JB is having a sale and looks like M1 Macs are included.
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Correct (base models only)
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I have had my M1 Mac mini for about a week now. I’m using it as my work machine and I have to say it’s great, fast, quiet, doesn’t get hot. And because its so small it fits in my audio rack in my little studio so can’t complain about that.
The only issue I had was one day the screen went blank and it wouldn’t wake up. I tried starting VoiceOver the screen reader just to see if it was a monitor issue but that didn’t work either so rebooted it. But I rebooted and all well now.
How has everyone else’ new M1s been going?
I’ve never owned or used a faster Mac than my new M1 Mac mini. It’s astounding. I’m in love.
Edit: I went for 16GB, but I can’t wait for one with even more RAM to be available.
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I was tossing up what to use mine for, I decided to replace my trash can Mac Pro as my handbrake encoder. I was also pleased when I saw the new build of handbrake for the M1.
I do a lot of DVD ripping and encoding and I have to say this thing is fast. It’s going through encodes a lot faster than my Mac Pro… it’s fast and responsive and is quiet and cool.
In time I might start throwing more at it.
My only disappointment with my M1 macs is having to use Big Sur on day 1. It’s buggy as every new Apple OS is on day 1. 
Hardware itself is brilliant. (I am also disappointed there’s no eGPU support, but I knew that going in).
So ended up cancelling my BTO from JB Hifi as after three weeks it still had not gone prepared for shipping. They had a 10% off sale on the standard models and so I just bought one of those. After watching numerous review videos and knowing my use case, I’m pretty certain 8GB is going to be enough. Will this machine last me 7 years like my previous 13" Retina MacBook Pro? Possibly not, but so far it’s feeling like a solidly built and well put together machine. The keyboard is just fabulous as well.
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I’ll wait for the second generation M1. I hear they’ll be out this summer (Or winter, if you’re in Australia 
)
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Upgrade year for me this year. 2016 MBP is doing just fine, but I’m keen for an M1 (or whatever the next iteration is called) 14” but only if they include more ports.
I don’t care how good the M1 chip is, I can’t get by with just 2 USB C ports!
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My wife just bought herself an M1 MacBook Pro (mostly because I pointed her in that direction).
She was on a 2011 13" MBA which was just had it’s fans constantly screaming. She switched to my previous 2013 15" MBP for the last year with remote schooling and while it is still a pretty nice machine, it’s bigger and heavier than what she wants.
The Air vs Pro for us came down to battery life. It’s really hard to go past something which provides so much more batter for very little additional weight. She also liked the idea of the touch bar as something new and different.
In the week or so she’s had it, she’s loving it. Watch unlock is just magical followed very closely by touch ID.
Battery life if phenomenal. That M1 chip is made of magic.
Performance has been perfect and we haven’t hit any applications with issues at all. Being a few months behind the release also means most main things have M1 specific versions now too.
She is amazed at how quiet it is. Zero fan noise, seemingly ever for what she uses it for. It’s never seems to get hot. Again, made of magic.
We also opted for the 512GB/16GB model… mostly because I couldn’t get my head around only having 8GB of RAM, especially given how long she is likely to keep this machine.
She only uses it as a laptop and rarely plugs in anything, so two ports haven’t yet presented an issue. Not needing to plug in to charge so often (in theory) helps with that.
She already had a USB C memory stick (with USB A adaptor) so can hand it to people to share files if she ever needed to. Her iPad Pro already charges via USB C, so putting the new charger in place covers both devices in one place. (The iPad charger is in the back room so if we needed to charge both at once one device would have to go down there).
We had to pull out the USBC → Lightning cable from her phone box, that’s about the only other things she plugs into her laptop to pull photos off.
Where she works (in a school) they have a nice Apple eco system too, so AppleTV’s are used to cast stuff to displays which means she doesn’t even need a display adaptor which is nice.
So yeah, ecstatic with her new purchase.
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I have the M1 Mac mini which I’m using as my work from home machine and I just love it. There’s no compatibility issues with anything I use (Microsoft 365/Teams/Salesforce) and all the video/audio stuff I do on it I can just use Apple’s apps like FCP and Logic.
Ports are fine for me, on the Mac mini with the USB A and Thunderbolt ports, its the same offerings as my 2020 iMac.
And yeah gotta love thise dual connection USB drives, I just bought a USB C/USB A 128gb dual drive for $25 and I love it. You can use it on the Mac, iPad Pro, PCs, etc. And you don’t then need to carry around adapters.
And as The_Hawk has said, so quiet. I have mine in my booth and it’s perfectly fine for the stuff I do.
Mac mini M1, 16GB RAM, 2TB hard drive. Does it really need to be using 11GB of RAM just to open Chrome, Calendar, Reminders and Messages???
However on a positive note, Windows 10 on ARM in a Parallels machine runs faster than a “real” machine.
Chrome is a bit of a RAM hog, but probably isn’t the main culprit. From what I understand of modern machine, they will keep things in RAM all the time ‘just in case’… after all, free RAM is wasted RAM. They will then drop things they don’t need if/when some other application needs it.
In the Apple world its called memory pressure (something I only learned about pretty recently).
Some reading if you’re interested:
View memory usage in Activity Monitor on Mac - Apple Support.
Does anyone here have any hands-on experience using Screen Sharing (ie Apple’s app) to remotely view the screen of the M1 iMac on an Intel Mac?
I’m looking at helping my dad buy an M1 iMac, but want to know that I can share his screen on my MacPro5,1 when he needs help. This was INVALUABLE when he got his last iMac about 10 years ago - although it stopped working 1-2 years ago, and so I’m back to completely confusing phone calls about “boxes” and “those things” and “these bloody computers!” that take 40 minutes just to work out what the hell he’s rabbiting on about, to fix a 2 minute problem.
No reason it wouldn’t work. It’s just VNC. You can also do the Cmd-K vnc://[email protected] with an Apple ID and it’ll connect over the net usually. Would work fine from High Sierra etc. on 5,1 to new Mac.
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Thanks @jaysee
My parents Apple ID is either my mum’s or dad’s email address. Just tried both, but didn’t get a connection. I’ll try next time I have them on the phone with vnc:// IP addy… but despite it being “open” on their end - it’s just not worked for at least 18 months - 2 years.
Oh - actually… I wont, because if I get that working on the 2008 iMac, Dad will probably put off upgrading!
What OS are they running at the moment? Guessing El Cap (given 2008). That may not support the vnc://appleid connection to be honest.
Nah - it’s got Mavericks on it…
Oh, ok. Yeh guessing it doesn’t have the vnc://appleid connection support.