Apple Tried to Destroy This Mac… But I Found One!

The M1 Mac mini changed everything—but it wasn't the first Apple Silicon Mac...

Check out Collin's stuff: @dosdude1

This video takes an exclusive look at Apple’s rare Developer Transition Kit (DTK), a Mac mini prototype with the A12Z chip, originally designed to help developers transition from Intel to Apple Silicon. Intended for destruction, this DTK survived and offers a unique glimpse into Apple’s early macOS Big Sur and M1 transition strategy. We tear down the DTK, benchmark its performance, and test its gaming capabilities. Learn how this pre-release Apple Silicon Mac mini compares to the final M1 Mac, showcasing hardware like Rosetta 2, ARM architecture, and more.

0:00 I got my hands on a DTK!
0:23 2020 was wild and Big Sur was... BIG!
1:22 Apple Silicon's transition "bridges"
3:11 Weird DTK oddities!
6:15 Tearing down Apple's DTK
9:30 Looking at the SoC and other components
10:35 Apple's FAILED attempt at DESTRUCTION!
12:22 No Thunderbolt!
12:53 The CMOS batteries are WILD
14:11 More SMC shenanigans and boot sequence
15:57 A12Z was architecturally flawed for macOS
16:57 Synthetic benchmarking vs M1/M3
19:46 How does it handle video editing?
21:39 Can it game?!
24:13 This thing sucked and Apple flubbed it
25:15 The DTK died so M1 could live!

#apple #prototype #mac

[dosdude]

So glad you had the chance to take a look at one of these weird Macs! The repair and restoration of these boards represents about a year’s worth of work and research, and needless to say I am very happy with the result!

[swimmln]

Mild correction: the 'Mac Mini' tag and thunderbolt logos on the unit are just a result of Collin reusing a Mac Mini casing—since his board came loose. The original chassis used for the DTK had no thunderbolt logos on the back, and only the regulatory logos on the bottom.

[bfriesen]

As a developer I had one of these machines. The machine was slow and Rosetta was buggy. I thought this didn't bode well for Apple. When I returned the machine and got a full M1 as a replacement, I was very surprised by how snappy the machine was compared to the dev kit.

[ShadowRubberDuck]

Quinn from Snazzy Labs: “Any commission Linus? Payments are late!”
Derek from Vertasium: “No problem Quinn!”

[iambenmitchell]

As a small developer at the time, I immediately applied for the DTK after WWDC ended. I got approved and the terms and conditions were sent over. Literally took 30 seconds for me to realise it was a horrible idea. £500 and I had to send it back for no refund? And if I didn’t send it back, Tim would send Craig to my house and kidnap my family… no thanks.

[Benjaminpro]

A while ago I bought an iPhone but recently I bought a Mac for the ecosystem and it was a good decision. What I like most and what surprises me is its performance and screen.

[EricMBlog]

I remember when they did the Intel transition, if you got the dev kit, they sent you an Intel iMac as a replacement for them when they did the dev kit reclamation. Much classier.

[what-a-lark]

I worked on a team that got one of these - primarily to test Apple Silicon as we replaced our dedicated mac app with a Catalyst version adapted from our iPad app. I did most of the work getting everything to compile for the new architecture (and boy was it a wild west when it came to external libraries). The DTK itself was definitely a bit buggy and had several quirks (I had to use DFU mode to reset/fix it on 3 separate occasions). But it was exactly what we needed to get the app ready and tested by the time the M1 came out. On the whole it was worth it for our team, and it was fun to get a glimpse of the future for mac.

[tetrakoop]

yelling at the humane pin almost made me choke hahah

[transposestudios]

That M1 release era was awesome. Working in printing our prepress dept. uses macs and we had to put off the upgrade for awhile until Kodak got with the program (M1 support, etc.) Sucked that one developer kept us from upgrading as long as they did

[HardikMeel]

These obscure Apple products just make me happy.

[peteralfredhess]

The Humane pin screaming to be relevant cracked me up so much 😂

[exlomo]

someone needs to commend the storytelling and pacing in this video it's really well done. whoever's scripting and editing needs a 15% pay rise. i enjoyed seeing dosdude1's work given slick editing back to apple's keynote.

you two should collaborate again. dosdude is such a legend, i love that he's doing extremely delicate and huge cost of failure jobs off the back of an old dvd drive because if you turn it upside down it's flat enough.

[ntnwwnet]

THIS is what we want from Snazzy!

Yesterday’s video was… unfortunate.

[TheWolfHowling]

I’m a little surprised that you actually got the DTK to “work”. I would have thought that maybe Cupertino might have used the Dark Apple Magic to remotely brick any surviving units, such as barring any A12Z MacOS devices from connecting to their servers, or even sending some kind of “Kill Code”

[Mooooooof]

This being more iPad than Mac always made me wonder if reverse engineering macOS onto an iPad would’ve come out of people getting their hands on it

[Shamoss]

0:12 Doesn't look like an iPad to me...

[Rosa_AI]

that ltt plug made me chuckle, intresting video! thanks!

[joeykeilholz]

First test of apple silicon has 16 GB ram in tandem with an iPad SoC and m4s ship with 8 GB ram default to this day 😂

[anumeon]

"And what is new in Flynn, , i mean Encom OS-12?"
"This year we put a 12 on the box"