Waiting for delivery of new Mac Mini + separate 32 Gb RAM for self upgrade. New ARM products were announced at WWDC on Monday, and apparently Mini will be the first to upgrade, but who knows when? I can limp along with current Mini for a few months, or bite the bullet now and upgrade. I am not a developer or programmer. Mostly photography/photoshop, etc.
Should I bite the bullet and keep the Mini I ordered or pull the plug and wait for new models?
The longer you plan to keep it, the longer I would be willing to wait, but if you need a new Mac Mini now, Iād buy one. Intel should be supported for at least 3 or 4 years.
I canāt really help but having a similar dilemma so keen to hear what people suggest. Iām thinking of switching my current setup to a MBP 16 but itāsa huge cost if arm is going to be worth the wait. My concern is that I use boot camp for occasional gaming and my (limited) understanding suggests that is unlikely on the arm models so it would put me off for the initial models at least.
Fwiw I have a Mac mini 2018 with egpu as my main machine at the moment and I love it, just think moving to as good a spec mbp would give portability too.
Plus I want to buy something shiny.
Mini boxes were used as loaner dev boxes because it was the easiest & cheapest way to provide an ARM box to developers. But there is no guarantee that Appleās lowest-end, lowest priced, possibly lowest-margin machine will be updated to ARM in the first wave of new machines. (Apple similarly offered a transition kit in summer 2005 with an Intel Developer Transition System box in a PowerMac case that too was required to be returned to Apple).
When Apple announced the first Intel Macs in January 2006 they were a Macbook Pro and an iMac. A month later they offered the Mac mini with a low-end (and if I remember, vastly underpowered) Intel option. Six months later they completed the transition with new variants of all pre-existing PowerPC Macs.
Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who has leaked many accurate details over the years due to close ties to sources in Appleās supply chain has reported that the first ARMacs to come out, at the end of this year, will be a 24" iMac and a 13.3" Macbook Pro.
So I wouldnāt count on being able to buy an ARM-based mini until maybe a year from now.
Should you wait? Itās up to you. But you probably shouldnāt expect to get a mini with an ARM processor this year.
If I remember correctly, the dev boxes will have an A12, and be $500, so not sure if they are loaners?
The Developer Transition Kit is not a product. As @bowline says, I would not necessarily take the existence of the Developer Transition Kit as evidence that the Mac mini will be among the first wave of ARM Macs. Indeed, I think that when we do see an ARM mini, it will be rather different than the DTK (different array of ports and a different processor).
You didnāt post much about your current situation, but you did describe it as ālimp alongā. If you need a new Mac mini now, keep your order for an Intel based one. Donāt count on a ARM mini unless youāre willing to wait up to two years.
Theyāve said theyāre loaners.
From the Universal App Quick Start Program page:
As part of the program, youāll have limited access to a Developer Transition Kit (DTK), which will be shipped to you, for developing and testing your Universal apps. The DTK is owned by Apple and must be returned.
Developers are required to return the Developer Transition Kit one year after accepting the Universal App Quick Start Programās terms and conditions.
I think I would upgrade. As others have pointed out, the ARM mini will be a while coming. Probably around that time the MacBook Whatevers and iMacs that are coming out first will be due for a refresh, and you could be in the same dilemma.
Yup, vastly underpowered, Core Solo and Core Duo.
You should be ok for 5-7 years
The first generation or two of Apple hardware products can be a bitā¦ underwhelming is the wrong word, because theyāre often awesome (think iPhone), but they are sometimes more aspirational than fully realized (think iPhone, MacBook Air, iPad). That may not be the case with the next generation of Macs, but I think there will be some significant growing pains over the first couple of new Mac generations.
If youāre an early adopter type, that might favour your trying to wait and then get a next generation Mac, but if you feel yourself more toward risk adversity then buying a Mac now is a safe bet that will leave you with a computer that will be working well for years to come. I bought a pretty loaded (2TB SSD was the only non-maxed out part) 16" MBP in January; if I hadnāt then, I would have zero hesitation about buying one today.
Thanks for all your suggestions. Iām going to go ahead with the purchase, and save $400 or so by doing a RAM upgrade on my own. I have 2 Mac Minis now that have served me well, and are on their last legs. I use them between two homes in different countries, where I keep monitors, keyboards, mice, etc. Works great for me.
Great choice 
If you can max out the specs with the storage that you need so it will serve you well for a long time. Or has a decent resell value in a couple of years if you want to buy a unit with AS.
Whenever they do come out with the new Mini, does any know if thereās any technical reason an ARM Mini wouldnt support eGPUs?
Itās certainly possible. Weāll have to see. Apple gives some clues about its plans in developer documentation, referring to āApple GPUsā
ā¢ Use the Common family to create apps that target a range of GPUs on multiple platforms.
ā¢ Use the Apple family to create apps that target Apple GPUs.
ā¢ Use the Mac family to create apps that target GPUs on macOS systems.
ā¢ Use the Mac Catalyst family when building an iPadOS app to run on macOS.
It will need to have some kind of direct connection to the processor, like a (successor to) PCIe or thunderbolt 3 / USB4. The developer mini doesnāt, but pundits Iāve read expect an AS mini to have some manner of robust connection.
An eGPU will also be dependent on drivers being written that talk to the AS.
There was some discussion about ARM Macs and discrete GPUs on the WWDC episode of ATP. The A series processors have much better integrated GPUs than the relatively anemic Intel ones and that will probably continue (if not get even better) on Apple Silicon. However, if Apple wants to transition the full lineup to ARM, including the Mac Pro, theyāll have to support discrete GPUs eventually. Given that an EGPU essentially involves the same underlying issues as getting an ARM processor to talk to a discrete GPU (plus the added issues of getting it to do it over Thunderbolt rather than PCIe) we might not see EGPU support until we start seeing Macs with discrete graphics.
Iām in the same boat. My MacBook Pro died a few months ago (mid-pandemic) and I decided on a Mac Mini. I think Iām going to get an i7 model before the Apple silicon transition to give Apple some time to work out the kinks. Also would like to still be able to run Windows in Parallels/Boot camp.
Hopefully they will still put out Mac OS releases for intel for some time. My last Mac lasted almost 8 years.
Probably should have mentioned that I bought an i5 rather than i7. Both 6 cores. I donāt do video or gaming. Anyone think that was a mistake?