The new Mac mini is almost certainly coming

[Boil]

Duo & Quadra is what most folks seems to agree on, as they are old Macintosh models, last century stuff...!

Quadro won't work because that is the Nvidia workstation lineup moniker...?

Quattro is an Audi automobile...

But Apple could just say, "Introducing the all-new Apple silicon Mac Pro Cube with up to four M1 Max SoCs...!"

 

[EugW]

Duo & Quadra is what most folks seems to agree on, as they are old Macintosh models, last century stuff...!

Quadro won't work because that is the Nvidia workstation lineup moniker...?

Quattro is an Audi automobile...

But Apple could just say, "Introducing the all-new Apple silicon Mac Pro Cube with up to four M1 Max SoCs...!"

Yeah, I remember the Quadra, and re-using that old Mac name is what I was thinking (although I misremembered it as Quadro in previous posts). I forgot about the Duo though. Makes sense.

I'd love to see them show the original Quadra in a 2022 keynote, as a preamble to the intro of the new M1 Max Quadra.

 

[Boyd01]

I had a Duo 210 back in the 90's, I just loved that little computer, it was so small and light for its day. What really impressed me was that it was just as fast as my Macintosh IIcx. I used to carry it to work in a padded manilla shipping envelope (long before Steve Jobs pulled a MacBook Air out of an envelope, LOL). That tiny grayscale screen was pretty bad, but that didn't bother me much back then.

My boss (a computer phobe) thought it was so cool that he asked me to set him up with one. Since he could afford it, I got him a Duo 230 and the DuoDock so he could use it on his desk with a big monitor and ethernet connection.

Then my (ex) brother-in-law, who was pretty affluent, got a Duo 280c with a color screen. I was so jealous! They were really impressive computers in their day. But IMO it would make no sense to name a desktop computer after them, in fact I'd consider it rather disrespectful of their history. The whole point of the "Duo" name was that it could be either a laptop or a desktop when slid into the dock.

 

[Boil]

...it could be either a laptop or a desktop when slid into the dock.

Makes me think of the rumor of an Apple laptop docking into an Apple flat-panel monitor, I want to say it was around the same time the iPad was nothing but a rumor...?

 

[trickster is meaningless]

Motion Design inside After Effects.
Now I know technically a Windows PC is better for this use (and a lot cheaper), however I use a computer both for my personal and professional life and I highly prefer macOS.

One IMMENSE benefit of going the Windows way is that a great work machine is also an amazing gaming machine, and by going the mac way I'm sacrificing quite a lot, but in the end it is still worth it.

I don’t blame you, I would prefer something where I’m comfortable with the whole OS over other stuff. I’m always interested in how people are using the machines. I dabbled with a hackintosh last year because I was building a Linux box and cherry picking the right components made little difference to the price. I’ve left it dual booting as it’s unbelievably stable. It’s just too power hungry for an always on machine.

M1 Max RAM is not on-chip. Not for M1 Pro 16 GB either, or even for M1 8 GB for that matter.

And I’d be shocked if there was a discrete GPU.

Apologies, I meant on package. I was getting mixed up because the diagram I was looking at misses the word “controller” on the RAM interface.

I think the GPU will have to be discrete for the highest end as the only people I know who use Mac Pro’s change the graphics cards far more frequently than anything else as it’s the faster accelerating tech.

Me too, however one would expect a new shiny mac pro to be potentially more powerful than the previous generation's top of the line and even if Apple made a Quad-M1 Max system (which would be a beast don't get me wrong), it would allow a maximum of 256GB of ram, while the current mac Pro can exceed 1TB.
Eventually Apple has to allow some integration with external GPUs (and other PCI-Express accessories), because the mac pro doesn't make sense any other way.

I imagine apple want to lock the whole system down to be apple hardware, but it seems like a huge jump from where they are at the moment, unless they are going to have a few aces up their sleeves.

I agree about the Mac Pro needing the more open architecture with RAM and PCIE etc otherwise they lose the modularity they were so keen to underline when it was launched. The M1 was almost certainly well on the cards by then. Even the guys at Linus Tech Tips seemed impressed with Mac Pro’s design, upgradability and modularity.

Makes me think of the rumor of an Apple laptop docking into an Apple flat-panel monitor, I want to say it was around the same time the iPad was nothing but a rumor...?

I remember that well! I hoped something like that would happen when TB3 started catching on as the bandwidth allowed for a more modular system. I seem to remember the patent having a laptop slot into the iMac-like display, which in practise would have probably been a disaster. The holy grail of extensible computing is a long way away still.

 

[Neodym]

Eventually Apple has to allow some integration with external GPUs (and other PCI-Express accessories), because the mac pro doesn't make sense any other way.

„Making sense“ is not always Apple‘s forte …

 

[JippaLippa]

„Making sense“ is not always Apple‘s forte …

As much as it pains me to, I gotta agree 😅

 

[MajorFubar]

I cba to wait for Apple to put chips they already have in production (M1 Pro/Max) into the Mac Mini form factor, so likely enough I will instead buy just a regular 1TB 16GB M1 Mini and keep it until it is obsolete, like I did with my 2011 iMac and my 2012 MPB. It's going to be so far ahead of the ten year old Macs I currently own to not matter that it hasn't got the the latest and greatest chips.

Apple's glacial sluggishness in dripfeeding their technologies down through their product lines without the preface of some televised fanfare means they will lose the few hundred quid difference they would otherwise have got from an amateur musician and 'bedroom producer' in north west England, but I doubt that will keep Tim awake at night.

I'll supplement it with a similarly specified MBA and be done until they launch a computer with the M12 Quadra Max Plus Pro with 4TB unified RAM

 

[Maximara]

Me too, however one would expect a new shiny mac pro to be potentially more powerful than the previous generation's top of the line and even if Apple made a Quad-M1 Max system (which would be a beast don't get me wrong), it would allow a maximum of 256GB of ram, while the current mac Pro can exceed 1TB.
Eventually Apple has to allow some integration with external GPUs (and other PCI-Express accessories), because the mac pro doesn't make sense any other way.

I have to ask just what requires 1TB of RAM?! Thanks to the way the M1 handles RAM you don't have the CPU RAM GPU RAM two step shuffle reducing the need for such huge amounts of game. People are still thinking of the Mac's future as if it was still doing Intel. Past a certain point more RAM doesn't speed things up. Then there is the DDR4 to DDR5 transition which is going to shake things up some more.

 

[EugW]

I have to ask just what requires 1TB of RAM?! Thanks to the way the M1 handles RAM you don't have the CPU RAM GPU RAM two step shuffle reducing the need for such huge amounts of game. People are still thinking of the Mac's future as if it was still doing Intel. Past a certain point more RAM doesn't speed things up. Then there is the DDR4 to DDR5 transition which is going to shake things up some more.

The M1 architecture reduces RAM access time, but it does not reduce the need for RAM. It can hide the need for RAM better, but it doesn't actually reduce its need. If you are at the point where memory pressure is an issue, the M1 will handle it better, but that is still not a recommended situation.

 

[Neodym]

I have to ask just what requires 1TB of RAM?! Thanks to the way the M1 handles RAM you don't have the CPU RAM GPU RAM two step shuffle reducing the need for such huge amounts of game. People are still thinking of the Mac's future as if it was still doing Intel. Past a certain point more RAM doesn't speed things up. Then there is the DDR4 to DDR5 transition which is going to shake things up some more.

3D objects and ever-increasing resolutions in general fill up the Ram. No matter how good the M1 may handle memory - sometimes you simply need all that Ram for lots of data points. Granted - 1 TB is only relevant for quite extreme scenarios, like e.g. scientific calculations, but the MacPro is the official top dog in Apple‘s portfolio, so it has to be prepared for more demanding tasks than Joe Doe cutting his homemade videos … ;-)

 

[MarkC426]

Seconding above comments....
Working with 3D animation, as much as people 'sing praise' at GPU rendering, it is limited to the max gpu ram.
Working with fluid dynamics for example can quickly use up all gpu ram, so bags of 'standard' ram and cpu cores are needed.

 

[Boil]

l would expect Apple to be one of the first to market with LPDDR5X in the Apple silicon Mac Pro...

Maybe not for the M1 Max-powered models, but for the M2 Max-powered Mac Pro...

LPDDR5X is pin compatible with LPDDR5...

Up to 1TB RAM & 2TB/s UMA bandwidth for a quad Mn Max model...?

But it will be stupid expensive...!

 

[EntropyQ3]

Seconding above comments....
Working with 3D animation, as much as people 'sing praise' at GPU rendering, it is limited to the max gpu ram.
Working with fluid dynamics for example can quickly use up all gpu ram, so bags of 'standard' ram and cpu cores are needed.

In my field, the codes that are ”GPU accellerated” are actually often better described as scaling with bandwidth rather than FLOPs, it’s just that GPUs have given access to high bandwidth (and of course the FLOPs to saturate it) easily and cheaply. There are things I’d be very curious to see up and running on Apple Silicon.

 

[troop231]

Wanted to join in on this thread. I look forward to an M1 Max Mac mini or whatever Apple has in mind!

Currently have an aging late 2013 15" MacBook Pro that has had the battery replaced twice DIY (and thermal paste redone two or three times). Honestly, has been a great machine and is able to run dual 4K monitors @60 Hz; way more than it probably was ever designed to do. It just chugs away even though it is showing its age.

I can't wait to replace a nearly decade old laptop with a modern Mac mini!

 

[now i see it]

Wanted to join in on this thread.

You can check in any time you like… but you can never leave.

 

[Basic75]

Me too, however one would expect a new shiny mac pro to be potentially more powerful than the previous generation's top of the line and even if Apple made a Quad-M1 Max system (which would be a beast don't get me wrong), it would allow a maximum of 256GB of ram, while the current mac Pro can exceed 1TB.

What if they configure the RAM attached to the four M1 Max chips as additional per-chip cache layer and add another unified off-package tier of RAM as system memory and make that scale way up?

 

[Boil]

What if they configure the RAM attached to the four M1 Max chips as additional per-chip cache layer and add another unified off-package tier of RAM as system memory and make that scale way up?

• LPDDR5X
• Up to 64GB chips
• Up to 1TB RAM in quad Mn Max SoC configuration
• 33% faster than LPDDR5
• 20% lower power usage than LPDDR5
• Pin compatible with current LPDDR5

Dual (possible Quad) M1 Max will have "low" RAM limits (128GB/256GB), but when LPDDR5X becomes available in volume, Apple could spec bump the M1 Max-powered Mac Pro, or hold the LPDDR5X for M2 (or M3) Max powered Mac Pro models...

 

[eelpout]

Duo & Quadra is what most folks seems to agree on, as they are old Macintosh models, last century stuff...!

heh, yep. I still have an old Quadra 900 prototype sitting in my office from back in the day.

 

[arvinsim]

Anyone care to guess how much the new Mac Mini will cost assuming that it will get the same M1 Pro/Max chips as the Macbooks?

 

[EugW]

Anyone care to guess how much the new Mac Mini will cost assuming that it will get the same M1 Pro/Max chips as the Macbooks?

Several guesstimates have already been posted in this thread, particularly right after the M1 Pro/Max MBP pricing came out.

 

[Boil]

M1 Pro Mac Mini:

• 8-core CPU (6P/2E)
• 14-core GPU
• 16GB RAM
• 512GB SSD

Could be the same as the current Intel Mac mini, $1100, could be a hundred bucks more, could be a hundred bucks less...?

After that, referring to the upgrade costs from the base 14" MBP, the following:

• 10-core CPU (8P/2E)
• 32-core GPU
• 64GB RAM
• 1TB SSD

Would be a $1700 upgrade charge, and another hundred bucks for 10Gb Ethernet...

So US$3k (before taxes) for the configuration in my sig...?

 

[Jorbanead]

Anyone care to guess how much the new Mac Mini will cost assuming that it will get the same M1 Pro/Max chips as the Macbooks?

I did already:

I took a stab at possible M1 Pro/Max Mac mini prices based on the Macbook Pro upgrade prices. Since the current i5 model starts at $1,099 but only comes with 8GB of ram, I added $200 to the base price. Of course, Apple could surprise us and knock $100 off like they did with the M1 mini, but I'd rather assume the worst and be surprised. All configs below have the baseline 512GB of SSD as well.

	M1 Pro	M1 Pro	M1 Pro	M1 Pro	M1 Pro	M1 Pro	M1 Max	M1 Max	M1 Max	M1 Max
CPU	8 Core	8 Core	10 Core	10 Core	10 Core	10 Core	10 Core	10 Core	10 Core	10 Core
GPU	14 Core	14 Core	14 Core	14 Core	16 Core	16 Core	24 Core	24 Core	32 Core	32 Core
RAM	16GB	32GB	16GB	32GB	16GB	32GB	32GB	64GB	32GB	64GB
Macbook Pro	$1,999.00	$2,399.00	$2,199.00	$2,599.00	$2,299.00	$2,699.00	$2,899.00	$3,299.00	$3,099.00	$3,499.00
Mac Mini	$1,299.00	$1,699.00	$1,499.00	$1,899.00	$1,599.00	$1,999.00	$2,199.00	$2,599.00	$2,399.00	$2,799.00

Edit: Had wrong core count

 

[arvinsim]

@Boil @Jorbanead Thanks for the estimates. Seems that the price is very reasonable indeed!

 

[farciar]

Hi folks!

It seems like Mac Mini M1Pro/Max is coming this spring and Mac Mini M2 in the fall.

Do you know if both versions will get the new design? I am awaiting plexiglass as I think it will eliminate all WiFi/Bluetooth issues the full aluminum body box has.

I wonder if the M2 chip will get the possibility to configure it with >16GB of RAM and whether it will get the armv9 arch. If M2 can be configured with 32GB I guess it will be a tempting option to choose over M1Pro for some people.