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Convince me that I need to buy M1 Mini....?

Attirex

Attirex

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Apr 8, 2015
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Currently rocking late 2014 model with 8GB RAM that I use for daily light computing tasks (Web, email, light word processing). I have three external USB drives hanging off of it (for OS, music, and photos/video backups) along with microphone and Webcam, and recently bought a powered 7-port USB hub.

Obviously, the 16GB RAM limit isn't an issue for my use case, and it still runs fine (and can run Big Sur). So does the new Mini get me anything beyond future proofing? I'm not sure it does, although I think mine will be categorized as obsolete in another year or so.

Hm.
 
In your situation, I'd wait (I'm in a similar situation, and I am waiting).

If you mean Apple's official "Vintage" and "Obsolete" - not for a while yet. The 2014 mini was discontinued in 2018, so five years after 2018 for Vintage, seven years after 2018 for Obsolete. And those categories only affect the availability of hardware repairs through Apple.

If you mean "practically obsolete" - it can run Big Sur, so you have another year with the most-current OS, and maybe more. Even if it doesn't run 11.1 (though I suspect it will, because people who bought that model in 2018 would be quite upset if they couldn't upgrade macOS after three or four years), Big Sur will likely serve just fine for several years after that. Apple will undoubtedly be releasing security updates for Big Sur for several years after 11.1 comes out.

Apple will be supporting Intel Macs for enough years that "future proofing" shouldn't be a concern. Next year, the year after - the AS Macs will be more mature, but your current Mac will still be fully supported. Plenty of time to wait and see how things develop.

Now, if you're itching to get iOS apps running on your Mac, or love being an early adopter, then go right ahead. The only thing holding me back from buying one of the new Macs is that I'm waiting for a big screen iMac (yeah, I could get a mini and a display, but I love the iMac form factor). I have a late 2013 27" iMac. It won't run Big Sur, but it's performance is still fine for my needs. I'm willing to keep using Catalina for another year while I wait for the AS Mac that I want.
 
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Thanks! Yeah, I have similar thoughts--that upgrading isn't necessary--but needed third-party verification to keep the Big New and Shiny Tech Beast in me at bay. :)

I suppose the M2 (or whatever) Mini will be even faster, have more ports, and by that time this Mini will be ready for pasture.
 
Attirex said:
Currently rocking late 2014 model with 8GB RAM that I use for daily light computing tasks (Web, email, light word processing). I have three external USB drives hanging off of it (for OS, music, and photos/video backups) along with microphone and Webcam, and recently bought a powered 7-port USB hub.

Obviously, the 16GB RAM limit isn't an issue for my use case, and it still runs fine (and can run Big Sur). So does the new Mini get me anything beyond future proofing? I'm not sure it does, although I think mine will be categorized as obsolete in another year or so.

Hm.
Click to expand...
You've properly identified that the M1 mini will suffice as an upgrade to your Haswell (2014) mini. I think the real question here is whether or not you need to upgrade today. If not, then I'd wait. Hopefully by then, they will have figured out how to complete the replacement of the 2018 mini and have better options on the high-end (and maybe even upgrades to the current M1 Mac mini on the low-end).
 
Attirex said:
Thanks! Yeah, I have similar thoughts--that upgrading isn't necessary--but needed third-party verification to keep the Big New and Shiny Tech Beast in me at bay. :)

I suppose the M2 (or whatever) Mini will be even faster, have more ports, and by that time this Mini will be ready for pasture.
Click to expand...

Not much of a beast if still rocking a 2014 mini. Should wait til past the Rosetta stage. Apple said two years. Sounds like a good time frame to wait.
 
I’m not quite in the same position. I was using a 2015 12” Macbook to drive a Dell monitor as a second home workstation. It died and is too expensive to fix. And yes it was slow.

So recently I resorted to using my iPad Pro 2018 12.9” to drive the same Dell monitor. Surprisingly it works pretty well with a Logitech BT keyboard and mouse. In this mode it is not as great as an experience as my 2017 iMac. I wish Apple would do more with iOS and get the screen ratio for a 27” monitor right (eliminate the black bars on the left and right of the working screen). Now to the point.

Yesterday I ordered an M1 MacMini. It is going to take a while to ship. When it arrives I’m going to compare it to my iPad/monitor experience.

If it doesn’t blow me away then I will send it back for a full refund. I normally don’t purchase and return merchandise. But Apple’s M1 performance claims need to be real for me to justify the expense.

I’m also interested to see how it compares to my i5 2017 iMac. But the main test will be M1 MacMini vs. 2018 iPad for my minimal needs as a second home workstation/play—station ;)
 
I have a 2015 Retina MacBook Pro maxxed out with 16GB ram, and a 2TB PCI SSD M.2. It still works well, but I feel it getting sluggish. I just ordered a M1 Mini with 16GB ram and ordered two Dell U2720Q monitors with a Dual VESA arm. I hope it lives up to the hype. I didn't care much about storage since I have a 32TB Synology NAS on the network.

I will note being able to run native iPhone apps is a big plus, I am getting into Swift development.
 
jazz1 said:
I’m not quite in the same position. I was using a 2015 12” Macbook to drive a Dell monitor as a second home workstation. It died and is too expensive to fix. And yes it was slow.

So recently I resorted to using my iPad Pro 2018 12.9” to drive the same Dell monitor. Surprisingly it works pretty well with a Logitech BT keyboard and mouse. In this mode it is not as great as an experience as my 2017 iMac. I wish Apple would do more with iOS and get the screen ratio for a 27” monitor right (eliminate the black bars on the left and right of the working screen). Now to the point.

Yesterday I ordered an M1 MacMini. It is going to take a while to ship. When it arrives I’m going to compare it to my iPad/monitor experience.

If it doesn’t blow me away then I will send it back for a full refund. I normally don’t purchase and return merchandise. But Apple’s M1 performance claims need to be real for me to justify the expense.

I’m also interested to see how it compares to my i5 2017 iMac. But the main test will be M1 MacMini vs. 2018 iPad for my minimal needs as a second home workstation/play—station ;)
Click to expand...
that will be an interesting comparison :) and yes, although I don't own an iPad right now, I do think it's about time Apple add a full "extended desktop" like experience when connecting a monitor.
 
Need and want are two different words with different meanings.

There is nothing wrong with wanting something you don't need. Just be sure if you proceed that you know why you are going ahead with the purchase.

Note that there's a BIG difference between A.) buying something you don't need yet you can afford versus B.) buying something you don't need that you can't really afford.

I bought some fancy imported cheese the other day. It was very tasty and now it's all gone. I'm not regretful that I spent the extra money on premium cheese. By no means could I be considered rich where I live (Silicon Valley) but I'm not exactly poor either. I'm an adult and responsible for my actions whether it be buying groceries or purchasing real estate.

That said, if you still need some justification, I'll take a different tack.

The American economy relies heavily on consumer spending. One of the most patriotic things an American can do is spend money, particularly on consumer discretionary purchases: videogame consoles, bottles of wine, cosmetics, etc.

An American who has some sort of retirement fund or pension is undoubtedly an indirect shareholder of Apple Inc. Thus buy purchasing something from Apple you are helping drive up AAPL shareholder value.

:p
 
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ApfelKuchen said:
If you mean "practically obsolete" - it can run Big Sur, so you have another year with the most-current OS, and maybe more. Even if it doesn't run 11.1 (though I suspect it will, because people who bought that model in 2018 would be quite upset if they couldn't upgrade macOS after three or four years), Big Sur will likely serve just fine for several years after that. Apple will undoubtedly be releasing security updates for Big Sur for several years after 11.1 comes out.
Click to expand...

People could still buy PowerPC equipped Macs in early 2006... and in just 3 short years later Apple introduced Snow Leopard, effectively dropping support for those who unknowingly made the mistake in purchasing those machines. They've done it before without hesitation... they could do it again.
 
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Erehy Dobon said:
Need and want are two different words with different meanings.

There is nothing wrong with wanting something you don't need. Just be sure if you proceed that you know why you are going ahead with the purchase.

Note that there's a BIG difference between A.) buying something you want but don't need yet you can afford versus B.) buying something you want but don't need that you can't really afford.

I bought some fancy imported cheese the other day. It was very tasty and now it's all gone. I'm not regretful that I spent the extra money on premium cheese. By no means could I be considered rich where I live (Silicon Valley) but I'm not exactly poor either.

That said, if you still need some justification, I'll take a different tack.

The American economy relies heavily on consumer spending. One of the most patriotic things an American can do is spend money, particularly on consumer discretionary purchases: videogame consoles, bottles of wine, cosmetics, etc.

An American who has some sort of retirement fund or pension is undoubtedly an indirect shareholder of Apple Inc. Thus buy purchasing something from Apple you are helping drive up AAPL shareholder value.

:p
Click to expand...
lul--all good points! I am a shareholder, and also want but don't yet need but CAN afford the new Mini. However, the money I would spend vs. the benefit I would gain is minimal. Would Safari be snappier? Sure! Would email download quicker? I have no idea. Would Pages load more quickly? Maybe? Would music play faster? Yes! But that pretty much sums up what I use this Mini for (I have a work-issued PC laptop for, well, work, and built a gaming PC for play). So think I'll wait.
 
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I am still rocking the 2012 i7 quad core with 16 GB of RAM on my mac mini. I have to boot from an external SSD (didn't want to risk an internal install issue), and that alone boosted my performance. But now I am struggling with Plex transcoding in 4K (which isn't the biggest issue). However even with minimal apps open and my mac does seem to struggle at times watching 1080p youtube videos. The Activity Monitor starts to max and it starts to buffer hard. The 2012 has served me well over the past 8 years, but I am ready for an upgrade. Was about to pull the trigger on a 2018 model a few days before the M1 announcement. Now I just want to see some benchmark scores to fully justify buying something I cannot upgrade.
 
tpivette89 said:
People could still buy PowerPC equipped Macs in early 2006... and in just 3 short years later Apple introduced Snow Leopard, effectively dropping support for those who unknowingly made the mistake in purchasing those machines. They've done it before without hesitation... they could do it again.
Click to expand...
First, due to today's existence of the Apple Ecosystem and free software upgrades, the trend has been to extend hardware usefulness in favor of ongoing engagement in the ecosystem. I doubt they'll follow the same timeline this time around. Even if they did, that clock would start ticking after the sale of the last Intel Mac, not the sale of the first AS Mac.

Second, I was specifically addressing the OPs situation, which is near-term, not long-term. It's not about what might happen with a 2014 mini in 2023-2024, it's about whether there's an imminent need to jump on the AS bandwagon today.
 
OP wrote:
"Currently rocking late 2014 model with 8GB RAM that I use for daily light computing tasks (Web, email, light word processing). I have three external USB drives hanging off of it (for OS, music, and photos/video backups) along with microphone and Webcam, and recently bought a powered 7-port USB hub."

Are you aware that the m1 Mini has TWO LESS USBc ports on the back than does the 2014?
There are two USB3a ports, and two USBc/tbolt3 ports.
 
Fishrrman said:
OP wrote:
"Currently rocking late 2014 model with 8GB RAM that I use for daily light computing tasks (Web, email, light word processing). I have three external USB drives hanging off of it (for OS, music, and photos/video backups) along with microphone and Webcam, and recently bought a powered 7-port USB hub."

Are you aware that the m1 Mini has TWO LESS USBc ports on the back than does the 2014?
There are two USB3a ports, and two USBc/tbolt3 ports.
Click to expand...
I am. Per my original post, I recently bought a powered 7-port USB hub, so two less ports wouldn't be an issue. But given good advice in this thread, I'm going to wait until my Mini is truly slow and ancient. Seems to be running Bis Sur fine so far.
 
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Quick update: Been running Big Sur since release, and after allowing for the usual re-indexing (or whatever else goes on after big updates), I have to say my experience hasn't been great. The UI is laggy (even with doing something as simple as mousing over apps in the dock), and with only iTunes, Mail, a couple of Safari web pages, and Messages open, my memory usage sits around 70% and can spike to 80% (8GB RAM). So right now, Big Sur is killing my poor Mini lol.

Even worse, Zoom screen sharing causes horrible flicker and ghosting/artifacts on my primary monitor, I'm guessing bc the CPU/VRAM are overtaxed.

I'm hoping a future update smooths things out, but if not, I'll either have to revert to Catalina or seriously consider M1.

Hm.
 
Attirex said:
Quick update: Been running Big Sur since release, and after allowing for the usual re-indexing (or whatever else goes on after big updates), I have to say my experience hasn't been great. The UI is laggy (even with doing something as simple as mousing over apps in the dock), and with only iTunes, Mail, a couple of Safari web pages, and Messages open, my memory usage sits around 70% and can spike to 80% (8GB RAM). So right now, Big Sur is killing my poor Mini lol.

Even worse, Zoom screen sharing causes horrible flicker and ghosting/artifacts on my primary monitor, I'm guessing bc the CPU/VRAM are overtaxed.

I'm hoping a future update smooths things out, but if not, I'll either have to revert to Catalina or seriously consider M1.

Hm.
Click to expand...
In your case, I'd make backups, clone and TM, then try bare bones system after erasing the drive.
 
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I too looked at possibly moving on from my 2014 Mini (similar config and duties as the OP), but came to the conclusion of upgrading to a NVMe SSD made more sense (And getting feedback from here). Will probably look at buying a new Mini after the next Mx iterations or when Apple obsoletes the 2014. Probably stick with Mojave for now too.
 
You can install a NVME in the 2014 Mini? I did not know that (figured everything was welded to the motherboard and the case itself is also welded shut). Would there be any appreciable performance increase?
 
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