components out there. An ARM mini seemed an interesting way to get poke into that space, but running containers locally needs memory...
I'm beginning to be an ARM convert. The new AWS ARM offerings (graviton) are very interesting; between that and these development machines from Apple we may have a huge move.