In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Adrian the earliest in all probability (based on Apples historic media launch dates) will be late March next year.

If not then likely it will be October as iPhones typically are announced in September. June tends to be when they announce iPads. Not set in stone of course….especially with global pandemics and chip shortages in play…

Cheers, I will wait until March and see what happens, give me time to stick more money into the account i am using to save for it, save taking money out of my main savings, not that it makes much difference as I can put it back.
I am going to phone my landlord up next week as I am pretty sure I am a few quid in advance, maybe a grand

More than enough for a Mac mini, a new keyboard and a dock.
I am looking at the Logitech MX keys mini, but I am not sure how I would get on with the flat keys as the keyboard I have now, is mechanical.

The keyboards at work are cheap Dell flat keyboards and I get on okish with them, but then I only use them for a few minutes a day. The Logitech one should be better than them.
the only problem is, the Logibolt, which is required for it to work on my PC is out of stock and have been for a couple of months or so.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Adrian the earliest in all probability (based on Apples historic media launch dates) will be late March next year.

If not then likely it will be October as iPhones typically are announced in September. June tends to be when they announce iPads. Not set in stone of course….especially with global pandemics and chip shortages in play…

Latest rumor mill suggestion is they could launch an up-spec Mac Mini at a launch event on 8 March …

https://www.macrumors.com/2022/02/06/gurman-apple-ev...

I have seen a video that says the new Mac mini may have the M2 chip, shame really I would have liked it to have the pro, but the M2 will do ok, as long as the price stays the same.

Yeh rumours, rumours swirling everywhere. It will be interesting to see what exactly they announce on the macs.

I believe their processor timeline is running a bit skewwhiff…M1 Pro and Max were about 6 months late out of the oven, so they’re in a situation where they want to give these ‘new’ processors some breathing space in the market before they whack out the M2 based stuff…who really knows until the day😀

M2 is a slightly updated M1 by the seems of it, same amount of cores, but slightly updated, fine for me to be honest. the M1 would do me, but I may as well wait and see what happens.
I could get a Mac book pro I suppose. We will see.

For the M2 looks likely they will use the same "Avalanche" high-performance cores and "Blizzard" energy-efficient cores as they used in the most recent A15 mobile SoC.

As you say probably will be an incremental performance improvement for M2 over the M1 generation, as these will be ARMv8.5-A revision cores up from the ARMv8.4-A cores in the M1 (aka Firestorm & Icestorm).

The next really big step up ought to be a fresh design based on the ARMv9-A architecture.

Edited by Pheasant (Wed 09-Feb-22 19:45:17)

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

For the M2 looks likely they will use the same "Avalanche" high-performance cores and "Blizzard" energy-efficient cores as they used in the most recent A15 mobile SoC.

As you say probably will be an incremental performance improvement for M2 over the M1 generation, as these will be ARMv8.5-A revision cores up from the ARMv8.4-A cores in the M1 (aka Firestorm & Icestorm).

The next really big step up ought to be a fresh design based on the ARMv9-A architecture.

Well, we will see, Which ever way I go, I will not be updating again for a long time. To be honest, I am fed up with spending on these machines, so will get something that will last.

When I got my first computer, my ZX81, I never realised it would cost me so much over the years

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

When I got my first computer, my ZX81, I never realised it would cost me so much over the years

My first "proper" computer was a 25MHz Intel 386 with 4MB of RAM, a 13" VGA display and an 80MB HDD (near top of the range at the time)... it cost me slightly more than this 3.1GHz 6-core Intel Core I5 iMac with 8GB RAM, a 27" 5K retina display and a 256GB SSD.

In real terms that first computer probably cost me more than my last 2 iMacs combined... it's a funny old world

And I'm just waiting for Apple to bring out a 27" iMac with an M2 in it

Snap. Wind the clock back 30 years…to 1992 I had bought my first Acer 386SX 20 MHz as a first year engineering student. A whopping 4 MB of RAM and 120 MB Quantum hard drive. 14” SVGA monitor. I can’t recall how much video RAM it had but I think it wasn’t more than 1024K. DOS 5.1 and Windows 3.1. Not such thing as USB - a high speed connection was a centronics parallel printer port 😂

In reply to a post by billford:

My first "proper" computer was a 25MHz Intel 386 with 4MB of RAM, a 13" VGA display and an 80MB HDD (near top of the range at the time)... it cost me slightly more than this 3.1GHz 6-core Intel Core I5 iMac with 8GB RAM, a 27" 5K retina display and a 256GB SSD.

In real terms that first computer probably cost me more than my last 2 iMacs combined... it's a funny old world

And I'm just waiting for Apple to bring out a 27" iMac with an M2 in it

While I did not have much to do with IBM compatibles when I was younger, I was a student I could not afford a proper computer, I did use an Amstrad Pc, i think it was the PC 1512, we used a card index system to store recipes. Before that we used a torch, but that used a z80 I think.

I know people complain about prices now, certainly with video cards, but if I made this machine from scratch, instead of using parts from the last upgrade, it would come out just slightly more than my first PC, a Cyrix 166 based machine.

I did think about an Imac, the problem is I already have a pretty good monitor, i doubt it is Imac quality, but it is fine for me, cost me over £300 and it is larger than the largest Imac screen, also the cheapest iMac is around £1,700. the Mac mini is a fair bit cheaper, the only thing I would have to get is a decent keyboard, because this one is on its way out, I was thinking of the Logitech MX Keys Mini, mainly because it can change between computers, but I am not sure if I can cope with the flat keys, this keyboard I use now is a mechanical one. I will keep my anker Vertical mouse, great mouse, certainly for the price. I will certainly get one of those docks that fits under the MAc mini to add more ports and space for another hard drive.

I will go for a Mini with more memory, but with the minimum storage, as storage is easy to solve, but memory is not.
The M1 mac mini with 256GB of storage and 16GB ram is £899, the talk is that the new versions will be the same price, but higher cpu SPEC.

i have to sort things out to be honest, lots of stuff to clear out from this room.