Presumably this will come when Apple releases an M-series chip for high end MacBooks, iMacs and the Mac mini. Right now the M1 is exclusively replacing base models across the range.
More specifically, it's new for the Mac Mini with M1 chip. This has been a build-to-order on the Intel Mac Mini for a while.
Personally I'd be more excited if Apple could help mainstream 2.5Gbps Ethernet as the base option. The consumer market has been stuck at 1Gbps for far too long.
It's certainly plenty for anything involving the Internet. But for local connections it's quite tired. Now that we have SSDs everywhere I just want my local backups to run a bit faster.
Port speed was always mostly about satisfying home network rather than being simply bigger than your net bandwith. NAS, sync or streaming between local devices, etc.
I've absolutely loved my M1 Mac mini since I got it ($1,199 I think? with 16 gigs of memory and 1TB). I never hear the fan, it hardly ever gets slow, and I drive two 4k monitors with it at 60Hz (1 with DisplayPort, the other with HDMI 2.0).
Most apps I use already support Apple Silicon. Most that don't, work well under Rosetta 2. And whenever I've needed Windows, I've been RDP'ing into my local NAS machine so I don't miss VMware.
It feels great to use a desktop again.
Meanwhile, on my MacBook Pro that I spent nearly $3,500 for (i9, 32GB memory, 1TB hard drive, AppleCare, etc), the asinine butterfly keyboard causes me to have typos in about 30% of words I type. And the fan comes on no matter what I do.
I’m not 100% sure but both the pro and mini have fans. I’ve never heard my mini’s fan in 3 months. I’m sure it might have run at times because I do compile elixir all day. But I’ve never noticed any slowdown.
There’s a lot of not-so-home use switches available on eBay at great prices depending on your region. I bought a US-48-750w for like 200-300usd a few months ago, which has two 10g ports and 48 1g POE ports.
You can get some multi gig switches with 1 or 2 10g ports brand new from net gear for about 250USD. Things like the MS510TX.
Specifically the CRS305-1G-4S+IN, a great little switch and can run either RouterOS or SwOS. Pair with some decent copper DAC twinax from fs.com and you're all set, the only problem is reliable access to < $200 NIC cards that doesn't require eBay.
The selection of 10GB cards has really improved relatively recently. Search Amazon for "10gb network card" and you'll see lots of choices for around $100 USD.
Everyone probably already knows this, but it was news to me at the time that I could direct-connect to one other 10GbE device without a switch. My desktop is happily connected to my NAS, while using Wi-Fi for everything else.
The power consumption is a problem mainly for high-density switches and SFP+ transceivers. Individual ports on a desktop motherboard aren't a problem, and switches with low port counts and no PoE can be fanless.
It is still ineffective; nbase-t port requires more power than dac or optical, on desktops it is just not dense, so it doesn't show up to the same extent.
Switches with no poe can also have not enough juice to power rj45 transceivers in every port; it is quite possible to be able to juice up only every fourth port or so.
About memory use: macOS has had quite a lot of optimizations. Transparant memory compression, swapping and given the fact a lot of apps are coded in objective C/Swift and running native code without VM's, garbage collectors etc they don't seem to require as much memory.
Of course, if you insist on running Java, Electron or other wasteful frameworks you will have a worse time, but even then 16Gb can be enough.
For the 'standard office' user running Safari, Mail and Office 16 (or even 8) Gb is more than enough.
intel's latest mobile chip has 2x thunderbolt 4 ports which are each good for 40Gbit system to system connectivity. this expensive addon is way way behind where the times should be.
dual 25Gbe cards are $200. i realize that's not in high demand in the home right now. but the whole connectivity situation makes me feel very uneasy.
it feels like 2.5Gbe and 5Gbe are basically being invented to make 10Gbe feel amazing & wonderful & great, to justify it's high price, even though 10Gbe has been around & fairly within reach for a long long long time. 25Gbe is nipping at it's heels in practice, but there's these huge market forces working overtime to keep charging loads of money for 10Gbe. we've concocted half (& quarter) measures to justify something that was semi-bordering obsolete.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 34.5 ms ] threadIf Apple would just give the Mini 32GB of RAM it could be a serious contender.
Personally I'd be more excited if Apple could help mainstream 2.5Gbps Ethernet as the base option. The consumer market has been stuck at 1Gbps for far too long.
Most apps I use already support Apple Silicon. Most that don't, work well under Rosetta 2. And whenever I've needed Windows, I've been RDP'ing into my local NAS machine so I don't miss VMware.
It feels great to use a desktop again.
Meanwhile, on my MacBook Pro that I spent nearly $3,500 for (i9, 32GB memory, 1TB hard drive, AppleCare, etc), the asinine butterfly keyboard causes me to have typos in about 30% of words I type. And the fan comes on no matter what I do.
I can't wait to trade it in.
Do you think there would be much difference in CPU performance between the mini and the air?
I have heard the mac-air will throttle after a while to keep cool, but the mini throttles the least out of all 3?
You can get some multi gig switches with 1 or 2 10g ports brand new from net gear for about 250USD. Things like the MS510TX.
I've never encountered an autosensing 100mbit device, though.
Switches with no poe can also have not enough juice to power rj45 transceivers in every port; it is quite possible to be able to juice up only every fourth port or so.
Nbase-T is also higher latency than the others.
it feels like 2.5Gbe and 5Gbe are basically being invented to make 10Gbe feel amazing & wonderful & great, to justify it's high price, even though 10Gbe has been around & fairly within reach for a long long long time. 25Gbe is nipping at it's heels in practice, but there's these huge market forces working overtime to keep charging loads of money for 10Gbe. we've concocted half (& quarter) measures to justify something that was semi-bordering obsolete.