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• MAC MINI REVIEW 2020 MAC

MAC MINI REVIEW 2020 MAC

Both RAM and SSD can be further upgraded, but only at purchase-the Mac Mini is not user-upgradeable, nor even upgradeable at the Apple Store-all the way up to the model which was sent to me for testing, featuring 16 GB of RAM and a 2-terabyte SSD for $1,699. The other base model is the same, except it ups the SSD to 512 GB, for $899. The base Mac Mini gives you 8 GB of RAM and a 256-GB solid-state drive for $699. I never encountered a crash during my testing and invariably found the system peppy and responsive in daily use.Īll Mac Mini models include the 3.2-GHz M1. Rosetta can’t run everything-any kind of Intel-era system extension won’t work on the new Mac Mini-but it didn’t choke on anything I threw at it, including games, few of which have been updated for the new hardware. Given the importance of the Mac market to Adobe, it’s hard to imagine these apps won’t be hustled out as quickly as possible, but note that there are currently no official release dates for native versions of any of Adobe’s other apps. An M1-native Lightroom will also be released by the end of 2020, per Adobe. But at least it runs.Īdobe’s Creative Cloud-just as it was with Microsoft’s SQ1 chip-is the big holdout here, but a beta version of Photoshop for M1 is already out (it shipped at the same time as the version for Microsoft’s ARM chip), with a final version slated for next year.

The good news is that a new version of Apple’s Rosetta emulator is always on standby to fill in any gaps, so you can still run Intel-designed applications on the Mac Mini, just a lot slower than native code. Naturally, all of Apple’s own applications are fully M1-ready, but so is a significant portion of the rest of the market. I don’t have the 2018 Mac Mini around to use in a side-by-side test, but my review unit churned out benchmark numbers on tools like Geekbench and Cinebench that easily best many Intel- and AMD-based PCs that I’ve tested, and which (based on previously published scores) blow older Mac hardware numbers away.Ī lot of this success has to do with the fact that Apple has strongly nudged its ecosystem into embracing the M1, and it came out of the gate with a huge number of applications that have been upgraded to run as “universal” apps, programs which can run natively on the M1 and take advantage of its architecture in full. Turns out these claims are all more or less justified. It’s roughly 3.5 times faster on most tasks, up to six times faster on graphics (an eight-core GPU is integrated into the same silicon), and up to 15 times faster on machine-learning tasks, thanks to a 16-core “neural engine,” in case you’re trying to coax your Mac into self-awareness. Apple has thrown out a lot of self-generated honorifics about the new Mac Mini and the M1.

Apple hasn’t disclosed the TDP for the 3.2-GHz M1, but it appears to be in the vicinity of a mere 10 watts.Īnd sure enough, it runs great despite sipping at juice. The 3.2-GHz Intel Core i7 in the prior Mac Mini had a thermal design power of 65 watts. The eight-core CPU is designed not just to improve the performance of applications running on the platform but also to be more power-efficient than the Intel chips the line previously used.

The M1 chip plays decidedly to the strengths that the Mac Mini had already laid as a foundation. Demure and inconspicuous, it’s supposed to blend unobtrusively into the scenery, to serve as a quiet workhorse instead of an ostentatious status symbol. The slim device-just 7.7 inches square, under 1.5 inches tall, and weighing only 2.6 pounds-is designed to be quite the opposite of most Apple hardware. The formula hasn’t ever fundamentally changed. Perhaps the least anticipated among them is this, the fifth generation of Apple’s svelte, low-cost Mac Mini.įor those not in the know, the Mac Mini dates back to 2005 and was most recently updated in 2018.

Apple formally announced the new M1 CPU for its Mac computers less than a month ago, and it’s already shipping in a trio of products. And from every angle I’ve been able to examine it, the company is doing a bang-up job with its own silicon strategy so far. I guess you’re just not a technology company these days unless you’re designing your own microchips.