New Mac mini with new M1 chip

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by tomsem

https://www.forbes.com/sites/barryco...ort-of-memory/

Yesterday when I was checking on the pricing for the new mini I noticed that they had two new models: $699 8GB model and $899 16GB model. Otherwise the specs were the same. I thought that was odd. Before the M1 mini you would have seen one model and various RAM options for it. Oh well, user RAM upgrades for M1 Macs won’t be an option. That much we now know.

I’m very skeptical of Apple’s benchmarks. It reminds me of the Cheech and Chong routine about the dog poop! I look forward to seeing some real user benchmarks and experience with the new Macs on video and photo processing. I hope the 8GB mini can really way outperform my 2014 MacBook Pro 15” Retina with i7 processor and 16GB of RAM. If so, then the mini would be a no brainer at just $700! We will see...

[downeaster59]

One of the complaints about the iPad over the years was that, as a tablet, it was limited by having essentially a smartphone OS. Separating iPadOS from iOS was an attempt to address that complaint.

What I wonder now is whether Apple will end up making the Mac (any Mac) more limited by having essentially a smartphone CPU. No doubt, like the iPad, the M1 will excel at some things in real world usage, but will it fall flat in others? In making the grandiose claims that it makes for the M1, Apple is taking a risk. If the M1 fails to meet the hype, what happens then?

[leebase]

Originally Posted by downeaster59

What I wonder now is whether Apple will end up making the Mac (any Mac) more limited by having essentially a smartphone CPU. No doubt, like the iPad, the M1 will excel at some things in real world usage, but will it fall flat in others? In making the grandiose claims that it makes for the M1, Apple is taking a risk. If the M1 fails to meet the hype, what happens then?

Apple wouldn't commit to moving it's entire Mac business to Apple Silicon if they weren't absolutely sure they could bring a superior customer experience...so much superior...that it was worth the years and years of effort to make it so.

[leebase]

Originally Posted by OtinG

Before the M1 mini you would have seen one model and various RAM options for it. Oh well, user RAM upgrades for M1 Macs won’t be an option. That much we now know.

The ram is built into the M1 chip. It's kind of like "most of the computer in one chip". That's were a good deal of the performance improvement is coming from. So many of the components (CPU, GPU, MEMORY) no longer communicate across a bus to other discrete chips. And it's a unified memory architecture -- so that the cpu and gpu don't have separate RAM. RAM can be used as needed by whichever type of process needs it.

Originally Posted by OtinG

I’m very skeptical of Apple’s benchmarks. It reminds me of the Cheech and Chong routine about the dog poop! I look forward to seeing some real user benchmarks and experience with the new Macs on video and photo processing. I hope the 8GB mini can really way outperform my 2014 MacBook Pro 15” Retina with i7 processor and 16GB of RAM. If so, then the mini would be a no brainer at just $700! We will see...

The Anantech folks did a nice write up....they are optimistic based on what they've seen in the A14 iphone/ipad chip.

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by leebase

The Anantech folks did a nice write up....they are optimistic based on what they've seen in the A14 iphone/ipad chip.

iPhones and iPads can’t do heavy duty video and photo processing. So not sure what could have impressed them... It is one thing to do mamby-pamby editing to a selfie on an iThingy, but it is a few orders of magnitude greater to accomplish high level video editing and photo processing. I’m not convinced the new Macs are up to heavy duty processing yet. We will have to wait until they get tested by users.

[leebase]

Originally Posted by OtinG

iPhones and iPads can’t do heavy duty video and photo processing. So not sure what could have impressed them... It is one thing to do mamby-pamby editing to a selfie on an iThingy, but it is a few orders of magnitude greater to accomplish high level video editing and photo processing. I’m not convinced the new Macs are up to heavy duty processing yet. We will have to wait until they get tested by users.

I think you will find others disagree with you on the kind of photo and video editing that can be done on an iPad pro.

They demo'd multiple live 4k streams being edited with AI backed filters being put on....with the 2 year old ipad pro chip that went out in the demo mac mini's last June.

These are their low end Macs. Mac Airs were never the "go to laptop" for video editing. I'm not expecting these Macs to take the place of a $60k fully loaded Mac Pro

[binaryhermit]

And when (or perhaps if?) there is an Apple Silicon Mac Pro I expect it'll have more (perhaps more capable) cores, a better GPU, and be able to address more RAM.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by OtinG

This might be an affordable option. I won’t be buying any Mac for quite a while, so I’ll have plenty of time to hear what the actual, real world performance will be like from users. At a starting price of $699 though it might be a decent buy, depending on how much “upgrade” you have to buy. Apple loves socking it to us for extra RAM and extra SSD capacity. I assume the $699 starter will be stripped down.

Apple has some nerve. They are charging $200 more for a a MAC Mini with 512GB SDD vs. $699 for the same machine with 256GB SSD. I can buy a 1TB SSD for less.

[JSWolf]

The thing is, you can get a lower priced Windows machine that will have better hardware specs then a MAC. So why spend all the extra $$ on a machine that you really cannot upgrade and has inferior hardware?

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by leebase

I think you will find others disagree with you on the kind of photo and video editing that can be done on an iPad pro.

They demo'd multiple live 4k streams being edited with AI backed filters being put on....with the 2 year old ipad pro chip that went out in the demo mac mini's last June.

These are their low end Macs. Mac Airs were never the "go to laptop" for video editing. I'm not expecting these Macs to take the place of a $60k fully loaded Mac Pro

I disagree on many levels. For one thing, a MacBook Pro is NOT a low end computer. Second, applying preset filters to video or selfies is child's play. The true need for power comes when a real professional digs deep into very large RAW files and sets of RAW files to do their own editing, not just mamby-pamby hold your hand filter application that most people would do. You do not need a Mac Pro for that, unless perhaps you are working on a Hollywood level production. Even people like me who photograph the night sky (astrophotography) need to sometimes use 100+ RAW images to align them, stack them, and pull out the most detail with the least amount of noise. That process requires a lot of processing power and a lot of memory and memory management. My old 2014 MacBook Pro with i7 and 16GB RAM can do that, although not with great speed. An iPad Pro? No bleeping way. Not even close. Until I see actual users pushing the new M1 Macs to the limit to see if they can handle this kind of power/memory hungry computing, I will remain skeptical.

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Apple has some nerve. They are charging $200 more for a a MAC Mini with 512GB SDD vs. $699 for the same machine with 256GB SSD. I can buy a 1TB SSD for less.

It has been that way for many years. To get more RAM or unified memory, a larger SSD, et cetera, Apple has charged way more than they should. That is nothing new. A $700 Mac can easily wind up costing $1200 after upgrading the base model to something that is actually useful to your needs.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The thing is, you can get a lower priced Windows machine that will have better hardware specs then a MAC. So why spend all the extra $$ on a machine that you really cannot upgrade and has inferior hardware?

Of course you can. However, I have Macs because I hate the Windows OS. I suspect many, if not most, Mac owners feel the same way. I'm willing to pay a premium if I get a computer that is more to my tastes than anything running Windows would be. If I have to choose between a Chevy and Toyota, I'll pay the extra and get a Toyota because I know it will likely be a much better experience for me. To each their own of course, but I much prefer the Mac computing experience to that of Windows, and I will pay a premium for it whenever I can afford to do so.

BTW, I had a decades long career in the high tech industry. Most of my office computers were Windows machines. I had no choice but to use them. I have always had so much better of an experience with my Macs though, and once I retired it was great to be able to switch over to Macs again. I started with Macs and DOS machines 40+ years ago. DOS always sucked, and Windows never was a good experience. Again, to each their own...

[tomsem]

So far, independent benchmarks appear to bear out Apple’s performance claims. E.g.:

https://www.cultofmac.com/727721/m1-...in-benchmarks/

No other Intel-based Mac laptop tested to date comes close in Geekbench 5 tests. The fastest we could find in the charts, a 16-inch MacBook Pro from late 2019 that costs upwards of $5,000, achieves a single-core score of 1,095 and a multi-core score of 6,869.

The MacBook Air will be somewhat throttled at sustained performance compared to the mini and MacBook Pro, because it doesn’t have active cooling.

[binaryhermit]

Maybe, maybe not, the Intel chip is likely 14nm or 10nm whereas the M1 is 5nm, so it should be more efficient ignoring that ARM is generally better on the processing power per watt front than AMD64

EDIT: Plus, it looks like the Intel chip in question has a 45W TDP and the M1 has a 10W TDP.

[kyteflyer]

The Australian prices for the new hardware is off the charts. I thought I probably would not be upgrading, and indeed I am not. I’ll carry on with my current elderly hardware until such time as my preferred applications are upgraded beyond my own capacity to upgrade the OS. Then, I’ll install Linux on both machines.

[leebase]

Well....we won't have long to wait to find out. The machines will start shipping next week. So far the benchmarks are off the charts. We will have to see what that means practically.