New Apple Silicon Macs for 2021: Redesigned iMac and a Mac Pro mini

[TurbineSeaplane]

@pastrychef

I'm curious - have you tried an M1 Mini?
Any reason for not just jumping now and upgrading that piece down the road?

I only mention it since you've sold your big GPU and I'd imagine your existing/current setup is pretty well matched by the Minis.

I had one here for a brief trial and my only disappointment was GPU performance...but that was in comparison to at minimum RX 580 type of stuff. For every other aspect it was an incredible machine.

 

[pastrychef]

@pastrychef

I'm curious - have you tried an M1 Mini?
Any reason for not just jumping now and upgrading that piece down the road?

I only mention it since you've sold your big GPU and I'd imagine your existing/current setup is pretty well matched by the Minis.

I had one here for a brief trial and my only disappointment was GPU performance...but that was in comparison to at minimum RX 580 type of stuff. For every other aspect it was an incredible machine.

I tried it briefly. My uncle has one. Seems great to me.

No, I don't think there's any reason to avoid any of the current Apple Silicon Macs.

Personally, I'm just holding out for:
More RAM
10GBase-T
Improved GPU

I have two hacks running. One has a Vega 56 and the other has an RX 560. It used to be Vega 56 and Radeon VII.

 

[trs96]

If Apple made the Late 2020 $699 mini with 4 TH4 ports, user upgradable NVMe drive, a 10GBe option and support for any brand of eGPU as well as support for Win 10, it would be the best selling computer in the world. It would also kill off the sales of many of their higher end desktop Macs such as the 27" iMac. Possibly soon to be 30". This is why they've made it the way they have. The low price entices Windows and hackintosh users, then when they regret the limitations they will pay a lot more for an iMac or Mac Pro.

 

[TurbineSeaplane]

I saw that base M1 Mini's have been in/out of stock at the Apple Refurb store for only $589.

It's one HECK of a computer at that price

 

[TurbineSeaplane]

If Apple made the Late 2020 $699 mini with 4 TH4 ports, user upgradable NVMe drive, a 10GBe option and support for any brand of eGPU as well as support for Win 10, it would be the best selling computer in the world. It would also kill off the sales of many of their higher end desktop Macs such as the 27" iMac. Possibly soon to be 30".

Very true.

The soldered in RAM I can "get" a bit more than the soldered in SSD.

There would be no drawback performance wise, that I'm aware of, to a socketed NVMe.

I know -- they won't...
But I sure wish they would on the desktop line at least.

 

[pastrychef]

If Apple made the Late 2020 $699 mini with 4 TH4 ports, user upgradable NVMe drive, a 10GBe option and support for any brand of eGPU as well as support for Win 10, it would be the best selling computer in the world. It would also kill off the sales of many of their higher end desktop Macs such as the 27" iMac. Possibly soon to be 30".

I don't know if there will eGPU support for Apple Silicon Macs. I suspect they will be going it alone on the GPU front like they have with CPUs.

I think that the only chance there will be eGPU support is if AMD and/or Nvidia releases their own drivers.

 

[TurbineSeaplane]

I wonder what Apple (and other retailers) plan to do with all this new and refurbished stock of Intel based MacBooks I see.

It seems like nobody, understandably, wants anything to do with, for example, the most recent Intel MacBook Air.
Honestly, we have an M1 MBA in the house and I don't even want an Intel version of it -- at any price.

They could give it to me and I'd just sell it for whatever I could get.

 

[TurbineSeaplane]

An off the wall idea I've had is to buy a base M1 Mini, use it for a while as I sell off Hack components (I'm sure it would take some time, effort, etc) and then when I upgrade to something else (presumably sometime in the next calendar year), put the base M1 Mini into service as my next Plex server/RAID backup setup to replace my now 8 year old FreeNAS.

 

[pastrychef]

An off the wall idea I've had is to buy a base M1 Mini, use it for a while as I sell off Hack components (I'm sure it would take some time, effort, etc) and then when I upgrade to something else (presumably sometime in the next calendar year), put the base M1 Mini into service as my next Plex server/RAID backup setup to replace my now 8 year old FreeNAS.

When I put together my NAS a few years ago, I went with a CPU with a TDP of 15W. Even by today's standards, that's pretty efficient and it serves as my Plex server just fine.

If the hardware your current NAS is running on is very power hungry, it may be a good plan.

 

[trs96]

the most recent Intel MacBook Air.
Honestly, we have an M1 MBA in the house and I don't even want an Intel version of it -- at any price.

There were some very steep discounts on these last December, as much as $300 off retail. I'm sure we'll even see bigger discounts later on. They still work OK for general use like internet surfing and email, chat etc. That's about it.