Back in the days of late PowerPC, Apple released a DTK which looked like a Power Mac G5 on the outside, but was actually a modified Intel Pentium 4 machine. Fast forward to the Apple Silicon transition, Apple released another one to developers on a loan-basis, with an A12Z chip in it.

If you were a developer, you certainly couldn’t keep one, and had to jump through some hoops to get it in the first place. For $500, you would need to sign up to Apple’s “Universal Quick Start Program” – which provided you the necessary license for even having one of these. With this membership, you’ll get access to Apple engineers, technical support on a code level, and “one on one” labs. You can’t keep it, aren’t allowed to run all kinds of benchmarks, can’t take it apart, or even use it for anything outside of developing.

After some time, Apple offered a $200 discount towards new Macs for developers, in exchange for returning their Dev kit early, which wasn’t stipulated in the original terms of agreement. Developers and users alike raised some noise about this machine – claiming it was unstable, unusable, had data losses, and some people were under the impression they could keep it for a year. After some back and forth, Apple gave in on 2/5/2021 and bumped the discount code to $500 – allowing it to be used through the end of the year rather than expiring on May 2021.

Above: Screenshot sourced from Archiware Blog

Link: Luke Miani reviews the DTK

• Cinebench R23: 4353
• Geekbench 5.3.0 Pro for ARM: Link to test results
  • Single Core: 1137
  • Multicore: 4799

Quirks

• Fan runs at 100% speed, all the time
• It is claimed there are no internal temperature readouts/sensors
  • It’s been said time and time again it’s an “iPad” stuffed into a Mac mini.
• This Mac does NOT have Thunderbolt, the USB-C in the rear is USB-C 3.1 only.
• Recovery partition thinks/looks like it’s macOS Catalina
• On the original build of “Big Sur” beta, the DTK shipped with drivers meant for the iPad:
  • Face ID, Touch screen, and Camera.
• Has 3x “coin” style batteries.
  • Has an unusually power hungry SMC that lasts only 6 months.
• Source for quirks: DTK teardown

Above: Photos from Luke Miani’s DTK teardown. Logic boards from left to right: 2018, DTK, M1 Mini

Details

• Announced 2020.06.22
  • Early Return – February 2021
• Model: A2330
• Order Number: MYAL2xx/A (Space Gray)
• ADP3,2

Mac OS

• Requires macOS Big Sur 11.0/10.16 (Build 20A5299w) or later
  • Requires “Developer Beta Access Utility” to update macOS

Core System

Legend: L1i = L1 Instruction Cache, L1d = L1 Data cache, SLC = System Level Cache

• CPU ($500): 8 Cores, 4x 2.49 GHz “Vortex” High Performance Cores: 512K L1i, 512K L1d, 32MB L2, 8MB System Level Cache, 7 nm process
  • 4x 1.59 GHz “Tempest” energy efficient cores: 128K L1i, 128k L1d, 8MB L2, 8 MB SLC
• 16 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR4X-4266 SDRAM
  • 68.2 GB/s Memory Bandwidth

Video

• Integrated Apple A12Z with 8-Core Metal 3 Hardware Accelerated GPU, 1125 MHz clock

Drives

• Drive Bus: 512GB PCIe SSD ~1.3 GB/s, 2x 256GB NANDs in Parallel

Expansion/Ports

• Wifi 6 (802.11a/b/g/n/ac), up to 1.3 Gb/s
• Bluetooth 5
• Ethernet
• Two USB-C Ports
  • Support for: USB 3.1
• Two USB-A ports
  • Support for USB 3.0
• HDMI 2.0
• 3.5mm headphone jack

Comes with:

• Mac mini DTK (2020)
• Documentation: “The future of Mac is yours to write”
• Power Cord
• Yes, it comes with 2x Apple stickers!

Orignal Box

Source for picture: Archiware Blog

Physical

• Size:H/W/D 3.6 x 19.7 x 19.7 cm
• Weight: 2.54 lb./1.16 kg