I do not find any of the products they released to be ridiculous in cost even with the 16GB memory upgrade! And the Mac mini actually was reduced in cost. Keep in mind if you buy a dell workstation totally specked out like the top end Mac Pro fully maxed you will spend roughly the same amount.
I didn't say that the M1 Macs are overpriced; at least not until you try to spec them up, which many might be forced to do, due to the complete lack of upgradeability. The point I was trying to make, which I probably failed to convey, is that this vertical integration and performance/efficiency, seems to be veering towards an increasingly locked/restrictive ecosystem, within which price gouging is known to occur.
Also about the Dell workstation; this is off-topic and has been discussed ad nauseam, so I'll only say that it's impossible to make a true apples to apples (heh) comparison, but for a somewhat comparable Dell system, you'd looking at around $3,000-3,500 (if you want, you can have a look at
Dell's configurator)
My Mac mini routinely beats my main desktop in video encoding. But you're also forgetting about the neural engine and the T2 that increases stuff when it comes to photo and video editing. Lets also not forget the apps that people who buy Mac Pros use will be tailored to it.
I didn't forget it; I mentioned apps specifically tailored to the M1's specialized hardware. From what I've read, the T2 accelerates h.265 8-bit encoding, so if you do that, you'll get a big boost.
In the past when I ran tests the 970 EVO Plus gave me the same speeds over TB3 as it did in the internal m.2 slot and I doubt the person I was replying to is doing such hard core tasks they would even notice. You say 30% slower but I think you forget that due to the TB3 controller being on the SOC with the CPU, Memory, Neural, video, and increased memory pipe if it is slower it is maybe 5%.
Depending on the workload, it might be 5%, 30% or 0%. What I was trying to say is that an external SSD isn't a replacement for a proper internal m.2 slot and it's not like there's no space inside the Mac mini (half of the enclosure is empty).
Even If they offered slots for their own SSD modules, then that'd be great too, but not at $600 for 1TB of "dumb" flash modules. I mean, come on!
I am just going to put this here for you:
Thanks for digging the scores up. It more or less confirms what I mentioned. Faster at single, slower at multi. So I wouldn't call that absolutely stomping a 9900K. Where it does comprehensively stomp it though, is in power efficiency. It's embarrassing for Intel really. In a few days when proper reviews come out, we'll know more.
Again, I'm not knocking Apple here. What they've done is super impressive, but I have voiced my concerns above.
