If Apple just made the parts user replaceable, it wouldn't be a problem.

I used to always just get the lowest configuration Powerbook or Macbook Pro, and place an order for a RAM upgrade simultaneously from another vendor. And eventually max out the RAM, upgrade to SSD, etc. Made the upfront purchase price less of an issue as a longer term investment.

Apple is nickle and diming customers by locking down and soldering everything on Macs, when they should look at the Mac as a gesture of goodwill to the professionals and developers who contribute to the Apple ecosystem and help drive sales of Apple's iOS cash cow.

The RAM is user serviceable on the new Mini. The drive might be soldered this time but even the 2014 still allowed you to replace it so I am cautiously optimistic that the iFixit teardown will reveal it to also be replaceable. Which makes the i7 Mac Mini with base specs quite attractive.

If not you can use an external SSD since it's a desktop computer and doesn't move. An external 1TB Samsung for everything besides applications and OS isn't bad at all.

I hope so. I just upgraded a 2015 11" MBA's 128GB SSD to a 1TB Samsung 970 EVO NVMe drive by using a $14 adapter (ST-NGFF2013-C)[0]. It works perfectly.

[0] http://eshop.sintech.cn/ngff-m2-pcie-ssd-card-as-2013-2014-2...

> The RAM is user serviceable on the new Mini. The drive might be soldered

sure / source?

If so I will order one straight away (not $2000 for 64gb ;)

> external 1TB

how do internal NVME SSDs compare to external ones speed wise?

Update: There are external Thunderbolt 3 NVMe SSD enclosures out there that can read and write in excess of 2000 MB/sec

But they bring you back to the $1000 upgrade cost ? :(

External drives would be based upon Thunderbolt 3 using USB-C compatible physical connections, and those are basically PCI-e 3.0 x4 lanes with a little external sync overhead. Samsung’s T5 drive would go along very well with these new minis. Obviously a drive hanging off a machine is less attractive / practical for business purposes but this is the usual Apple price / market segmentation model at work. Going back to user replaceable RAM is a bit of a shock to me considering other changes that are user-hostile (the T2 chip comes to mind).

Thanks

Any guess how much faster Apples SSDs would be than a T5 like this: ?

https://www.amazon.de/Samsung-MU-PA1T0B-EU-Portable-Kabel/dp...

I‘d expect an NVMe SSD to be about 5 times as fast as a traditional SSD like the T5, at least in theory. However as an owner of the T5 I can assure you it’s still very performant and ideal for large media storage. If peak performance is a real concern, you still have another option I just discovered: Samsung X5 - an external NVMe SSD: https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/product/p...

This should be very close to internal PCI-based SSD performance and benchmarks seem to confirm this: https://9to5mac.com/2018/09/05/review-samsung-x5-thunderbolt...

So there‘s a storage upgrade path if you’re fine with external hardware. I‘m considering this solution myself.

Fantastic!

The new Apple SSDs in the Mac Mini 2018 are unknown so far but bets on being the latest Samsung and Toshiba NVMe SSDs for consumer class wear levels.

There’s a lot of small gotchas and caveats with Thunderbolt 3 and SSDs now but they are getting better slowly https://www.macworld.com/article/3276325/storage/nvme-over-t...

And let’s not forget that this is a 1st run product of a new generation and the Mac Mini 2019 may be significantly better in this area (or worse...)

>An external 1TB Samsung for everything besides applications and OS isn't bad at all.

Yep. 4x TB3 means I don't care at all about the internal storage. I'll take the 128GB internal drive for the OS and be on my way.

So, after further consideration I think the one to buy is the base i5 model with 256GB for 1099. Buy the RAM separately. It looks like it has 2 slots. With my local vendor 2x16GB DDR 2666Mhz comes out at 300 USD or so. I already have an external 1TB SSD, but otherwise a Samsung T5 is available for around 220 USD. That's a 1600ish USD system, which is somewhat reasonable for a mac with those specs IMO. Would be nice if Apple just gave you that for around 1800, but the 2300 they want is just unreasonable IMO.

You sold me on this config. I want to be able to use this computer for a long time, and you hit the nail on the head.

I'd go with a bigger one, just in case. I'm pretty sure future releases of macOS with all its tooling will take more and more of that space and I'd expect the machine to be useful for 3-5 years (usually more, as per Mac tradition - my mini is 6 years old and the only thing I want to upgrade in it is the hard drive).

I believe the i7 upgrade is only available in the higher model, with the base 256GB SSD.

No you can go i7 with the 128GB model as well. I think the 256GB base model makes sense though, to have enough headroom for the OS and such.

Just over a year ago, I bought an iMac, specifically because it was the only model (besides the Pro) that I could upgrade the memory after I bought it (which I've done twice already, nice to have 32GB when you have 4 family members constantly logged in).

If this Mini with up-gradable RAM had come out before then, I would have bought it instead.

Chances they use M.2 sata..... doubtful.

You can always just order it with maxed out RAM. With 4 USB-C ports you don't need to replace the internal storage - you can just add more outside the box (like we used to do with our Suns and SCSI Macs - I still have a pile of 3-drive boxes that connected to my SPARCclassic). With that, 64 gigs can probably carry us for a good 3-5 years without too much of a hassle. The fast network option also makes sharing NAS through the office an attractive option.

The last generation of Mini's had a replaceable drive. I have an office here full of Mac Mini's where I bought the base 5400RPM drive model and swapped them all out to SSD's. Which by the way I have been very happy with as a way to get desktops for my entire team.

It's kind of a nightmare the first time, it took me like an hour, very slowly disassembling the entire thing and replacing the drive with the iFixit tools I ordered. The second time took like 15 minutes and it got easier from there, it's just kind of remembering all these steps.

Needless to say it's ridiculous that they built it that way, it would have been trivial to keep the form factor and make it easy. But whatever, it's no big deal to swap out. And there's a couple places in NYC that'll do it for you for $50 as well.

Hopefully the new one will be the same way, it does look pretty much like the same box. If the RAM is also upgradeable (which it appears to be) then the platform would definitely remain attractive.

> Apple is nickle and diming customers by locking down and soldering everything on Macs, when they should look at the Mac as a gesture of goodwill to the professionals and developers who contribute to the Apple ecosystem and help drive sales of Apple's iOS cash cow.

On the other hand, selling to professionals and businesses usually means much less price sensitivity. I know corporations and startups balk much less at the price of a fully-loaded MacBook Pro than a consumer who just wants a laptop to surf Facebook with.

$800 for the base unit (i3/8GB/128GB SSD) is frankly ridiculous. Their price is roughly double what you'd pay for an equivalent NUC.

I just built a 32GB, 8 core/16 thread, NVidia 1050ti discrete GPU, 480GB m.2 NVME machine with a premium power supply and case for exactly $800.

I always expect 80-100% markup on a Mac, and I've accepted it, given the integration and beautiful design; but this time they went way over the top, especially with the upgrade prices. To get an equivalent Mac Mini (ignoring that it's impossible to get 8 cores and discrete GPU), I would have to spend about $2100. That's about 160% markup on comparable components. That's a first in Apple history, as far as I can tell.

A comparable system would be rhe 1600 hackish-mac mini I outlined in my last post if you add a 700 USD eGPU on top. Even if you deduct 400 for the additional casings required, it’s just so far from competitive. As you wrote, up to 100% markup for macOS and all the Apple benefits is acceptable, but it has gotten a really hard pill to swallow now.

I'd say Win 10 with WSL is now arguably a better dev environment. The only reason I still use a Mac at work is because I need to support Safari/iOS clients and Apple doesn't allow VMs. You are not paying a 100% markup for OSX, you're paying a 100% markup because Apple keeps it 100% proprietary.

I've been considering going down the hackintosh route but now I'm considering something more extreme.

ESX system with MacOS VM and GPU passthrough. If this works, then I could have a standardized MacOS VM build that will keep working as I upgrade the underlying hardware. Still mulling this over...

I’ve been running that setup as my main workstation for over 3 years. Use an nVidia gpu and a dedicated usb card for IO. You also need a second machine to do esx management, I have a laptop. And a second video card to see the esx console (handy when it isn’t working). Finally don’t use multiple drives for esx datastores, there is no way to remove them later (to upgrade or replace failed drives). I learnt the hard way, transferring 6TB of vms over usb 2 is not fun.

Cool! Do you perchance have a writeup of your setup?

I managed to get a High Sierra VM converted to Mojave yesterday. Previous attempts had been failing due to the VM not being APFS. This link was helpful: https://licson.net/post/vmware-apfs/

I started musing if trying to get an eGPU to work with a Mac VM would be possible but that might be pushing it too far. It looks like Thunderbolt 3 support might be hit or miss from what I've been able to find so far plus I do not see a lot of motherboards (Z390?) that are TB capable. Gigabyte just announced a Z390 based Designare which looked interesting. https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/gigabyte-launches-their-al...

Current plans are:

  * ESXI 6.5 or 6.7
  * 10G NIC
  * 32 or 64GB mem
  * mATX footprint
  * USB switch to control which machine keyboard/mouse goes to
  * MacOS VM with iGPU passthrough
  * Win VM with Nvidia GPU passthrough for gaming

I'm hoping this allows for my dream of having two machines in one without having to dual boot.

On a related note, I'm still annoyed that there does not seem to be a wealth of consumer MBs that have onboard 10G

I'm about to try qemu/kvm for a virtualized macOS solution. I have a 1050ti as my primary GPU on Linux (arguably a bad choice).

What card do you recommend for GPU passthrough?

I've heard that your proposed setup works great. Do it!

I don't suppose you have a pcpartpicker build list handy? It would be nice to compare against what I'm currently looking at.

It's the Thunderbolt / USB C ports I'm going to miss from your setup.

that wouldn't run mac OS, which comes "for free".

... with what kind of warranty? included software?

I agree. I have a 2011 Mac Mini Server (quad-core, dual-drive) that I've upgraded to 16gb of ram and 1TB of solid-state storage. To get the equivalent in this new Mac Mini would be ridiculously expensive. Thanks, but no thanks.

128gb of storage was too small for a PC 5 years ago, let alone in 2018.

This is life for high end systems though. I have a Dell Lattitude 7390, 8th Gen i5, 256GB SSD and 8GB RAM. Cost about £850 (edu discount). The upgrade to 512GB SSD and 16GB RAM would have been an extra £500. Admittedly you also get an i7, but if Dell actually offered 1TB and 32GB RAM, I would bet it'd be at least £1k on top of the base.

On the plus side, despite Dell's warning, both the SO-DIMM and the M.2 SSD are user serviceable and easily accessible. The chassis even has retaining screws!

I mean, Apple always charges Apple prices. I'm more surprised that the base price is so high. They couldn't do a 4gb/64gb version with a lower-end CPU?

> They couldn't do a 4gb/64gb version with a lower-end CPU?

The PR would be far, far worse.

Same. I primarily use a desktop for gaming these days, but also do iOS development. My dream machine would be a Mac Mini with an eGPU.

I'm looking to do a gaming rig rebuild soon, and was excited to see a new Mac Mini before I made my decision. These prices though....I'll just build a mini-ATX myself.

I have a mini atx build for Linux(I'm just a 100% linux guy), but I was considering a used mac mini or something for music stuff. I currently have to use a windows vm for a couple of instruments. But the state of music software on Linux isn't the best.

don't they even show a eGpu in the demo?

I totally expected I'd be buying this right away, but the prices just seem outrageous. And I had no problem plunking down $1150 for an iPhone XS recently.

Yeah, I almost cry in joy when I see the base config and naively forget about how big are the prices for upgrading with apple.

And 128 GB? Not even iphones start at that.

iPhone XS, XS Max, and XR base models are 64 GB.

I stand corrected. I was so sad in how costly could be the model I wish that I do a bad comparision from thin air. (ie: The Iphones I have)

As are the newest iPad Pros