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The new Mac mini is almost certainly coming

dogslobber said:
It is certainly coming on Thu for me. I gave in!
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Will be interested to see your views on it, I’m more interested to see what replaces the upper SKU Intel mini be it M1X or M2 while restoring 4 thunderbolt ports and adding more graphics capability.

The chassis can dissipate 65w TDP and should be able to handle something with double the number of cores and/or more interestingly better onboard graphics processing.
 
sublunar said:
Will be interested to see your views on it, I’m more interested to see what replaces the upper SKU Intel mini be it M1X or M2 while restoring 4 thunderbolt ports and adding more graphics capability.

The chassis can dissipate 65w TDP and should be able to handle something with double the number of cores and/or more interestingly better onboard graphics processing.
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We can only hope for all of that. I’m sure the rumored 8,1 Mac Pro base price would probably be at least $4000. I could afford one but that’s a little rich for me. I’m thinking more like $2500 max for a pretty fast muti-drive setup excluding a possible display upgrade.
 
Micky Do said:
Might there be an all new Mac Mini today?
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To be fair, it may be possible. I mean if there is a newer chip available it is an easy win to replace the last intel Mac Mini still being sold and that is the Mac Mini line transitioned to Apple Silicon.

Not like it needs a redesign, just as it was when they released the 1st one a few months back.

Likely? Probably not, but we are in different times, Apple will want to get rid of the Intel devices asap and this would not be a difficult one to achieve.
 
Jorbanead said:
only if they have an M1X chip ready which I’m expecting at wwdc
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WWDC might be the good date to look for (if not in the 2 weeks either side as a press release, but ARM is too big of a deal to press release it on this occasion.

The Mini's Coffee Lake CPU has been discontinued and last stocks are due to delivery around June 4 time - depending on how Apple stretch it out they might make it last until October which is a traditional hardware announcement month but 4 month lead time is substantial.

The same CPU is employed in the iMac 21.5" which hasn't seen an update since 2019 so it stands to reason that both will be refreshed at the same time.

The iMac seems like a great candidate for a WWDC keynote with the mini hanging on its coat tails as a high end SKU to finish off the mini transition.

If we're discussing the M1X then it could certainly go into a top SKU Mini, 21.5" iMac replacement and then into a 14" and 16" MacBook Pro - especially interesting if Apple start grading versions of M1X with differing numbers of compute cores and GPU cores.

And since Apple aren't releasing MHz figures I'm going to assume that clock speeds will stay consistent across each model, so perhaps we could see M1X in lower power setups while M1Z carries more horsepower.
 
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sublunar said:
WWDC might be the good date to look for (if not in the 2 weeks either side as a press release, but ARM is too big of a deal to press release it on this occasion.

The Mini's Coffee Lake CPU has been discontinued and last stocks are due to delivery around June 4 time - depending on how Apple stretch it out they might make it last until October which is a traditional hardware announcement month but 4 month lead time is substantial.

The same CPU is employed in the iMac 21.5" which hasn't seen an update since 2019 so it stands to reason that both will be refreshed at the same time.

The iMac seems like a great candidate for a WWDC keynote with the mini hanging on its coat tails as a high end SKU to finish off the mini transition.

If we're discussing the M1X then it could certainly go into a top SKU Mini, 21.5" iMac replacement and then into a 14" and 16" MacBook Pro - especially interesting if Apple start grading versions of M1X with differing numbers of compute cores and GPU cores.

And since Apple aren't releasing MHz figures I'm going to assume that clock speeds will stay consistent across each model, so perhaps we could see M1X in lower power setups while M1Z carries more horsepower.
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Great analysis and speculation. I completely agree with everything you said. I am predicting a product lineup sort of like this:

M1 - 13" MBA, 13" 2-port MBP, 2-port MM
M1X - 14" MBP, 16" MBP, 24" iMac, 4-port MM
M1Z - 27" iMac (pro?), Mac Pro

I also think these chips could be binned to different core counts. So for example you may be able to find 12-core and 16-core versions of the M1X chip, and then maybe an 18-core, 24-core, and 32-core versions of the M1Z chip. The higher core counts will go to products that have a higher thermal capacity like the Mac Pro.
 
Jorbanead said:
Great analysis and speculation. I completely agree with everything you said. I am predicting a product lineup sort of like this:

M1 - 13" MBA, 13" 2-port MBP, 2-port MM
M1X - 14" MBP, 16" MBP, 24" iMac, 4-port MM
M1Z - 27" iMac (pro?), Mac Pro

I also think these chips could be binned to different core counts. So for example you may be able to find 12-core and 16-core versions of the M1X chip, and then maybe an 18-core, 24-core, and 32-core versions of the M1Z chip. The higher core counts will go to products that have a higher thermal capacity like the Mac Pro.
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I hope you're right. I hope they release a M1X version of the Mac Mini with 32 GB of RAM and 10G ethernet available. Doubt it will be released on 4/20 though.
 
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With the multi-coloured iMacs; they could have released a matching range of MMs without even doing any form of spec bump.
I mean; they literally did that to the iPhone by introducing the purple iPhone12.

OTOH: not doing anything at that event makes a spec bump with new chips more likely / sooner...
 
Googlyhead said:
With the multi-coloured iMacs; they could have released a matching range of MMs without even doing any form of spec bump.
I mean; they literally did that to the iPhone by introducing the purple iPhone12.

OTOH: not doing anything at that event makes a spec bump with new chips more likely / sooner...
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It's of interest to the Mac mini because Apple appear to have discontinued the iMac 4k Retina which used the Coffee Lake CPUs. The base model is now found under the 27" iMac for $1099.

So it's technically propping up the range below the similarly poverty spec base iMac 24 for $1299.

It comes with 256Gb SSD which I guess is a small mercy but the 7th gen mobile Intel CPU with Iris Plus Graphics 640 really chugs.

Remember that Apple haven't discontinued the top SKU Mac mini and Intel's last delivery of Coffee Lake CPUs is in June.

I still suspect that Apple will be doing a lineup refresh with M1X CPUs when the time is right, I'd say that time is WWDC or thereabouts otherwise we're looking at all the way in October but that's about the time when we will know if Apple intend to hammer home their CPU advantage with an annual refresh to M2 or if they are going to rest on their laurels.

M1X/Z variants could complete the transition for everything below the bona-fide Mac Pro.

If Apple were so minded I'd expect M1X to go in the MacBook Pro 14, 16, Mac mini, and iMac Pro (large screen).

And M1Z could go in a Mac Pro - with extra graphics cores and perhaps even more compute cores (following on from A12X and A12Z)
 
Googlyhead said:
With the multi-coloured iMacs; they could have released a matching range of MMs without even doing any form of spec bump.
I mean; they literally did that to the iPhone by introducing the purple iPhone12.

OTOH: not doing anything at that event makes a spec bump with new chips more likely / sooner...
Click to expand...
The Mac mini isn’t really a big visual statement like an iMac. I don’t think colors would sell very well.
 
I bought the M1 Mac mini as a transition until the AS iMacs come out. The new iMacs look nice and sweet, I'll miss the Apple logo on the chin probably. However, this is far from being a professional machine and much inferior to the 27" iMac. So, I'll wait till the end of year to see how the larger iMac will evolve.
Oh, btw, every product started to have M1 (Mac mini, iMac 24 and iPad Pro) so I ask myself if I should pay double over Mac mini to get an all in one solution. If the M1 chip would be inside the new iMac, its price had to be lower.
 
hagjohn said:
I would love to have MacOS on an iPad Pro. I would buy it in a heartbeat. MacOS on a dock and PadOS while not on a dock.
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In theory this should work....as the new ipad Pro has exactly same specs as M1 mini.
And the M1 macs are supposed to run iOS apps, so why not the other way around.... 🤔
 
I actually agree, personally I have no interest in multi format apps....👍
After the iPad pro release, it was exact spec as mini, and put that thought in my head.
 
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