Commissario
Who's getting one of these little beasts?
*** The official late 2020 Mac mini thread (it has the M1 chip and everything!) ***
- Thread starter Feek
- Start date
Soldato
Ordered this with the 16GB Memory upgrade - although it did hurt to pay the premium Apple tax for that. Still a Desktop guy at heart.
Soldato
Don't really have much choice now that the RAM is part of the package.
Man of Honour
I’ve ordered mine, 16GB 256GB spec so a few days delay but I cannot wait. I was expecting to have to wait a while for the Mini to get the Apple silicon but I’m so glad they did it first 
Only annoyance is it only having 2 USB-4 ports, which will be taken up by both monitors.
Only annoyance is it only having 2 USB-4 ports, which will be taken up by both monitors.
Associate
Ordered 512gb/16gb memory model!!!
The lack of ports USB-A is a concern. Any Docks that anyone can recommend?
The lack of ports USB-A is a concern. Any Docks that anyone can recommend?
Caporegime
Eagerly looking forward to hearing your opinions about this. If it turns out to be a wondrous piece of tech, I might flog my PC and go Mac mini + consoles for my setup. Keep my fingers crossed that the American Truck Simulator devs make a native ARM version as that is really the only thing I’d miss.
Soldato
I just can't stomach the price of the memory upgrade.
In China, so no customization/pre-order yet, but had a look on the US site and had a disappointed laugh.
I think it'll be a cracking little desktop, but I don't want it aging prematurely by extreme lack of memory.
In China, so no customization/pre-order yet, but had a look on the US site and had a disappointed laugh.
I think it'll be a cracking little desktop, but I don't want it aging prematurely by extreme lack of memory.
I'm expecting that, if we get a Mac mini Pro with internals that will also go in the higher-model MBP and base iMac, the memory upgrades to (maybe) 32GB will be even more eye-watering. I think we're paying more price for the fact RAM is now part of the M1 chip as a whole, so it's not even a case of it being soldered to the logic board, it's right there on the chip, as well as "Apple tax".
Man of Honour
Apple have said Bootcamp isn't possible on Apple Silicone Macs, but Parallels and other VM solutions seem to be making good progress on updating their products which is great news
Soldato
I mainly use my mini for general browsing, office work, light photo/video editing, the new mini will be more than enough. Looking forward to the tighter integration from the chip and OS.
I think I'll wait for the beefier high TDP variants to be put in but it's still tempting. I don't see the memory thing as much of an issue considering the SKUs that these new units (including the MBA. MBP) are here to replace. There will be new chips with more memory.
I do have an ageing 2012 Mac mini running the odd thing in the background that for the first time in 8 years will not be able to upgrade to the latest OS (pretty darn impressive)
I do have an ageing 2012 Mac mini running the odd thing in the background that for the first time in 8 years will not be able to upgrade to the latest OS (pretty darn impressive)
There will be proper support for virtualisation (of other ARM operating systems), as well as emulating other architectures. You can already run x86 windows inside an iPad through Qemu emulation (after you jailbreak
). That will surely be available on macs as well.But yeah, Bootcamp as we knew it is dead. There might be a chance that in future years Microsoft will open up the ARM Windows project and then Apple and Microsoft can figure out how to run ARM Windows on AS macs.
There will be proper support for virtualisation (of other ARM operating systems), as well as emulating other architectures. You can already run x86 windows inside an iPad through Qemu emulation (after you jailbreak
But yeah, Bootcamp as we knew it is dead. There might be a chance that in future years Microsoft will open up the ARM Windows project and then Apple and Microsoft can figure out how to run ARM Windows on AS macs.
With virtualization, will it make full use of the CPU and GPU?
Most likely yes. You can just pass a device (like GPU, USB, etc) directly to a VM, no problem. You can also pass CPU instructions directly to the CPU from the guest OS. The overhead is usually in the low single digits.
So I could fire up say Adobe premiere or some emulator and it should work fine? What about vulkan drivers?
Soldato
I think there are a lot of unknowns at the moment when it comes to stuff like that. They showed Virtualisation working with a Linux VM at WWDC, but not sure if there's been a huge amount of news other than that.
The only guaranteed thing is Rosetta 2 (running x86 macOS software on AS macOS). So x86 Adobe Premier for macOS will run just fine through emulation.
For virtualisation, there will be third party solutions that will take care of things. Availability and features, obviously, is unknown now, but yes, eventually you should get virtualisation on ARM macOS in the same way that it exists everywhere with all those features.
Soldato
- Joined
- 7 Aug 2004
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I use a mac mini 2018 as my desktop computer, I'll miss this gen as I think the i7 is still similar general cpu perf, obviously slower on the cherry picked benches and I do a lot of 4k video editing....so I use lots of the 64gb ram I use now....also no egpu support is a massive fail for us professionals 
I have a vega gpu attached to mine.
Sure the M1 has video editing acceleration but I don't hold up much hope when I'm editing a 500-700gb project that's all h264/h265 4k. Sure proxy etc etc but not always possible with some stuff due to fast storage big enough
I have a vega gpu attached to mine.Sure the M1 has video editing acceleration but I don't hold up much hope when I'm editing a 500-700gb project that's all h264/h265 4k. Sure proxy etc etc but not always possible with some stuff due to fast storage big enough