The new Mac mini is almost certainly coming

[theluggage]

True that. I wonder what the price difference actually IS at the wholesale level that Apple buys.

Pretty sure that's nothing to do with the price - Apple were charging the same per-GB rate for upgrades to the Intel Mac Mini and iMac which used totally different DDR4 DIMMS until they were dropped. No reason to believe that the surface-mount LPDDR modules in the SoC are any different to the surface-mount LPDDR modules in other manufacturer's laptops. I'd bet that the extra logistics in having 3 versions of the M2 SoC costs Apple more than the difference in RAM chip prices.

However, Apple's base price (which is what attracts punters in) will doubtless be influenced by what proportion of customers they can sell high-margin BTO upgrades to - lower the headline price to get more sales, make it back on upgrades. Also, the models on offer at third party retailers (who still expect to take a slice of the purchase price so they can eat hot meals and sleep indoors, the scroungers!) are typically base models, while needing a BTO version pushes people to the Apple store (Apple gets to keep all the money).

Apple didn't get to be a however-many-trillion company by accident!

 

[NeonNights]

The 8GB configurations are meant to hit a price point. Doesn't matter how much it costs Apple at wholesale for 16GB capacities, Apple isn't passing on the discount to the consumer.

I now have a 32GB M2 Max MacBook Pro 16 for more serious photo/video work, but also an 8GB base Mac Mini as a media server behind the TV. Prior to that the 8GB Mini was actually the primary family desktop and was still capable of light photo and video editing, and some Xcode work. The cheapest base Mini with 8GB is perfectly fine for school-type work, general productivity, and browsing the web. Heck, I'm still holding onto an 8GB 2015 Intel MacBook Pro 13 that still serves us well for my kid's school work. Today's Macs are not broken or hampered by 8GB RAM. I wish my 32GB, i7, SSD, Windows work laptop was as responsive as my 8GB Mini.

 

[Boil]

Just dropped in to say...

The new (M3/M3 Pro, w/hardware ray-tracing) Mac mini is almost certainly coming...!

;^p

 

[Freida]

Yes, but still a long time away. If we are lucky Apple will update the Mac Mini to M3 Pro in January again but if they are *******s they will neglect the Mini for another year. Who knows.

Just dropped in to say...

The new (M3/M3 Pro, w/hardware ray-tracing) Mac mini is almost certainly coming...!

;^p

 

[rumz]

I finally sold my 2014 Mac mini i5 / 8 GB RAM / 500 GB SSD / 1 TB HD, since as of last year I've been using an M1 Mac mini 16 GB / 1 TB. It seems these old Intel Mac minis still have some value.

That 2014 with NVMe SSD still runs Monterey quite well, even with just 8 GB RAM, and at least for lighter business or educational multitasking. Right now my sweet spot for my business usage with the M1 seems to be 16 GB, but I would usually have no problem with 8 GB too. However, eventually when I upgrade to an M4 Mac mini or whatever, hopefully the Mac mini will start at 16 GB. I'll probably get 24-32 GB though, just because. Or maybe I'll just get the Mac Studio.

However, I'm pretty sure the M3 Mac mini will start at 8 GB / 256 GB yet again. I'm betting spring 2024.

Remind me, did you end up picking up a thunderbolt dock? And if so, which did you land on?

 

[EugW]

Remind me, did you end up picking up a thunderbolt dock? And if so, which did you land on?

Plugable 5-in-1 Thunderbolt 4 and USB4 Hub

3x Thunderbolt 4 / USB4 ports for speeds up to 40Gbps, and 15W charging for phones and tablets. 1x USB-A up to 10Gbps, 1x upstream Thunderbolt 4 port up to 60W charging to host

I run my USB-C monitor off it. Works fine, with no monitor sleep issues.

My monitor is a Huawei MateView 4K+ 28.2".

 

[rumz]

Plugable 5-in-1 Thunderbolt 4 and USB4 Hub

3x Thunderbolt 4 / USB4 ports for speeds up to 40Gbps, and 15W charging for phones and tablets. 1x USB-A up to 10Gbps, 1x upstream Thunderbolt 4 port up to 60W charging to host

I run my USB-C monitor off it. Works fine, with no monitor sleep issues.

My monitor is a Huawei MateView 4K+ 28.2".

View attachment 2215358

Awesome-- I saw that was one of the ones you were looking at in my digging around but was curious how it was working out. Sounds like it's doing the job without any issues. Thanks!

 

[EugW]

Awesome-- I saw that was one of the ones you were looking at in my digging around but was curious how it was working out. Sounds like it's doing the job without any issues. Thanks!

I do have a USB-C SSD (Samsung T5) connected to it for some infrequently accessed data and I will say that occasionally after wake from sleep it tells me it was improperly ejected (and reconnected). This happens about once or twice a week or something like that. It never disconnects when the machine remains on though. It only ever gives me that message (occasionally) after sleep, although it always automatically reconnects upon wake. This is a common problem with many USB and Thunderbolt hubs. It was also a problem with my cheesegrater Mac Pro using a PCIe USB 3 card. I have a different USB-C SSD (Samsung T7 Shield) connected directly to the M1 Mac mini, and that one never has that sleep eject issue. This does illustrate that directly plugging into the Mac is usually best, meaning that if you have multiple USB peripherals, you're best off getting the Mac mini M2 Pro or Mac Studio.

I'm just happy that I get none of the sleep issues with the monitor though.

 

[Freida]

How good is the monitor, please? Any scaling or mac issues? How is the picture quality etc. pls?

Plugable 5-in-1 Thunderbolt 4 and USB4 Hub

3x Thunderbolt 4 / USB4 ports for speeds up to 40Gbps, and 15W charging for phones and tablets. 1x USB-A up to 10Gbps, 1x upstream Thunderbolt 4 port up to 60W charging to host

I run my USB-C monitor off it. Works fine, with no monitor sleep issues.

My monitor is a Huawei MateView 4K+ 28.2".

View attachment 2215358

 

[EugW]

How good is the monitor, please? Any scaling or mac issues? How is the picture quality etc. pls?

Not (widely) avail in US because it’s Huawei. Available in Canada, Asia, Europe, etc.

Text is very decent at 163 ppi but some may complain it’s not quite “Retina”. I run scaled to 2304x1536 but a more common scaled rez would be 2560x1707 on this 3:2 3840x2560 28.2” monitor, equivalent pixel density to 2560x1440 on a 16:9 3840x2160 27” monitor. However, the Huawei provides 18.5% more vertical pixels.

Brightness uniformity is not awesome as it is a tad brighter at the centre than at the edges. OTOH there is no significant edge or corner light bleed, something that I encountered with two different Asus ProArt monitors I bought (and returned). Despite Huawei’s factory calibration claims, colour balance was just OK out of the box. So I also bought a Spyder to calibrate with excellent results. The colour reproduction is now excellent.

 

[toke lahti]

Agreed, but FWIW, Ventura runs perfectly fine on 8 GB RAM for light usage (see above), and I'd guess Sonoma does too. But like I said, all bets are off three years from now.

"Perfectly fine" might also mean "shortened lifespan".
Have you checked your daily writes at ssd?
I'm still using intelMini with 20GB, but still OS+apps writes about 50GB to ssd per day, even if I just keep the mac on and do nothing intensive. (I do have maybe 50 tabs open in browser in average at all times.)

I also find this a bit funny, how the need for storage has fallen over 2 decades.
2009 Mini had minimum of 160GB of storage, which raised to 320GB 2010. In 2011 minimum was 500GB.
I guess these storage sizes have never been about user needs and have always been about Apple's pricing and profits.

 

[Longplays]

Hi,

i work in an Apple Reseller and like many of you i'm waiting for the mini 2013 refresh.

From monday the two major Apple suppliers in Italy are suddenly and completely out of stock of minis. I know that this happen from time to time, but the timing is no coincidence.

Trust me, a new mini is coming next week, or at least we have solid evidence to believe it.

That "coming next week" turned into 10 months, 10 days from the date of this original post to the 2014 refresh.

I wonder why Apple took 2 years to refresh the 2012 Mac mini. Intel did not have the appropriate part?

 

[EugW]

"Perfectly fine" might also mean "shortened lifespan".
Have you checked your daily writes at ssd?
I'm still using intelMini with 20GB, but still OS+apps writes about 50GB to ssd per day, even if I just keep the mac on and do nothing intensive. (I do have maybe 50 tabs open in browser in average at all times.)

I also find this a bit funny, how the need for storage has fallen over 2 decades.
2009 Mini had minimum of 160GB of storage, which raised to 320GB 2010. In 2011 minimum was 500GB.
I guess these storage sizes have never been about user needs and have always been about Apple's pricing and profits.

I checked the SSD health on used OEM Apple Samsung 256 GB drives I bought to upgrade my wife’s and daughter’s 8 GB Macs. At the rate they were going, it would take literally decades to wear out the drives.

 

[toke lahti]

I checked the SSD health on used OEM Apple Samsung 256 GB drives I bought to upgrade my wife’s and daughter’s 8 GB Macs. At the rate they were going, it would take literally decades to wear out the drives.

How many TBs of writes they had?

 

[Freida]

Thats incorrect. Those storages were what the market was doing with spinning drives. Once we switched to SSD we kinda started again from the beginning as SSD were extremely expensive (in a way still are) so thats the problem. If Apple (or any other retailer) could get 10x more capacity for the same price I can guarantee that we wouldn't start on 256gb.

"Perfectly fine" might also mean "shortened lifespan".
Have you checked your daily writes at ssd?
I'm still using intelMini with 20GB, but still OS+apps writes about 50GB to ssd per day, even if I just keep the mac on and do nothing intensive. (I do have maybe 50 tabs open in browser in average at all times.)

I also find this a bit funny, how the need for storage has fallen over 2 decades.
2009 Mini had minimum of 160GB of storage, which raised to 320GB 2010. In 2011 minimum was 500GB.
I guess these storage sizes have never been about user needs and have always been about Apple's pricing and profits.

 

[EugW]

How many TBs of writes they had?

I haven't checked recently, but it's not much, trust me. My wife uses her MacBook Air mainly for surfing, email, and occasional Photos, and my daughter uses mainly educational web apps with most of the data stored in the cloud actually. 8 GB RAM is plenty for both of them. For my daughter's used 2015 MBP that I bought in late 2021, it came with a 128 GB drive that had 4.5 TB writes. For my wife's used 2017 MBA that I also bought in late 2021, it came with a 128 GB that had 9 TB writes. And for my used M1 Mac mini that I bought in late 2022, it came with a 1 TB drive with only 2.5 TB writes, although my Mac mini has 16 GB RAM.

 

[toke lahti]

I had sandisk X400 128GB in my Fusion in Mini2012. IT had TBW of 72 and died at 111TB written. Power-on hours were 9872.
So it had writes average of 10 GB per hour! 22Mbits/s, all the time...

My 17" mbp has Kingston SV300 120GB (Fusion), 19000h, 192TB written! TBW is 64! It is dying, but still kicking!
SMART "231 SSD_Life_Left 0x0013 038 038 010 Pre-fail Always - 0" is confusing, does it really claim that it has 38% life left? Or 0%?

I now use samsung860evo as boot disk for mini2018, power on hours ~9000h, 23TB written (TBW 600).
I used to use WDblue with it power on hours 24700h and 88TB written (TBW 400).

So the mileage can vary quite a bit.
There has been a lot talk in the forums about M-macs swapping a lot.

When I started making those Fusion drives, I did not look closely of ssd lifespan, since they were "immortals".
Btw, my MP also had OWC ssd (in Fusion of course) that died. I think I nevertook the smart values out of it...

M macs needs more RAM, because they drive screens that have more resolution.

 

[EugW]

So the mileage can vary quite a bit.
There has been a lot talk in the forums about M-macs swapping a lot.

There were a couple of extra reasons for this.

1. People were thinking M1 was the second coming of [insert diety here], and buying 8 GB machines for Macrumours geek workloads.

2. There was an SSD write over reporting bug in macOS, which has since been fixed.

I’ve always said that if you need 16 GB then get 16 GB. However my point is that at the low end, most people don’t actually need 16 GB, and won’t for a few years either.

Pages plus Safari & Chrome with 5 tabs each plus iMessage plus Mail plus Calendar plus a few other small mainstream apps works just great on 8 GB without too much SSD writes.

 

[Boil]

bUt YoU gOtTa MaX tHe RaM tO fUtUrEpRoOf...! ;^p

 

[sublunar]

Pretty sure that's nothing to do with the price - Apple were charging the same per-GB rate for upgrades to the Intel Mac Mini and iMac which used totally different DDR4 DIMMS until they were dropped. No reason to believe that the surface-mount LPDDR modules in the SoC are any different to the surface-mount LPDDR modules in other manufacturer's laptops. I'd bet that the extra logistics in having 3 versions of the M2 SoC costs Apple more than the difference in RAM chip prices.

However, Apple's base price (which is what attracts punters in) will doubtless be influenced by what proportion of customers they can sell high-margin BTO upgrades to - lower the headline price to get more sales, make it back on upgrades. Also, the models on offer at third party retailers (who still expect to take a slice of the purchase price so they can eat hot meals and sleep indoors, the scroungers!) are typically base models, while needing a BTO version pushes people to the Apple store (Apple gets to keep all the money).

Apple didn't get to be a however-many-trillion company by accident!

The 8GB configurations are meant to hit a price point. Doesn't matter how much it costs Apple at wholesale for 16GB capacities, Apple isn't passing on the discount to the consumer.

I now have a 32GB M2 Max MacBook Pro 16 for more serious photo/video work, but also an 8GB base Mac Mini as a media server behind the TV. Prior to that the 8GB Mini was actually the primary family desktop and was still capable of light photo and video editing, and some Xcode work. The cheapest base Mini with 8GB is perfectly fine for school-type work, general productivity, and browsing the web. Heck, I'm still holding onto an 8GB 2015 Intel MacBook Pro 13 that still serves us well for my kid's school work. Today's Macs are not broken or hampered by 8GB RAM. I wish my 32GB, i7, SSD, Windows work laptop was as responsive as my 8GB Mini.

I just wonder given the sudden crash in price of RAM and NAND chips will have been a factor in the recent price cut in the 13" M2 MBA. Perhaps there was a sign of this ahead of time as the M2 Mini base model got a price cut upon release - Apple hedging ahead of time will have foreseen the drop in RAM/NAND pricing.

Certainly Apple might be able to double up storage for this year's iPhones (or cut prices, or offer some big technological upgrades) but we've also seen a lot of early movement in third party retailers to cut prices to varying degrees for various Macs.

There's been no change in the M2 Mini pricing since as there's been no update in that line but the M2 Studios haven't seen as big a price rise in Europe as I might have expected - the USD price remained the same though.

Interestingly on a Mac mini front, a refurb M1 Max Studio 32/512 is now £1609 in the UK which compares with £1799 for a BTO 32/512 configuration on an M2 Pro Mini (£1399 for 16/512). It's certainly a shot across the bows of the M2 Pro because it's a similar price to a BTO 32/512 refurb M2 Pro and that model has a slow single chip SSD configuration.

 

[Micky Do]

bUt YoU gOtTa MaX tHe RaM tO fUtUrEpRoOf...! ;^p

Prudent advice in days of yore; not so much today.

 

[koyoot]

I just wonder given the sudden crash in price of RAM and NAND chips will have been a factor in the recent price cut in the 13" M2 MBA. Perhaps there was a sign of this ahead of time as the M2 Mini base model got a price cut upon release - Apple hedging ahead of time will have foreseen the drop in RAM/NAND pricing.

Certainly Apple might be able to double up storage for this year's iPhones (or cut prices, or offer some big technological upgrades) but we've also seen a lot of early movement in third party retailers to cut prices to varying degrees for various Macs.

There's been no change in the M2 Mini pricing since as there's been no update in that line but the M2 Studios haven't seen as big a price rise in Europe as I might have expected - the USD price remained the same though.

Interestingly on a Mac mini front, a refurb M1 Max Studio 32/512 is now £1609 in the UK which compares with £1799 for a BTO 32/512 configuration on an M2 Pro Mini (£1399 for 16/512). It's certainly a shot across the bows of the M2 Pro because it's a similar price to a BTO 32/512 refurb M2 Pro and that model has a slow single chip SSD configuration.

Thats not how volume contracts work . You sign them to not be affected by price rises, but it also does not change the price for you if the price on open market drops.

Apple lowered price of those models because thats what fits their marketing strategy.

If it would be really because of price drops on NAND and RAM - we would see a price drop for M2 Pro Mac Minis, M2 Pro/Max MacBook Pros.

And thier prices haven't moved at all.

 

[sublunar]

Thats not how volume contracts work . You sign them to not be affected by price rises, but it also does not change the price for you if the price on open market drops.

Apple lowered price of those models because thats what fits their marketing strategy.

If it would be really because of price drops on NAND and RAM - we would see a price drop for M2 Pro Mac Minis, M2 Pro/Max MacBook Pros.

And thier prices haven't moved at all.

I wasn't making a point about Apple directly passing on any cost savings from their supply chain, they don't have a record of doing that at all - foreign exchange is what affects Apple pricing on an annual basis and we know the price Apple sets at the start of a product lifespan is usually the price at the end of that's product lifespan (unless you're in the UK and Brexit crashes your foreign exchange rate).

Not disputing that Apple will have had a really advantageous fixed deals for future NAND prices, but in the face of the PC manufacturers increasingly dropping prices at the moment Apple have done 2 things of note:

1. Dropped entry price of M2 mini - a new machine - after discontinuing the M1 mini.
2. Dropped entry price of existing M2 Air - a model which continues after the price drop - which is a very rare event.

Note that point 1 is acceptable Apple strategy because it's a new model, even though it's unusual as Apple generally keep the same price point.

Point 2 is the interesting one - the newly introduced 15" Air is priced aggressively and that seems to have affected the pricing of the 13" model - the line may not get M3 till next year according to the most recent rumours.

Point 1 might be supply chain based, but point 2 is probably marketing based. Either way they will have worked out the impact on the profit margin per unit and the better headline figure is to reduce the price of entry level models. I believe Apple didn't change the price of BTO upgrades.

 

[koyoot]

I wasn't making a point about Apple directly passing on any cost savings from their supply chain, they don't have a record of doing that at all - foreign exchange is what affects Apple pricing on an annual basis and we know the price Apple sets at the start of a product lifespan is usually the price at the end of that's product lifespan (unless you're in the UK and Brexit crashes your foreign exchange rate).

Not disputing that Apple will have had a really advantageous fixed deals for future NAND prices, but in the face of the PC manufacturers increasingly dropping prices at the moment Apple have done 2 things of note:

1. Dropped entry price of M2 mini - a new machine - after discontinuing the M1 mini.
2. Dropped entry price of existing M2 Air - a model which continues after the price drop - which is a very rare event.

Note that point 1 is acceptable Apple strategy because it's a new model, even though it's unusual as Apple generally keep the same price point.

Point 2 is the interesting one - the newly introduced 15" Air is priced aggressively and that seems to have affected the pricing of the 13" model - the line may not get M3 till next year according to the most recent rumours.

Point 1 might be supply chain based, but point 2 is probably marketing based. Either way they will have worked out the impact on the profit margin per unit and the better headline figure is to reduce the price of entry level models. I believe Apple didn't change the price of BTO upgrades.

They also did not drop, after the release of MBA 15 prices on: MacBook Pro 13, Mac Mini M2 Pro, MacBook Pro 14, MacBook Pro 16.

Why 15 inch MBA is priced in line with 13 inch MBP?

Because 13 inch will be replaced with entry level MBP14. "Marketing strategy".

 

[toke lahti]

There were a couple of extra reasons for this.

1. People were thinking M1 was the second coming of [insert diety here], and buying 8 GB machines for Macrumours geek workloads.

2. There was an SSD write over reporting bug in macOS, which has since been fixed.

I’ve always said that if you need 16 GB then get 16 GB. However my point is that at the low end, most people don’t actually need 16 GB, and won’t for a few years either.

Pages plus Safari & Chrome with 5 tabs each plus iMessage plus Mail plus Calendar plus a few other small mainstream apps works just great on 8 GB without too much SSD writes.

My lesson learned was that old versions of Fusion swapped like hell.
10GB per hour for the whole life of the drive!