New Mac Mini and 14-Inch and 16-Inch MacBook Pros Available for Pre-Order Starting Today

[Vident]

Completely disagree.
Sorry but nothing you've said sounds close to reality to me.
First off, the RAM cliff hasn't been an issue for consumer PCs since 2010, not sure what decades you're talking about. You can use even 4GB on a PC for basic tasks such as the ones described, but surely won't be great for multitasking. 8GB has been a standard for years now, if the tasks stay the same, you don't need more.
There used to be a myth of RAM making your computer faster but... it had to be the bottleneck and not it very rarely is nowadays.

Specifically about the M1... have you tried multitasking with it? The way it uses the RAM was one of the greatest features, it has great cache and also uses the very fast SSD as swap in some clever way. Been stressing it for a long time now and the only time I ever felt like I could use more RAM was with After Effects with... RAM previews. A very specific task that just works better with more RAM. But that's not what was asked here, and frankly not even what the Mac Mini is meant to deal with, it's not a ideal for professionals.

On the other hand, cloud and external storage are never as fast, practical or reliable as internal storage. Some apps, cache folders and libraries only run (or only run decently) from the boot drive. That's something all users can end up needing.

Thank you. I was planning to get the new M2 Mac Mini to replace my folks' old 2011 Mini, which, btw, only has 4GB of RAM and 128GB of SSD, but still runs smoothly for the basic tasks* it is used for. Still, I was wondering whether I should get the 16GB RAM just for the future proofing, but I guess it's not neccessary. One option of course would be try to get the older M1 Mini with 16GB of RAM from a discount, but I doubt it would really make a difference.

*= Basic tasks in my folks' case is just that; web browsing, printing something every now and then, online banking etc.

 

[Menneisyys2]

2013 macbook

Which one? The Retinas were pretty thin. And there was no Unibody any more in 2013.

 

[YursageDomile]

Do we have any indicated when this will go on Preorder at Best Buy?

 

[Leon Ze Professional]

Just woke up to this news.

Essentially nice touches have been added to these Mac Mini's and Macbook Pro 14 and 16 inch just to bring them inline with expectations.

Have not yet checked the prices in my nick of the woods yet. So I hope I am not speaking to soon?

EDIT: Dam $200 price increase.

 

[Shaggymax]

Love maxing-out a configuration / proceeding to checkout and then realize your current setup is pretty rock solid.

 

[Gengar]

Love maxing-out a configuration / proceeding to checkout and then realize your current setup is pretty rock solid.

Yeah, buddy. 😂

The Air does what I need it to do. I’m long past my college days where I would’ve needed a more Pro machine, but couldn’t afford one.

 

[ismi]

Love maxing-out a configuration / proceeding to checkout and then realize your current setup is pretty rock solid.

What's also fun is maxing out the config, gulping at the checkout price, confirming the order and walking away in excitement at what you just bought, knowing that it absolutely kills what you have now.

Happened to me today with the 16" MBP. The only thing I didn't max out was the storage. Overkill, for damn sure, but it's replacing an old Intel MBP from 2017 so yeah, I'm excited.

 

[Mainiac]

Do we have any indicated when this will go on Preorder at Best Buy?

They are up on their site now. No store pickup option yet, just says ships by release day.

 

[EdgelessLemming]

Eligible for $670 CAD trade in for my mint condition 14" M1 Max, 32GB, 1TB. Guess I'm not upgrading.

 

[garylapointe]

Disagree. I would not buy a computer in 2023 with only 8gb of non-upgradeable RAM. It isn't so much what you do with it today that concerns me. What concerns me is what MacOS and a web browser will need in five years. I'm sure 16gb will be enough five years from now. I'm skeptical about 8gb. I'm also sure that at some point in the not too distant future a 8gb computer will chug and but with 16gb that same computer will be fully functional.

I can't believe how much I can run on my 8GB M1 Mini (Excel, Powerpoint [each with several windows], Zoom dual-monitor, multiple windows, VLC, Kindle app, and screen sharing with Zoom) while running 3 displays (4k monitor, a 1080p monitor in portrait mode, and a 12.9" iPad 2732x2048 via SideCar).

But the killer is when I'm web browsing, a dozen tabs, and it's dragging (even with none of those other apps open). Activity Monitor actually redlines often (Google Docs is often the tipping point, even with less tabs). I don't know what's going on sometimes...

 

[Jay_MR]

5nm - seriously? The 3nm chips are in production.
Apple, please add some pro back into Pro!

 

[Beau10]

But their introduction video (10:00+) presents repeated benchmarks and comparisons against the M1 Pro MBP, not just the Intel-based ones, with strikingly large percentage increases.

They should add that to whatever text or charts they have on the website.

Roughly 20% CPU and 30% GPU (like vs like) are pretty decent gains, esp. on top of the better battery life. You rarely saw that much in the old Intel tock cycle even. If you're someone who really pushes your machine it could be worthwhile to upgrade.

That said, we'll probably see somewhat better increases when moving to 3nm.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Now, I shall await (in hope) for Apple to devise (and produce) an exquisite 12" device with such specs........

 

[kryptticAZ]

Eligible for $670 CAD trade in for my mint condition 14" M1 Max, 32GB, 1TB. Guess I'm not upgrading.

Yeah, Apple has crappy trade in offers. Check itsworthmore.com or cashforyourmac.com if you want something better. Keep in mind that when you upgrade, you are not only getting the newest specs, but a brand new warranty as well. Obviously, keeping an older machine that still works perfectly is going to be the best value, but there are arguments to be made for upgrading.

 

[Ener Ji]

Looks like a very nice refresh, WiFi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 specifically are two I was looking for. My only gripe is that they are not offering a 24GB RAM option. I can't really justify 32GB for $400 extra, and I'm worried about 16GB becoming a limitation during the life of the machine.

 

[Fomalhaut]

Macbook pro is so junky and heavy. It’s like the 2013 macbook. Back to future or back to the past? Lol. Would consider buying it when it is as slim as the last intel macbook pro.

The thickness is really not noticeable in use, and it feels like a really solid machine on your lap. The 14" is a great allrounder with a very nice balance between performance/battery life/screen-size/weight

 

[Alan-in-CO]

Great timing! I hope to replace my wife's 2012 MBP... don't laugh, it still runs great! (RAM and SSD upgrade a few years ago helped).

For those of you on the fence about 8G of RAM, this article may be helpful:

Why It's Okay to Buy A Mac With Only 8 GB RAM

Windows PCs might need at least 16 GB of RAM for a good experience in 2023, but that's not true for Macs.

www.howtogeek.com

 

[Fomalhaut]

Dont order any mac mini with M2 pro with 32gb ram...the mac studio with M1 Max is far a better deal

Moreover, getting a base spec Mac Studio (or with minor upgrade such as 1TB SSD) will as a general rule have better resale value than a maxed-out Mini M2 Pro.

My experience with selling heavily upgraded BTO Macs is that I never get back the proportional price differential between my purchase price and used sale price. e.g. the fact you paid US$400 for a 16 to 32GB RAM upgrade may only add $50-100 to the resale price, whereas the "base spec" might keep 40-50% of the original price after 2-3 years, and maybe a bit more.

 

[svish]

Delivery still available for launch day. Good to know that there is no shortage of the new Macs.

 

[TallManNY]

Completely disagree.
Sorry but nothing you've said sounds close to reality to me.
First off, the RAM cliff hasn't been an issue for consumer PCs since 2010, not sure what decades you're talking about. You can use even 4GB on a PC for basic tasks such as the ones described, but surely won't be great for multitasking. 8GB has been a standard for years now, if the tasks stay the same, you don't need more.
There used to be a myth of RAM making your computer faster but... it had to be the bottleneck and not it very rarely is nowadays.

Specifically about the M1... have you tried multitasking with it? The way it uses the RAM was one of the greatest features, it has great cache and also uses the very fast SSD as swap in some clever way. Been stressing it for a long time now and the only time I ever felt like I could use more RAM was with After Effects with... RAM previews. A very specific task that just works better with more RAM. But that's not what was asked here, and frankly not even what the Mac Mini is meant to deal with, it's not a ideal for professionals.

On the other hand, cloud and external storage are never as fast, practical or reliable as internal storage. Some apps, cache folders and libraries only run (or only run decently) from the boot drive. That's something all users can end up needing.

Well I am old, with experience with Macs that goes back to using the original ones. And I have heard that the M1 really handles RAM exceptionally well. I don't have one and don't use them for work. You can see in my signature, I'm still using a 2018 mini (with 32gb of RAM that I upgraded my self). I do have a team that uses PCs though and they complain about their laptops with 16gb of RAM being constrained. And this is for office work. The issue is that the way people use their computers these days is they open tabs in browsers and never close them. So they might have 20 or even more tabs open in Google Chrome, all the Microsoft apps open, Zoom and Microsoft Teams running, and a couple of PDFs as well, and then complain they don't have enough RAM and their laptop is chugging. This is just the way people work these days as far as I can tell.

Anyway, as an old guy, what I would do would be about four or five years into ownership of a Mac, I would upgrade the RAM. And then I would get years more of trouble free use. Among my family and friends, we were often looking at 8 to 10 years of use out of our Macs. In fact there was a 2010 Macbook Pro (year might not be quite correct) that I returned to near full functionality by upgrading its RAM in 2017 or around then. It went from nearly unuseable with 4gb to nearly fully functional with 8 or 16gb (I don't recall the exact amount anymore). But there was definitely a RAM cliff back then.

Yes it is the bottleneck. And the bottleneck usually starts with the OS and then Google Chrome (though I think even Safari will chug if you leave 30 tabs open; personally I never leave that many tabs open). And Microsoft's apps aren't great at RAM management as far as I can tell. If I bought a 8gb, I'd worry about MacOS needing nearly all of it in a couple of years.

Maybe the architecture is so fundamentally different that 8gb MACs sold today will be running the latest MacOS fine in 2030. But I'm skeptical that we won't see issues well before then. And I'm wondering if Apple sees the same value proposition with that $200 upgrade cost to go from 8gb to 16gb. Honestly that is a pretty egregious cost increase on a $599 computer. But it might really make a difference in the not too distant future.

 

[cicalinarrot]

Well I am old, with experience with Macs that goes back to using the original ones. And I have heard that the M1 really handles RAM exceptionally well. I don't have one and don't use them for work. You can see in my signature, I'm still using a 2018 mini (with 32gb of RAM that I upgraded my self). I do have a team that uses PCs though and they complain about their laptops with 16gb of RAM being constrained. And this is for office work. The issue is that the way people use their computers these days is they open tabs in browsers and never close them. So they might have 20 or even more tabs open in Google Chrome, all the Microsoft apps open, Zoom and Microsoft Teams running, and a couple of PDFs as well, and then complain they don't have enough RAM and their laptop is chugging. This is just the way people work these days as far as I can tell.

Anyway, as an old guy, what I would do would be about four or five years into ownership of a Mac, I would upgrade the RAM. And then I would get years more of trouble free use. Among my family and friends, we were often looking at 8 to 10 years of use out of our Macs. In fact there was a 2010 Macbook Pro (year might not be quite correct) that I returned to near full functionality by upgrading its RAM in 2017 or around then. It went from nearly unuseable with 4gb to nearly fully functional with 8 or 16gb (I don't recall the exact amount anymore). But there was definitely a RAM cliff back then.

Yes it is the bottleneck. And the bottleneck usually starts with the OS and then Google Chrome (though I think even Safari will chug if you leave 30 tabs open; personally I never leave that many tabs open). And Microsoft's apps aren't great at RAM management as far as I can tell. If I bought a 8gb, I'd worry about MacOS needing nearly all of it in a couple of years.

Maybe the architecture is so fundamentally different that 8gb MACs sold today will be running the latest MacOS fine in 2030. But I'm skeptical that we won't see issues well before then. And I'm wondering if Apple sees the same value proposition with that $200 upgrade cost to go from 8gb to 16gb. Honestly that is a pretty egregious cost increase on a $599 computer. But it might really make a difference in the not too distant future.

Nice Mac curriculum
Well, I started with my father's G4 Powermac and... that's why I think times has changed for RAM. That "beast", a pricey pro machine, had 64MB of ram and could be upgraded to 2GB. By a few years, 1GB was the minimum to handle the OS, so upgrade was almost mandatory. But OS' were getting massive upgrades with fundamental new features back then. Looking at recent requirements, they grow much more slowly (and I frankly don't notice much difference when using Mac Os 10.4...).
Media consumption went from... nothing to 480p videos and then to 4K videos. We won't have 32K videos in a few years.
Web browsing is different because in general, they've always tried to keep it light (except for a few very dumb people putting massive Flash stuff in their sites, usually car companies). If you make it heavy, you lose customers with older machines. Also phones, with relatively low power, happened and I think that helped old computers to stay functional.

Of course you're right about multitab but... there's always a limit that the user has to know. I had a little laptop with 2GB of ram and it's still kinda usable but I know that more than 8/10 chrome tabs make it crash (and 12 probably set it on fire). And with the M1 Mac Mini, I still haven't found it. I literally never worried about RAM. It surely often uses all of it and goes to swap and... I never notice.

Now, there's a drawback to this which is possible SSD wear out because of swap use and when the M1 first came out, some users reported huge write numbers probably because of this (something like 10/20% of the expected life of the SSD in one year!) but it seems like they solved it and I often check my SSD. The OS surely writes a lot on it, but still about 10% than those nightmare scenarios that some users reported.

The last thing you've said is likely the most relevant to me: we're talking about a 33% price increase on a low-end machine for the upgrade of a single component for the possibility that it becomes useful... it's hard to recommend for me. I would have probably agreed if it was 8GB on an Intel Mac right now. And I would have strongly recommended it if it was something about $100 but $200 (actually €230 in here) is too much.

Well, of course one could play safe and just put more RAM but I don't think 8GB is a formula for planned obsolescence as it may seem.
I can't know with 100% certainty, obviously, until 10 years from now, but I don't see why things should change so radically and what use case for regular users could affect this right now. Guess we'll see...
[PS: sorry for the long post]

 

[FlyingTexan]

Anyone know how the mac mini M series chips handle transcoding? I have a large plex server and curious how their hw transcoding is and how the software transcoding capabilities are.

 

[MacWiz_007]

No thanks. Holding out for the 3nm version.

 

[TallManNY]

Nice Mac curriculum
Well, I started with my father's G4 Powermac and... that's why I think times has changed for RAM. That "beast", a pricey pro machine, had 64MB of ram and could be upgraded to 2GB. By a few years, 1GB was the minimum to handle the OS, so upgrade was almost mandatory. But OS' were getting massive upgrades with fundamental new features back then. Looking at recent requirements, they grow much more slowly (and I frankly don't notice much difference when using Mac Os 10.4...).
Media consumption went from... nothing to 480p videos and then to 4K videos. We won't have 32K videos in a few years.
Web browsing is different because in general, they've always tried to keep it light (except for a few very dumb people putting massive Flash stuff in their sites, usually car companies). If you make it heavy, you lose customers with older machines. Also phones, with relatively low power, happened and I think that helped old computers to stay functional.

Of course you're right about multitab but... there's always a limit that the user has to know. I had a little laptop with 2GB of ram and it's still kinda usable but I know that more than 8/10 chrome tabs make it crash (and 12 probably set it on fire). And with the M1 Mac Mini, I still haven't found it. I literally never worried about RAM. It surely often uses all of it and goes to swap and... I never notice.

Now, there's a drawback to this which is possible SSD wear out because of swap use and when the M1 first came out, some users reported huge write numbers probably because of this (something like 10/20% of the expected life of the SSD in one year!) but it seems like they solved it and I often check my SSD. The OS surely writes a lot on it, but still about 10% than those nightmare scenarios that some users reported.

The last thing you've said is likely the most relevant to me: we're talking about a 33% price increase on a low-end machine for the upgrade of a single component for the possibility that it becomes useful... it's hard to recommend for me. I would have probably agreed if it was 8GB on an Intel Mac right now. And I would have strongly recommended it if it was something about $100 but $200 (actually €230 in here) is too much.

Well, of course one could play safe and just put more RAM but I don't think 8GB is a formula for planned obsolescence as it may seem.
I can't know with 100% certainty, obviously, until 10 years from now, but I don't see why things should change so radically and what use case for regular users could affect this right now. Guess we'll see...
[PS: sorry for the long post]

Thanks for the long post!

Yeah, that 33% price increase also really gives me pause. I still think I come out on the side of get the 16gb of RAM. But it isn't the same 100% position that I have in the case of $200 more on a $1,199 MacBook Air. (Note that the $1,999 M2 Pro MacBook Pros all start at 16gb.) I also just can't get either friends, family members, or my employees to close tabs on browsers. They want all their tabs open and a computer that doesn't allow them to do that is, in their view, somewhat broken. Also, for the most part, they like Chrome (basically universally in the case of PCs used at work; Safari sometimes caries the day among my group on their Macs). I live with PC laptop users telling me that their 16gb laptops don't have enough RAM. And these are folks running Microsoft apps and a browser; zero video/audio editing or coding in their workflow, these are office workers.

However, I resell or hand down to family members my old Macs. So I expect to get some of that upgrade cost back when I resell the computer. I think in the case of the Mac mini, assuming I resell it five years from now, I bet the 16gb version will resell for $100 more than the 8gb. But that bet is heavily influenced by me still being worried that RAM will be an issue five years from now for 8gb machines. And as you say, the silicon chips just use RAM different and faster, so maybe it won't be. Just like folks report that the machines today suffer no RAM constraints in ordinary usage. So I may just be wrong here and the base models will still be totally functional five years from now with clear line of sight toward another five years of life thereby protecting their resale value.

 

[cicalinarrot]

Thanks for the long post!

Yeah, that 33% price increase also really gives me pause. I still think I come out on the side of get the 16gb of RAM. But it isn't the same 100% position that I have in the case of $200 more on a $1,199 MacBook Air. (Note that the $1,999 M2 Pro MacBook Pros all start at 16gb.) I also just can't get either friends, family members, or my employees to close tabs on browsers. They want all their tabs open and a computer that doesn't allow them to do that is, in their view, somewhat broken. Also, for the most part, they like Chrome (basically universally in the case of PCs used at work; Safari sometimes caries the day among my group on their Macs). I live with PC laptop users telling me that their 16gb laptops don't have enough RAM. And these are folks running Microsoft apps and a browser; zero video/audio editing or coding in their workflow, these are office workers.

However, I resell or hand down to family members my old Macs. So I expect to get some of that upgrade cost back when I resell the computer. I think in the case of the Mac mini, assuming I resell it five years from now, I bet the 16gb version will resell for $100 more than the 8gb. But that bet is heavily influenced by me still being worried that RAM will be an issue five years from now for 8gb machines. And as you say, the silicon chips just use RAM different and faster, so maybe it won't be. Just like folks report that the machines today suffer no RAM constraints in ordinary usage. So I may just be wrong here and the base models will still be totally functional five years from now with clear line of sight toward another five years of life thereby protecting their resale value.

Oh, yep, I had not mentioned resell value, that may change things a bit for people who are into that. And even if 8GB will still be enough in a few years as I believe... they'll surely sound very bad to a potential buyer if all devices will have moved to 16GB.