Its kind of a moot point, we could should've, could've ourselves till we're blue in the face. I have no idea why apple did what they did and why they chose the timing that they did.
Kind of beside the point. It's a thought experiment and a discussion topic of "why didn't this happen, it seems silly that this had to happen this way, do you agree or disagree?" kind of an exercise.
Who says we've "all" been thinking that?
"we all" is quicker and easier to type than "those of us following Mac news and interested in both the Mac mini's transition from Intel but also the Mac mini's product line in general".
The 2018 Intel Mini had upgradeable RAM, supported eGPUs, and still has better performance in some x86 applications that haven't had the magical seamless transition via Rosetta2. It also has much wider OS support, as it can dual-boot Windows and can run older versions of MacOS as needed (such as Mojave for legacy 32-bit apps). And it had fewer compatibility issues with external displays.
Plus, they came in Space Gray.
Oh, trust me. I haven't ruled out the notion of buying one from the Apple Certified Refurbished Mac section of their online store. I know they're useful and good machines. But, specifically from Apple's standpoint (where Apple wants to stop selling Intel Macs in favor of Apple Silicon Macs and at least complete the Intel to Apple Silicon Mac transition in a reasonable timeframe), GIVEN that they were going to end up replacing that space gray model with an M2 Pro version that never went as high as the Intel version did (and with the same amounts that were in the M1 Pro version, since both M1 Pro and M2 Pro have the same maximum RAM capacities), they could've been at the "The Mac Pro is the last remaining Intel Mac still being sold" point that we are now at much sooner.
The M1 Pro chip didn’t exist back then, it was launched for the 14” and 16” MBP.
Now the new Mac Mini was launched alongside the 14” and 16” MBP, which is why you have the M2 Pro available now.
It is pretty simple.
You didn't read what I wrote.
The M1 Mac mini came out in November of 2020. At that point in time, the Mac mini lineup had three models, two with an M1 and one with Intel.
The M1 Pro SoC came out with the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros in October of 2021. AT THAT POINT IN TIME, they could've replaced the one Intel model with a model that had the M1 Pro in tow and then the Mac mini would've completed its transition to Apple Silicon from Intel in October of 2021 instead of January of 2023.
Why would such customers continue to use Intel-based Mac minis rather than transitioning to Apple silicon?
There are definitely workloads that will function better on Intel than on Apple Silicon. Some examples can include: x86-64 virtualization, Boot Camp, older development tools that developers may be forced to keep using for some reason or another that don't run well (or at all) in Rosetta 2. I'm not saying they're commonplace or that most users will fit into this mold, but I can't imagine that those people aren't out there.
Stop spreading misinformation. Here are the facts
M1 Mac Mini = 2020 model
14” and 16” MBP = 2021 model.
The M1 Pro didn’t exist when the Mac Mini got refreshed back then.
Again, this is besides the point. Apple could've put the M1 Pro into a higher-end Mac mini intended to replace the Intel Mac mini in 2021 when the M1 Pro was first made public. That's the point.
There was literally no price space for the M1 Pro Mini once the studio launched.
There was and is. Hence why there is an M2 Pro mini and a Mac Studio now being sold side-by-side.
It isn't particularly clear why Apple has no memory bump for the M2 Pro.
It is curious though, no?
If jump into the Apple configuration page for the M2 Max for the laptops you'll see that they M2 Max cannot be configured for 96GB of RAM unless also pick the highest GPU core setting. So must add $200 for SoC max upgrade and only then can add $800 for the 96GB upgrade. So minimally Apple takes in another $1,000 to get to 96GB.
So for 'half' of the laptop M2 Max configurations there is no memory bump there either.
That somewhat looks like Apple purposely doesn't want to sell the maximum number of 96GB configurations.
Logical reasoning there.
So the notion that "Apple was always going to ..." is a huge bit of over reach.
The "Apple was always going to..." bit is more to say that that's what they ended up doing. The Intel Mac mini went up to 64GB. That was one of a handful of limitations that the M1 Mac mini had over it. Clearly, that wasn't a showstopper because the Mac mini line now tops at 32GB of RAM. So, if M1 Pro and M2 Pro both only go up to 32GB of RAM, then M1 Pro wouldn't have been any worse of a replacement for 8th Gen 6-core i5 and i7 in 2021 than M2 Pro is in 2023.
I'm not sure Apple was "always going to kneecap" the M2 MBA with "less NAND package" (backsliding bandwidth) 256GB SSD . The $599 Mini probably has the same issue. There is a decent chance Apple wanted to reset the minimum on SSD capacity to 512GB , but supply chain and price increases pushed them into throwing the bandwidth on the entry model 'under the bus' to keep price stability on the entry price. ( and to move the M2 Mini down. )
I don't think there was the same sort of inevitability behind Apple ditching 128GB chips in favor of 256GB and higher chips (and therefore single-chip SSDs that are slower). I think that happened across the board. I'm not sure if that's what happened on the M2 Mac mini, but I agree with you that it's probably a safe bet that the same thing is happening here, despite the negative press Apple got for it.
Similar thing could be in play here. The M2 Pro could be capable of 48GB but there are not enough higher density RAM dies to go around to make the additional semi-custom RAM packages. The M2's get them and only a sliver of the M2 Max's get them.
That I completely believe.
Apple doesn't need anything 'beefier' in core count than the M1 Ultra for the Mac Pro.
The M1 Ultra has a 20-core CPU. The Mac Pro tops out at 28-cores. I'm pretty sure they'll want to do more than 20 when replacing the Mac Pro with something.
The M1 Ultra has eight x1 PCI-e v4 lanes. That's primarily it if don't so some cheesy hackery with an 'extra' Thunderbolt controller to roll out just one x4 PCI-e v3 bundle internally.
I don't believe PCIe expansion is everything when it comes to what people want out of a proper Mac Pro replacement. Important, yes. But, I think Apple wants something heftier for the Mac Pro.
Introducing a Mini Mx Pro before introducing the Mac Studio would have greatly confused the measurement of just how much inherit demand there was for the Mac Studio.
M1 Pro and M2 Pro have enough inherent limitations that they're not going to cannibalize from M1 Max and M2 Max. Yes, someone needing 32GB of RAM, but not the increased GPU core count would be plenty served by an M1 Pro Mac mini over an M1 Max Mac Studio, sure. But M1 Max is overkill if you don't need the GPU cores. And even still, there are definitely going to be many Mac Studio inclined folks (most of them, I presume) for whom an M2 Pro Mac mini won't suffice for instead.
Apple was taking a pretty big leap in dumping the large screen iMac. How that was going to redistribute itself and how many detached screens Apple would sell when users had a choice would have been untested waters.
Nah, they offered a display of the exact same size that, when paired with a Mac Studio made the total cost about the same as a similarly spec'ed iMac. The only "untested waters" bit was that it wasn't an iMac in the second-to-highest-end Mac spot, but I'd hardly call that untested. They've done that sort of thing before.
And if go back to 2021 in the time period where Apple introduced the 14"/16" models there were very long backorders for a long time. Apple did not know in advance the right number of Pro vs Max dies to make . Having a Mini M1 Pro helps alot if grossly overestimated the number of M1 Pro SoCs needed and need another Mac system to 'sop up' the higher than desired inventory. However, it is a more problematical system if there is a shortage of M1 Pro's and now have two systems competing to consume them.
Honestly, this seems like the real answer as to why it didn't happen right here.
Similar cacade coupling if grossly under estimated number M1 Max's need and now needs substantially more wafers to fill the demand. Likely would have to chop wafer assignments for M1 Pros over to making the larger M1 Max dies.
The Mac Studio was time shifted several months after the 14"/16" launch. Apple jumps that in once have a handle on how many M1 Max dies to make.
If Apple was still trailing on M1 Pro die production then there is no need to add a second 'consumer' to the mix.
By the time it came to do 2nd generation M-series Apple would have had a almost full allocation of Mac products to better gage what the wafer allocation of M2 , M2 Pro , M2 Max , M2 xyz , M2 abc SoC packages they needed to make.
The M2 Pro Mini gets incrementally 'cheaper' if other Mac products absorb all the initial driver , component qualification , etc costs before it rolls out. [ Apple's large re-use of subcomponents across multiple product helps reduce total ecosystem aggregate costs. Leverage higher levels of economies of scale. ]
Yup, I'd definitely buy that logic.
There are smaller shops than those larger players that will want to buy them. The Intel Mini actually is certified for VMWare tier 1 ( 'raw iron' ) hypervisor usage.
Very true. Though, having one of those run ESXi is only practical if you're trying to run macOS guests. It's otherwise the worst kind of computer you could use for an ESXi host given the internal storage is wholly incompatible thanks to the T2.
The newer stuff is not. The MP 2019 never finished working around the complications of its T2 implement and add in card mix. The Apple silicon stuff is 'staring' directly at Apple's non official technical support for anything other than macOS ( folks can hack around on non commercial Linux projects ... but it does have technical support. (and ad hoc features to slightly decrease the undocumented hackery is not technical support. )
I didn't know that there was a difference in the T2 implementation between the 2018 Mac mini and the 2019 Mac Pro. I always figured that it'd be the same T2 across the board. And yeah, I'd assume that an Apple Silicon Mac would never be a proper ESXi host, even for an ARM64-only version of ESXi.
The bigger problem with the Mini 2018 model is that it is a 2018 model. Apple's support policies don't start the legacy/obsolete countdown until Apple stops selling a model. So there is an implicit assumption that every 1-2.5 years that they will kick off that countdown. ( legacy in 5-7 years so +/-2 extender). The farther it gets past the built in 'error bar' the more detached it gets from policy's assumptions. If get extremely far off the mark then get things where the MP 2013 gets chopped on macOS upgrades far outside the usual timeline.
I think it's more that Intel discontinues the processors at some point so Apple is only able to use what it has purchased from Intel (which, in theory, is enough to keep selling new and refurb models as well as to have a healthy supply of replacement logic boards if ever needed).
Pretty good chance AWS, Azure, MacStadium ,etc are going to slow their rate of Intel Mac Mini instances, but also a pretty good chance not going to toss vast majority of them into 'e-waste' either for a long time.
I'd imagine that the amount of people who NEED to use an Intel Mac for a specific workload will eventually fade. They currently aren't supported for Windows 11 outside of virtualization and they'll only be supported for macOS releases for a finite amount of time. I don't doubt that there will be folks having to stay on them for a while, but many of them will probably be able to move off of them and onto an Apple Silicon Mac of some sort. And all that will translate to what customers need from AWS/MacStadium/Azure/WhomeverElseOffersMacsRemotely.
