I’m Having Second Thoughts on the M1 MacMini After Reading This...Advice?

[redcaptrickster]

ZDNet...lol.

You need to find better friends.

 

[jdb8167]

ZDNet...lol.

You need to find better friends.

I didn't see this when it was first posted but that article in zdnet was published before anyone actually had any M1 Macs in their hands. Nowhere does he claim he used an M1 Mac mini. He was just speculating based on published specs. It doesn't appear that he followed up after the M1 Mac mini was actually available either. Just a click-bait piece from zdnet.

 

[tokyojerry]

10Gbe is still too expensive for the majority of people. It would be a $1,000+ cost just to upgrade my switches, getting NICs and upgrading my NAS to support it. I can understand the loss of 10Gbe on the systems, but the Intel Mac mini is still around if you need it. It will probably have 10Gbe sometime next year.

People are acting like 10Gbe is a standard when it is very expensive vs a $20 1Gbe switch.

And USB 4 includes Thunderbolt 3. Unless you are referring to the two extra ports. Again, this is the lowest Mac mini configuration. Its probably a limitation of the M1 chip that will get addressed with the more higher performance chip that will be in the top spec Mac mini.

You may be correct on the 10Gbe ethernet. It may be unnecessary for most people.

As for Thunderbolt 4, there are other advantages besides just supporting and matching thunderbolt 3. Power delivery and other specs which adopting OEMs will need to adhere to in order to be certified to use TB4. Since it is the new emerging standard here in now, I will only purchase equipment that has TB4, or USB4 as an AMD user. There are differences between the two but performance wise, basically the same.

 

[kode54]

Just got mine on the 25th of March, and not even regretting it, except for maybe not having a pile of money to fully deck out the storage. Got a bunch of devices plugged into the one USB port I'm using, and a switchable 3.0 hub for my mouse and keyboard, and a USB-C to DP cable for my secondary monitor.

I plan to use the remaining C port to add external Thunderbolt storage in the future, and I doubt that anything I could possibly afford, not even an NVMe M.2 card, could ever hit the limits of the port, unless I were to attach a Thunderbolt hub and go wild.

The new Neural Engine, used from CoreML, far exceeds my Ryzen PC's RX 480 at running the same models for some things, such as image scaling. What used to take upwards of 30 seconds and multiple runs on tiles of data, completes in about a second on the M1.

 

[UBS28]

I was planning to buy the Mac Mini but once the specs came out, I didn’t buy it.

Now I got my eyes on the M2X 16” MBP unless Apple cut corners with that machine too.

 

[ed.]

Now I got my eyes on the M2X 16” MBP unless Apple cut corners with that machine too.

And why not wait for the M4Z with a 17" screen in a 11" enclosure? After all 2027 is around the corner.

 

[Yebubbleman]

Inside the new Mac mini: Does Apple's M1 architecture really leave Intel behind?

While the same M1 chip is coming out in the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac mini, the design of the mini gives us some forensic clues about how the M1 chip might be designed.

www.zdnet.com

I’ve got the M1 Mini on order. I have pretty basic needs, but like to look forward to new technology, particularly with computers and cameras.

But, this article seems to underscore that fact that this first M1 MacMini seems to have made some compromises vs. the 2018 MacMini. The throughput of the ports seems particularly perplexing. It is almost like the 2018 MacMini is more “pro” than the initial offering of the late 2020 MacMini in some of the specific comparisons.

I find myself asking why did Apple go with these compromises just to get AS out the door? M1 seems so good on som many points. Is this a two steps forwarded and one step back kind of thing?

I’ve been going back and forth on whether to buy a 2018, or the new late 2020. And I did make a choice for the late 2020. But, as some of the hype clears I say again this seems more to be an evolution than a revolution in Apple technology.

Unless you need things like 32GB or 64GB of RAM, built-in 10Gb Ethernet, the ability to run more than two native displays, the ability to use an eGPU, or four Thunderbolt 3 ports, the M1 Mac mini is still superior. But if you need these things, this is why Apple is still selling the 8th Gen Hexa-Core Core i5 and i7 variants of the 2018 model. If your needs are basic enough such that 16GB of RAM is fine and most of the software you need to run is either native to Apple Silicon and/or runs fine in Rosetta 2 and/or is going to be ported to Apple Silicon in the not too distant future, and you don't need x86-64 OS virtualization or Boot Camp, I'd stick with the M1 Mac mini as it will still be a great machine for you.