4 ms·

I wish they had went for a design that scaled down better with the Mac Pro. It's an amazing machine and it's great for professional video production which is it

by jpgvm 5y ago

I wish they had went for a design that scaled down better with the Mac Pro. It's an amazing machine and it's great for professional video production which is it's reasons d'etre but it would have been nice if it scaled down well enough for software engineers. Sort of like how the old G5 did, it was an "pro" machine, rather than a "professional video editing rig".

zarzavat 5y ago
I suspect the M1 Pro will eventually find its way into a Mac Mini since they certainly have the thermal headroom for it, and the new Mac Pro will get some kind of M1 Supermax.
- d3nj4l 5y ago
  There's definitely a long-time rumor that a more powerful Apple Silicon Mac mini is in the works. It was expected to come out with the macbooks, but it didn't: https://www.macrumors.com/2021/08/22/gurman-high-end-mac-mini-this-fall/ https://www.macrumors.com/2021/08/22/gurman-high-end-mac-min...
- _ph_ 5y ago
  If the predictions by Gurman hold true, they have chips in planning which are twice and four times the size of the current M1 Max... I so hope there will be a Mini with the M1 Max, as this would finally be the desktop Mac, so many people have been waiting for (me including).
skhr0680 5y ago
I really wanted a cheaper Mac tower ten years ago but most of the reasons I wanted one aren’t really relevant anymore: The future finally happened in terms of fast external peripherals (especially storage), and I don’t have a burning need for a Mac with upgradable internal storage anymore. In 2010 I got a $100 graphics card that let my PC do things that the PS3 and Xbox could only dream of. Now for the cost of a “mid-range” GPU it’s possible to get a Switch with a game or two that look fine and run at fast FPS. One thing: Macs need to cut the Bs and give us upgradable RAM back
- iSnow 5y ago
  >Macs need to cut the Bs and give us upgradable RAM back I don't see that happen any time soon, not with their new focus on building the core as a SoC. Maybe with the MacPros, there will be on-SoC RAM and slower off-SoC, but I doubt it till I see it.
- marcan_42 5y ago
  Low power, high performance, upgradable RAM: pick two. RAM slots aren't free; all that extra interconnect length increases power requirements and becomes impractical with large buses. You'd need 8 SO-DIMM slots to match the bus width of the M1 Max models, at much higher power consumption and slower performance. LPDDR RAM doesn't even exist in removable form for these reasons.
  - laurent92 5y ago
    All macs should have 32GB without customization. It’s not so expensive without sockets, and Apple customers deserve the best. We shouldn’t even have to choose.
  - alisonkisk 5y ago
    What does bus width mean? Wikipedia isn't showing an 8x different in any metrics of lpddr5 vs sodimm ddr5
  - marcan_42 5y ago
    For those wondering about the math: a SODIMM channel (e.g. DDR5) is 64 bits. An LPDDR channel is 16 bits. M1 has 8 of those (128 bits), M1 Pro has 16 (256 bits), and M1 Max has 32 (512 bits). That means the M1 is equivalent to dual channel RAM, the Pro to quad channel RAM, and the Max to octa channel RAM, in typical desktop/laptop RAM terms. Modern embedded SoC integration is insane. Yes, the "two" memory chips you see on the M1 are really 8 discrete dies/chips (4 stacked together inside each of the two packages), and the "two" big fat things around the Pro are actually 2x8; double them up for the Max and that's how you get to 32 channels. Good luck putting that through a connector...
- ekianjo 5y ago

by jpgvm 5y ago

zarzavat 5y ago

I suspect the M1 Pro will eventually find its way into a Mac Mini since they certainly have the thermal headroom for it, and the new Mac Pro will get some kind of M1 Supermax.

d3nj4l 5y ago
There's definitely a long-time rumor that a more powerful Apple Silicon Mac mini is in the works. It was expected to come out with the macbooks, but it didn't: https://www.macrumors.com/2021/08/22/gurman-high-end-mac-mini-this-fall/ https://www.macrumors.com/2021/08/22/gurman-high-end-mac-min...
_ph_ 5y ago
If the predictions by Gurman hold true, they have chips in planning which are twice and four times the size of the current M1 Max... I so hope there will be a Mini with the M1 Max, as this would finally be the desktop Mac, so many people have been waiting for (me including).

skhr0680 5y ago

I really wanted a cheaper Mac tower ten years ago but most of the reasons I wanted one aren’t really relevant anymore: The future finally happened in terms of fast external peripherals (especially storage), and I don’t have a burning need for a Mac with upgradable internal storage anymore. In 2010 I got a $100 graphics card that let my PC do things that the PS3 and Xbox could only dream of. Now for the cost of a “mid-range” GPU it’s possible to get a Switch with a game or two that look fine and run at fast FPS. One thing: Macs need to cut the Bs and give us upgradable RAM back

iSnow 5y ago
>Macs need to cut the Bs and give us upgradable RAM back I don't see that happen any time soon, not with their new focus on building the core as a SoC. Maybe with the MacPros, there will be on-SoC RAM and slower off-SoC, but I doubt it till I see it.
marcan_42 5y ago
Low power, high performance, upgradable RAM: pick two. RAM slots aren't free; all that extra interconnect length increases power requirements and becomes impractical with large buses. You'd need 8 SO-DIMM slots to match the bus width of the M1 Max models, at much higher power consumption and slower performance. LPDDR RAM doesn't even exist in removable form for these reasons.
- laurent92 5y ago
  All macs should have 32GB without customization. It’s not so expensive without sockets, and Apple customers deserve the best. We shouldn’t even have to choose.
- alisonkisk 5y ago
  What does bus width mean? Wikipedia isn't showing an 8x different in any metrics of lpddr5 vs sodimm ddr5
- marcan_42 5y ago
  For those wondering about the math: a SODIMM channel (e.g. DDR5) is 64 bits. An LPDDR channel is 16 bits. M1 has 8 of those (128 bits), M1 Pro has 16 (256 bits), and M1 Max has 32 (512 bits). That means the M1 is equivalent to dual channel RAM, the Pro to quad channel RAM, and the Max to octa channel RAM, in typical desktop/laptop RAM terms. Modern embedded SoC integration is insane. Yes, the "two" memory chips you see on the M1 are really 8 discrete dies/chips (4 stacked together inside each of the two packages), and the "two" big fat things around the Pro are actually 2x8; double them up for the Max and that's how you get to 32 channels. Good luck putting that through a connector...
ekianjo 5y ago