New MacBook Pro and Mac Mini With M2 Pro Chips Likely to Launch in November

[Juicy Box]

I have to restart every other day

Yikes, that would really suck. I only restart my MM for updates, I think the last time I restarted was a month or two ago.

I was pretty sure I could find the System Uptime somewhere, the last time I restarted was with an OS update, and that was over 25 days ago:

BTW, I am not saying your experience isn't real, as I know there are a lot of factors at play that can influence how a Mac, or any Apple device performs, and one's experience can be totally different from another's with the same exact device.

 

[theluggage]

I hope the M2 version is a significant update that adds more performance, RAM & SSD options that aren't overpriced like usual. 1TB SSD is too small in today's world. I added my own external to compensate, but it really isn't the best solution, imo.

If you want to know what the capabilities of a M2 Mini would be, just look at the specs and benchmarks of the M2 MacBook Air and 13” M2 MacBook Pro. You’ll get somewhat improved CPU and GPU performance and a 24GB RAM option, but nothing night and day.

I‘d be sceptical about the M2 Pro Mini rumour since that would decimate sales of the M1 Max Studio - but then Apple’s line ups don’t always make sense.

However impressive the base M1 is, it’s still Apple’s “entry level” - unfortunately, Apple really dragged their feet over introducing the Pro and Max and I think some people got carried away by the superficially high benchmark scores and tried to use the M1 for overly heavy tasks.

Storage wise - personally I think 1TB is enough for the built-in system disc on a desktop and that it makes more sense to use external storage for anything beyond that. (It’s a bit different on a laptop where external drives hinder mobility). There are horses for courses with storage (speed vs. capacity vs. price vs. redundancy) and external lets you choose.

If I were you I’d investigate what’s going wrong with your M1 Mini - it doesn’t sound right. However, a modern web browser (or, rather, modern web pages that can’t sell you a bag of sugar without downloading a video clip and 10 animated adverts) will chomp its way through whatever RAM and resources you have if you leave tabs open.

 

[chucker23n1]

I was pretty sure I could find the System Uptime somewhere, the last time I restarted was with an OS update, and that was over 25 days ago:

View attachment 2100582

BTW, I am not saying your experience isn't real, as I know there are a lot of factors at play that can influence how a Mac, or any Apple device performs, and one's experience can be totally different from another's with the same exact device.

Same here; currently up 38 days and 3 hours (to be fair, I haven't installed 12.6 yet, and yes, I should).

Something seems wrong with their setup. I'm not trying to blame them; it's on Apple to improve the quality of macOS. But I don't think their experience is representative.

If you want to know what the capabilities of a M2 Mini would be, just look at the specs and benchmarks of the M2 MacBook Air and 13” M2 MacBook Pro. You’ll get somewhat improved CPU and GPU performance and a 24GB RAM option, but nothing night and day.

I‘d be sceptical about the M2 Pro Mini rumour since that would decimate sales of the M1 Max Studio - but then Apple’s line ups don’t always make sense.

Maybe.

A 24 GiB RAM upgrade would probably be $400. So that's $1099. You probably want 512 GiB storage, too, so now we're at $1299. Since there isn't currently a product that is available in both M1 and M1 Pro variants, we don't know what a Pro BTO option would cost, but I imagine it'd be at least $200. So now we're at $1499.

That's only a $500 gap. It buys you: an M1 Max instead of M1 Pro (that alone is $500 on the MBP), 32 GiB RAM instead of 24 (that's another $200), 10 GigE.

There are probably Mac Studio buyers who don't really need the GPU capabilities of the M1 Max, and would happily get the Pro for a few hundred less instead. But beyond that?

 

[EugW]

Same here; currently up 38 days and 3 hours (to be fair, I haven't installed 12.6 yet, and yes, I should).

Something seems wrong with their setup. I'm not trying to blame them; it's on Apple to improve the quality of macOS. But I don't think their experience is representative.



Maybe.

A 24 GiB RAM upgrade would probably be $400. So that's $1099. You probably want 512 GiB storage, too, so now we're at $1299. Since there isn't currently a product that is available in both M1 and M1 Pro variants, we don't know what a Pro BTO option would cost, but I imagine it'd be at least $200. So now we're at $1499.

That's only a $500 gap. It buys you: an M1 Max instead of M1 Pro (that alone is $500 on the MBP), 32 GiB RAM instead of 24 (that's another $200), 10 GigE.

There are probably Mac Studio buyers who don't really need the GPU capabilities of the M1 Max, and would happily get the Pro for a few hundred less instead. But beyond that?

A $500 gap is HUGE when you’re in these price tiers, and not everyone needs 32 GB RAM or even 24 GB RAM of course.

$1999 vs $1499 (M2 Pro/512/24) is a 33% price increase.
$1999 vs $1299 (M2 Pro/512/16) is a 54% price increase.

Given that scenario but no M2 Pro option, I suspect a lot of those who don’t need the extra features of Mac Studio would rather downgrade to M2 instead. To go to the Mac Studio would just be ridiculous:

$1999 vs $1299 (M2/512/24) is a 54% price increase.
$1999 vs $1099 (M2/512/16) is an 82% price increase.

 

[chucker23n1]

A $500 gap is HUGE when you’re in these price tiers, and not everyone needs 32 GB RAM or even 24 GB RAM of course.

Yes, but the amount of people who need an M1 Pro but then also pick 16 GiB RAM is… slim, I imagine.

(At this point, you probably shouldn't get a Mac with 8 if you can avoid it. Wouldn't be shocked if the M3 Air doesn't have that option any more.)

Apple is (for whatever reason) the company that has a $329 iPad, a $449 iPad, a $599 Air, and a $799 Pro. They can do a $699 M1 mini, a $899 M2 mini (see below), a $1499 M2 Pro mini, and the $1999 M2 Max Studio.

They haven't been that worried about one product of theirs cannibalizing another, and they seem to like filling entire gradients of product lines.

$1999 vs $1499 (M2 Pro/512/24) is a 33% price increase.
$1999 vs $1299 (M2 Pro/512/16) is a 54% price increase.

I'll add that I didn't factor in that the M2 could get more expensive, if we go by what they did with the Air, e.g. if it gets a new design or other new features instead of merely a spec bump.

 

[EugW]

Yes, but the amount of people who need an M1 Pro but then also pick 16 GiB RAM is… slim, I imagine.

I'd be absolutely shocked if the M1 Pro with 16 GB is NOT the best selling 14" MacBook Pro.

At this point, you probably shouldn't get a Mac with 8 if you can avoid it. Wouldn't be shocked if the M3 Air doesn't have that option any more.

The 8 GB MacBook Air is probably the best selling MacBook Air too. And you know what? It runs macOS just fine, for light to moderate business app type usage and student/teacher type usage too.

We currently have 5 Monterey Macs in the house:

24 GB iMac 2017 (mine)
16 GB MacBook 2017 (mine)
8 GB Mac mini 2014 (mine)
8 GB 13" MacBook Pro 2015 (daughter's)
8 GB 13" MacBook Air 2017 (wife's)

For my wife and daughter, they basically NEVER stress out their 8 GB machines. For my 8 GB Mac mini running business applications and multitasking, usually it's fine, but occasionally it can lag a bit. A lot of it has to do with the CPU of course, but I sometimes get a couple of GB of swap too if more heavily multitasking. Nothing major, but it can be noticed.

BTW, my Mac mini is the machine I use the most, as it is my work machine. That is the one I'd replace with an M2 or M2 Pro Mac mini. For my business applications and multitasking a 16 GB M2 would be fine, but it will likely end up replacing my 2017 iMac as well (once that loses official macOS support), so I'm eyeing a 24 GB M2 or M2 Pro. (I wouldn't pay for 32 GB in a Mac mini though.)

They haven't been that worried about one product of theirs cannibalizing another, and they seem to like filling entire gradients of product lines.

Yes, and if you take out the Intel Mac mini, there is a huge gap between the Mac mini and Mac Studio right now.

Basically, what would make sense to fill in the gap would be to replace the Intel Mac mini with an M2 Pro Mac mini. To keep costs down (eg. US$200 premium over M2), they could even use a binned variant of M2 Pro, with fewer CPU cores or fewer GPU cores or both.

Will they do this? I dunno. It's up to them to decide if it makes sense from a marketing point of view, but purely from a spec and pricing point of view, an M2 Pro Mac mini makes sense.

 

[theluggage]

A 24 GiB RAM upgrade would probably be $400. So that's $1099. You probably want 512 GiB storage, too, so now we're at $1299. Since there isn't currently a product that is available in both M1 and M1 Pro variants, we don't know what a Pro BTO option would cost, but I imagine it'd be at least $200. So now we're at $1499.

I think you can get that same (approximate) answer by multiple routes. It's pointless to try and guess to within more than +/- $100 since there may be price rises and base spec changes.

From the unbinned M1 Pro 14" MacBook Pro 16GB it costs $600 to BTO upgrade to the 24 GPU core Max (that includes the compulsory 32GB RAM upgrade).

So, start with the $2000 Studio Max and "downgrade" to a 16GB M1 Pro gives you $1400 for a hypothetical "Studio Pro".

...which happens to be exactly the price of the current, ripe-for-replacement, Intel Mac Mini if you upgrade it to 16GB RAM and 10 GB Ethernet.

I wouldn't read too much into that except to say that it seems quite feasible, price-wise, for a Mx Pro Mac Mini/Studio to come in at the same price range as the current Intel Mac Minis (which were formally the better/best options of the Mini range).

Whether it is a "Mac Studio" or "Mac Mini" is moot - a Mx Pro can support the ports of a Studio Max and (vice-versa) a Mac Mini casing/PSU designed for an i7 space heater could run a M1 Max (but maybe with fan noise). The prices have more to do with Apple's strategic price points & "perceived value" than bill-of-materials and I doubt whether the slightly more complex construction of the Mac Studio case would make a big difference.

The issue is whether Apple wants to undercut the Mac Studio line - especially by releasing a M2 Pro Mini/Studio while the rest of the Studio range is still on a M1 series, with slower (and possibly fewer) cores. My money would be on the M2 Pro beating the M1 Max on many performance measures.

 

[Boil]

Take the base 14" M1 MacBook Pro & configure the same as the base M1 Max Mac Studio...

There is a $900 price difference...

Configure the laptop with a full-die M1 Pro, 16GB RAM, & 512GB SSD; $2300, so a comparable Mac Studio would be $1400...

Add $200 to bump up to 24GB RAM, add another $100 to bump up to the M2 Pro SoC (rather than the M1 Pro); looking at $1700...

"High-end" Mac mini:

• M2 Pro SoC (8P/4E/20G)
• 24GB RAM
• 512GB SSD
• Gigabit Ethernet
• $1699

 

[TobiasLeRoy]

What about a larger-than-13" MBA??? Anyone???

 

[Nugget]

Umm...where are you getting THAT?

You can buy a Mac Pro today (Intel) with 1.5TB of RAM. What do you predict will be the max ram config for a chiplet-design M2 config in an Apple silicon Mac Pro?

 

[SactoGuy18]

I would not be surprised that Apple will do a "refresh" of the 24" iMac with M2 and M2 Pro SoC options.

 

[chucker23n1]

You can buy a Mac Pro today (Intel) with 1.5TB of RAM. What do you predict will be the max ram config for a chiplet-design M2 config in an Apple silicon Mac Pro?

It depends.

The M1 Ultra already goes up to 128 GiB. If the M1 Extreme is simply two M1 Ultras in a trenchcoat, that's up to 256. I also wouldn't be surprised if the high-end M2 series doubles the RAM ceiling or at least increases it by 50%, as the M2 has. So that's 384 or 512.

The thing is, though, I kind of don't buy that the Mac Pro is simply like a Mac Studio but with an M2 Extreme. There's got to be more to it than that (cause what would be the point? You spend like $1,500 more for… the option of a higher-end SoC? Why not make that a BTO option on the Mac Studio, then?). For example, what they might do is heterogenous RAM: the M2 Extreme itself comes with up to 512 GiB, but on top of that, you get RAM slots, just as the 2019 Mac Pro has. They come with the upside that you can reach much higher capacities that way (plus, you get to upgrade yourself), but the downside of far lower bandwidth and worse latency. For apps that need a lot of RAM, you configure at startup (in Finder's Get Info) that they use the RAM slots. Other apps default to the package RAM.

 

[EugW]

The thing is, though, I kind of don't buy that the Mac Pro is simply like a Mac Studio but with an M2 Extreme. There's got to be more to it than that (cause what would be the point? You spend like $1,500 more for… the option of a higher-end SoC? Why not make that a BTO option on the Mac Studio, then?). For example, what they might do is heterogenous RAM: the M2 Extreme itself comes with up to 512 GiB, but on top of that, you get RAM slots, just as the 2019 Mac Pro has. They come with the upside that you can reach much higher capacities that way (plus, you get to upgrade yourself), but the downside of far lower bandwidth and worse latency. For apps that need a lot of RAM, you configure at startup (in Finder's Get Info) that they use the RAM slots. Other apps default to the package RAM.

FWIW, so far, the claim is that there are no RAM slots, but there are PCIe slots.

 

[Boil]

You can buy a Mac Pro today (Intel) with 1.5TB of RAM. What do you predict will be the max ram config for a chiplet-design M2 config in an Apple silicon Mac Pro?

If stil using LPDDR5 SDRAM, then most likely 384GB maximum RAM with a M2 Extreme SoC...

If Apple switches to LPDDR5X SDRAM, then there could be a maximum of 1TB RAM...

The thing is, though, I kind of don't buy that the Mac Pro is simply like a Mac Studio but with an M2 Extreme. There's got to be more to it than that (cause what would be the point? You spend like $1,500 more for… the option of a higher-end SoC?

No, you spend more for the PCIe slots, the larger chassis, and the larger PSU...

 

[chucker23n1]

FWIW, so far, the claim is that there are no RAM slots, but there are PCIe slots.

Maybe.

(That raises further questions. Will GPUs be supported? If so, will eGPU support come back as well?)

"It's like the Mac Studio, but for $2,000 more, there's internal expansion… well… for the PCIe slots, anyway. Not the RAM. Nor the storage." is also even less compelling than the 2019 Mac Pro, and that's saying something.

 

[EugW]

Maybe.

(That raises further questions. Will GPUs be supported? If so, will eGPU support come back as well?)

"It's like the Mac Studio, but for $2,000 more, there's internal expansion… well… for the PCIe slots, anyway. Not the RAM. Nor the storage." is also even less compelling than the 2019 Mac Pro, and that's saying something.

The claim is the you can stick in an AMD PC GPU into the PCIe slot and it will actually get recognized, but it doesn't work. My guess is that won't change, but I don't know. I don't see eGPU coming back either, but you never know.

As for storage, you can always add it internally via PCIe.

 

[chucker23n1]

The claim is the you can stick in an AMD PC GPU into the PCIe slot and it will actually get recognized, but it doesn't work. My guess is that won't change, but I don't know. I don't see eGPU coming back either, but you never know.

Right. ARM64 support for non-Apple GPUs is either something Apple hasn't gotten around to yet or something they simply don't want to do any more (in part because of kexts). Maybe macOS 14 Death Valley will have user-mode graphics drivers?

As for storage, you can always add it internally via PCIe.

Sure, for SSDs. It's nothing quite like the hot-swap push-in HDD slots on the pre-2013 Mac Pro.

 

[Boil]

As for storage, you can always add it internally via PCIe.

Sure, for SSDs. It's nothing quite like the hot-swap push-in HDD slots on the pre-2013 Mac Pro.

Only smaller, cooler, faster; overall better in every way...?

 

[chucker23n1]

Only smaller, cooler, faster; overall better in every way...?

You think SSD that cannot be hot-swapped and cost several times as much are “overall better in every way”?

 

[i4k20c]

APFS? Format it with HFS+. Because of issues with APFS and mount/unmount under Monterey, Big Sur.

if i am already in APFS, to get it to HFS+ will it erase all my data?