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So, I got my Mac Mini and after hours of troubleshooting with my display not working over HDMI on the monitor I want to use I found out that using a USB C hub with HDMI with the same monitor works fine... Not sure what is going on with that, but it’s a mess. I’m afraid to call Apple because I will plan on hours on the phone with no resolution.
Sidecar needs to be enabled from system preferences. It will not work as an alternate display. Don’t consider relying on it.
I did check with Duet Display over the USB connection as I don’t want to pay their subscription. I don’t have automatic login enabled but it worked. I basically booted and had an external keyboard connected, waited for when I thought the login screen was there, and logged in. Then it was working. I am pretty confident this will work if you use automatic login.
Still, if something goes wrong you will be in trouble. Carrying even a tiny HDMI display designed or a raspberry pi or something wouldn’t be a bad idea. Getting an HDMI travel monitor could work as well. They are coming out with some reasonable ones these days. I honestly think if you travel getting a Macbook would be best.
Aside from cost difference between a 500GB SSD w/16GB MacBook Air vs a 500GB SSD w/16GB mac mini... would there be any other significant differences?
My guess is (apart from portability) with the Macbook Air you get battery operated, a keyboard and display.. and likely the exact same performance as the mac mini... for approximately $350 more. With the mac mini, you save $350, and gain ethernet port, hdmi port, and 2 usb ports.
Is that pretty much all the differences? Or, would there be significant performance differences between the two to consider as well?
Some benchmarks and reports are showing a pretty good performance increase for the Mini in some applications. The processors are identical though, so this is going to be because of thermal throttling in the Air.
Oh, and there is also the thing with the bottom level Air only having 7 of the GPU cores and not 8. But, that doesn't apply to the higher level Air and probably won't make any difference for audio applications.
I'm really torn on this. It doesn't appear from the tests I've seen... that having 16GB means quite what it used to. I'd likely be just fine with 8GB for a good while.
I'm inclined to just go for either the 500GB SSD M1 Air or 13in MBP 500GB SSD... in 16GB and be done with it for a few years. But, I don't really want to spend that kind of money of the very first version of this processor.
I'm thinking maybe just spend as little money now, get the 8GB mac mini... keep using my still very well functioning mid-2012 13in MBP for mobile... then upgrade to a higher end MBP after then next revision and design update next year.
Even though my mid-2012 13in MBP didn't make the cut for BigSur... I think it's at least got another good year of usability left in it.
Just watched a video where the guy was running 50 LogicPro tracks on an 8GB Air M1 with loads of stuff like FCP, Chrome, Safari, Xcode, Photoshop, etc. running in the background. I'm thinking 8GB would suffice 99.9% of the time... at least for my use.
I would get 16GB if it was me (not sure if I'm getting one this year though) even if you can open all the apps at once, the performance in each one will be slower in comparison, but I'm sure 8gb will be fine for average use, depends on what you're doing. I guess they capped at 16GB so that the more high end macs get a performance boost with more ram next year.
I've watched videos that bring up the added wrinkle of more swap memory being used in the 8GB versions, etc. And, if I was buying a machine to use for the next several years, then yes... I'd go for the 16GB too.
But, what I'm thinking is... I really don't need a new machine right now. What I have does everything I need it to. And even though my mid-2012 13in MBP didn't make the cut for BigSur... I don't think I'd install it right now even if it was supported.
I only want one of these new M1 machines. Don't need. So, I figure spending the least amount now just so I can play with it, then getting a MBP 16GB+ on the next processor and design revision sometime next year... then sell the mac mini M1 and likely not take to much of a hit on it at it's current price point.
Yeah that's a good point, 8GB might be all you need then, apparently 8GB M1 feels like 16GB in an intel macbook so if you'd be happy with that then 8 should be enough.
I just picked up one of the M1 Mini 8GB machines. I'll let you know how I think it looks on memory usage.
How swap gets used on Unix machines can be weird. Generally, the more RAM you have, the more swap you need set aside. Since Apple doesn't use a fixed swap partition, this doesn't play out that simply. But, it can still be the case that having more RAM will lead to there being more active swap space being used.
I’m very interested in this. I’ve noticed I have quite a bit of swap on my new 8GB M1 mini, but at the same time, the maximum RAM I ever see used is 6-6.5GB.
EDIT: this from Unix Stack Exchange.
The OS needs there to be some free RAM for when applications try to allocate more memory. If it had to swap out memory to disk at the point the application needs an allocation, it's going to slow everything down. If the OS stays ahead of this and doesn't allow all of the actual RAM to be used up before an allocation, then it will run smoother. It can move things into swap when it has more resources available. It'll try to keep the applications that aren't actively using their allocated RAM swapped out and the more active apps' memory in the actually RAM. It's a lot like what happens with the multiple levels of cache on the CPU.
If you have less RAM on your system, it's still going to try and keep a chunk of memory free, so you might have more RAM in swap. On the other hand, if you have more RAM, then you can have more RAM being used by the applications and the system might end up having to actually put more out to swap.
Another point is that these disks are really fast. It's not like we are having to worry about writing out to a 5400 RPM hard drive. The point I was trying to make is that worrying about how much swap is going to be used is probably not very important. You really just have to look at the applications you are going to use and consider if those will need lots of RAM. If I were going to be doing tons of video stuff, I would want as much RAM as my system could hold. But, I probably wouldn't have picked up this first gen of M1 machines then.
I have my Mini home now so I can start experimenting with it. Part of the reason I got the base model is that I want to know how the things I'm working on work on the lowest level machine people are going to be using. So, now I get to go and see if my plugins are in the camp that crash hosts. I'll watch the memory usage while I do my testing and let you know what I see.
@NeonSilicon did you get the 500GB model? I want to get the lowest end too... just because I'd rather invest more after the first revision... and this one just to play with in the meantime. But, I'm thinking 250GB is just a little too tight. I don't have a huge amount of applications... but the ones I have take up a lot of space
No, I did the 256GB. If I were getting a laptop I would have done the 512GB as a minimum. But, since I got the Mini I'm attaching an external drive to it. I have a spare 512GB M.2 disk that I currently have in a USB3 enclosure. I'm going to test the speed of that first and if it is too slow I'll move it to a Thunderbolt enclosure. The Thunderbolt drive on my main development machine is really fast and I've had no issues using it as my main drive. So, I think using an external on the Mini as a data drive will be fine.
Well, I'm interested in your impressions of the absolute base. I think that's what I'm leaning toward. There are rumors of a 14in MBP with more ports, the new chip, and a redesign... that I'd prefer. If a base model isn't too strapped for resources when editing images/video... than it'd sure be fun to use in the interim.
After you've had time to mess around with it... I'd like to know if you wish you'd gone for the 500GB/16GB instead.
Memory is good so far at 8GB. I still haven't tried anything really intense like video editing (or opening 60 tabs in Firefox) but for what I have been doing, the memory pressure stays sitting well below 50%.
The OS and Applications plus Xcode and dev tools takes about 100GB by themselves. The Photos app hooked up to iCloud when set up my account and tried to down load my entire photo library. If I hadn't caught it doing that, the rest of the 150GB would have been gone. I probably clicked something I shouldn't have when I created my user account, but if you are going to store photos locally on the machine, that 256GB isn't going to last long and getting Photos to store on an external drive is a bit of a pain.
I have put the external disk on the machine and created softlinks so that everything I compile on the Mini will be on the external drive. I've got my Programming directories and everything for MacPorts setup there. I'll keep my music projects over there too. So, this does work and it will definitely make it so I can get by with the 256GB internal disk, but it does take some setup effort and some maintenance over time. On the plus side, it costs less and will be easy to upgrade in the future. On the downside, it takes up time -- not a lot -- but it's certainly more effort.
I'll try to push the memory side of things as hard as I can and see how that holds up and let you know more as I see it.
I have the 8GB 512, and I have a 1TB SSD a hooked up via usb 3. It’s the old second internal drive from my ancient iMac, and it has my Photos library and Logic instruments on it, plus my own samples. I have preferred this setup for years, as when you have to reinstall the OS, you don’t have to touch your data drive.
I have a Samsung T7 on the way, which is apparently very fast.
I'm using a 500GB SSD internal now. I've got about 190GB free. I'm using 310GB now and I've already got my LPX and FCP libraries stored on an external drive. As well as my iTunes and Photos app libraries.
I could probably get that 310 down closer to 250... but that would be pushing it too close. I'm going to probably have to go for the 500GB I reckon. I don't want to be in the position I've been in before when new OS or application comes out and it says I don't have enough free space to install it. I really hate to have to pay an additional $200 for an extra 250GB when you can buy 500GB SSD internal drives for about $50 now.
So.. you cats who've been playing with the new mac mini M1... now that the new gear smell is starting to fade a bit
what are your impressions? 8GB RAM proving to be enough? Any gotchas? Wish you'd held off? Or, loving it?
@skiphunt I’m thinking of switching to a 16GB model, just for Lightroom use. For everything else 8 has been fine.
I'm more impressed by it now than I was when I first got it. The tools I use, MacPorts, Visual Studio Code, LLVM, etc, are coming together much quicker than I thought they would. I was able to get a working build of Faust from source last night and I wasn't expecting that nearly this soon. Seeing that Reaper is ARM native on macOS was surprising too. I've been leaning that way already, but this is going to push me to moving to Reaper as the main DAW I use.
The bad aspect is that the iOS apps on macOS thing is about as bad as I expected it to be. AUv3's work, but the UI bugs that crash the host make this a pretty solid no-go for now at least.
As far as RAM usage goes, for what I do it hasn't hit more than ~60% memory pressure ever. It usually sits at about 25% and heavy use like audio and compilations drive it to about 50% memory pressure. I have't done video editing, 3D modeling, or the like with it yet though. This is impressive for 8GB. I couldn't do that on my iMac at 8GB and had to upgrade it to 24GB. 16GB would have been fine for everything I do on my iMac including editing video and motion graphics and stuff. I think that 8GB on the M1 will be good enough for almost all uses. 16GB will handle everything but the really heavy stuff and that's all going to need to wait for the next CPU round anyway.
I played a game on it yesterday in 4K at high settings on everything. It was able to maintain a solid 60FPS at all times. I wasn't expecting that. It wasn't a heavy CPU usage game, but still, I find it pretty amazing that it was able to do this.
Oh, I still haven't ever heard the fan. Even in compilations that are running 7 or 8 parallel compile threads, no slow down and no fan.
Thanks @mistercharlie & @NeonSilicon