Finally time for a new computer soon: Mac MIni?

[bayswater]

That said, I'd like to think your basic entry level $1000 Mac Mini would be an improvement of 10 fold in terms of computing power from my Early 2008 iMac?

Probably not. I think you'd want the i7. Although, I went into the Apple Store and watched the i5 play the "thousand track" demo song in Logic.

[mothra]

Typically how long after the WWDC would those bargains start to appear?

If you're holding out for a Mini, you better check that site like 10x a day, and be ready to buy one the minute it shows up.. They don't last more than a couple of hours when they do show up at the refurb site.

[mikehalloran]

Ha! I wish that my crystal ball could be accurate more often.

There is a new Mini shipping this week with 16GB RAM, 512GB onboard and the new A12Z ARM chip. You have to be an Apple Developer to order it right now, however. Catalina only with the alpha of Big Sur for development.

The rest of the Mac line is scheduled for upgrades to ARM over the next two years.

Tim Cook did say that there will be incremental upgrades on most of the Intel Mac line "very soon". This usually means an announcement or two this week plus one or two more by the end of July.

As ship dates are announced, watch the Refurb Store for bargains as Apple warehouses and stores make room for the next, current versions.

[HCMarkus]

Given Apple's move to ARM, maybe ye old 5,1 Mac Pro isn't looking so bad...

If you can find a deal on a dual CPU 5,1, (I picked up my last 2010 dual for a measly $150 on Craigslist) you can still enjoy 12 cores of power for minimal $$$, maybe long enough to see what happens with ARM over the next few years.

[mikehalloran]

Pretty safe bet that this new Mini is unlikely to run anything older than Catalina.

[bayswater]

Pretty safe bet that this new Mini is unlikely to run anything older than Catalina.

I thought the annoucement said it comes with the next version of the OS

[mikehalloran]

Pretty safe bet that this new Mini is unlikely to run anything older than Catalina.

I thought the annoucement said it comes with the next version of the OS

As I already reported

...Catalina only with the alpha of Big Sur for development.

[Z car guy]

Ha! I wish that my crystal ball could be accurate more often.

There is a new Mini shipping this week with 16GB RAM, 512GB onboard and the new A12Z ARM chip. You have to be an Apple Developer to order it right now, however. Catalina only with the alpha of Big Sur for development.

The rest of the Mac line is scheduled for upgrades to ARM over the next two years.

Tim Cook did say that there will be incremental upgrades on most of the Intel Mac line "very soon". This usually means an announcement or two this week plus one or two more by the end of July.

As ship dates are announced, watch the Refurb Store for bargains as Apple warehouses and stores make room for the next, current versions.

Hey Mike , I just started following your posts . Great info BTW ! I am jumping on the refurb store as I have been watching it and I do see the base iMac pro pop up a lot . After seeing WWDC yesterday and no new immediate mac coming , I have to jump on the refurb deal ASAP as I'm having issues with my 2013 iMac possible power supply problem . Plus I think they still ship with Mojave . That would be an easy start up bonus right out of the box . I am also waiting forever for the MOTU M4 ...... lol

[mikehalloran]

The Mini is the right ARM Mac to release first. The A12Z is an 8 core chip with one core being GPU—the current Mini's major shortcoming. Tim C was showing it off on a pretty amazing Photoshop demo.

The base iMac Pro is always in the Refurb Store. It already has a powerful 8 core CPU plus a very nice GPU.

[mikehalloran]

Ha! I wish that my crystal ball could be accurate more often.

There is a new Mini shipping this week with 16GB RAM, 512GB onboard and the new A12Z ARM chip. You have to be an Apple Developer to order it right now, however. Catalina only with the alpha of Big Sur for development.

The rest of the Mac line is scheduled for upgrades to ARM over the next two years.

Tim Cook did say that there will be incremental upgrades on most of the Intel Mac line "very soon". This usually means an announcement or two this week plus one or two more by the end of July.

As ship dates are announced, watch the Refurb Store for bargains as Apple warehouses and stores make room for the next, current versions.

Hey Mike , I just started following your posts . Great info BTW ! I am jumping on the refurb store as I have been watching it and I do see the base iMac pro pop up a lot . After seeing WWDC yesterday and no new immediate mac coming , I have to jump on the refurb deal ASAP as I'm having issues with my 2013 iMac possible power supply problem . Plus I think they still ship with Mojave . That would be an easy start up bonus right out of the box . I am also waiting forever for the MOTU M4 ...... lol

There’s an iMP with 64GB RAM, Vega 64 and 2TB onboard in the Refurb Store at the moment, also the normal base model.
https://www.apple.com/shop/refurbished/mac/imac-pro

[mothra]

Ive had my i7/16GB Mini for about 2 weeks now so I can kinda give you a comparison against a 5.1 hex core 3.33Ghz Mac Pro.. Im a Logic Pro guy so keep that in mind.. Power-wise, the CPU seems to be a slight bit under the Mac Pro but the two are almost neck and neck. I loaded up the projects Ive been working on and the CPU meter in Logic is almost exactly the same. The BIG difference is the response. The Mac Pro with the latest Mojave can get kinda 'jerky' at times, Catalina, isn't some big speed boost, but its smooth as hell compared to the Pro running Mojave/Logic 10.5. The Pro would sit at just under 25% CPU in Logic, but would randomly just stop with a core audio overload.. The Mini hasn't choked once and just keeps on ticking.

Haven't done much in the way of games but MAME runs great as always, and Ive been trying to finish the Baldur's Gate remaster this past week. Granted, the game is not anything like a FPS graphics wise, but it runs just fine. Mini gets a little hot after about an hour of playing but nothing worse than it does running a 24-30 track mix loaded with plugins in Logic. I may still get an eGPU but I just dropped $400 on a 28" IPS 4K Samsung display yesterday so no more toys for me til next month hehe. Ill have to break out Quake 4 and see if it still runs in Catalina..

[mikehalloran]

Ive had my i7/16GB Mini for about 2 weeks now so I can kinda give you a comparison against a 5.1 hex core 3.33Ghz Mac Pro.. Im a Logic Pro guy so keep that in mind.. Power-wise, the CPU seems to be a slight bit under the Mac Pro but the two are almost neck and neck. I loaded up the projects Ive been working on and the CPU meter in Logic is almost exactly the same. The BIG difference is the response. The Mac Pro with the latest Mojave can get kinda 'jerky' at times, Catalina, isn't some big speed boost, but its smooth as hell compared to the Pro running Mojave/Logic 10.5. The Pro would sit at just under 25% CPU in Logic, but would randomly just stop with a core audio overload.. The Mini hasn't choked once and just keeps on ticking.

Haven't done much in the way of games but MAME runs great as always, and Ive been trying to finish the Baldur's Gate remaster this past week. Granted, the game is not anything like a FPS graphics wise, but it runs just fine. Mini gets a little hot after about an hour of playing but nothing worse than it does running a 24-30 track mix loaded with plugins in Logic. I may still get an eGPU but I just dropped $400 on a 28" IPS 4K Samsung display yesterday so no more toys for me til next month hehe. Ill have to break out Quake 4 and see if it still runs in Catalina..

Nice to see a real world review that includes gaming. something I'm not into.

With that monitor, I shouldn't think you need eGPU — unless it helps gaming and I have no clue when it comes to that. But... we do know you're going to get one eventually... right?

[plum]

I was about to start a new post. I am getting excited. I am so tired of my computer barely being able to run a couple of plug ins and one glitchy demanding VI -- like Virtual Drums.

I waited for the Event to pass. I would really appreciate if you folks would go over the specs within and give me a heads up on anything I should know before I make the leap...

Listening to the advice here I have come upon this Mac Mani as a good choice:

Customize your Mac mini
3.2GHz 6‑core 8th‑generation Intel Core i7 (Turbo Boost up to 4.6GHz)
8GB 2666MHz DDR4
Intel UHD Graphics 630
512GB SSD storage
Gigabit Ethernet (10/100/1000BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet using RJ-45 connector)

To this I plan to add a 32 inch samsung curved monitor for the $300.

Will the 8 of ram be enough to satisfy me for a little while until I get brave to upgrade it.
Will I really need to? I read here (thank you) that Internal Storage can not be changed but now the starting package storage on the 3.2 6 core 8th i7 is 512!

It seems there are several parameters than add to create the overall performance -- and how they are individually responsible I still do not complete understand.
CPU RAM #Processors/cores and of course the operating system compatibility with DAW.

Should I add Apple Care? I have generally in the past!

This arrangement comes in at 1300 Bucks! Do I even need this much?

I haven't tried for the Apple Card. I always got denied from Barclays. But I am about to try again.

[mothra]

Nice to see a real world review that includes gaming. something I'm not into.

With that monitor, I shouldn't think you need eGPU — unless it helps gaming and I have no clue when it comes to that. But... we do know you're going to get one eventually... right?

Welp, even with the monitor, the Mini isn't up to really doing FPS's I would imagine. I fired up Battletech last night, which isn't exactly new (or even a really graphic intense game), it was still set to 'high' quality as the last time I played it was on the Pro with the RX570.. Nope, even at medium the game was choppy and slow as hell just inside the regular UI anyways. I didn't even bother trying to play a mission it probably would've taken 20 minutes for the mission to even load hah. The old Radeon 5770 was just enough to play the game smoothly at varying degrees of low/medium quality, so Im guessing the Intel UHD is on par. 2D/ISO games seems to be great as is emulation like MAME and OpenEMU (NES/SNES stuff). But if decent 3D gaming appeals to you, you wouldn't want to do without an eGPU.

It'll be fine for the Mac OS optimized stuff like Logic, but things like Cubase and Ableton Live are a bit more GPU heavy so YMMV if you're on another DAW. No clue how DP compares (I actually just got my copy of Performer Lite two days ago haha) so cant help there. My 828x is working great though!

Oh I should clarify something in my original post that looks weird now that I read it.. When I mentioned the Mac mini CPU power being just UNDER my Mac Pro, I was referring to the usage meter in Logic being lower, not the actual CPU itself! The single six-core i7 definitely has a bit of an edge above the older single six-core 3.33Ghz Xeon, so I hope nobody thought I meant the Pro was outperforming it.

Will the 8 of ram be enough to satisfy me for a little while until I get brave to upgrade it.
Will I really need to? I read here (thank you) that Internal Storage can not be changed but now the starting package storage on the 3.2 6 core 8th i7 is 512!

It seems there are several parameters than add to create the overall performance -- and how they are individually responsible I still do not complete understand.
CPU RAM #Processors/cores and of course the operating system compatibility with DAW.

Should I add Apple Care? I have generally in the past!

This arrangement comes in at 1300 Bucks! Do I even need this much?

I haven't tried for the Apple Card. I always got denied from Barclays. But I am about to try again.

Get 16. Mac OS itself seems to run fairly smooth with 8, so give your apps some room to grow, and keep in mind up to 1.5GB of that system memory will get used by the graphics chip so its better to have a cushion. I just did the upgrade when I bought it because Im too lazy nowadays to open the thing up and I just didn't want to deal with it. You can get more ram way cheaper from OWC or anywhere and do it yourself if you don't mind opening and disassembling the whole thing from the bottom.

Ive been trying for an Apple Card for like 20 years. Literally since the day I bought my Quicksilver 2002 G4 haha. My girlfriend, who's got immaculate credit and even just bought a new Caddy two days ago, still cant get one. This last time, I actually got a letter from them saying they wanted some more information to process it, but by the time they sent that I already had my new Adorama credit card and had already bought mine from them instead. Im tempted to send them what they need, but eh I don't want a Barclay's Apple account tempting me to buy stupid things like AirPods when I have bad impulse control and really don't need them haha. The daily deals for plugins on sale are bad enough on my bank account!

[primeevolutionary]

So, I'm guessing that, if I were looking to purchase a new Mac Mini, I would have to buy the Intel Core because the M1s can only go up to 16GB RAM.

Is that a correct assumption?