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We will never have a pro chip mac mini
- Thread starter Worlrl
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Because Apple's EULA disallows leasing as a VM, you have to lease them as a dedicated machine. After Big Sur, the minimum leasing period is 24hrs. This makes it extremely hard to make a CICD service at a reasonable cost. Apple is releasing Xcode Cloud so perhaps Apple don't want any third party CIs anymore.
Where you do see a lot of people with two externals is in offices -- two externals seems to be SOP for many administrative offices these days (accounting, HR, etc) (typically they're cheap [~$200] low-DPI 24" displays). Those offices are typically Windows-based. If they wanted to instead supply their workers with Air's, that wouldn't work. Though it would with Minis, since they can drive two externals.
Of course, there you run into another issue, which is that MacOS looks really bad on low-DPI displays (compared to Windows), so you're forced to get high-quality externals to keep your workers from getting headaches, which gets pricey.
I would think your observation period is too short, and hence reach the pessimistic conclusion. IMO, Mac Mini will soon be split into two classes: lower end and higher end models. Just like Mac Studio currently is. Time frame of this happening could be M2 or later. Personally I think M2 is about the time. Here are the reasons.
M1 Mac Mini is a minimum effort product without much change in overall design. M1 Pro likely did not fit into the thermal design limit. Also in the time frame of M1 Pro, Apple could only support max 32GB memory which is less than desirable for a higher end Mac Mini anyway. The current Intel model has been able to support max 64GB for many yrs.
In the M2 gen, the lower end Mac Mini based on M2 could support 8, 16 and 32GB (yes 32 possible). The higher end model based on M2 Pro could support 16, 32 and 64GB. Apple may choose to limit each to 24GB and 48GB max respectively for better product segmentation. And they finally can discontinue the Intel model.
I would think a 48GB (or 64GB) M2 Pro Mac Mini is very appealing to iDevice developers and power users, who do not require more powerful iGPU offered by Mac Studio.
Someone with pricing details in mind perhaps can help to run through the overall M2 gen line-up if it makes sense now.
Are you sure? Avid already supported M1 long times ago
Curbase provided native builds as of version 12, and version 11 runs under rosetta just fine.
Propellerhead Reason is not native, but runs under rosetta just fine.
CorelDRAW 2021 added native M1 support.And that's all the "surveying software vendors" you provided at the moment, all of them runs on Apple Silicon and 3/4. of them are running as arm64 native.
It is a very false statement that all software will drop Mac support because Apple drops Intel. To software vendors, the deprecation of certain industry standard api like OpenGL, is a more serious reason to drop Mac support, but an intel Mac wont give you the software API back.
Ok nothing that affects me, phew! Any news on whether these are short-term gaps because it’s new, or are they likely to stay not working forever?
I wonder if that’s the case, in theory M1 Pro has TDP 30-40W, while Intel 8500B in Mac mini has 65W.
exactly...that envelope could easy sustain the M1 pro
I anticipate mac mini with m2 pro chip in 2023, at the moment they release new macbooks pro. We will have to wait 8 months... if someone is in a hurry, get the mac studio, the difference between m2/m1 pro will be more noticeable in the mobile realm, for desktop that doesn't matter so much.
See the other post I quoted above
The Bootcamp support is quite up in the air. Apple has said that they're willing to work with Microsoft to make it happen but the ball is in Microsoft's court for that. And Microsoft supposedly has a licensing deal with Qualcomm to, for the time being, only make ARM Windows available to Snapdragon devices officially.
As for other things currently not working entirely on M1 devices, I've had a few experiences with some development tools. For example (and this might be fixed now) it was a bit of a pain to get my Haskell compiler toolchain set up. I did get it working in the end, but not for native building and even working through Rosetta was rough for that at least at the time, with a lot of manual work to make all the components capable of seeing each other. (Using Glasgow)
I've also had to use some x86 Linux software, and Rosetta is not capable of running non-macOS environment software that is x86. I solved that with QEMU but it was rather slow. Workarounds exist but it's not seamless. As of macOS Ventura, Rosetta can be set up to run Linux x86 in virtualised environments though that is also a bit of a set up hassle, but it works and should be fairly fast.
In short, there are things that genuinely don't run yet on M1 but so far I've been able to work around it, and it won't affect an average user. In my case at least it's only been development tools and virtualisation bits and bobs. And that's all getting smoothed out all the time anyway
Well, some of those have already been debunked - but surveyors (and other areas like CAD) have never been well-served by Mac (and if anybody really is riveted to winxp they're not getting much love from Microsoft and Intel either!) - so it isn't really an Apple Silicon problem. If a vendor is committed to supporting Mac and already had a Mac-optimised application then supporting Apple Silicon isn't too big an ask - maybe there are a few "special circumstances" but generally I'd say that if a vendor hasn't bothered to support Apple Silicon by now then they were already lukewarm about supporting Mac at all.
What Apple needs to distinguish Macs from PCs is a critical mass of software that is well-optimised for Mac, designed to work well with Metal, and that can take advantage of things like the neural engine and AV processors. "Can also run PC software" (or even software ported from PC with minimal effort) - even if it is convenient for some users - just isn't a big sell.
I think it was ~2007 when I found myself sitting in a video production suite surrounded by dusty Macs and Final Cut boxes on the shelves while the virtuoso video editor bashed away on his custom AVID keyboard hooked up to a no-brand (probably buit-to-spec) PC. They'd switched. The editor didn't care whether he was running Avid on a PC or Mac - it did the same job, probably for less money and more scope for customisation. The good old days when Macs were in a different technical class to PCs were long gone - and Macs were just premium-priced PC clones with maybe a nice GUI which you barely saw when you were armpit-deep in Avid or Adobe CS all day. Since then, Apple have faced a shrinking pool of Pro users as established users leave and new ones fail to join (even if MAcBook Airs and iDevices are booming in the consumer market).
Now, if the M1 means that Apple can make a MacBook Air that can smoothly edit 4k video in the field, handle a squillion-track Logic project without a fan, or a Mac Studio that delivers insane performance when treated as an "appliance" for Mac-centric apps then maybe they can distinguish themselves from PCs. But if you want a system that runs PC software well, then I give you... the PC!!!
Hmm.
For the first one why wouldn’t they keep the lower-end i3 mini? Seems like the best choice for reasonably priced Intel device. Also I honestly don’t think they’d be interested in doing that for this transition (also didn’t for PPC iirc). I feel like they kept the higher end models to dignify something > M1 is going to go into those, similar to how they didn’t touch the higher-end 13” MBPs when the lower one went M1.
For the second one I’d figure they’d have more stock of the lower end i3 version than the others.
Finally if these were to be designated Intel models for those who still need them or leftover stock they’d probably be as hidden as that awful $1099 iMac that’s dead now.
If you go back and read that in context, Apple were almost certainly talking about virtualising Windows for ARM using the hypervisor framework built into MacOS, not bootcamp. Elsewhere they've said clearly that the won't support* direct booting of OSs other than MacOS.
The two propositions are vastly different - virtualisation just needs relatively simple paravirtualised drivers that call the MacOS host to emulate Windows-compatible devices. Bootcamp needs complete bare-metal Apple Silicon drivers for everything. Bootcamp was only ever a thing because Intel Macs were a gnats whisker away from being PC clones. In the T1/T2 era they relied on Apple producing suitable Windows drivers for functionality taken over by the T1/T2. With Apple Silicon everything is now proprietary and would need new Windows drivers.
Virtualising Windows-for-ARM on MacOS is a done deal - Parallels supports it and, sometime last year, the reliance on a evaluation-only "preview" build of Windows (with possible licensing issues) quietly went away & you can - apparently - legitimately buy a license and activate the production version of WoA.
Trouble is, though, I suspect a lot of people who need Windows really need x86 Windows - Windows for ARM seems to be gaining momentum but it's still early days and a lot still depends on x86 emulation.
(* Which doesn't mean they'll block it, just that if, say, Ashai Linux's reverse-engineered drivers get broken by every Mac firmware update, that's just to bad - and don't expect 18 months notice if they do decide to block it)
Outside of Apple's own toolchains, development tools support for Apple Silicon is still a bit of a work in progress. If you are using your Mac to develop backend software targeting Linux, an Intel Mac is still simpler. Also, if you are developing cross platform front end software, an Intel Mac allows you to target all major client platforms (Windows, Mac, iOS & Linux).
I am aware. There was definitely talk of full Boot Camp. I’ll try and find the video. It was an interview with two Apple employees after the initial M1.
Fortunately, the solution came through the magic, fine both
.
Yes, but you can say that about any Mac. If you spec-up the new M2 MacBook Air then you're in touching distance of the 14" MacBook Pro, for instance.
Eh, I don't think that means much. I'd say it's improbable because it's a rumour that started with John Prosser, who has become quite the wrong one these days.
I don't think that matters. Ultimately a lower-end product will always threaten to take away sales of a higher-end one and even if that happens Apple still gets a sale (and they can figure out how to make that person spend more later anyway lol).
Just a small correction: Corel does ship software for the Mac. They have added M1 support in 2021.
Both of us are doing some guesstimate here without detailed justification. Not sure it's worth the digression. Perhaps you're expecting a justification from mine. So here we go.
I'm not aware of Apple publishing any TDP numbers. Also comparing TDP numbers across vendors is pretty meaningless these days. It says nothing. So let's go down some concrete numbers.
For your 8500B/8700B, the sustained max power is about 65W. From benchmarks I've seen, M1 Pro in gaming can sustain ~60W. Gaming hardly pushes both CPU+GPU to their limits at the same time. But I know when M1 Max pushed to their limits, sustained power is about 92W. So we know for M1 Pro, the sustained max power is somewhere between 60W and 92W. Say it's 65W. I don't know if you're happy with me hypothetically put it there for M1 Pro.
Apple isn't known for provisioning adequate cooling for Intel Mac (except MacPro7,1). When 8500B/8700B is sustained at 65W, temperature is around 100C. Fan is spinning up. Noise and throttling crank up. Not something Apple wants for their new Mac's.
I would think M1 Pro is indeed likely hitting the thermal design limit if put inside the current Mac Mini.
Can't find the video version where I saw it said, but here's a MacRumors article on it that says "native"
Craig Federighi: Native Windows on M1 Macs is 'Really up to Microsoft'
Following the release of the M1 Macs Apple executives have been doing interviews with a range of publications, and today, Ars Technica published...
www.macrumors.com
Could they in theory mean virtualised "ARM Windows" as "native", feasibly I suppose, but the wording to me says "Boot Camp".
But on the point of virtualisation; Ventura offers Rosetta 2 to run x86_64 ELF Linux binaries inside virtualised ARM Linux environments. That's a pretty neat new feature though it does require some manual setup to get working.
If you go back and read the Ars article carefully, the "native" bit was editorialising by the article writer, we weren't told what the actual question was and in context probably does just mean "ARM windows" (as opposed to emulated x86). Earlier paragraphs were clearly referring to virtualisation and/or technologies like Crossover/WINE and the "core technologies" would be the "Hypervisor kit" in MacOS.Could they in theory mean virtualised "ARM Windows" as "native", feasibly I suppose, but the wording to me says "Boot Camp".Craig Federighi: Native Windows on M1 Macs is 'Really up to Microsoft'
Following the release of the M1 Macs Apple executives have been doing interviews with a range of publications, and today, Ars Technica published...
Compare that with some words that actually came out of Craig Federighi's mouth in a pervious interview, which leave no wriggle room: "We're not directly booting another operating system - It's purely virtualization".
That said, it's perfectly true that Microsoft could produce a direct-boot Windows for Apple Silicon if they wanted to commit to writing all the bare-metal drivers (and fixing them every time Apple changed the design) just as the Ashai Linux folks are doing for Linux.
The M2 chip is not more or less M1. And the Pro series (e.g. M1 Pro) is not used on the Studio. Apple can clearly create an M1 Pro Mini (or M2 Pro) and not cannibalise many sales of the Studio. Just my 2 cents.
Also, never say never
The Mac Studio starts with an M1 Max chip, there's the base M1 Mac Mini, a pending update Intel high-end Mini, the M1 Max Studio and the M1 Ultra Studio... to me it's obvious the Intel high-end Mini will get an M2 Pro when it gets refreshed, it's the missing M variant in the desktop space, as there's currently no M1 Pro desktop Mac.
My bet is we'll see it this fall, a redesigned Mac Mini with base M2 and a high-end M2 Pro replacing the Intel model, followed next year by an M2 Max & M2 Ultra Studios.
My bet is we'll see it this fall, a redesigned Mac Mini with base M2 and a high-end M2 Pro replacing the Intel model, followed next year by an M2 Max & M2 Ultra Studios.