You are right. But why would Apple make a Mac mini with Mx Pro or Mx Max SoCs, that would eat into the sells of the Mac Studio series?
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The new Mac mini is almost certainly coming
- Thread starter GabrieleR
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The M1pro is not avail in the studio, so an M1pro mini would fill a slot perfectly.
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I always scratch my head at this kind of argument, first of all, the M1pro is not avail in the studio, so a Mini with the M1pro would not directly compete.
But more to the point, by that argument, the M1max in the 14" and 16" macbook pros supposedly 'eats' into sales of an M1max studio, since you can always use your laptop as a desktop with the studio display.
And by the way, the studio is definitely 'eating' into sales of the current Mac Pro, so apple clearly does not - and should not - design their lineup to avoid 'eating' into sales of one model or another.
I understand where you're coming from, but to be honest I no longer see much point in the M1 Pro Mac mini. While there is a significant gap between the M1 Mac mini and the M1 Max Mac Studio, M2 fills that gap very, very nicely.
M2 includes several improvements over M1 that fits that middle ground, namely: LPDDR5 memory support with vastly improved memory bandwidth, 24 GB RAM support (for much less cost than the upgrade to 32 GB with M1 Pro), vastly improved GPU performance, and hardware 8K ProRes encode and decode acceleration.
While I had predicted some of these improvements, I hadn't predicted the 24 GB option for various reasons. With the hat-trick of 24 GB RAM, better GPU, and ProRes acceleration, this fits the bill for the vast majority of this mid-tier category.
If Apple actually does release an M2 Mac mini with 24 GB RAM option, I see the people who actually "need" M1 Pro in a similar package being a very small niche, and a niche that I just don't see Apple supporting. It has to do with pricing.
Mac mini <-- I'd consider this.
M2
16 GB RAM
512 GB SSD
Gigabit Ethernet
US$1299
Mac mini <-- I'd also consider this.
M2
16 GB RAM
1 TB SSD
Gigabit Ethernet
US$1499
Mac mini
M2
24 GB RAM
512 GB SSD
Gigabit Ethernet
US$1499
Mac mini <-- This is also an option, but I don't actually need this, and the cost is getting quite high.
M2
24 GB RAM
1 TB SSD
Gigabit Ethernet
US$1699
Mac mini
M2
24 GB RAM
1 TB SSD
10 Gigabit Ethernet
US$1799
Mac Studio
M1 Max
32 GB RAM
512 GB SSD
10 Gigabit Ethernet
US$1999
Mac Studio
M1 Max
32 GB RAM
1 TB SSD
10 Gigabit Ethernet
US$1999
I think a bigger concern for some people perhaps is not whether or not it has M2 vs. M1 Pro, but how many ports it has.
Apple marketing wise tends to look forward. The M1 Pro was used in the MBP 14" and 16" and I doubt they would want to release a Mini with the M1 Pro. It's more likely since it's Apple's budget Mac they will update it with the M2. Besides an M1 Pro Mini would compete with the Mac Studio which has a base price 3x that of the current base Mini.
If you bump the specs on the mini but not the Studio, you make the gap look smaller than it really is.
The M1 mini I'd buy, if I had to buy an M1 mini today, is a BTO at $1300. That's base model with the low-hanging fruit gathered -- one $200 bump apiece on RAM and SSD.
The Mac Studio I'd buy, if I had to buy a Mac Studio, is a BTO at $2400. Again, that's base model with one $200 bump apiece on GPU and SSD. (Bumping RAM in this case would take $400, since there's no 48GB option.)
It's hard not to notice that $2400 is almost twice $1300. That's a big gap, and that's the gap where an Mx Pro mini would go.
An M2 mini with 24 GB would bump the price by $200 using Apple's default scale of $25/GB, but $1500 is still a long way from $2400. Even if you add $100 for the two new GPU cores ($50 at $25/core, but Apple likes to round up to the nearest hundred), you're still $800 away.
Which is to say, I don't know how I'd decide between a Mac Studio and an Mx Pro mini -- I'd just love to have the choice, because that's a pretty big hole.
Here we go again with the phantom argument that Apple doesnt want to make products that 'compete' with each other. Broadly ... ALL macs compete with each other for which one you will buy.
And since you apparently missed my earlier point, the Mac Studio has NO M1pro version, so an M1pro mac mini wouldnt be 'competing' with it regardless.
I was suggesting they'll keep the M1 Mac mini at the low end, and the M2 would be the mid end. IOW, just getting M2 would bump the pricing $200 vs similarly configured M1 machines. In this scenario, M2 Mac minis would start at $1099 with 8 GB RAM and 512 GB storage. Move up to 16 GB RAM, and it would be $1299. Move up to 24 GB RAM and it would be $1499, and move up to 1 TB on top of that, and it's $1699.
As a comparison, a Mac Studio with 1 TB storage is $2199. So, that's a difference of $500. Still a bit of a gap, but much smaller than you were suggesting. (Or $400 if you configure the Mac mini with 10 GigE.)
It's not so much about competition with other Macs. It's about a lot of people just not caring that much about an M1 Pro option, if an M2 + 24 GB option is available. In fact, I suspect a lot of people would actually prefer M2 with 24 GB option vs. M1 Pro with 32 GB option, due to upgrade pricing.
Now, I'm not saying there aren't advantages for M1 Pro. Of course M1 Pro is better than M2 in many aspects. What I'm saying is that the number of people who will care about that may not be big enough to justify the release of such a model.
The only way I see M1 Pro / M2 Pro making sense in a Mac mini is if Apple discontinues the M1 model this year and directly replaces it with M2 at the same price points. However, as mentioned earlier, I'm predicting Apple will not do this. I'm thinking that like with the MacBook Air, it will keep M1 at the low end, and move M2 to the mid end to replace the Intel model, until M3 comes out. We shall see though.
Then I suggest you patiently wait for your M1 Pro Mac mini. Meanwhile something tells me i'll be buying an M2 mini before they release your M1 Pro mini.
But there's no reason to believe they'd do this -- the M2 just isn't a $200 boost over an M1, even at Apple Tax rates.
The change to M2 in the MacBook Air was a $200 boost but includes a better camera, MagSafe, a different case design, a brighter display, bigger battery, more speakers, etc. I think these changes have a lot more to do with the price increase than the change in SoC.
One of the beauties of the mini is that comparisons between models tend to be more apples-to-apples with fewer variables.
I hope you're right, but I'm not optimistic.
OTOH, I'm hopeful that an M2 Mac mini at a higher price could also include additional ports, like the Intel model it would replace.
I think that's the key thing. The M2 probably isn't going to be as fast as the M1 Pro for multi-threaded or GPU-heavy loads, but it does narrow the gap - especially c.f. the cheaper, binned version of the M1 Pro - and will be faster on some single-core-heavy workloads.
What I'm not clear about is why people think Apple would make a M1 Pro Mini and not a M1 Pro Studio when the Studio case design already has the extra ports that the Pro can support.
My guess is that we might see a M2 Pro Studio when those processors roll around.
I doubt it's an entirely phantom argument. You don't have to be a business genius to work out that if you offer a $1000 computer and a $2000, some people who would otherwise buy the $2000 computer are going to make do with the $1000 one. On the other hand, if you only offer the $2000 one, some people are going to be scared out of the shop (figuratively or otherwise).
You can be sure that Apple will pay its market research people good money to model the hell out of this and pick the optimum price points and specs for each model. So "self competition" might not be the only factor, but it will be a consideration.
Absolutely - so why wouldn't Apple factor this into their product range?
It's not a case of "Apple will never make one model that competes with another" but they will optimise. Generally, desktops won't compete so much with laptops. Also, economies of scale come into it - MacBooks are among the largest-selling laptop models in the world so the MacBook range can accommodate a bit of internal competition (we're seeing that with a M1 Air, a M2 Air and a M2 13" Pro all competing with the 14" MBP). By all reports, Mac desktop sales are a fraction of laptop sales, so there are less total sales to go around. Electronics relies tremendously on economies of scale, so a small-selling model is a big problem.
No, a M1 Pro Mini/Studio (doesn't matter what it says on the label) would be potentially taking sales from the M1 Max Studio. Why buy a $2000 computer when a $1200 one would do the job?
Ultimately, it isn't rocket surgery for Apple to make a M1 Pro Studio/Mini (and there's an obvious gap in the lineup for one) - if their modelling people said that they'd make more money by offering one, they would have done.
Maybe so, maybe not; who knows, who cares. But rest assured that the new Mac Mini is almost certainly coming.
M1, M1 Pro, M2.... it's just not going to have the same soothing warmth and gently purring fan of the 2018 Mini! 😸
Not in terms of specs, but one has to take into consideration the price and how that influences potential customer buying behavior.
Let's start with an M1 Mac mini with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of SSD at $1099.
An M1 Pro BTO upgrade would be a minimum of $200, and that would likely be for the binned version. Add $200 to that for the "full" SoC. So you are now at $1299 or $1499.
Now, if all you want is multi-core CPU performance, then drop $1499 and you're good to go.
But what if you need more memory than 16GB, as well? Then you're at $1899 for 32GB. And if you are at $1899, why would you not buy a base Studio since for $100 more you get 50% more GPUs and double the memory bandwidth? Even if you have zero need for the GPUs, if you needed 32GB, you would almost certainly benefit from the 400GB/s memory bandwidth on the M1 Max compared to the 200GB/s of the M1 Pro. You also get twice as many TB4 ports plus an additional two USB4 ports (so 6v2).
So Apple likely did a study on how many people would buy a $1499 M1 Pro Mac mini compared to how many would buy a Mac Studio because for $500 more they had double the RAM, double the RAM bandwidth, double the TB4 ports and 50% more GPU cores. And I expect their studies skewed strongly to the Mac Studio - so strong that it was not worth offering the M1 Pro on the Mac mini - especially when they can barely meet demand for the M1 Pro MacBook Pro.
Yes. And based on Mac sales, a significant majority of customers go this route. Per Apple, the Mac mini is less than 1% of total Mac sales, which means they probably shift around 250,000 units a year (based on ~22 million units in 2020) between M1 and Intel. How many of those 250,000 buy the M1 16GB/512GB model? And how many of those would buy an M1 Pro? I think 50,000 units a year would be an optimistic assumption. That is not a market I see Apple seeing worth serving.
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my guess is because The mini more. than perhaps any other machine goes for long stretches without (meaningful) updates. It seems like there’s the rumor that Apple will cut its production now and then because of how long it goes between updates sometimes.
I think it’s sells could go up if Apple cares to do more with it, but in the end Intjink they’re hoping people will get the iMac or macbook air, etc.
Actually, they (Apple) could make an option in the upcomming Mac mini M2, that if you pay additional, I don't know 400 to 500 $, you could get an M2 Pro SoC in there... The question is: would that be worth it for the buyer?