I think 64gb is too little now. I do think there could be a market for a small modular Mac. Something that would start out even smaller than the current Mac mini with even less ports. Maybe just 4 Thunderbolt 3 ports (no power, hdmi or even USB-A). Then sell Apple branded hubs, storage expansion etc that could be stacked.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
If Apple offered an M1 Mac mini with ONLY 64 GB of NAND Flash Storage for $499 USD, would you Buy It ? ...
- Thread starter Cosmosent
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
That would be one mean Ubuntu server at less than 25W.
8-core CPU, 8GB RAM and 64GB NVMe storage.
Why?
That isn't and never has been Apple's core market.
These new apple silicon macs are the tip of the iceberg - they are a taster, a proof of concept, a cautious toe dipping in, but also with a bold knowledge they are about to completely upend the entire market in terms of performance/power usage.
Heck, with just these three entry level macs, they have *everyone* raving.
This is intentional Apple marketing and product placement at work and as always, it is quite masterful.
Apple branded hubs? What are you smoking?
These are entry level models aimed squarely at new adopters, with massive bang for the buck.
These are entry level models meant to really shake up those in "the know" - look what Apple has done by making their own silicon - and how successfully it has been pulled off.
This is just the beginning - Apple aren't after small things like hubs or file servers, jesus, what the heck?
This is all part of a drive to having more control over *every single part of the offering* - the software, the hardware - something apple have always strived to do, for better or worse.
They now *control* all aspects of the hardware - and you are going to see some *astonishing* things in the next few years in terms of performance with low power requirements.
Keep your eyes open for what apple is going to do with AR/VR - if they can pull off what they did with mp3 players so many years ago now, it's going to be pretty damn exciting.
Hah, apple branded hubs... seriously .. ?️
Apple is always looking to expand into different markets. They left the server market previously because after the switch to Intel they really couldn't offer anything unique. They have previously looked a stackable connector type system years ago - they even filed for some patents. Some of which we now see with "new" MagSafe but if you look at the filings you can see they had in some other applications too. This is the type of system that could bring them back into that market. You don't think there is a huge demand for high performance, tiny modular, lower power systems in data centers? You don't think they already have prototypes and are planning to move some of their own server infrastructure to such systems? Cool... let's bookmark this and come back to it in a few years.
Last edited:
No. We live in the 21st century and reasonable memory|storage should be 8|512 for air and 16|1TB for pro.
Minimum 256 for Air and 512 for Pro.
For education and very basic office 128 may work.
64 eMMC would kill the performance.
Otherwise we are at a smartphone level. BTW they cost the same money.
Minimum 256 for Air and 512 for Pro.
For education and very basic office 128 may work.
64 eMMC would kill the performance.
Otherwise we are at a smartphone level. BTW they cost the same money.
Last edited:
1. Good for you. Deals aren‘t always available when you need them.
2. What happened to 64GB MBA now? It has been gone for few years now. 64GB aren‘t cut it anymore. Heck, even low end Windows based laptop comes with 128GB storage (though most are eMMc drive). People aren’t stupid.
3. Most people who purchase a low end Mac are the one who don’t want spend lots of money. it doesn’t matter if you can get 1TB external SSD, it is extra cost to them. How many people who purchased 64GB MacBook Air went to get external drive as bootable devices?
4. Apple is going to switch to ARM based Mac, so people will have Intel based Mac and ARM based Mac, so your external boot drive probably won’t work in long run. If your goal for external boot drive is to have unified boot drive, then you gonna have to make sure this boot drive works for all your devices.
5. Most people who will have no idea how to setup external boot drive. It is more complicated than you would thought. How many people know how to boot from USB on their PC, even thought it is simple as press F12 during boot sequence? Most new Macs comes with T2 chip, one need boot to recovery and disable secure boot in order to boot from external. How many people know how to boot to recovery?
64GB Mac is dumb idea.
While a $500 Mini is a great idea; I don't think 64GB costs substantially less than 128GB. Maybe $2 or something at the kind of volumes Apple is doing. I believe 128 is kind of the sweet spot cost-wise for minimum sized SSD. Apple would more likely need to change the casing design to cut the price down to $500. This probably wasn't done this round just to save R&D costs. Eventually I'm sure they will make a new Mini that is half or less the volume. That should allow them to cut the price if they wish.
No way. I could be swayed by a 128GB model at that price. But the machine would have to be dedicated to a purpose to which a large internal drive is otherwise impractical. Like being attached to a massive Thunderbolt 3 storage array with several 12TB hard drives and serving up content using open-source and/or native utilities.
Half of the available storage space would be something Apple would let us start with in the first place coming from an entry level product
$499 and 64GB for an Operating System would suffice if Apple really wanted to give it to us
No. I would not buy such a system.
Nor would Apple sell one. If you look at the cost of iPads, then at the cost of the M1, RAM, ports, etc. it does add up to less than or equal to $499.
Now, it is quite possible that in a lab in Cupertino there are Mac 'micro' or 'nano' systems. Or even a Mac 'rasperyberry pi' like system that some group of engineers made for fun. But I doubt they'll ever see the light of day.
But damm, a $200 MacBerryPi would be cool ...
Maybe I'll write a letter to Tim ...
Nor would Apple sell one. If you look at the cost of iPads, then at the cost of the M1, RAM, ports, etc. it does add up to less than or equal to $499.
Now, it is quite possible that in a lab in Cupertino there are Mac 'micro' or 'nano' systems. Or even a Mac 'rasperyberry pi' like system that some group of engineers made for fun. But I doubt they'll ever see the light of day.
But damm, a $200 MacBerryPi would be cool ...
Maybe I'll write a letter to Tim ...