Mac Mini 2020 model with M1 processor.
Bought this myself by price beating at Officeworks.
Has been cheaper in the past here (https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/597220) but not much difference =)
A review https://www.techradar.com/au/reviews/apple-mac-mini-m1-2020
UPDATE 8/3/21 - looks like the deal has been extended for another 7 days
Yep. If you're in no particular hurry the US Apple store just started selling refurbished models, so the AU one probably will too in a month or two.
That would be the time to get an OW price beat to maximise the savings.
OW won’t price beat a refurb? Or wait for JB 10%?
@unity1: Yep, got mine for $939 a couple of weeks ago price beating the TGG 10% off. You only have a few hours at the start of each sale to do it before officeworks updates their prices though.
Even without an official sale, they tend to discount 10% anyway from experience if you ask, though the sales happen regularly enough
But that’s surely the way to go coupled with discounted JB gift cards if you’re in the market for these
I’m waiting so long for JB to have the 256GB version to be in stock with 10% sale.
Here it is fir $989.10 delivered with PLUSET10
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/254794848539
$939 with eBay gift cards
Anyone have experience with running one of these as an emulation station? Or is Mac just not as well supported?
The current M1 system has more SSD wear than the other model. Probably because the system uses more space for swap partition like page file in windows.
https://www.macworld.com/article/3609096/apple-silicon-m1-ma…
Should be alright if you are just browsing the web and using office. But for the power user, probably choose 16G model and larger storage if you want to keep it longer.
There’s fierce debate over whether that’s real or a bug in smartmon.
Some users have seen reports of impossible read/write volumes, like terabytes per hour on idle machines. It could just be a reporting bug.
It’s come up on Reddit a few times today, a guys M1 did 15TB within a day - seems quite unlikely so I’m keen to see how this all plays out.
Alternatively, bite the bullet early and get an external drive and mount everything disk I/O intensive on that (at least as far as write operations).
Very capable and cheapest way into MacOS
Only issue is not everything is M1 optimised, and not everything runs well on Rosetta
Give it another 12 months and I think most software should have made the transition, but until then, still a very fast capable unit.
I bought one from Apple Store price matched JB 10% off.
I plan to use until new iMacs appear.
I’ve got one of these M1 Mac Mini. Very capable is an understatement - they are blisteringly fast. But the “only issue is” list is getting longer by the day. Monitor issues. Bluetooth problems. USB 3.1 Gen2 issues. But how one uses it will determine how many problems you may come across.
All in all, these computers are equal parts amazing and frustrating at the same time.
Are these issues strictly for the M1 Mac Mini? Because I have an M1 MacBook Pro and honestly it's been a breeze
I've got the M1 Macbook Air and I've had plenty of monitor issues. I've now had the display and logic board replaced so may be a one-off. They also updated software recently to deal with monitor issues, so maybe it is fixed now?
@bangabargain: Oh yes I'm aware of the display issues too. My brother failed to get a USB-C to DP cable working for 4K@60Hz so then after a bunch of research on reddit, we both got USB-C to HDMI and now our problems are solved, working at 4K@60Hz. It's really annoying how Mac needs you to have the latest technologies to get a functioning setup (e.g. 4K monitor, USB-C monitor for even more convenience, Thunderbolt Docks etc).
@TwentyTwoCarats: I’m using my mini on my Late 2009 IMac 27” using target display mode via USB C to Mini DisplayPort cable
Working beautifully
@TwentyTwoCarats: Do you have an M1 MBP?
Our 2015 MBP is currently hooked to a 4K Dell via Thunderbolt to DP cable (4K@60Hz) and I'd like to switch it over to an M1 MBP.
I was hoping to go via the USB-C to DP cable route, but your experience isn't too encouraging.
@Member 0230: So far, it seems like M1 devices work best with USB-C to HDMI for 4k60Hz. DP is causing a lot of issues. Not sure how serious it is and whether they can fix it with a future update or whether it’s a limitation of the chip.
At the moment my M1 MBP is running totally fine with USB-C to HDMI -> 4K with retina scaling to look like 2560x1440 (so it renders at 5K and downscales to 4K). Looks cripsy af
How does all the adobe apps run in rosetta? Youtube benchmarks say better than my gaming specced windows pc i paid $2000 for.
I'm kind of keen to transition away from PC but mah steam games will forever keep me on that system.
switch to console, i really dont understand how people sit and game on pc when you can do it on the comfort of your sofa with a nice big screen and dedicated controller
I have 40/50 games in my Steam/Epic/GoG but always go to the PS4 on the couch. I thinking since Covid more time in the study brings on PTSD
ive spend hundreds of dollars on steam games and played zero of them. at this point i just accept im not a pc gamer. consoles for leisure, pc for productivity.
@magnitude: I guess you just kind of get used to it. Using a mouse and keyboard is far more freeing compared to a controller.
A couch is better than the computer chair but that's the only positive compared to the rest of my PC setup.
i really dont understand how people sit and game on pc when you can do it on the comfort of your sofa with a nice big screen and dedicated controller
You can literally do all of these things with a PC, plus more.
You make it sound like PC's aren't compatible with tv's and console controllers…
Let's just say some people don't like the casual feel with controllers. I tried playing doom 3 on a TV with a controller.. Nope. 160hz with a kb/mouse is where it's at.
Yep, Dota2 and LOL cannot be played on console like you can on a iMac/PC.
i find controllers to slow and inaccurate for aiming compared to a mouse/kb combo. might be ok for RPG games
and miss out on the tonnes of games like Valheim that are only on PC? No thanks
dedicated controller
Good luck with that on CSGO…
Can someone please tell me why Apple would make such a sexy device and then totally screw over consumers (upgrades be damned) by soldering on EVERY SINGLE-CHIP on this thing? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4ArjHz4gd4)
Do they assume people will not want to upgrade or increase capacity, extend the life with a new NVME once the original SSD's TBW is reached?
Or is the philosophy that in 3-4 years you'll throw it away and buy a new one?
(I understand I'll probably get negged by fanbois - but I'm open to convincing reasons as to why this is a GOOD thing for the environment)
TO MAKE MONEY LOL?
2 trillion dollar corporation that pays little tax.
Thinking they care about you
Let me give this a stab:
It's for security and helps keep its resale value. Without soldering someone could sell you one with a replaced component. 🤣
Imagine if cars were this secure.
What a load of… It's so people can't upgrade & have to buy a new one after a few years. Companies don't care about resale value - that is money lost to them. You can actually increase your resale value by… Upgrading your device.
Cars don't need to be this secure because you NEED to be able to replace parts if something breaks. Or do you want to buy a new car if your alternator breaks down?
Proprietary systems = Lock in Customer = Spend More on Apple ecosystem…basically it's their rule…not the customer’s; a standard hawkish business model.
Promotions from the company around being secure yada yada are nothing compared to the $$$$ goals
Proprietary systems = Lock in Customer = Spend More on Apple ecosystem…
You can choose to spend more money upfront and have everything just work, or you can be cheap then spend more later in the many hours trying make your piece-meal solution fit together, then be frustrated every time an update or upgrade breaks your shit.
Apple offer the market a choice, and lot of people seem to prefer that option.
This is my only major problem with the M1s. Unupgradeable, unrepairable. It seems like it's kind of an extension of their mobile chip lines which have such limitations. Their future M1X release looks like it will have more reasonable options, but who knows until it shows up.
The M1's computing power to electrical power & heat output is absolutely undeniably the best in the world right now by an insane, revolutionary margin. And it's at a good price point to boot. But I'm waiting for the M1X variant before I decide.
The M1's computing power to electrical power & heat output
Just in case you didn’t know, when it comes to almost all electrical devices, their power consumption and their heat output are essentially the same. Computers are no different, I don’t have exact figures but probably around 99% of the power usage eventually goes to heating up the room the computer is in.
Yeah, that's why I grouped them.
We are after an entry level Mac mini that I can swap out disk to replace with 1tb.
What’s the last model that was user upgradable ?
The last one with upgradeable RAM but not disk was the 2018 Intel. The last one with upgradeable disk but not RAM was the 2014. The last one that'd let you upgrade both was the 2012. Is there a reason your boot drive has to be 1TB, or can you use external storage?
@atj: I just sold a 2012 i5 mac mini for $300 which I purchased for $680 nearly 9 years ago. I would have kept it had it not been for apple stopping operating system support for it. The latest OS that can be installed is Catalina. You cannot formally/officially install Big Sur.
The ridiculous part of all this is that you could easily install Windows 10 on the machine without any dramas whatsoever.
@atj: Many Thanks. I might be able to use an external disk.
Im using it to download the family iphoto library for local backup.
Not sure what the other options available to make sure my photos exist on a local disk I can time machine?
Ps
Also cant work out how to backup (not sync) apple notes.
@1Kenobi: I think you might be in luck as you can move a Photos library to an external disk. If I recall correctly Time Machine will back up external drives but by default it excludes them. It's $300 to upgrade from 256GB to 512GB on the M1s. Two Samsung 1TB T5s will set you back less than that.
I've never thought to backup Notes. I probably should look into that.
Unupgradeable, unrepairable.
Does this matter for most people?
You'd have to ask most people.
Repairability.
Cheap upgrades on base model.
Long usable life of product.
Apple doesn't want you to have any of the above.
Yeah they have this bizarre strategy of making stuff that doesn't break and doesn't need upgrades to remain compatible with current OS
My daily driver 2013 iMac says hey, how you doing
Sorry, it meant heyhow~1.docx
It'll be somewhere on your…let's all say the alphabet, try not to use your fingers…A, B, C drive, good boy, gold star
@atj: "It was only good enough for the next 8 major OS upgrades and still works fine with a substantially identical OS?" That's your criticism?
Try harder champ, you can do it
"It was only good enough for the next 8 major OS upgrades and still works fine with a substantially identical OS?" That's your criticism?
Yes. Remember you said "doesn't break and doesn't need upgrades to remain compatible with current OS". If the enabler patches hardware support summaries are accurate, your machine will run Big Sur fine except for stable wifi, which you could probably fix by upgrading to a newer wifi chipset. Your machine under macOS is slowly breaking, and some time in the next few years will become a liability. Meantime it'll happily run the latest Windows or Ubuntu. As it will in three or four years time.
Stuff that doesn't break or need upgrades? You obviously don't work in IT.
Prior to their M1, Apple used the same parts as any other computer manufacturer. You know, Intel chips and (ancient) DDR3 in their thrash can Mac Pros.
I stopped using my iPad after 3 or 4 years because many apps no longer were compatible with the old version of IOS. It also slowed down because of Apple's "battery saver feature" (which they only made adjustable after it was found out they slow down old devices on purpose)
They make good stuff, yes. They also want to make money with these soldering tactics. "Macs don't need to upgrade" is just naive. Remember, they don't have to solder - they choose to anyway.
My PC from 2007 still ran Windows 10 fine until I replaced it last year in need of a 4k editing station. Your 2013 Mac is a spring chicken compared to that.
@Kontiki: Sorry, you're banging on about soldering and I just want to check you're not talking about Surfaces, or Thinkpads, or Dell's XPS line.
Coz I'd hate for you to come across as an insecure, biased, uninformed commenter who's cherry picking a particular issue then claiming that's it's vendor specific rather than a widely-adopted industry standard, what with you "working in IT" and all.
Anecdotally, a buddy of mine built a hackintosh a few years back and said it was great at first, but compatibility issues between software and hardware became problematic after some time.
100% profitability is their driving reason for all this, but it could partially be due to keeping the system simpler to maintain to reasonable standards.
Forget about hackintosh, Apple always made it harder with anything other than Apple. However it works so amazing on its own hardware. I'm not surprised that you develop a hate/repulsion towards other systems that are open to other hardware and tweaking. This has been my experience while transitioning to Apple, I only own Apple devices now. No regrets though, they are efficient for work.
I think that a lot of IT nerds embrace the tinkering/DIY life and Apple is none of that, hence the push back. I used to be like that, but now I just want stuff to work as effortlessly as possible.
Apple writes their OS for specific hardware, I bet limiting upgrades makes the OS better and faster for everyone in the long run. Apple can design these chips with a very specific range of hardware in mind, it’s a big part of why the fastest phone in the known universe for many years now has been an iPhone.
Am I right that if you want the 16gb upgrade you can only buy from apple? Cant seem to find the 16gb version online anywhere. Almost pulled the trigger during the afterpay 12% off last week with 5% off eBay gift cards. Could have stole one for $918 but the bargain glory wasn’t worth the compromise on the upgraded ram.
Annoyingly it’s only available as a BTO.
I got my 16GB M1 Mac Mini through the Apple Business section, only 6% off rather than the 10% or so you can manage elsewhere, but I’d rather the RAM than the few extra bucks at purchase time.
For working in FCPX with larger files I found it was quite a bit better than the 8GB model. I’ve owned both, returned the 8GB model for a 16GB.
Apple have always done it like that, even if you go to an Apple Store upgrade configurations have been build to order since as long as I can remember. Probably since Apple ever stopped leaving stock in warehouses for months at a time.
pc > mac
If you are running a hackintosh yes. My $400 hackintosh is about equal to an approx $1700 Mac.
Just use Zorin OS. You can get the macOS look and feel.
Or just load MacOS using the the virtualbox on a windows PC.
Is the Apple-made M1 chip going to make hackintosh's an impossibility in future? I don't fully understand the implications of M1 beyond 'it's way faster/efficient' and that apparently some software is not yet able to run on it. Ie. Is it possible software written in future may be only M1-compatible, so unable to run on anything else?
Absolutely. I have never seen an IOS emulator on an Android phone, and that is the same architecture.
MacOS is shit
The Mac advertised here is $987 and I'll be willing to bet real money that it shits all over on your hackintosh.
Feel free to post your parts list, hours invested and performance benchmarks.
Prove it.
no need, its the same as with the earth, some people say its flat, i wont get into that and wont prove the earth is round, smart people know
Pathetic.
@nuts: yes you are, just like the guy who wanted to prove the earth is flat, shot himself in the air and died
Do you guys know if apple stores will price match Umart? I remember they price match JB, Harvey and the like.
Back in the day, you can also just walk into an Apple store to buy something off the shelf. Now, you have to make a booking online to see someone in the store. I have a gift card that I got from last year's black friday sale that I'd like to use so I'd prefer to get it off Apple.
is Mac mini part of the "uni student deal" ?
Afraid not - Laptops and iPads only. This has long been the case unfortunately.
They have recently added the mini to the higher education store!
https://www.apple.com/au-hed/shop/buy-mac/mac-mini
Does this destroy a PC build of the equivalent cost because of the M1?
Nah. But M1 is smaller therefore you can save some space on your desk and also MacOS.
It’s superior to any Intel consumer CPU offerings. GPU is far from competitive with even a midrange Nvidia part from 5 years ago.
Then as the troll insinuated ^^above, if you don’t like MacOS, then get a PC.
It’s impressive to see the ARM revolution taking place, but given Apple’s software and hardware isolation M1 really isn’t feasible for a lot of people.
Depends on the app you're running, you can check Anand's Conclusion page on what it does well, what it doesn't.
You can get a good feel from reviews by Tom's Hardware, The Verge, TechRadar, etc., of course.
PC of the equivalent size, then yes, definitely, but a PC of the equivalent cost, that's hard to say.
Ultimately it depends on what you're doing. Modern computers are way more than fast enough if you're just looking to browse the web, use Word/Excel, do programming…etc. I've got several PCs around my house + office including a 5K iMac, Intel MBP, M1 MBP, and a 3970X-based Threadripper workstation, and a 5950X-based gaming system. They're all exactly identical in terms of how they feel for "day-to-day" tasks.
My strong opinion is that the M1 MBP/MBA are best in class at the moment. Their performance is far better than Intel's offerings and they're actually usually coming in cheaper than the premium alternatives (particularly the MBA), which is a surprise for Apple. Native M1 performance is fantastic and Rosetta works really well for non-native apps, usually running them even faster than the Intel MBP. FWIW, there are some issues being reported with the M1 machines, so do your research before buying.
However, if you're talking about the Mac Mini as a desktop replacement, then it's a difficult question because you're comparing a low-wattage mobile chip to potentially very power hungry desktop-class chips. The discussion is no longer just performance/watt, but rather, performance in general, where the desktop class chips will still be much faster. That's why I suspect Apple hasn't released an M1-based iMac. Similarly, an Apple silicon Mac Pro is still a long way off too.
The competitor to this machine would something like an Intel NUC or other mini pc's given this machine's size and power consumption (30W at most). GPU is fantastic for integrated graphics but most dgpus would crush it. It's definitely better than most of the Intel Nuc's but the Ryzen mini pc's are faster in multi core stuff.
Yes, as long as the app you need to run has a Mac version in the first place. All the people saying no haven’t checked pc component prices in a while.
I endorse this machine.
M1X is coming soon.
That is an Olympus camera
Bought one of these last week and have been trialling it in the office. I want to love it, but the softness of text on anything other than a 4K monitor is a real issue. Mac OS seems to be very heavily focused on retina - excuse the pun. I've tried it with various cables and monitors (up to 2K), but no luck. I'm still trying to convince myself that its not that bad, but it's headache inducing tbh.
Pardon if I don't understand you clearly but have you gone to
System Preferences —> Displays —> changed resolution to SCALED ?
Yes, tried everything and then some. I had a PC running into the same monitor (LG Ultrawide) to test, swapping back and forth and the text is pin sharp in Windows and soft in MacOS. The other monitors in the office were 2K and were certainly better with the Mac, but still soft.
My research has lead me to believe that Windows is simply more forgiving on lower res monitors.
Turn off font smoothing. They removed it from system preferences in Big Sur for some reason but you can still do it via Terminal
Odd, I'm using 2k ultra wide, no issues
I have to admit, the 2K LG Ultrawide I use isn't the best monitor. The swap between Windows and Mac OS did however highlight the difference in text rendering.
One of my team has been testing the Mac today on a 24" 2K monitor with Windows running next to it on an identical monitor and was happy enough with the Mac. I guess I'm just a bit more fussy.
I think I'll go with a 32" 4K monitor and hope that is close enough to retina to keep the Mac happy.
When JB, GG etc have 10% off Apple computers do these macs minis get discounted?