- I'm Rene Ritchie, and okay. Yeah. The Mac mini isn't as popular as any of the MacBooks, or the iMac. But it's just beloved. Beloved even, by every hobbyist, and nerd, and newcomer, and cross compiler. By anyone who wants anything, from the cheapest Mac, to just the last Mac server standing. But the really big question, for the mightiest of mini Macs' is this, just how much mightier, or minier even, could Apple Silicon really make it? From SoC to expandability, size to price, ports to clusters. I'm gonna go over all of it for you, and I'm gonna to do it right now. Sponsored by Brilliant. When he introduced very first model, back in October of 2005. Steve Jobs said, "Everyone understood the iPod mini." "So everyone should
understand this as well, the Mac mini." The iPod Mini is what we had before the iPod Nano. Wait. The iPod is what we had before the iPhone, (chuckles) nevermind. It was a tiny, by back then standards. Extruded round wrecked of a box. Plastic on top, aluminum, sorry. Aluminium around the sides, with a front mounted, slot loading combo drive of a DVD player and CD burner. All right. So the DVD and CD, is what we had before
Blu-Ray and streaming. Fine, whatever. Wikipedia it. Over the years, it lost that drive, and lost that plastic top. Now it has a sleeker space gray or recycled full on aluminium. I don't know (chuckles), more unibody. But it never lost that overall design, it even lent it to the original Apple TV. Being a shorter, broader
version of the same. Before it went even teeny tinier, on abashedly black plastic. And I'd be tempted to
call the design iconic, if it wasn't just so basic, but not in a bad way. Maybe even in the best way, its Job. From Job's was never to stand out, just the opposite. It was simply to sit, and fit right in. That didn't change when it transitioned from power PC to Intel,
the very next year. And I don't imagine it'll change when it transitions from
Intel to Apple Silicon, next month, year. Whenever it's scheduled to hit. But I do think Apple Silicon will allow for some level of change, evolution maybe. And that could go in
either of two directions. First, the current core unibody, could stay about the same. I mean, this is like the only Mac, not rumored to be getting an iPad Pro style makeover anyway. That opens up some space inside, and I'll go over just what exactly that could mean, in a hot thermal minute. Second direction is to
get rid of that space by shrinking the Mac mini down. Maybe not like Apple TV squared, hockey puck circle size, But even more mini, nano even. That would let it just sit and fit. Mount and hang it, even more places and spaces. Basically, massive Apple Silicon power, itty-bitty living space. And yeah, hell yeah! I'm once again, really tempted to say, "Poor Ken, no lost us." Anyway, let's talk display. An Apple designed and manufactured, Non-pro, non-XDR display. One that you can bring to your own new Mac mini. One that may not have the reference modes, but also isn't 6K for 6K. More like 1K for 5k. Pretty much what Apple's last few non-pro displays have been. The latest iMac panel, all packaged up for people who still want an Apple display. And yes, sure. It's the same panel you'd get in an LG UltraFine. Which has been what Apple's abdicated to for the last few years. Only this one would be driven by Apple's display team, which is just way better. And Apple's industrial design team, which is astronomically better. Just look at all the issues LG's had with the UltraFine. Everything from Wi-Fi
interference to ghosting, which sure, they fixed. But that decidedly not
candy, plastic shell. They have not. And I don't know, whatever the opposite of extra is about the entire design in general. And I'm a big believer in the horn effect, the opposite of the halo effect. Which is when you have one Apple product, like the iPhone. It leads you to buy more Apple products, like the iPad or Mac. And vice versa. Having non-Apple products, like a display. Leads you to buy more non-Apple products, like an Intel NUC. So I would just love, all caps love. For them to announce a new Apple display EDR as well. And sure, Nano-texture for 500 bucks extra. Why not? But let me know what you
think, in the comments. Apple doesn't have the best track record when it comes to updating
the Mac mini internals. They have just about the worst. The Mac mini uses mobile parts, like a laptop, rather than desktop parts. Its like a desktop. Not because it's mobile, but because it's mini and operates under similar
thermal constraints. But not only did it lie an extraordinary style fellow, for years, like almost half a decade. Before finally getting its big update in October of 2018. It hasn't gotten much of
any updates since then. Now, sure. You could absolutely argue the eighth generation Intel processors, Apple's kept in there. Haven't exactly been
blown out of the water, by the 10th generation Intel processors now on the shelves. And that just adding the extra cores, Intel has been welding
on as a work-around. Would just add extra power draw, heat and a hundred bucks or more, to the already non mini priced box. And yes, sure. Granted. It's one of the also many reasons why Apple is making the switch from Intel, to their own custom Silicon to begin with. The current developer test kit, has an iPad pro A12Z in it. And while that's cased up to look like a Mac mini, it's not a real machine. With a real chip, that's ever gonna see a real customer. So my biggest hope with Apple Silicon, is that we start getting Mac mini updates, every 12 to 18 months. Just like iPad pro updates. Whatever the next generation equivalent of the AIX series fry pads is, put the Mac version of that. 14X, 15X, 16X, just all the X's. Other than that, I expect we'll see the
same type of improvements from Apple Silicon and the Mac mini. That we'd see from Apple Silicon in the MacBook Air. Way better performance, especially for graphics. And especially, especially for anything and everything Apple includes custom accelerators for. Like, 4k and above video rendering. H.265 encode and decode. Hypervisor acceleration, for virtual machines. And a few other things, to make developers and power users alike. Just smile a little or a lot wider (chuckles). Of course, Apple Silicon SoC may mean, only Apple integrated
GPU cores from now on. And it may be a lot of them. But I'd love to see something like what Apple is doing, for the new modular Mac Pro. Whether that's GPU expanders, or even something like Afterburner. Or reprogrammable ASIC, to accelerate video rendering, or other higher demand tasks. Basically let it turn your Mac mini, into a Final Cut mini, or Logic mini, or Maya mini. Or whatever. More on that, in the upcoming Apple
Silicon Mac Pro video. So make sure you hit the subscribe button and bell, and that way you won't
miss any of these series. And we can hang out and chat in the comments, for the first hour. Right after new videos go live. But that does also bring me to the biggest question I have, going into the Apple Silicon Mac mini. Namely, just how extensible will it be? In other words, will we be able to change
the SSD or the RAM? Like at all. The current Mac mini is already locked down the SSD. It's fused with the T2 security chip, for real-time encryption. So you're basically stuck with whatever internal capacity you buy, and whatever external storage you choose to hang off the back. The RAM story is only slightly better. You can get the memory changed, but it's not easy. So unless you have Kyle Wyman style, home repair skills. You need to take that
box to an Apple store, or Apple authorized repair place, just to get the ramp swapped. With Apple Silicon, that story may stay the same. Maybe even get worse, that's because Apple Silicon will be a system on a chip. Which means the RAM isn't
in separate modules, isn't even chip solar to the board. It's often on the same
chip as a CPU and GPU. Not always, but often. That's what allows for universal memory, or CPU and GPU sharing the RAM. It's possible Apple could keep some RAM universal, and break out some other RAM. Probably a CPU only, but that would get
really ugly, really fast. If I were writing fanfic, I theorize about some
special modular system. Fast enough to use for RAM. That Apple would make, so you could pop different expansion modules in and out. But that makes more
sense with the Mac Pro, or even mythical mini tower budget. Which probably isn't what
we're getting in this, existing tiny little Mac mini box. A nerd can dream though. What could be more likely, is what we started seeing already with the 2018 Mac mini, stacks. Essentially, you treat each one as a compute unit. And then, cluster together as many
as you want or need. Twice the cores, twice the memory, twice the Mac minis. Same for three, five, 10. Until you hit Mac stadium. You know, like Lego. That may not be practical for everyone, but maybe we work really, really well, for people with massively
scalable workloads. The current Mac mini has a T2 chip, which handles all the encryption, component controllers, and accelerators. It's basically a variant of the A11 from the iPhone 7. And that'll get folded into whatever new Apple Silicon chip, the new Apple Silicon Mac mini gets. Like an A14X variant, not a problem. But see, the MacBooks also use T2, and we'll use whatever
14X for touch ID as well. It has a secure element, that matches the math arrived from your fingerprints. And releases the authentication token to the system. But unlike the MacBooks, which put the capacitive touch ID fingerprint scanner in the power button, on the keyboard. The Mac mini doesn't have a keyboard, to put it into. Which is why the current Mac mini, doesn't have touch ID. Same thing I explained in the Apple Silicon iMac video last week. Link in the description. Now, Apple could make a magic keyboard, for the Mac mini, iMac, and Mac Pro. That builds in the touch ID sensor. But they probably want to keep the secure hardware channel, for the authentication. So that means, putting at least a T1 chip
into the keyboard itself. T1 being a variant of the S2 chip, from the Apple Watch 2. Which has a similar secure element, for authentication handling. It's what the 2016 MacBook Pro used, before the T2. But that would add whatever
the cost of a T1 chip and fingerprint scanner are, at the very least to the
cost of the keyboard. More, if for whatever reason you want a touch bar, might as well be thrown in there as well. The easier to imagine
work-around for the iMac, is using face ID, with a true depth camera. Just placed where the face
ID camera is right now, right above the display. But the Mac mini doesn't
have a built-in display, and with a separate display or webcam, you get the same problem as the keyboard. You have to build in at least a T1 chip. So yeah, now Apple could put a touch sensor on the body of the Mac mini itself. Even though the power button is nowhere nearly as conveniently located as it is on a MacBook. And of course, the Mac mini may be nowhere nearly as conveniently located either. Across the desk, across the room, across the house, across the data center. So my guess is, Apple could just double down on remote authentication. If you have an Apple Watch, with a built-in S chip. Or an iPhone with a built-in A chip, on the same Apple ID. In close proximity, you can just double click. Or touch ID, or face ID on that, and it'll unlock or authorized the Mac. It keeps the mini, hmm mini. Apple's been avoiding
Wi-Fi 6 on the Mac line. Which is just, all shades of odd. Given how fast they've shoved it into the iPhone and iPad. There have been issues with Wi-Fi 6. So it's possible Apple has been waiting on their own custom Silicon, before bringing it to the Mac. So again, hopefully this gives us that. Now, fanfic me very much wants to wonder out loud. If there'd be a way for Apple, to not only bundle Apple TV functionality into the Mac mini. For the ultimate and
home theater experiences, but to bundle in Airpod
extreme functionality as well. For the ultimate in home router, and backup privacy, all of that protection. Also manage HomeKit, iCloud, staging updates across the home network. And the new HomeKits
secure features as well. But that would probably be better left to an actual new Airpod mesh system, and a future video. Hit the like button, If you want to see that. I really, really liked the current Mac mini port compliment and layout. You've got your Ethernet, four times USB-C/Thunderbolt 3. HDMI, USB-A, and the 3.5 millimeter headphone jack. Pretty much what I asked for in my Apple Silicon iMac video, just last week. Just with the HDMI instead of the SDHC. And given the Mac mini doesn't have to be located anywhere near where you're actually working, but might have to be located
where you're watching. I think that's a fair trade. The USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 should be upgraded to
USB4/Thunderbolt 4, of course. And let you drive just
all of the displays, all of them. But otherwise it's set. When it was first introduced, this Mac's price was as many as its name, 499 for the base config. The current model though, the current model starts
any much pricier 799, even including Apple's usual margins. The reason for that is simple. It's using more expensive components, and to quote Flossy Carter, "It's too damn high." And I don't really expect that to change with Apple Silicon, at least at first. I mean, it's not like Apple was paying a small fortune for Intel's
10th generation Silicon. It was still eighth gen, and the costs were distributed
throughout the system. I also think the first
generation of Apple Silicon, will be used to pay down Apple Silicon. But even if it takes a generation, I think it'd be great if Apple could use this transition to drive
the price back down, to that 499 base config. And if they could double down on the current iPad strategy, with the more expensive high-end models, inevitably get driven down to make even better low end models. That would be great. Even something like
the iPhone SE strategy, where every few years, we get a new entry-level iPhone. That way we could eventually
see something like a Mac mini SE at $300 or $350. Basically an Apple TV, with better SoC, more ports, and more RAM. And hey, like I said, "A nerd can dream." And it would only take Apple, running the math. Like with Brilliant's, whole new math course library. So anyone can brush up on fundamentals, probability, algebra, calculus, trigonometry, differential equations, and geometry. All of the maths, for school, for work, for fun. For figuring out, how to make lower price Mac minis. Brilliant's a website, and app. With over 60 interactive courses in math, science, and computer science, logic and deduction. Physics, quantum mechanics, game theory, cryptocurrency, so much more. It's based on problem solving and active learning. It's about seeing concepts visually, and interacting with them. And then, answering questions that get you to think. The courses are laid out like a story, and broken down into pieces that you can tackle them, a little bit at a time. As much as you like, any time. There are no tests and no grades. You just pick a course, based on what you're interested in, and get started. And if you make a mistake, who cares? Just check out the explanations, to find out more. Go to brilliant.org/reneritchie and sign up for free. Just click on the link in the description, or go to brilliant.org/reneritchie. And the first 200 of you, can also level up, with 20% off the annual
premium subscription. And clicking on that link, really helps out the channel. Now, make sure you check out my Apple Silicon MacBook Air, MacBook pro, and iMac videos. Just hit the playlist right there, I'm covering all of them. Click on the playlist for more, and I'll see you as soon as the next video starts.
