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The new Mac mini is almost certainly coming
- Thread starter GabrieleR
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Yes, and if Apple have headless machines starting with M1, going through M2, and then M1 Pro and M1 Max, each with close price points, that would make for very confusing reading.
At the moment, professionals looking at the M2 Air will crunch the numbers and consider that beyond a BTO 16/512 they may as well get the M1 Pro MacBook Pro 14", it's a similar question with the M2 MacBook Pro 13" because the products are priced so similarly. Cheaper real world users might just go for the base M1 Air.
But once the lines become fuzzier with the Mac mini situation up against the Mac Studio. If Apple pulled the same trick but inserted an M1 Pro CPU into the range this year, or an M2 Pro next year it really muddies up the water when you consider that Apple may want to replace the 2018 upper SKU mini with a new case.
The rumoured case is largely rumoured to be thinner - but how does that tally with the supposedly hotter running M2 which throttles more? And then throw a mid range CPU like the M1 Pro in there too?
It's not going to end well.
Although rumours suggest Apple have tried various CPUs in various cases, I would suggest that there's not enough room to squeeze an M1 Pro/M2 Pro into the lineup as well, especially as M2 Pro would look mightily confusing up against M1 Max and M1 Extreme in other Macs and even an M2 CPU in the same lineup machine without spinning it off into its own model (fanless Mac Cube 2nd gen anyone?)
My current thinking is that Apple could continue the 8/256 model M1 in the same case and keep an 8/512 option as well.
The upper SKU mini which is currently a $1099 Intel one is then replaced by an M2 16/512 configuration with 10 GPU cores. And it would come in the same case as the M1 but in space grey. It's the same thinking behind the replacement of the MacBook Pro 13" which replaced everything for no uplift in $ price (although us UK/Euro folks will fume quietly at our price increase).
Remember this spec gets to $1699 if you could BTO to 32Gb RAM and 1Tb - 24Gb/1Tb would still cost $1499. My estimate would be an M1 Pro costs $200 to add on top - and at that point you may as well get in line for a Mac Studio.
Even without M1 Pro this would be clearly an upsell to raise the average selling price of the mini while getting people in who otherwise wouldn't have afforded the Mac Studio which will remain the machine to get for anyone needing more than 2 screens.
Then later on, if Apple needed to refresh the lineup, the base model would be populated with M2 CPUs, potentially with 8 GPU cores, with M3 inhabiting the top SKU.
And I think some future benchmarks could actually look at whether or not video editors would benefit from the extra encoders that have been added to the M2 over the M1.
To be fair, under Steve the number of Mac models in each line expanded rather significantly in line with the significant growth in Apple's marketshare and Tim has been continuing that as Apple's marketshare continues to grow.
Apple's sales associates are there to match people to the machine they need. As the forum audience is much more technically-minded, we "get into the weeds" far more than the average Mac customer does and our decision trees are much more complex and complicated in comparison.
Apple's sales associates are there to match people to the machine they need. As the forum audience is much more technically-minded, we "get into the weeds" far more than the average Mac customer does and our decision trees are much more complex and complicated in comparison.
No, you can't assume that. First of all the M2 Air is way lighter, and it supposedly has longer battery life too for mainstream usage.
Furthermore, a >16 GB tricked out model is still way cheaper than the 14" MB Pro.
M2 MacBook Air
24 GB RAM
512 GB SSD
$1799
M1 Pro MacBook Pro
32 GB RAM
512 GB SSD
$2399
That's literally a $600 (33%) price difference. Yeah, 32 GB is more than 24 GB, but for some people it could benefit to have more than 16 GB, with 24 GB being good enough. 32 GB may be overkill.
I'm not in the market for a Mac laptop anytime soon, but if I were to buy, I'd take the Air over the Pro, no question, even if I wanted more than 16 GB.
My assumption is the hypothetical M2 Mac mini will also get the 24 GB for $200 option. If so, that will prove popular for a certain segment of Mac buyers. The drawback here though may be that the M2 version could have fewer ports. (That's less of a concern for me for a MacBook Air, since I just need a few ports on my laptops. I just want more than the single USB-C port on my 12" MacBook.)
The typical value of 8 GB for Apple is $200 so the delta is $250. The M1 Macs in general, can be had at discount to MSRP via either Certified Refurbished or Authorized Reseller discounts. I've even seen a case of a Mac that's both Certified Refurbished and with a discount though it's the 2020 iMac 27. You also don't have to wait as resellers have them in stock.
I think that the better comparison is the M2 MacBook Pro to the M1 Pro MacBook Pro 14. The Air is a different kind of system for most being ultraportable.
MacBook Airs will go on sale too, and there are also edu discounts for those who qualify.
But even comparing a 24 GB MacBook Air at $1799 full retail over a 32 GB MacBook Pro at $2249 on sale, I'd take the MacBook Air over the MacBook Pro any day for my usage preferences. More than sufficient memory, fast (even if not as fast as MBP), lighter, potentially longer battery life, and it's $450 cheaper? No brainer decision with my usage preferences. MacBook Air wins hands down.
As you may have realized, I value portability and battery life in a laptop, with sufficient memory, more than I do raw computing power.
And no, I don't think the better comparison is the M2 MacBook Pro. That is a completely uninteresting option to me. It may as well not exist as far I'm personally concerned. It's basically the worst of both worlds IMO, and it's got that damn Touch Bar too.
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As you might understand - not everything is about your preferences.
And as you might also understand, not everything is about your or @sublunar's preferences either. There are a LOT of people who are going to buy 24 GB M2 non-Pro Macs.
I asked the question in the MBA sub-forum, of how much memory people were going to get and half said 16 GB RAM, but one-third said 24 GB RAM. Only 1/6th said 8 GB RAM. That's with 210 votes. MacRumors may skew toward more geeks wanting more RAM, but nonetheless it's clear that I am not alone in my thinking that a 24 GB M2 non-Pro Mac is an attractive option.
That means in just that one single thread with 102 posts and 210 votes, 68 people intend to get a 24 GB MacBook Air.
I understand. But you put your preferences foremost.
That extra $250 does get you a lot. Performance. Speakers, Ports, Display, The ability to drive two external displays.
I have over 300 GB of RAM in my systems so I always appreciate more RAM.
I'm all for 24 GB of RAM. I wish that they had offered it in the M1 mini. But that doesn't make the 14 MBP with 32 GB an inferior option. My son received one of these from his workplace for his work. Our old 2014 MacBook Pro 15 models came standard with 16 GB of RAM. 16 should be the minimum today, not 8.
8 is fine for a minimum. My wife, daughter, and I all have 8 GB RAM Macs. The 8 GB is fine for my wife and daughter, and will remain so for years. For me 8 GB for my work VPN Mac mini, 8 GB works but is restrictive. However, that's OK, since I bought that older Intel machine for really cheap as a stop gap after my old Mac Pro died in 2021, until the M1 Pro or M2 Mac minis come out. I will go 16-24 on that Mac mini when I get it. I have 24 GB for my main personal iMac though, and 16 GB for my MacBook.
And the point wasn't that the M1 Pro MacBook Pro is inferior overall. It's mainly that it's way more expensive. At retail pricing it's $600 more expensive, and with your sale pricing it's $450 more expensive. Spending that to get more features most people won't even use isn't necessarily the smartest way for them to spend their money. And there's the bonus that the MacBook Air does have some advantages too.
BTW, I asked a friend of mine who is a creative for a major multi-billion dollar corporation about external monitor usage amongst their web devs. He said just about nobody there used more than one external monitor. It's basically no external monitor or else one external monitor.
Sure, lots of people do use multiple external monitors, but I'd say they are the minority even amongst professionals.
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At my last Fortune 100 Software Engineering job, all of the engineers in my building had at least two monitors.
I have four monitors on my desk. I go back and forth between four and five.
It would be nice to have a mini that supported 24-32 GB of RAM and 3-5 monitors directly. I don't need an M1 Max or even an M1 Pro. Just support for a lot of monitors. I have a lot of Macs, though, and can just assemble a cluster of Macs that looks like a large system.
If you use your Macs to earn a living then the cost of the Mac isn't a big deal.
The amount of overlapping models reminds me of the quadra / centris days
That’s really rather worrying…
That’s really rather worrying…
They did way worse in 2018.
Back then you had:
12" rMB
13" Classic MBA
13" Retina MBA
13" rMBP, 2TB
13" rMBP, 4TB
Five models of Macbook, each one being flawed in some avoidable manner, and they all catered to basically the same customer.
Now you only have 3, and each one is a good product in its own right.
Next year, they'll phase out the M2 MBP and M1 MBA design, introduce a bigger MBA design, and we'll all be happy.
But yeah, under Jobs there was way less product overlapping. But Apple was also a much smaller company back then.
And you could argue that he left too many niches uncovered (think about bigger iPhones, smaller iPads)
To me, if the new mini doesn’t max ram to 32 GB, then best go with a studio. Am waiting until Apple releases the specs on the new mini before making my mind.
Yeah, this is what he came up with back then:
It seems when companies are not doing well, they have to try to "un-bloat", and focus on the basics.
However, once they're doing great they will pickup again on "trying to fit in another product to adhere to a specific market". All companies like to expand.
Car analogies do not always work great here, but I see similarities with car companies. Not that BMW (for example) was doing badly, but since they expanded hugely throughout the years in China specifically, the have added all sorts of models...
"Classic" were 3, 5, (6?) 7 series.
"Now" 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 series. X1, X2, X3, X4, X5, X6, X7, i3, i8, iX. Oh, and in different versions.... GT's, Coupe's, what have you.
To me, getting a Mac mini "Pro" (M2 or M1) does "fit". Even if the price gets close to the Mac Studio, it gives the consumer the idea they can choose every option.
I also hope Apple is thinking about a 27" iMac again. And with the "Pro" CPU.
I had the 27" iMac 2017 model (for in the living room) and replaced it with the M1 24". Lovely machine, sure... but I will never get used to the smaller screen size. It really is a step back.
Apple back then also had its back financially to the wall and was way smaller. Now they are the most valuable publicly traded company in the world. I'm too lazy to try and do the math, but I bet that unit sales per product are higher now than they were with the 4 product matrix.
Plus the person running it specializes in efficient supply chains.
Plus the person running it specializes in efficient supply chains.
I would probably get 16-24GB RAM just to be safe to allow enough memory for Windows VM and maybe a Linux VM (latter to try, not as production as I already have a dedicated 13” xps for that).
The very fact that they offer a 24Gb RAM tier suggests to me that Apple are considering the M2 to be good enough to bridge the gap between Mini and Studio. If Apple decide to offer M2 Pro as a middle stepping stone it might fill the small gap inbetween but we're at the point where any significant BTO build could quickly put buyers into the next bracket up.
The recent reviews of the 10 GPU core M2 variants in the MBA and MBP13 suggest a better cooling solution (such as that offered in the current Mac mini) is now more important than with M1 to not only alleviate throttling but also potentially keep the unit quiet.
The recent reviews of the 10 GPU core M2 variants in the MBA and MBP13 suggest a better cooling solution (such as that offered in the current Mac mini) is now more important than with M1 to not only alleviate throttling but also potentially keep the unit quiet.
That may or may not be true. However, I think 24/32 GB RAM was a long time coming, esp. since the previous Intel Mac minis already supported much more RAM.
My prediction was actually that M2 would be limited to 16 GB but 24 GB could come with M3, mainly because I foolishly thought Apple wouldn't be able to get enough supply of the 12 GB chips in 2022.
The main question here is what they would do with the RAM tiers. 32 GB RAM with an M2 Pro would leave very little space to manoeuvre for pricing, but 24 GB leaves some breathing room.
The M1 mini is very good. An M2 mini would be even better.
I could run my entire production setup if the M1 mini could support 24 or 32 GB of RAM and four monitors natively. I am nowhere near CPU or GPU bound. But I have to buy a Studio if I want more RAM and more displays where I don't need the additional CPU and GPU cores. So I'm just hanging onto my M1 mini with 16 GB and doing some hacks to support three monitors and maybe four.
I see the number of people needing the Mac Studio in terms of CPU and GPU as fairly small. I think that people do not realize how much work an M1 Mini (or M1 Air or M1 MacBook Pro 13) can do if configured well. I would welcome an M2 Pro Mac mini but I do not need the CPU/GPU of such a device - just the display channels and additional RAM.
I have an M1 Pro MacBook Pro 16 and it is ridiculously overpower for CPU and GPU. But I wanted 32 GB of RAM and all of the other niceties. I could see it serving me easily for a decade.
can you share in another thread how you are configuring your Mac mini? I have a 2018 i5 MM but it is getting way to hot and I am seeing issues.... I have 32 GB ram, but only 256 ssd.... I am thinking that might be my issue.... I am wanting to wait and see if there is a new MM coming out soon....
Right now, I have at least to the end of the month a 14" M1 Pro.... Trying to decide if I want a laptop vs a desktop.... I do have 2 12.9" iPP's.