whoa have you seen this according to john prosser and thanks to these amazing renders by ian’s elbow we got our first look at the rumored m1x max mini it has a lot of upgrades but also one confusing missing feature now this is the next version of the m1 mac mini which is one of my favorite devices to come out last year but where the m1 version was designed specifically to be the lowest entry point into mac os the m1x version is designed for a more demanding user from a design standpoint the overall footprint looks identical to the m1 version but the height looks like it was cut by about a half so it’s like a smaller mac mini like a mini mac mini with the m1 version apple kept the same overall design as the intel version even though the new internal components didn’t require as much space it’s almost like when you have these parts laying around and you’re like you know what why don’t we just use what we already have instead of ordering new parts at the top of the new m1x mac mini seems like it’s made of some sort of reflective material which suggests the
possibility of a two-tone design like similar to what we have on the m1 imac which technically has three colors because the chin is just a whole different color but you can watch that video if you want to know more about that out of curiosity if you were to get one of these new mac minis would you actually want it to be colorful because i’m not really sure like i really like the m1 imax i like all the colors that they offer because it sort of fits with the whole concept of an all-in-one that’s integrated into your home decor but with a professional device like this new m1x mac mini i don’t know i think i might want space gray or even a matte black version now going back to the form factor aside from the height adjustment we also see that the vents were moved to the bottom instead of on the back right here this was necessary because the current vent you can see takes up about a third of the width and since you’re cutting everything in half there’d be no room for it on the back we also have two rubber strips which are on the bottom and should give enough clearance for the fan to be able to expel the warm air now it’s important to understand that all we’re looking at right here are renders based on schematics and the final version may not look exactly like what we have but it should have the
same components and ports and speaking of ports that was one of the issues that some users complained about with this m1 model and the new version has some upgrades but again also has something missing if you look at the back of the m1 mac mini you’ll see that there’s a power button a power cord input a gigabit ethernet port two thunderbolt slash usb 4 ports an hdmi 2.0 port two usb a ports and a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack and even though this is a step back from the intel version that had more ports i think this current setup would work great for the vast majority of users but when we get to the prosumer level then we’re going to need more ports for example if you’re using the two thunderbolt ports to connect two monitors then you’re already out and you’re left with just usba ports now the m1x mini renders show us four usbc ports but it’s not clear whether all four are thunderbolt slash usb4 ports with a maximum transfer speed of up to 40 gigabits per second or if it’s a configuration like we got on the m1 imac with two thunderbolts usb 4 ports and two usb 3.1 gen 2 ports which max out at 10 gigabits per second now in both cases we’re getting more ports which is great and
it’s going to be interesting to see what the final specs look like next on the renders we have two usb a ports which i think is great like a lot of users still have accessories that use usba and this makes it less likely that they’re going to need an adapter we also see a magnetic power cord that looks very similar to the magnetic cable that apple just used on the m1 imac and if that’s truly the same cable then we’re going to see a power brick rather than just the power cable we have with the m1 mac mini what’s interesting is that there’s still an ethernet port on the back of the renders of the m1x mac mini and i’m curious why apple didn’t incorporate that into the power cord and adapter like they did with the imac i definitely like this feature because it creates a super clean look for the imac i guess it doesn’t matter as much with the mac mini because you’re already going to have cables going out to at least one monitor so one more cable is not that messy now the final port that we see on the new design is hdmi which will be convenient for users who may have existing monitors with limited connectivity options and speaking of monitors the m1x mini should support up to three displays instead of the two displays on the m1 version now i wasn’t super critical of the two display limitation if you want to call it that because i think just a very small fraction of the target audience for this entry-level device is going
to go beyond two monitors but with the new version since we’re targeting more advanced and demanding users i can easily see more users taking advantage of a three display setup and i have six monitors so maybe i shouldn’t be talking about this at all now going back to the ports on the back what we see missing from the new design is a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack and that was something that was included with this previous version or current version depending on how you want to look at it and it seems strange that apple would omit it from the m1x version again these are only preliminary renderers and it’s altogether possible that the actual m1x mini will have a headphone jack i know that apple has been on a path of removing headphone jacks from their portable devices like we obviously don’t have them on any iphones and the ipad 8 was the last ipad to include one but the m1x mac mini is not a portable device and if we look at the design of the new imac even with how thin it
is apple found a way to incorporate a headphone jack into the side panel now both the m1 macbook air and the macbook pro still have a headphone jack and it’s definitely a feature that video editors and any other creator working with audio is going to want if i had to guess i would say that the final version of the m1x mac mini will have a headphone jack especially considering the target audience but only time will tell now one other thing that’s still missing is an sd card slot which again would be useful for photographers and videographers who often transfer media you can always use a usbc hub or a dock would just be so much cleaner if it was included into this new high performance mac mini and speaking of performance let’s talk about what this m1x has in store for us of course we know that the m1 mac mini has an eight core cpu and an eight core gpu and of the eight cpu cores for our high performance cores which are designed to run a single task as efficiently as possible while maximizing performance then we also have four efficiency cores that are designed to handle lighter workloads while using a tenth of the power and the new m1x is rumored to have 10 cpu cores with eight of them being power cores so twice as what we currently have and then two high efficiency cores so by doubling the number of high
performance cores and having the number of efficiency cores it would appear that apple is focusing on providing a ton of power at the cost of increased power consumption i think that’s a good approach for this device because someone who’s looking for a mac mini to just do like general office work or you know browsing the web or even photo and video editing can already do that on the m1 mac mini whereas a user who is opting to go and pay for this high performance m1x version is intentionally prioritizing performance now we’ll get to the price in just a moment but this new chip is also going to come with 16 to 32 gpu cores and then once again we’re going to get a significant bump in performance and if that’s not enough a comment that i’ve gotten from a lot of you more demanding users is that the maximum of 16 gigabytes of ram on all the existing m1 devices isn’t enough well you’ll be happy to hear that the m1x is set to support up to 64 gigs of ram so you can just go ahead and just stack up as much ram as you need it’ll also be interesting to see if apple continues this current trend of 200 per 8 gigs of unified ram upgrade if we’re potentially looking at a 10 core cpu 30 core gpu m1x mac mini with 64 gigs of unified ram i mean that thing is gonna just like scream can you even imagine optimized for silicon final cut pro running on this new m1x and it’s just crushing 4 and 8k prores now i know the average user isn’t going to need this much power but
those of you who do should be really excited that brings me to the price where it’s a question of how low can they actually start the m1x mac mini the m1 version with eight core cpu and 8 core gpu 8 gigs of ram and 256 gigs of ssd storage sells for 6.99 and there are two considerations here like the base configuration of the new one and the starting price is apple going to offer a scaled down version with a 10 core cpu 16 core gpu eight gigs of ram and again 256 gig of ssd storage in that case you’re essentially just paying for additional cpu and gpu cores plus a couple of ports that’s something that could probably start at around 900 to 1100 and i feel like anything lower than that would just make people skip the m1 version then like i mentioned we’ll have to see if we’re still paying 200 bucks per 8 gigs of unified ram which if you max it out would be an additional 1400 bucks there will also be a gpu upgrade going from 16 to 32 cores and then finally what will the maximum internal storage be my guess is that it’s going to be 2 terabytes like we have on the m1 mac mini but we’ll have to wait for more leaks this is definitely a computer that i could see using to create a dedicated video editing setup maybe do like two or three monitors and then some cool higher end components let me know in the comments section if you have any ideas for this new setup or any specific gear that you want me to include also what do you think about the m1x mac mini leaks and renders that we have so far what about this new macbook pro that we’re hearing about at wwdc i can’t wait for this next event and i’m super excited about what apple has coming out this year hopefully you enjoyed this video click on my face to subscribe and then watch one of these videos you know what i always say buy it nice or buy twice good luck and see you soon
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