The new Mac mini is almost certainly coming

[iAssimilated]

If you have a GPU card (ideally a recent AMD model) lying around, I can recommend the Razor Core X: (Comparably) Inexpensive, no frills housing with integrated 650W PSU and a clever and very comfortable slide-out mechanism, built like a tank, fully Plug-and-Play. IIRC it’s even in Apple’s list of officially recommended eGPU housings. Only drawback: It’s huge!

Sidenote: If you need (driver) support for older AMD cards or nVidia cards in general, I had good experiences with Kryptonite. Other tools exist, but Kryptonite seems the most recent and most system-friendly one.

Without that tool, BigSur did not recognize the installed card (in my case an older AMD model). The wiki on the linked Kryptonite site is a good start to read up about installation and supported cards.

I totally agree! I originally wanted the BlackMagic Pro, but couldn't justify the price at the time (Dec. 2018), so I went with an ASUS XG Station PRO and a Sapphire RX 580. Things were better, but a game I frequently played had some graphical fragments, so I upgraded to the Vega 56. I had a few power draw issues with the eGPU enclosure, so I got the Razor Core X. Ever since... happiness!

Is it bulky, definitely, but for what it provides it can be worth it.

 

[trickster is meaningless]

Hello all, is it not wise to buy a low end mac mini now?
My parents have a 2009 iMac as their tv / computer but it finally doesn't turn on anymore.
I have a 2015 iMac and I'm holding out for the iMac upgrade.
However, since my parents need a new mac, I'm thinking about buying a m1 mac mini and give them my iMac.
I'll consider upgrade again when the new iMac come out, so buying a low end mini is the best option?

There are fairly regular sales of the M1 Mac mini through third parties, as well as M1 Minis occasionally popping up as refurbs now. I don't know your iMac specs, but I imagine you'd notice a decent performance bump as well. Also, depending on how you feel about it, you could look for somewhere with an extended returns policy and hope the high end version comes out while you can return it.

 

[norwaypianoman]

Hello all, is it not wise to buy a low end mac mini now?
My parents have a 2009 iMac as their tv / computer but it finally doesn't turn on anymore.
I have a 2015 iMac and I'm holding out for the iMac upgrade.
However, since my parents need a new mac, I'm thinking about buying a m1 mac mini and give them my iMac.
I'll consider upgrade again when the new iMac come out, so buying a low end mini is the best option?

Watch the video of today about the Spring Event rumors from Macrumors:

 

[MarkC426]

Watch the video of today about the Spring Event rumors from Macrumors

The key-word here is 'rumors'.
There may be a good chance of the new mini arriving as rumoured, but at the end of the day Apple could wait another 6 months, nobody knows.
It's a wait, don't wait game depending how desperate you are.

 

[Boil]

Watch the video of today about the Spring Event rumors from Macrumors:

The Prosser render is hot garbage, there is zero proper airflow there, and they have removed the height needed to fit the blower fan & heat sink...

The key-word here is 'rumors'.
There may be a good chance of the new mini arriving as rumoured, but at the end of the day Apple could wait another 6 months, nobody knows.
It's a wait, don't wait game depending how desperate you are.

I highly doubt Apple would wait until the very tail end of the transition to switch over the Mac mini to the M1 Pro/Max SoCs; it makes the most sense to transition the 27" iMac & high-end Mac mini at the same time at a Spring Event, leaving only the ASi Mac Pro for WWDC this year...

---

I still believe Apple will have two distinct Mac mini models going forward; a smaller (slimmer, shorter, thinner, whatever...) model for the Mn-series SoCs, and the current chassis (maybe a design tweak here & there...) for the Mn Pro/Max-series SoCs...

The new low-end Mac mini will most likely have the external PSU/Ethernet combo; allowing a reduced size chassis & using economics of scale to bring down the cost of said external PSU for Apple...

The current chassis should keep the internal PSU; because it just makes sense, and because the various colocation sites that use tons of Mac mini units would surely appreciate it...

 

[norwaypianoman]

The key-word here is 'rumors'.
There may be a good chance of the new mini arriving as rumoured, but at the end of the day Apple could wait another 6 months, nobody knows.
It's a wait, don't wait game depending how desperate you are.

After watching it, I thought this:

My analysis:
This video was peculiarly short and poignant, is if it was made to end rumours, not to start them.
It was peculiarly clear, it just mentioned 4 things, likely to come up at an Spring Event.
It was peculiarly clear on details, the details seemed repeated with a strengthened focus, as if the first of the rumors web site - Macrumors - had been told slightly more, and this was more reliable.
And then the sound of the author just seemed different, trustworthy, confident. There just was not hidden intensions in the voice or script.

My conclusion: It works for me. I am confident, that we will be given a choice between the iMac 27 and an Pro version of Mac Mini at the same time this spring.

 

[MarkC426]

I agree, I think it is imminent, it was more of a reality check for others.

Not forgetting there is a global shortage of components etc (i.e. 2019mp is 7 weeks delivery).
Have Apple sourced the relevant parts required for any new Macs.

 

[coffee06]

I agree, I think it is imminent, it was more of a reality check for others.

Not forgetting there is a global shortage of components etc (i.e. 2019mp is 7 weeks delivery).
Have Apple sourced the relevant parts required for any new Macs.

While we are just guessing, in a time of shortage of components, it actually makes some sense to me for an upgraded mini with pro/max chip to come out at same time of iMac. Apple can still make some $$$ off us in a time of shortages. I’m sure iMac requires more parts and hence, is more likely to have bottlenecks in supply. But if those bottlenecks are on parts common between mini & iMac then I fear that better version of mini will be delayed yet again. Still, I think odds are on for upper mini soon.

 

[JippaLippa]

Ok, it has now been a month since I returned my M1 Max Mbpro, and I'm fully satisfied with my decision, having metabolised it.

So now it's almost exciting to be a part of the waiting game.
I'm honestly just waiting for months to pass and I'm genuinely excited that January is almost over.
If we'll get a High-End Mac Mini this late march, I fully expect some juicy rumours in February.

I'm also quite excited to see After Effects' development, and it's third party plugins, going so smoothly.
The Apple Silicon beta is now 100% usable for professional work (provided you don't need external plugins that still haven't been updated) and some plugins are being actively worked on.
ReVision's ReelSmart Motion Blur has been made compatible, and the Red Giant suites are been worked on too.
Spring will be an exciting time.

When it comes to this spring, I'll desperately need a new machine, therefore if Apple doesn't release the mini, I'll have to take the imac, but I'd rather not, as the mini-LED display, while amazing for HDR and Colour reproduction, has a horrible ghosting and it's a terrible fit for animation work (which is my livelyhood).

 

[norwaypianoman]

Ok, it has now been a month since I returned my M1 Max Mbpro, and I'm fully satisfied with my decision, having metabolised it.

...
If we'll get a High-End Mac Mini this late march, I fully expect some juicy rumours in February.
...
Spring will be an exciting time.

When it comes to this spring, I'll desperately need a new machine, therefore if Apple doesn't release the mini, I'll have to take the imac, but I'd rather not, as the mini-LED display, while amazing for HDR and Colour reproduction, has a horrible ghosting and it's a terrible fit for animation work (which is my livelyhood).

Interesting that you returned them. They seemed to be the same price as a Mac Pro.

I would definately want a Mac Mini Pro in Spring, and the ability to have 4 TB SSD or 2 TB.

I think that the iMac would have the same price as the Macbook Pro 16 ?

And I think the Mac Pro would cost too much for me, to have 2 TB and 32 RAM ?

So I am pretty much gambling on the Mac Mini Pro. And having the Mac Pro as a second. And the Macbook Pro as a third.

 

[Boil]

I think that the iMac would have the same price as the Macbook Pro 16 ?

If the new ASi 27" iMac (Pro) is going to have a Mini LED / ProMotion panel, then it will definitely cost more than the 16" ASi MacBook Pro...

 

[turbineseaplane]

There is just no depth in the M1 iMac case for an Ethernet port.

Weird…what company made the decision on the iMac case size?

Lol

 

[trickster is meaningless]

AppleInsider has an article about a more maxed M1 Max, an M1 Max Max, if you will. The current M1 Max will become the M1 Min Max. I look forward to buying my M1 Min Max Mac mini as I doubt we’d get the M1 Max Max Mac Mini.

Fourth M1 chip with 12-core CPU may arrive in updated iMac Pro

Fourth M1 chip with 12-core CPU may arrive in updated iMac Pro | AppleInsider

Apple may not be completely done with its M1 generation of Apple Silicon chips, with a leaker claiming one more configuration is on the way in an "iMac Pro"

appleinsider.com

 

[Boil]

AppleInsider has an article about a more maxed M1 Max, an M1 Max Max, if you will. The current M1 Max will become the M1 Min Max. I look forward to buying my M1 Min Max Mac mini as I doubt we’d get the M1 Max Max Mac Mini.

Fourth M1 chip with 12-core CPU may arrive in updated iMac Pro

Fourth M1 chip with 12-core CPU may arrive in updated iMac Pro | AppleInsider

Apple may not be completely done with its M1 generation of Apple Silicon chips, with a leaker claiming one more configuration is on the way in an "iMac Pro"

appleinsider.com

If the above is real, it would still fit with rumors/reports of a 20-core & 40-core CPU (dual & quad M1 Max SoCs), it would just be that the CPU core counts were for the Performance cores alone, not counting the Efficiency cores in the reported core count numbers...?

M1 Max - 10-core CPU (8P/2E)
Dual M1 Max - 20-core CPU (16P/4E)
Quad M1 Max - 40-core CPU (32P/8E)

M1 Max Plus - 12-core CPU (10P/2E)
Dual M1 Max Plus - 24-core CPU (20P/4E)
Quad M1 Max Plus - 48-core CPU (40P/8E)

Makes one wonder if Apple might intend to push the limit of how big a SoC they can produce, adding more GPU cores as well; maybe the added cores are Ray Tracing specific...? ;^p

 

[trickster is meaningless]

M1 Max - 10-core CPU (8P/2E)
Dual M1 Max - 20-core CPU (16P/4E)
Quad M1 Max - 40-core CPU (32P/8E)

M1 Max Plus - 12-core CPU (10P/2E)
Dual M1 Max Plus - 24-core CPU (20P/4E)
Quad M1 Max Plus - 48-core CPU (40P/8E)

I wonder if we’ll see fewer E cores on the big boys. If they’re destined for a desktop, it might make sense to have one E core per chip, or some chips with only P cores. Although I guess that won’t necessarily scale, but could be accounted for with binning maybe.

 

[Nütztjanix]

I do think that even on a desktop you‘ll make good use of one or two efficiency cores, for system and background usage such as fetching mail, keeping iCloud in sync and so on. Using a full blown performance core for such light tasks would be overkill.

 

[Jorbanead]

There were many articles that recently posted DylanDKT’s tweet about the iMac Pro - but I think some people missed where the same reliable leaker also confirmed the mac mini is coming at the next spring event:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1485311433793490953

He also says a redesign mini is coming:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1485311964616314886

 

[Freida]

nonsense - I've tried the miniLED MBP for animation work (my livelyhood) and its a non issue. Either you had a bad unit or you had wrong settings.

and it's a terrible fit for animation work (which is my livelyhood).

 

[trickster is meaningless]

I do think that even on a desktop you‘ll make good use of one or two efficiency cores, for system and background usage such as fetching mail, keeping iCloud in sync and so on. Using a full blown performance core for such light tasks would be overkill.

I completely agree. I was thinking about the expected architecture of the Duo/Quattro processors. If we have 2xM1 Max it would be a 16P 4E config, but perhaps there could be a parent/child processor config where one chip is 8P 2E and the other is 10P 0E but maybe with some extra ASIC blocks. This would get you to the 20cores, but with a higher P count.

The Quattro would either double this parent child to make 36P 4E or use 3 child processors to become 38P 2E.

Complete speculation, but I’m interested in how this plays out more from a curiosity point than anything I’ll be buying.

 

[EugW]

Are you guys and gals still talking about the Mac mini? Cuz I’m 100% convinced these Duo and Quadra chips will NOT appear in the Mac mini.

 

[Jorbanead]

Are you guys and gals still talking about the Mac mini? Cuz I’m 100% convinced these Duo and Quadra chips will NOT appear in the Mac mini.

I think people are just talking about the duo and quad chips. I don’t think anyone here expects these to appear in the mini.

But it is a little off topic in this thread.

 

[Neodym]

I think people are just talking about the duo and quad chips. I don’t think anyone here expects these to appear in the mini.

But it is a little off topic in this thread.

I’d say it depends whether the mini will stay roughly the same (form-factor-wise) or whether Apple may choose to diversify the product line. There’s still the off-chance that the rumored Mac Pro mini will in fact be a Mac mini Pro, i.e. a spiritual successor to the Cube, with a bigger-than-mini housing and at least _some_ expandability (Ram, SSD - perhaps even a single PCIe slot).

If that’d be the case, I could imagine duo and quad chips as BTO options. Apple could then make a single chip offer to ambitious hobbyists (aka Prosumers) with a relatively affordable base price, but also cater to a higher-endish target group who wants “a super-fast, super-quiet, super-computer in an eight! Inch! Cube!” (scnr;-)

Fun fact: The Cube was never officially discontinued!

 

[Jorbanead]

I’d say it depends whether the mini will stay roughly the same (form-factor-wise) or whether Apple may choose to diversify the product line. There’s still the off-chance that the rumored Mac Pro mini will in fact be a Mac mini Pro, i.e. a spiritual successor to the Cube, with a bigger-than-mini housing and at least _some_ expandability (Ram, SSD - perhaps even a single PCIe slot).

If that’d be the case, I could imagine duo and quad chips as BTO options. Apple could then make a single chip offer to ambitious hobbyists (aka Prosumers) with a relatively affordable base price, but also cater to a higher-endish target group who wants “a super-fast, super-quiet, super-computer in an eight! Inch! Cube!” (scnr;-)

Fun fact: The Cube was never officially discontinued!

That’s very true. I guess I had just been under the assumption the mini would stay the mini and the M1 Pro model would replace the i5 mini SKU, and the M1 Max would replace the i7 SKU.

I don’t care what they call it, I personally just want a headless desktop Mac that has an M1 Max, Ethernet, 4 TB ports and 2 USB-A ports. And I want it to be able to run at sustained full loads with zero thermal throttling.

 

[Boil]

While a HUGE Cube fan, I would rather my M1 Max-powered (single SoC) be in the current Mac mini chassis (a redesign which keeps the same footprint would be alright, and would most likely be appreciated by the assorted Mac mini based colocation folks), with a internal PSU...

Design a newer, smaller chassis (with a possible external power brick, possible Ethernet combo) for the Mn-series SoC powered models; and a Cube-influenced chassis for a multi-SoC Mac Pro...

 

[Neodym]

Design a newer, smaller chassis (with a possible external power brick, possible Ethernet combo) for the Mn-series SoC powered models; and a Cube-influenced chassis for a multi-SoC Mac Pro...

Probably they could pull it off to put the base M1 into an AppleTV-sized housing. But I'm not sure it'd be worth it: The internal PSU is one of the major selling points of the current mini design. And the required ports for a "true" computer would need more space than the few ports of an AppleTV.

And it would increase complexity for testing and logistics to have yet another variant, next to the existing chassis for M1Pro/Max (single) and a newly developed, maybe Cube-inspired case about the size of two or three minis stacked for the hypothetic Duo/Quad flavours. That would be a slippery slope, considering the reasons for Apple's near-bankruptcy back in the days before Jobs returned.

I'd prefer them to make better use of the space in the existing housing by e.g. adding 1-2 NVMe slots and perhaps even additional Ram slots, which may be slower than the on-chip solution they have right now, but could be populated by the users themselves. System could then prioritize internal Ram, but would have additional resources when required.

And perhaps make the internals better accessible by having all components on a tray that could be simply slid out. Kind of a modern-day reincarnation of the the Cube's core-on-a-handle approach. DISCLAIMER: Without Jobs at the helm, I think it's highly unlikely for Apple to be brave enough to develop unusual solutions like this.