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Apple Unveils New Mac Mini Powered By M1 Chip, Pricing Now Starts at $699
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1. because getting new industrial designs done is probably a colossaly slow process to complete. The Industrial design group at Apple is a chokepoint in term of getting multiple things done concurrently.
2. Apple is Scrooge McDuck cheap. Still selling the Intel version. Same case with different logic boards saves money. Probably components on the Intel and M1 logic boards that are the same so bulk buy discounts there too.
In some sense, actually happens every year . Same model come with different engines ( V4 , V4 turbo , V6 in same car model year ) . I get trying to make some difference but chassis and basic infrastructure can spans years also.
On the Mini they aren't really "buying" much with a change. Frankly there are a large number of users who deploy Mini's in racks that do not want Apple to change the form factor at all. They just need new Mini's to do Continuous Integration and Cloud OS instance hosting services. They have spent lots of money on custom racks specifically for the Mini and don't want a change.
Ha ha ha. Show me how arm will miraculously do matrix algebra with matrices that don't fit in RAM, will you? Not everyone just browses the web / processes video / photos on their computers. I have 16 GB of RAM in my mac mini 2012 and MBPro 2011.
Max. 16 GB of RAM in 2020 is just ridiculous. And, by the way, this will mean a very short lifetime of these machines compared to the old models. So much for the proclaimed environment-friendliness.
:-(
great point. lifecycle analysis goes to years in the field. 1/4 the lifetime is same as 4x more footprint.
Its a new CPU/GPU & Chipset running macOS - it will behave like previous Macs running for years - unless Apple changes how they develop macOS to push the hardware much harder than they have been (more like the phones?). With most Mac computers, it's typically about 5 years before the changes in the OS start to make older hardware feel slow (or be no longer supported)
it offers limited expandability with only 2 TB3 (USB4) ports and one HDMI port and no RAM expandability… OWC will not be happy about this!
It's $100 cheaper, and you're disappointed? What were you hoping for?
Order placed. Would have absolutely appreciated the option for 10Gbps Ethernet, as I just upgraded my home office with 10Gbps switches back to the network/sever rack in a different part of my home.
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Yeah, I just posted that these M1 machines seem to be an "entry level" tier for ultra-portable, smallest Pro MBP, and mid-range Mini, the next gen, "M2" will increase performance and capacities across the board, but in a different product, so the MBP with 32-64GB RAM capacity (and a 12+4 or 16+4 core design, 12-16 core GPU) wll be the MBP 16".
... and I suspect, the more capable Mini will get new branding, I'm 100% with you, it'll be a Mini Pro
Next year, I'll be on deck for a "Mini-like" machine with 4 TB3 ports, 12-16 core CPU/GPU, and 32 or 64GB RAM options
By then, I'll also have my development situation sorted out.Even though they call the ports "Thunderbolt / USB 4", it's just Thunderbolt 3 and USB 3.1 Gen 2:
Two Thunderbolt / USB 4 ports with support for:
DisplayPort
Thunderbolt 3 (up to 40Gb/s)
USB 3.1 Gen 2 (up to 10Gb/s)
Thunderbolt 2, HDMI, DVI, and VGA supported using adapters (sold separately)
Two Thunderbolt / USB 4 ports with support for:
DisplayPort
Thunderbolt 3 (up to 40Gb/s)
USB 3.1 Gen 2 (up to 10Gb/s)
Thunderbolt 2, HDMI, DVI, and VGA supported using adapters (sold separately)
Because an iPad runs iOS.
There's no way AS is going to magically fit as much app data (at the C or Swift layer) on that 16GB of RAM as on the 64. Must be that this is the low-end one.
How do you know that? Do you have one already? Do you think someone that does video editing or photoshop would be happy with just 16gb of ram? There are plenty of cell phones that run arm and are already shipping with 12gb of RAM.
They're worlds apart. I wouldn't want a Mac Mini for full-time professional use of heat-intensve workloads.
I agree. The only reason I could think that Apple updates their machines like this is because;
Consumers who want the latest tech will buy a machine for the spec. bump regardless of design. Once the design is refreshed, a percentage of the customers who bought the latest tech will want the latest look as well. This way Apple can tempt people to upgrade and potentially sell more computers.
It’s a working theory.
Intel UHD Graphics 630 in Mac Mini 2018: 3.150 GPixel/s, 25.20 GTexel/s, FP32 403.2 GFLOPS
M1 Mac Mini 2020: 41 GPixel/s, 82 GTexel/s, FP32 2.6 TFLOPS
A12Z FP32 1.1 TFLOPS
Radeon Pro 560X 2.056 TFLOPS
Radeon Pro 5300M 3.2 TFLOPS
Radeon Pro 5300 4.2 TFLOPS
Radeon Pro 580X 5.530 TFLOPS
M1 Mac Mini 2020: 41 GPixel/s, 82 GTexel/s, FP32 2.6 TFLOPS
A12Z FP32 1.1 TFLOPS
Radeon Pro 560X 2.056 TFLOPS
Radeon Pro 5300M 3.2 TFLOPS
Radeon Pro 5300 4.2 TFLOPS
Radeon Pro 580X 5.530 TFLOPS
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maybe that lack of RAM expandability and pulling away two TB ports and no 10 GB Ethernet is about protecting the Pro lineup until they get the nest iteration of Apple Silicon. Will they be producing multiple variants of M1 or M² the way intel has i3, i5, i7 i9 and each at different speeds? Or just can they run more than one M1 on a mother board to scale up performance?
Does anyone know what game is shown on the Mac mini screen?
Apple today introduced a new Mac mini, its second Mac powered by the company's custom M1 Apple Silicon chip with integrated graphics processor.
Thanks to the introduction of the M1 chip, the Mac mini's 8-core CPU provides faster performance than the previous generation. Specifically, Apple says that the M1-powered Mac mini is able to compile code in Xcode up to three times faster, play a graphics-intensive game with up to four times higher frame rates, and render a complex timeline in Final Cut Pro up to six times faster.
The new Mac mini also features an advanced thermal design to sustain performance, allowing it to stay cool and quiet. It supports up to two displays and Wi-Fi 6 for faster wireless performance. There's also the Secure Enclave in M1 for what Apple describes as best-in-class security.
Apple says the 5-nanometer M1 chip supports Thunderbolt and USB 4 support, and boasts the world's fastest integrated graphics with a 16-core Neural Engine that can process 11 trillion operations per second.
The new Mac mini continues Apple's transition away from Intel processors in Macs. Back in June, Apple revealed its plans to begin using its own custom Apple Silicon processors in Macs, promising industry-leading performance per watt. At the time, Apple said that the transition would take about two years to be completed.
The Mac mini with M1 is available to order today on Apple.com, and then it will begin to arrive to customers next week. The Mac min is available at $699 for 256GB storage and at $899 for 512GB storage.
Article Link: Apple Unveils New Mac Mini Powered By M1 Apple Silicon
Even a fully custom-built PC is disposable after a few years unless you want to keep putting old upgrades into it. You can save the PSU and case I guess. Meanwhile Apple computers are much simpler in terms of hardware and manufacturing since they don't care about modularity. And more reliable too, even if one bad piece can kill it. So I'm not sure which is worse for the environment, but it seems like a wash.