The most important feature of an M1-based Mac will likely be OS support into the distant future. I'm still using a 2012 rMBP, which was the first-gen retina version, and it's held up much better than any other computer I've ever bought, partly due to OS support into 2020. I imagine Apple will stand behind this new generation for a long time as well.
The new M1 SOCs max out at 16GB RAM, which seems like a major limitation, but the timing and latency of this integrated RAM is probably much better than what you could otherwise achieve. Meanwhile, improved SSD performance will probably have a larger impact on the whole system. I remember when I bought a 15k RPM hard drive ca. 2005 - it was like a new computer. Upgrading the slowest part of the storage hierarchy made the largest difference.
One slight disappointment in the Mac mini is the removal of two USB C / Thunderbolt ports and no option for 10G ethernet vs. the Intel model. An odd set of limitations in 2020.
Overall, at the price they're offering the Mac mini (haven't really considered the other models for myself), I think it's ok to take the plunge.
> Overall, at the price they're offering the Mac mini (haven't really considered the other models for myself), I think it's ok to take the plunge.
I thought the same. I actually wonder whether the low prices aren't due to the App support being extremely limited at this point (basically only first party stuff)
It sucks that the SSD is (presumably) not upgradeable anymore. Apple generally charges a ton for the larger SSD offerings, but it used to be that you could just buy a base model and replace the thing later.
Apple positions itself as being on the side of the consumer, and while they never really justified their soldered-down RAM (on laptops), one _might_ argue that it reduced failure rates. It's interesting that IBM discovered that soldering RAM to the individual compute modules in the Blue Gene/L (ca. 2004-2007) did improve reliability, in part because they had 2^16 modules in one cluster. I don't really buy that argument for laptop RAM, and especially not for SSDs, but I'm not sure if there's anything that can push back against Apple other than plain old competition, which they're trying to distance themselves from as much as possible, of course.
They're on the side of a certain type of consumer (doesn't even consider upgrading hardware down the line), and with these product launches they're making it more clear than ever that they don't want you to purchase their products if you don't fit into being that type of consumer.
Also good luck recovering data from a watter-damaged laptop. I have also seen some macbooks with broken SSD on eBay, sold for cheap. Soldered SSD is a ticking timebomb for your data.
I'd prefer to store my hot raw video footage on my disk, and my preferred way to do that is by buying a $350 2TB nvme instead of paying Apple $1000 or whatever for the privilege.
I understand that it's less convenient but you actually can buy that 2TB NVME SSD as external drive too. It should operate in the same ballpark as decent to higher end internal NVME SSD options.
It only has two ports and multiport dongles are not reliable enough for external storage, you can only trust the single USB-C to USB-A dongles for that so it means giving up a port.
I have a base level 2 port MBP from work and having to do any work with large files has been a nightmare because of this, having to juggle power/monitor and storage constantly.
The new M1 SOCs max out at 16GB RAM, which seems like a major limitation, but the timing and latency of this integrated RAM is probably much better than what you could otherwise achieve. Meanwhile, improved SSD performance will probably have a larger impact on the whole system. I remember when I bought a 15k RPM hard drive ca. 2005 - it was like a new computer. Upgrading the slowest part of the storage hierarchy made the largest difference.
One slight disappointment in the Mac mini is the removal of two USB C / Thunderbolt ports and no option for 10G ethernet vs. the Intel model. An odd set of limitations in 2020.
Overall, at the price they're offering the Mac mini (haven't really considered the other models for myself), I think it's ok to take the plunge.
- Sent from my Dell hackintosh