We all remember the many deaths the Mac Mini was said to face.
Anything is possible, but I'll be pulling for the Mac Pro.
Anything is possible, but I'll be pulling for the Mac Pro.
The difference there is that the mini sales were always very good and required less resources to design and updateWe all remember the many deaths the Mac Mini was said to face. .
Apple already released the cube - its called the miniThe Cube is going to make a comeback to displace both Mac Mini and Mac Pro? A flexible cube that can upgrade three things, graphics/RAM/storage, easily?
This could be the unlikely and unforseen path to an upgradable mini (midi) form factor device. There has been clamoring for a replacement to the cube (Steve's fav) in the form of an upgradable mid-priced unit with exceptional graphics capabilities.
The PC is not entirely dead yet and an Intel chip is over $500 itself in a world where an A5 is about $25 bucks.
Apple can release a product in the PowerMac arena but cannot make demand out of nothing.
What they can do is increase the expandability features with "device boxes" that attach via Thunderbolt and accept graphics cards, pci cards, drives, and even add value such as GPU ganging as coprocessors. Perhaps even a blade server scheme. All BTO and all set to safety stocks among the lowest at Apple.
Rocketman
So the only thing that's important is profit?
The iMac's monitor is "good enough" for many, and it's not really bad, but:
Back in the day the main benefits to the MacPro were the expansion slots, dual processor, extra hard drives, and dual processors.
Now days with iMacs coming with quad cores, 16 GB of ram, and terrabytes of hard drive space, and thunderbolts ability to add external storage, and an expansion slot chassis; I think this is an obvious move. Add a duel processor option to the iMac and there you go. The only people this will hurt is the people that use Mac OSX Server as the MacPro and MacMini is the only server hardware they currently offer.
Apple already released the cube - its called the mini
If put a stamp on poop, you'd back em' up here.
Exactly. They just don't have the right machine right now. There is a major gap between an iMac and a Mac Pro for those who have displays. I want an expandable headless mac pro i7.
Back in the day the main benefits to the MacPro were the expansion slots, dual processor, extra hard drives, and dual processors.
Now days with iMacs coming with quad cores, 16 GB of ram, and terrabytes of hard drive space, and thunderbolts ability to add external storage, and an expansion slot chassis; I think this is an obvious move. Add a duel processor option to the iMac and there you go. The only people this will hurt is the people that use Mac OSX Server as the MacPro and MacMini is the only server hardware they currently offer.
Here's a straightforward solution:
Make the Mac Mini scaleable in stacks. Use the Thunderbolt port to make it simple to build anything from a FinalCutPro station, to a server, to a super computer by simply daisy chaining Mac Minis.
This would enable Apple to continue to serve the Pro market all the while only having to continue to build a Mac Mini which still has a high sale potential well into the future in the mass consumer market as a standalone unit. Power users could add another Mac Mini or several to meet the needs they would find in the Mac Pro.
The required change is in OSX enabling the stacking, no need for Apple to design, build and maintain a separate hardware line. To address the only remaining shortcoming: expansion slots. These could be added in the chain as external components. Either Apple could build and sell an expansion stack shaped like the Mac Mini with Thunderbolt I/O or leave it to third party manufacturers to build their expansion chips into these shapes.
The Mac Pro will be missed, but its place is in the history books.
New Mac Pro:
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With the current lineup of "desktop" computers Apple is certainly not appealing to a lot of people.