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Surprised That Mini M2 16GB Is 3-Week Wait and M2/8GB Is Two Days. Thoughts?

H

Highway61

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 30, 2008
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What, if anything, are the implications of there being nearly a three-week wait for the 16GB version and only two days (same day if I'd use courier) for the 8GB version. Is the 8GB version being avoided because the general wisdom is that one should forgo the 8GB for the 16GB?

(I have read/watched so-o-o many conflicting opinions on 8GB vs 16GB that I've just thrown up my hands and said "I'll go with the 16 GB," and I put one in my Apple "shopping bag." But I'm impulsive, and I halted the purchase when it said delivery would be 23 to 27 days out.)

Anyway, thoughts on the stock disparity?
 
I think mine took almost two weeks to get delivered here in Norway in december. Not too bad, I think, considering it came from Hong Kong. I'm guessing also, that most macs that are closer and can be delivered faster are base models, so when we order extra ram and ssd, it has to first be assembled, then shipped half-way around the world.
 
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pacmania1982 said:
Isn't that because 16GB is BTO? I ended up getting an M2 Mini with 16GB RAM via refurb as it was quicker (and cheaper) than getting a BTO one.
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That's what I assumed - base they churn out but adding memory/SSD turns into BTO with a bit of a lead time for shipping from China. This has been the case for at least a few months while I prepared to purchase. I don't think it indicates any kind of product lineup change.
 
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This is always how it is. The lowest spec'd model is the base model and those are always stocked to ship as soon as an order comes in. Almost anything else is built to order and delivers in a week even under the best of circumstances. If you want to get an M2 Pro Mini, then you can get it shipped immediately because the base model for the M2 Pros have 16GB.

If you're willing to buy from a 3rd party vendor, there are some who keep upgraded models in stock and will deliver immediately. B&H is well known to stock even some of the highest spec'd models.
 
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OP:

Wait if you must, but DON'T buy a Mini with only 8gb of RAM.
If you do, you will come to regret your decision sooner rather than later.

Wait and get 16gb !!
 
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Either Apple produces more 8 gig models or the 16 gig models are in greater demand making waits longer. I suspect a bit of both.
 
BTO items often get marked with a two week wait when one orders, I gather from putting things in my Apple basket and from what people report.

As for 8GB - you might be someone for whom that is quite fine. Only you know for what you will use your Mac. If it is reading email or watching YouTube then 8GB is quite fine.
 
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picpicmac said:
BTO items often get marked with a two week wait when one orders, I gather from putting things in my Apple basket and from what people report.

As for 8GB - you might be someone for whom that is quite fine. Only you know for what you will use your Mac. If it is reading email or watching YouTube then 8GB is quite fine.
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Please just take this as just conversation. I sit in the camp where I would never* recommend any M chip Mac with just 8 gigs of RAM. There are loads of Macphiles, experts and those with long-term experience who too agree with my sentiments that 16 gigs should be the proper minimum standard. One might go to YouTube and simply type in "Is 8 gigs of RAM enough for a Mac" and see what comes up. Overwhelming the response to that would be 16 gigs would be the right option for typical users. Note that unified memory is not the same as "RAM" as we know from PCs and past Macs. My own take is that 8 gigs should be enough if there is good memory management. To date, we see items like Safari used and web pages demanding vast sums of memory rather than Safari or the OS creating real thresholds of how much RAM will be made available to a given page. I believe Opera or one other smaller known browser did have its own setting to do just that ... so it is possible to manage. Sometimes I have to smile as I talk about 8 and 16 gigs of RAM when I was, long ago, strutting and boasting because my x86 machine had 8 megs of RAM which was about twice as much as everyone else in those days and yes, 8 megs was expensive back then.
 
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Yes, I'm going to be patient if need be, purchase and wait for the 16GB.
 
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phrehdd said:
Overwhelming the response to that would be 16 gigs would be the right option for typical users.
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Responses... from whom? Many YouTube Content Creators have made videos pointing out that 8GB base models are fine for people who want computers to do daily driving tasks, such as checking email and surfing YouTube.

My own experience tells me that, too. Really.

There is a corner of the computer using population that goes on crusades against some technological offering. One of those crusades is against Apple and their base configurations. Even though Lenovo, HP, and Dell (the other three major brands) have exactly the same base level configs in many of their models, for some reason it is a great "scam" (at term thrown around greatly) that Apple does it.

So I maintain that 8GB is enough for a great share of the population. I can write that confidently because most people do not do software development in which they need to run emulators, nor do they do 8k video editing, nor are they trying to host some LLM on their machine, and so on (please see my signature line.)

I am in the market for a new Mac. I will buy one with more than 8GB of RAM. I will do so because I know what what I want to do, and have experience doing it. (Including some programming to process large data sets, and document production with very large image files, etc.) My uses are simply not what most people do.

The OP's key post confesses confusion over the issue of RAM, and that is unfortunate. This is become a bit of a soap-box for me, which I had not expected until I started reading forums in prep for my upcoming purchase. I find these discussions over RAM much more telling about the die-hard computer hobbyists than telling about Apple, Inc.
 
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My thing with the 8Gb vs 16Gb is that I currently have a 2015 Intel with 16GB. When I bought it, I had gone with 8, and after projects in Logic kept overloading the CPU and freezing, I added the other 8, and everything has run beautifully since. Therefore, buying a Mac Mini 2 w/ 8 has given me a great deal of pause.
 
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Highway61 said:
My thing with the 8Gb vs 16Gb is that I currently have a 2015 Intel with 16GB. When I bought it, I had gone with 8, and after projects in Logic kept overloading the CPU and freezing, I added the other 8, and everything has run beautifully since. Therefore, buying a Mac Mini 2 w/ 8 has given me a great deal of pause.
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I'm pretty sure that @picpicmac isn't trying to convince you that you only need 8GB, especially now that we know that you plan on running Logic Pro. Rather the point is that 8GB is more capable than people realize, especially if it's an 8GB M-chip.

The way you started this thread may have thrown some people off too. If having to wait a couple of weeks was enough to persuade you to get a base model, you just might be the kind of person who would be fine with it.

Could you run Logic Pro on 8GB? Sure. SHOULD you? Probably not.

I've had to live off of 8GB loaner machines a couple of times the past few years. One was an 8GB Intel MBA and one was an 8GB M1 13" MBP.

The Intel MBA really struggled. Living on that would be inconvenient for me, but not impossible. The M1 on the other hand worked so well that I seriously considered keeping it and selling my 32GB 2018 i7 Vega20 MBP. It wouldn't have been ideal, but it would have been fine for the 6-12 months I was trying to bridge until the M1 Pro laptops were released.
 
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smirking said:
I'm pretty sure that @picpicmac isn't trying to convince you that you only need 8GB, especially now that we know that you plan on running Logic Pro. Rather the point is that 8GB is more capable than people realize, especially if it's an 8GB M-chip.
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Yes. And by having a specific application in mind, Logic Pro, the user already will know the requirement for that. Logic Pro may be used by a considerable number of people, but that number is still a small fraction of all Mac users.

People who are really into their computer systems and post on forums dedicated to such are not the typical buyer (see my signature line.)

Professional audio and certainly professional video tools are RAM hogs. But most buyers of Macs do not produce music or video professionally.

My own experience, going all the way back to the Amiga 1000, in trying to do video clips or audio clips has taught me that such applications are the primary reason most computer buyers will want more RAM. I remember struggling with video and music applications. Audio and Video creation are the most likely uses of a computer that do call for spec bumps.

Even many software developers never needed a great deal of RAM. With people today trying to play with LLMs and running massive Python menageries of code there is a sense that SW developers need lots of RAM, and that is true for some developers, sure, but a great many students can get by with what is sold off-the-shelf in Apple stores.
 
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