JMStearnsX2

slow n easy said:

I ordered one but it won't be here until the end of February, and it's also spec'ed out at $1,999.99. I debated waiting to see how it would compare to a Mac Studio but who knows how long it would take for the update to arrive.

I'm in the same situation, I'm not sure which one to get. I have my money ready, I wish I knew when the new Mac Studio is going to come out. I can wait a bit longer though.

DrBoar2 said:

Half the HD space of my mid 2011 budget and half of what I upgraded the RAM to on my own.
The real insanity is that with the M2 I have to pay as much for adding 256 GB SSD as getting a 2 TB external HD!  That is an 8:1 ratio
And why do I have to pay as much for adding 256 (256 to 512) as adding 512 (going from 412 to 1TB) !?

I agree it's insane, I wouldn't mind the soldered memory and storage as much if it were more reasonably priced. How much they charge for memory and storage upgrades is criminal. External Thunderbolt storage has a bandwidth cap, even a single NVMe 3.0 will be much faster. Move to PCIe 4.0 or 5.0 and there is no comparison.
I'm a certified Mac technician, I've seen the inside of the M1 mini. There is SO much empty space, you could fit 2x 2.5" drives inside and still have lots of air movement, much less having a few NVMe blades. The logic board & heatsink only takes about 20% of the interior volume, the rest is just air space from using the same enclosure from the last 13 years.  It would be trivial for Apple to add that capability to the logic board, but they won't when they make as much as they do on storage upgrades.

mike1 said:

Does 16.3 for HomePod activate the temperature sensor in the HomePod mini?

Let's hope so, I have one in every room so that would be nice.

I have three 5,1 Mac Pros, definetly my favorite Macs of all the many I've owned. I sincerly hope that the new M-series Mac Pro will still have PCI slots and the ability to add storage (SATA, NVMe) & memory. 

Something I would like, but for some reason has eluded us in macOS for a very long time is the ability to change the login/Lock Screen wallpaper. Count me as one of the people not a fan of the neon color gradient wallpapers, I do wish I didn't have to see it on the login screen every time I turn on my Macs.

Not very important, I know. But would be nice none the less.

I had an 8th gen iPad (32GB) for my son who is homeschooled that we bought from Apple using the education discount ($299). They offered me $240 for the 8th gen as a trade in, I figured for $60 it was worth it to double the storage alone as 32GB simply wasn’t enough. We don’t normally upgrade devices after just a year, but I decided to this year for him since it was a pretty decent upgrade all around.