Apple Unveils New Mac Mini Powered By M1 Chip, Pricing Now Starts at $699

[saulinpa]

How much of the heat is produced by the internal power supply? And how much weight and space does it take? It no longer needs 150 watts, with no fan and spinning disks or graphics cards. Apple should take the power supply out and put in a MacBook battery so it doesn’t need a UPS and can be used anywhere. And make a battery powered wireless screen.

Won't happen. You are describing a laptop minus the keyboard.

 

[HowardEv]

Won't happen. You are describing a laptop minus the keyboard.

Yes, basically an M1 MacBook with no screen or keyboard, in a better form factor for heat dissipation than a laptop (and not on your lap). Connected wirelessly to a thin and cool laptop or screen and keyboard.

 

[Homy]

Well, I ordered a Mac Mini with 16GB um and 1TB SSD, so we’ll see how it goes in real life in a few weeks! 😬

Thanks for the advice and info, much appreciated!!!

Congrats! Here is BG 3 at Ultra settings 1080p on M1 in this video at 6:45: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/tech-talks/10859/

 

[macsba]

You can buy an external thunderbolt storage, it's blazing fast compared with the old USB storage.

I see your point BUT I want to have a non-cluttered look to my physical desktop surface. I'm getting tired of having the look of spaghetti around.

 

[RobbieTT]

Well, I ordered a Mac Mini with 16GB um and 1TB SSD, so we’ll see how it goes in real life in a few weeks! 😬

Thanks for the advice and info, much appreciated!!!

I just ordered the base model, just to see how well the minimum specs run.

As I run one 24/7 it will be interesting to see the power pulled from the grid too.

Bag Subtotal​ £548.00​

Free Delivery​ £0.00​

VAT​ £109.60​

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Order Total​ £657.60​

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[4sallypat]

It looks pretty neat, but I might wait until later next year or even the year after to replace my 2012 quad-core i7 Mac Mini with one of those new M1 Chip Minis, which I will admit DO look and sound really cool. But I may want to wait a bit and hear reviews about them, and once there's more support and software from them and such. But they DO sound promising to me. If they perform better than the Intel predecessors, I'll definitely want to buy one as my first M1 Mac! (I'm already planning to get a 13" Intel MacBook Pro ($1799 model) to replace my 2009 polycarbonate MacBook as my first Mac that can run Big Sur.)

As for pricing, I'm surprised they lowered the prices for the Mac Minis again. Though if I were to configure one of the new models to my liking, it'd still run me up to $1299 (with 16 GB of RAM and a 1 TB SSD, like my 2012 Mini currently has), but it's not too bad to me though, as it'd definitely be $500 less than the MacBook Pro I plan to buy soon! (Though my new computer job has pretty good pay, so that helps a lot!)

I have the same machine too - love my i7 quad core Mini Server (2.6GHZ) and with 16GB or RAM, runs likes a champ and is my workhorse computer.

Just ordered the M1 base Mini to test alongside.

The only problem I will have is that the OS is not going to be the same to compare - my 2012 Server Mini is Catalina maxed out.

The new M1 is coming with Big Sur...

 

[canonical]

Downside:
* Thunderbolt ports reduced from 4 to 2
* Max RAM reduced from 64GB to 16GB!
* 10GB ethernet option seems GONE! Best offered is now 1 GB ethernet. That is very disappointing.

 

[RobbieTT]

Just ordered the M1 base Mini to test alongside.

The new M1 is coming with Big Sur...

The same issue also gives me pause, but for this there is no agony of choice.

A bit of a leap of faith going with the lower spec with so little performance information to lean on, but for around £650 it does look like a mighty replacement for the 2012 i7. Hopefully it will be pretty adept at video transcoding too as I also use a mini for Plex.

Thankfully I have a spare TB3 to 10GbE adapter to cover the strange choice of 1GbE only on the new mini.

 

[Ansath]

Downside:
* Thunderbolt ports reduced from 4 to 2
* Max RAM reduced from 64GB to 16GB!
* 10GB ethernet option seems GONE! Best offered is now 1 GB ethernet. That is very disappointing.

It's only the low end Mac mini, same with the MacBook Pro. You'll see the mid to higher end options over the next year or so, as they work through the 2 year transition from Intel to Silicon.

 

[4sallypat]

The same issue also gives me pause, but for this there is no agony of choice.

A bit of a leap of faith going with the lower spec with so little performance information to lean on, but for around £650 it does look like a mighty replacement for the 2012 i7. Hopefully it will be pretty adept at video transcoding too as I also use a mini for Plex.

Thankfully I have a spare TB3 to 10GbE adapter to cover the strange choice of 1GbE only on the new mini.

I paid over $1500 USD for the i7 Quad Core 2.6GHz custom built Mac Mini back in 2014 so I am quite pleased that the Minis start at $679 USD and go up.

It will be interesting to test out the M1 Mini - Chrome browser tabs open to see if it suffers from the laggy performance on Intel based devices.

 

[Chris Newbold]

For complex reasons I’m currently using an old iMac late 2009, patched for Catalina. But it’s obviously not great. Since I’m on a tight budget and no new iMacs anyway, I was thinking of getting a Mac mini and using the iMac as a monitor for now.. possible?! HDMI or thunderbolt to old DisplayPort?!

I think I’ll get 8gb (still more ram than other macs I’ve edited video on) and 512 hard drive as I use iCloud a lot and keep video files on an external drive.

Will my skinflint solution to get a new better Mac work?!

 

[MacCheetah3]

Downside:
* Thunderbolt ports reduced from 4 to 2
* Max RAM reduced from 64GB to 16GB!
* 10GB ethernet option seems GONE! Best offered is now 1 GB ethernet. That is very disappointing.

My assumption, the current RAM capacity options are probably to keep die size small -- this is a unified architecture -- whereas the reduced Thunderbolt and Ethernet capabilities are probably an indication that Apple's engineers are still working on upgrading I/O controllers -- the M1 is based on phone and tablet SoC designs, which don't use ultra-highspeed wired connections, including multiple high speed PCI lanes.

Either way, these hardware options are satisfactory for consumer these models are targeting.

Perhaps someone such as @cmaier or other PC-related hardware engineers could chime in theories.

 

[cmaier]

My assumption, the current RAM capacity options are probably to keep die size small -- this is a unified architecture -- whereas the reduced Thunderbolt and Ethernet capabilities are probably an indication that Apple's engineers are still working on upgrading I/O controllers -- the M1 is based on phone and tablet SoC designs, which don't use ultra-highspeed wired connections, including multiple high speed PCI lanes.

Either way, these hardware options are satisfactory for consumer these models are targeting.

Perhaps someone such as @cmaier or other PC-related hardware engineers could chime in theories.

I think they are simply segmenting the market. The higher end laptops/imacs will have a few more cores, and also more I/O channels. That die is naturally going to be bigger, so they wait until the yields are a bit higher and do the smaller chip first. I'm sure the bigger chip already taped-out, and now it's just a matter of time.

 

[Velli]

Congrats! Here is BG 3 at Ultra settings 1080p on M1 in this video at 6:45: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/tech-talks/10859/

I’ll repeat what I said some months ago: Gamers are very willing to change hardware often, even if it’s expensive, if it gives them a little more FPS. Until now, gamers were laughing at Macs. One year from now, gamers will start laughing at those sticking to Windows. They won’t be able to pass this performance up. I know it seems ridiculous right now, but remember that this is i9-beating performance from the i3 replacement. The ACTUAL i7/9 replacement chips will create a new category of computing, with no way for Microsoft to respond.

 

[MiniApple]

I’ll repeat what I said some months ago: Gamers are very willing to change hardware often, even if it’s expensive, if it gives them a little more FPS. Until now, gamers were laughing at Macs. One year from now, gamers will start laughing at those sticking to Windows. They won’t be able to pass this performance up. I know it seems ridiculous right now, but remember that this is i9-beating performance from the i3 replacement. The ACTUAL i7/9 replacement chips will create a new category of computing, with no way for Microsoft to respond.

I’m not talking down the AS hardware improvements, but the software in your argument: games need to be available in the first place and I’m not talking about the candy crushes.

Game development of AAA titles takes years and cost a fortune, usually they release also only on platforms which offer a large enough market for it to be viable.

Thus I don’t think you’ll see such games on AS Mac anytime soon, even if the hardware performance will be there.

 

[petterihiisila]

If someone has a DisplayLink box, I’d be very curious to hear if it works in M1 via Rosetta 2, after these new Macs ship. That is one of the few methods that in theory could improve the multi monitor situation on day 1.

Anyone?

 

[severe]

If someone has a DisplayLink box, I’d be very curious to hear if it works in M1 via Rosetta 2, after these new Macs ship. That is one of the few methods that in theory could improve the multi monitor situation on day 1.

Anyone?

I haven't read anything about this, but it's also occurred to me that I could possibly use my iPad Pro w/Sidecar and then hardwire HDMI from that to my 3rd display? I've been keeping a close look on egpu.io as well.

 

[Insidious]

It was more that I didn't feel comfortable going into the mac mini after 7 years of operation. I didn't want to screw anything up. The internal vs external debate on speed was minimal in my opinion and I just felt more comfortable replacing the spinning disk boot with an external.

Thank you, that makes a lot of sense!

 

[petterihiisila]

If someone has a DisplayLink box, I’d be very curious to hear if it works in M1 via Rosetta 2, after these new Macs ship. That is one of the few methods that in theory could improve the multi monitor situation on day 1.

I wrote to DisplayLink.com and asked if there's any hope for DisplayLink supporting M1 Macs. Turns out there is. If true, this is a potential workaround to attach multiple monitors to the new Macs. It's not going to be "eGPU fast", but the beefy processor should provide headroom for this solution to work.

Quote from support: "... our engineers are currently testing it and everything works fine with our DisplayLink Manager 1.1 so we believe that some minor bugs may appear but the overall experience should be all right."

 

[iJustines]

It seems plausible that a new 27’ consumer-grade display from Apple for Mac Mini!

 

[milescortez]

Repeat after me: Apple is comparing to i3. Not i7. The fact that people will scramble to find metrics where their i7 beats M1 (and they will), just speaks to the leap Apple is taking here - everyone is comparing the bottom end Apple Silicon to the top end Intel. I can’t wait for the PC folks to start gloating about their 5000 dollar DIY gaming rig beating a fanless 1000 dollar laptop to submission. I’ll be smiling in the corner, with the knowledge that Apple isn’t even trying yet.

What I see is a company desperately trying to preserve margins by a) providing less for the same price or more across product lines (removing ports, unbundling headsets, manufacturing their own chip etc.) and b) trying to migrate to higher margin product lines like airpods and services (TV, icloud, Music, Apple One). As a company, Apple hasn't grown organically in 5 years, in fact for years '16, '17, '18,'19 & '20 they generated LESS cash flow than they did in 2015. Of course the stock price is up because of share buybacks but the core business is flat to down. Growth is flat to negative. The M1 is an attempt to improve the margin on their macbook line because they need to continue to provide products to maintain and establish their ecosystem. I was a former fanboy. I've owned maybe 15-18 macs back to '08 and probably 3 dozen iphones across my family (256 mini 12 arriving today) and a dozen iPads. I can tell you with certainty that the quality of the product, both hardware and software, has been in steady decline since the Steve Jobs era. The business model is to create an ecosystem with extremely high switching costs (make it hard to switch to Android & PC) and then milk the consumer who can't leave. Don't get me wrong if I was CEO I'd do the exact same thing. It's pretty brilliant really but please understand the landscape.

 

[MacCheetah3]

It seems plausible that a new 27’ consumer-grade display from Apple for Mac Mini!

View attachment 1663582

It's interesting you bring that up because recently, while looking for a secondary monitor, I was reminded, and strongly considered, the Apple Thunderbolt Display. It's QHD resolution plus has integrated 2.1 audio, FaceTime HD camera, microphone, and USB hub. And you can now buy one for ~$250-400. Actually, not that outdated by today's standards, except for the hub being USB 2.0 -- and it was originally released nearly a decade ago. I passed on it, however, may indeed reconsider when I replace my Mac mini next spring.

 

[widEyed]

This is true for any Apple (nd probably non-Apple...) product. When the first edition is out, we focus on all the limitations. After a few iterations, and the product line expanding, we see the full potential. Noone should expect the first product to to replace every Mac in the lineup, and this is why there are still Mac Minis with i5 and i7 in the store, but not i3’s. This was the replacement for all the i3’s, not for i5 and i7. Those will come later. Show me ONE person that specced an i3 with 64 GB of RAM.

the point is existing intel Mac minis have four TB3 ports (intel iMac doesn't, MBP does, iMac Pro does). and have done since 2018. It's really important not to daisy chain certain devices on TB or even have on the same TB bus (I believe there are two buses for four ports on the intel Mac mini 2018/20). So it appears that Apple have chosen to hobble the TB side of things for the M1 mini, perhaps to stop the M1 mini taking sales from iMac, MBP before they get a AS makeover.

 

[widEyed]

What I see is a company desperately trying to preserve margins by a) providing less for the same price or more across product lines (removing ports, unbundling headsets, manufacturing their own chip etc.) and b) trying to migrate to higher margin product lines like airpods and services (TV, icloud, Music, Apple One). As a company, Apple hasn't grown organically in 5 years, in fact for years '16, '17, '18,'19 & '20 they generated LESS cash flow than they did in 2015. Of course the stock price is up because of share buybacks but the core business is flat to down. Growth is flat to negative. The M1 is an attempt to improve the margin on their macbook line because they need to continue to provide products to maintain and establish their ecosystem. I was a former fanboy. I've owned maybe 15-18 macs back to '08 and probably 3 dozen iphones across my family (256 mini 12 arriving today) and a dozen iPads. I can tell you with certainty that the quality of the product, both hardware and software, has been in steady decline since the Steve Jobs era. The business model is to create an ecosystem with extremely high switching costs (make it hard to switch to Android & PC) and then milk the consumer who can't leave. Don't get me wrong if I was CEO I'd do the exact same thing. It's pretty brilliant really but please understand the landscape.

mostly agree, though Apple Silicon does offer more than walled garden advantages. the build quality has certainly collapsed from when I started using Apple ][ all those years ago. my MBP 2015 has had two screen/lid replacements under factory warranty and the ports are all playing up with intermittency issues which is as funny as a funeral. Apples has moved into that Luxe attitude that people like Woz and the guy who SJ's stole the Mac project from stopped it from becoming. Sales now run by former Burberry CEO and watch bands by Hermes.

It sure has changed from the company I loved so much, but then so has the world. There's gonna be a day fo (climate) reckoning sooner than many think though, and the consumerism era will be a distant memory. Speaking of which, I think that's why Apple removed ear buds and chargers, I think it's a legitimate desire on the VC of Sustainability's part to reduce landfill waste. If they made Macs that didn't hardware fail so quickly that would also achieve a lot less landfill.

 

[widEyed]

It's only the low end Mac mini, same with the MacBook Pro. You'll see the mid to higher end options over the next year or so, as they work through the 2 year transition from Intel to Silicon.

except even the low end intel ma mini has 4 TB3 ports. its a big deal to some of us, not just saying it, we need it. also eGPUs precluded. more sad about that I must say.