The new Mac mini is almost certainly coming

[InuNacho]

I'm in pretty much the same place. But I also use Windows 10 in a Parallels VM and it works really well on my 2018 i7 Mini. Am running some pretty expensive GIS software and don't want an unsupported ARM version of Windows that isn't officially available from Microsoft. Furthermore, I run Mountain Lion and Sierra MacOS VM's that work really well with some very expensive legacy Mac software.

Before I retired, and for awhile afterwards, I was doing a lot of work with video in Final Cut Pro and audio in Logic Pro. Today.... not so much and my Intel Mini is more than adequate for that. The M1 machines would be a great choice is I still had those needs.

I will say however, the Studio does look like a good value and someday I may upgrade to one. Got my top-spec 2018 Mini from the refurb store in 2020, but it would have cost $3500 new. That would buy a pretty nice configuration of the Studio today.

I've considered a Snow Leopard VM on my Mini for PPC software but my Quicksilver that runs an older Nikon scanner handles all that old software pretty well. Someday I'll figure out how to screen share with OS 9 and control the batch scanner from my Mini.

I feel my 2018 Mini is more than adequate for my needs in terms of power. The eGPU really helps with the Affinity software suite. At some point I need to consolidate all my drives into a large Thunderbolt array but thats a project for another day.

The only real use for a M Mini or M computer I have at the moment is this large project I have coming up. I bought all of the photo TopazLabs software and have slowly working its magic on AI based upscaling of older digital photographs. The base 8GB M1 Mini would be a decent system to let it run all day with its low power consumption but at around $400 it is hard to justify. I can fit my old Mac Pro with a sub-$200 Nvidia Tesla and get far better performance.

 

[Neodym]

? According to others, the i7 Mac mini sounds like a vacuum cleaner at full load. eg. Check out the reports with Pro Tools 2021. Plus it throttles.

Can’t confirm the noise. Despite temperatures up around 95-100 Centigrades, iGPU hovering around 80-100% load and CPU around 75-85% on all cores, it’s only a very decent whoosh.

Maybe that changes with 100% constant load, but if the M1Max/Ultra would consume half the power of the i7, the cooling system ould have been more than sufficient.

 

[tubular]

Can’t confirm the noise. Despite temperatures up around 95-100 Centigrades, iGPU hovering around 80-100% load and CPU around 75-85% on all cores, it’s only a very decent whoosh.

That's the experience with mine. It definitely gets hot and bothered, and the fan noise is definitely noticeable, but not overpowering.

 

[CWallace]

Some part is missing in the puzzle here.

If the Ultra has a(n advertised) power consumption of 60 Watts and the current i7 consumes about twice that (Thanks Maximara, for collecting the numbers!) - why did Apple go to great lengths to develop that massive cooling system for the Studio, including a dedicated copper heat sink for the Ultra variant?

Since the Mac Studio is aimed at audio and video production, I presume those folks like quiet machines so Apple went overboard on cooling to ensure that even under sustained full loads the fans turn slow enough that the machine remains effectively silent.

Some folks are evidently saying the Max models with the aluminum heatsink is "loud", but I suppose it depends on the ambient noise and how they hear as we have had folks who noted the iMac at 1200RPM was loud to them when I can't hear mine until it is well over 2000RPM.

They did the same with the original iMac Pro, which owners noted was effectively silent under even full CPU and GPU loads when performing audio and video work.

 

[Neodym]

The base 8GB M1 Mini would be a decent system to let it run all day with its low power consumption but at around $400 it is hard to justify. I can fit my old Mac Pro with a sub-$200 Nvidia Tesla and get far better performance.

Energy must be cheap at your place. Running an old MacPro (under even partial load) with dedicated graphic card 24/7 would make the purchase of an M1 mini for $400 a no-brainer at the energy prices over here.

 

[EugW]

Can’t confirm the noise. Despite temperatures up around 95-100 Centigrades, iGPU hovering around 80-100% load and CPU around 75-85% on all cores, it’s only a very decent whoosh.

Maybe that changes with 100% constant load, but if the M1Max/Ultra would consume half the power of the i7, the cooling system ould have been more than sufficient.

That's the experience with mine. It definitely gets hot and bothered, and the fan noise is definitely noticeable, but not overpowering.

What are you guys doing with it? The complaints I've seen were from for example those using Pro Tools with near max load for extended periods, or else those doing YouTube streaming.

Granted, those are activities where any significant fan noise would be a problem.

As for my 2017 Core i7 iMac, I just hated the noise, and I don't do anything where silence is mission critical. I replaced it with a 2017 i5 and was much happier.

With my video encoding test, the Core i7 iMac hit max fan noise in about 30 seconds. IIRC, the Core i5 took 9.5 minutes to hit max fan noise (slowly and gradually increasing fan speed before hitting that max). The i5 took about 25% longer to encode the same video, but given that it took about 12.5 minutes to encode, that meant it was silent to relatively quiet for the vast majority of the time. In contrast, the i7 was at max fan noise for almost the entire encode.

Since the Mac Studio is aimed at audio and video production, I presume those folks like quiet machines so Apple went overboard on cooling to ensure that even under sustained full loads the fans turn slow enough that the machine remains effectively silent.

Some folks are evidently saying the Max models with the aluminum heatsink is "loud", but I suppose it depends on the ambient noise and how they hear as we have had folks who noted the iMac at 1200RPM was loud to them when I can't hear mine until it is well over 2000RPM.

They did the same with the original iMac Pro, which owners noted was effectively silent under even full CPU and GPU loads when performing audio and video work.

IMO, in more recent times, the Intel iMac was built for the i5. The i7 required iMac Pro level cooling. I was hopeful that the iMac Pro's cooling would trickle down to the iMac, but that never happened. I suspect instead Apple chose to implement that level of quietness for cooling in the Mac Studio instead.

My belief is that the M1 Pro will appear in the Mac mini, but with at best incrementally improved cooling, meaning that it may not be the best at controlling fan noise.

 

[Boil]

My belief is that the M1 Pro will appear in the Mac mini, but with at best incrementally improved cooling, meaning that it may not be the best at controlling fan noise.

Hopefully M1 Pro (M2 Pro, more likely...?) will get dropped into the current Mac mini chassis, with an updated active cooling solution...!

Otherwise, seems like the Mac Studio chassis is the perfect chassis for the M1 Max SoC...!

 

[sublunar]

Apple has Mac mini power consumption and thermal output (BTU) information and you can see how much of a wattage/kilojoule cut the Mini got:

Mac mini (2018) 3.2GHz 6-core Intel Core i7, 64GB 2666MHz DDR4, 2TB SSD, Intel UHD Graphics 630: 19.9 W; 122 W; 68 BTU/h; 417 BTU/h

Mac mini (M1, 2020) Apple M1 chip, 16GB unified memory, 2TB SSD: 6.8 W; 39 W; 23.2 BTU/h; 133 BTU/h

To put that in prospective: "The M1 Ultra also delivers all this power from an advertised power consumption of 60 watts" - First Apple M1 Ultra benchmarks show off awesome power

? According to others, the i7 Mac mini sounds like a vacuum cleaner at full load. eg. Check out the reports with Pro Tools 2021. Plus it throttles.

BTW, not a recent Mac mini but I bought a 2017 i7 iMac and decided in the first week to return it, specifically because of fan noise.

I think we can conclude from my quote from Linus Tech Tips that the M1 Ultra draws too much power for the Mini power supply to cope with (presumably at full tilt).

For marketing reasons (and optics) I'd also suggest that M1 Max won't be an option in the Mini either - by my calculations and based on a power draw of 65-70w (half that of the M1 Ultra) I'd say it's going to be too harsh in a Mini form factor. That and Apple wouldn't want buyers thinking that they could save $500 by specifying the M1 Max in a Mini size enclosure and get the same experience.

The low power draw is the reason why the M1 Mini is apparently practically silent in a Mini case which is over engineered for the power draw and TDP (thermal design power - the measure of cooling recommended by Intel). This in itself is a great buy for buyers who value silence from their PCs.

In the old Jony Ive days, if Apple were making an M1 Mini he'd be all over making a super-thin minimalist enclosure if Apple were doing an Mx class case for the Mini. That said, Apple could now keep the same case knowing an M1 Pro mini should sell like hotcakes with the Mac Studio above it and potentially a Mac Nano below it.

They could equally save even more money and keep the same case and keep the two colour schemes (silver for M2 this year, space grey for M1 Pro) and just refresh the relevant one year by year.

 

[Boil]

They could equally save even more money and keep the same case and keep the two colour schemes (silver for M2 this year, space grey for M1 Pro) and just refresh the relevant one year by year.

That would be cool, but would Apple do the same (Silver / Space Gray color options) for the M1 Max / M1 Ultra Mac Studio models...?

 

[eelpout]

the 2018 i7 Mini does sound like a little vacuum under load. run the Cinebench r23 multicore test for a while and you'll see (or rather "hear"). Or, on mine anyway, simply let Google Chrome Helper run rampant and watch the fan quickly go to 4200 RPM .

I don't think Apple would have any problem fitting an M1 Pro in the current chassis given the package size. That chip and 32GB of RAM in a Mini would make a lot of people content.

But no, they instead want people to make the jump from a Mac Mini 16GB/1TB at $1299 to a Mac Studio (Max) 32GB/1TB at $2199. There's a HUGE hole there no matter how many fan boys want to say it's worth the cost.

(and given that we now know that Apple has locked out the possibility of aftermarket home upgradable SSD's for the Studio, thanks Luke Miani, it makes the Studio less appealing)

 

[gusping]

the 2018 i7 Mini does sound like a little vacuum under load. run the Cinebench r23 multicore test for a while and you'll see (or rather "hear"). Or, on mine anyway, simply let Google Chrome Helper run rampant and watch the fan quickly go to 4200 RPM .

I don't think Apple would have any problem fitting an M1 Pro in the current chassis given the package size. That chip and 32GB of RAM in a Mini would make a lot of people content.

But no, they instead want people to make the jump from a Mac Mini 16GB/1TB at $1299 to a Mac Studio (Max) 32GB/1TB at $2199. There's a HUGE hole there no matter how many fan boys want to say it's worth the cost.

(and given that we now know that Apple has locked out the possibility of aftermarket home upgradable SSD's for the Studio, thanks Luke Miani, it makes the Studio less appealing)

Agree with everything you said. It's odd. Gurman has said several times he thinks the M2 Pro will go in the Mac mini (in his newsletter and the other day in the Macbreak weekly podcast). If that does come true, it'll be a mystery to me why the M1 Pro was skipped....

 

[Tagbert]

Agree with everything you said. It's odd. Gurman has said several times he thinks the M2 Pro will go in the Mac mini (in his newsletter and the other day in the Macbreak weekly podcast). If that does come true, it'll be a mystery to me why the M1 Pro was skipped....

It might be a supply issue. The new MBPs were released this past winter and have been supply constrained ever since. Since the M1 Pro is the cheapest chip on the MBP it is most likely the highest seller. Apple may be reserving supply of the M1 Pro for the MBPs. Once supply catches up, they could add a BTO option for M1 Pro later to either the Mini or the Mac Studio or they may wait until they are doing M2 updates.

 

[sublunar]

Agree with everything you said. It's odd. Gurman has said several times he thinks the M2 Pro will go in the Mac mini (in his newsletter and the other day in the Macbreak weekly podcast). If that does come true, it'll be a mystery to me why the M1 Pro was skipped....

I would say supply of chips might be the issue, secondarily it might be down to pent up demand for a headless Mac now forcing lots of people in the market for headless machine and willing to pay 2k to get something with a bit more horsepower than a mini. After all, benchmarks are in Mac Pro territory while costing a third of the price depending on the usage.

once the people who can afford the Mac Studio, even through gritted teeth, have got one Apple could then drop an M2 Pro mini at some point next year and bring that product back. This would be after a multicolour radio translucent M2 nano is brought out later this year.

 

[George Dawes]

It’s probably also because a m1pro 32 gb ram mini would make the studio look overpriced and pointless , that’d hurt sales / profit

 

[Neodym]

It’s probably also because a m1pro 32 gb ram mini would make the studio look overpriced and pointless , that’d hurt sales / profit

An M1Pro 32GB mini would be closer to the Studio than today‘s minis, so the gap would be significantly smaller. Besides, if the M1Pro would heat up the mini‘s housing close to what the 2018 i7 mini can „accomplish“ or would have to throttle to avoid that, I’d take the M1Max Studio over the mini any day!

P.S.: VH rock! 🤘

 

[InuNacho]

Energy must be cheap at your place. Running an old MacPro (under even partial load) with dedicated graphic card 24/7 would make the purchase of an M1 mini for $400 a no-brainer at the energy prices over here.

We have solar panels on the roof at my family business' warehouse. Almost free electricity!

 

[sublunar]

An M1Pro 32GB mini would be closer to the Studio than today‘s minis, so the gap would be significantly smaller. Besides, if the M1Pro would heat up the mini‘s housing close to what the 2018 i7 mini can „accomplish“ or would have to throttle to avoid that, I’d take the M1Max Studio over the mini any day!

P.S.: VH rock! 🤘

Would only be $300 less than a mac studio which likely has better cooling and I/O. Perhaps better wireless if apple reuse the 2018 mini case. That’s where Apple would look to upsell, but first they’d definitely want to capture the pent up demand with the only game in town at the moment.

 

[Neodym]

We have solar panels on the roof at my family business' warehouse. Almost free electricity!

… except at night times and (partly) cloudy weather But surely nice for 10-12/7/365

 

[EugW]

 

[Neodym]

View attachment 1979496

I’d easily accept twice the height of the Studio to get a Cube-like accessibility (again). Maybe next time …

 

[Royksöpp]

I’d easily accept twice the height of the Studio to get a Cube-like accessibility (again). Maybe next time …

 

[staypuftforums]

We can look back to PowerPC support when the shift to Intel happened. Snow Leopard (August 28, 2009) was when direct PowerPC support ended (Rosetta lasted until Lion) and the first Intel Mac were publicly available January 2006.

The difference between then and now is the refurb store where Macs as old as five years old (2017) which is less than the oldest Macs (2015) that can run Monterey (2022). I think the existence of the refurb store will keep Intel support longer than seen with PowerPC though a cut off at 2025 does seem likely as by that time the only Mac via the refurb store will be M1 and later.

I don’t think apple cares about refurbs at all. They sold the 2012 MacBook Pro forever (at minimum until 2017). And it got cut off from support only 2 years later. Catalina was the last update for that machine.

 

[sublunar]

… except at night times and (partly) cloudy weather But surely nice for 10-12/7/365

Not if you have a battery to store for daytime use. 😀

I don’t think apple cares about refurbs at all. They sold the 2012 MacBook Pro forever (at minimum until 2017). And it got cut off from support only 2 years later. Catalina was the last update for that machine.

The infamous 2012 MacBook Pro was retired in October 2016, official support would have expired in 2021 by that measure. If I am correct my 2012 mini should get the last of the Catalina security updates in October this year because Apple support OSes for 2 years after they are no longer current.

On a technicality the 2012 MacBook Pro squeezes by.

 

[Maximara]

I don’t think apple cares about refurbs at all. They sold the 2012 MacBook Pro forever (at minimum until 2017). And it got cut off from support only 2 years later. Catalina was the last update for that machine.

The OS after Catalina (October 7, 2019, last patch March 14, 2022) was Big Sur (November 12, 2020), Since Catalina is still getting patches, the 2012 MacBook Pro did not get "cut off from support"; rather it didn't get access to OSes newer than Catalina — big difference.

I would say 10 years of support brand new (2012 to 2022) and 5 years as refurb (2017-2022) is well within reason. In the computer world that is an eternity. That is on par with what Microsoft does with its OS.

 

[staypuftforums]

Not if you have a battery to store for daytime use. 😀

The infamous 2012 MacBook Pro was retired in October 2016, official support would have expired in 2021 by that measure. If I am correct my 2012 mini should get the last of the Catalina security updates in October this year because Apple support OSes for 2 years after they are no longer current.

On a technicality the 2012 MacBook Pro squeezes by.

Yes, but they sold it in the refurb store well into 2017, if not 2018. Someone who purchased it refurbished would have received 1 OS update (meaning a new version of MacOS and that's it).