I use it to run CQG, which is a financial markets trading software. Its not that intensive but it clearly disproves previous poster
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2014 Mac Mini Teardown Highlights Increased Difficulty For User Upgradability
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I use it to run CQG, which is a financial markets trading software. Its not that intensive but it clearly disproves previous poster
No one would be bothered about soldered RAM if it was priced at the market rate. No one likes being taken for a chump, a sucker, and by buying this Mac, with anything above the pitiful 4GB, you are admitting to yourself that you're a sucker with more money than sense, or just in complete denial.
They are charging much much more for the RAM than the retail price of a stick FFS. You utter greedy buggers Apple.
They are charging much much more for the RAM than the retail price of a stick FFS. You utter greedy buggers Apple.
Well aren't you special.
Just so you know, I have volunteered at homeless shelter and soup kitchens.
Yes there are a few people who are down on there luck, but most are bums who choose not to work.
Heres a little story for you. My father owned his own business. He was at D&D one day and someone asks him for a dollar. He said no , but I'll give you a $100 if you come work at my shop and sweep and take out garbage. The answer was a resounding "No I just want some money"
So get off your high horse, Welfare (call it what it is) is being abused horribly. If you cant see that you are blind. I am a recovering drunk and
I never collected one ***** dime from the state. I dealt with my problems
and got myself back where I am.
Unfortunately, this is a bad change too... Apple wants u to buy from them, even hardware (memory) at purchase and pay over the top pricing...
This is why i never get hardware upgrades from Apple (hardware permitting).
Unfortunately, the reality of getting upgrades and DIY from after market are going slimmer and slimmer with these thin designs that Apple wants to try and control..
You have a right to open your Mac.... warranty or otherwise...
But now, Apple's really saying "We know you'll void your warranty". instead of "At your own risk." Thus, there is no more option apart from the stuff that remains..
Where will we be in a few years time.... ? a completely disposable Mac that u cannot upgrade not even one component, a repair-ability score of 10/10, and u must buy at purchase...
I hate where this is going, but i think this is where Apple may be headed, and they probably want to send a strong message, which they are.
At least PC's are not this bad (yet).
If this how Apple controls their "lock" its a pretty bad lock,,, i'll bust it open with a crowbar if i have to
It's MY machine.... not Theirs..
Maybe if your father offered him $100 to upgrade the RAM on his new mini the person would have accepted.
Anyway, anecdotal evidence is worthless.
As you wish....it starts at 1 minute into this video, that Yosemite is a ram hog then he shows you how much ram is being used just for Yosemite.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ao7GJASlDOM
Show me a comparable Mac for $500.
We will all wait...
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So your friends will someone organically work into the conversation how you bought a used Mac Mini? By doing this, Apple will get the hint?
really ?
Guys, settle down, seriously !! Do any of you, for one minute, think that Apple gives a flying fig about a minority opinion on what they have re-adjusted as an ENTRY-LEVEL piece of hardware?
The previous generation Mac Mini was over-powered for what Apple intended it to be.
If you don't like the new one, heres an idea --> DON'T BUY ONE !!
Vent your anger, by defiantly purchasing the now defunct 2012 Mini, because that is guaranteed to show Apple you mean business.
I have a sneaking suspicion that the accountants at Apple will be laughing hard at such a move.
So, move on with your lives, it's REALLY not that big a deal.
Guys, settle down, seriously !! Do any of you, for one minute, think that Apple gives a flying fig about a minority opinion on what they have re-adjusted as an ENTRY-LEVEL piece of hardware?
The previous generation Mac Mini was over-powered for what Apple intended it to be.
If you don't like the new one, heres an idea --> DON'T BUY ONE !!
Vent your anger, by defiantly purchasing the now defunct 2012 Mini, because that is guaranteed to show Apple you mean business.
I have a sneaking suspicion that the accountants at Apple will be laughing hard at such a move.
So, move on with your lives, it's REALLY not that big a deal.
I don't think Apple wants anymore 32 Bit OS X products out there as that means they have to keep supporting both sets of code. That wouldn't be a good idea, plus an i3 is a slow poke. I've used Windows on it and it's painfully slow, basically unusable for normal people.
Lots of people use MacMinis for music servers because they are small, attractive, easy to set up, have all of the right ports in the back and they are affordable. So I don't think trimming down the ports would have been a good thing for certain markets these things are sold in.
The problem is that they can't make enough profit margin if this thing goes down too much further. I know most people don't like hearing that a company is making money, but that's why they're in business. Apple is trying to maintain a certain pre-tax and post-tax profit so they do have to keep that in mind, reducing this thing down too much and then the warranty support calls and break fix starts to pull down the margins much faster, because those don't change all that much.
If it goes down much further, they'll end up making $5 (just a number I threw out) a unit after it's all said and done. I don't they want to end up like that. The accountants, Board of Directors and shareholders don't want to see a product like this making the same amount of post tax profit as a Lightning cable.
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This is erroneous and not a true statement.
Modern operating systems handle RAM a lot differently than the past. "free" ram is a bad statement and doesn't truly reflect the amount of available ram for use by programs.
Most Modern operating systems will actually dynamically scale the RAM usage based on available ram and store it in a "cache" that can be called upon on demand by applications and programs.
For modern operating systems, you can see this amount of memory in various ways.
in Windows, on the "Performance" tab of Task Manager, in the little box called "Physical Memory(MB)", there is a number called "cached".
in *nix, in TOP, this is visible on the line that starts with "Swap:" and is the last number _______ Cached.
in OSx, it gets slightly trickier as Apple doesn't display cached, but uses a term called "memory pressure". As memory pressure increases, it starts using more of that memory space.
Another good check, to see if the actual memory usage is really that high, is look at your swap usage. if you don't use swap space, you are entirely operating in phsyical RAM (with some caveats).
I am running OSx Yosemite currently on 2gb of ram. it is currently using 1.7GB of 2GB. When I have web browser open, it will use 200ish of SWAP.
This shows me that the core of Yosemite can operate quite succesffully within 2gb of physical RAM, and it's only when running additional applications that I run into memory restrictions.
I just did a quick look at OWC & Crucial for 2X8gb RAM upgrades (PC3-12800 DDR3) and am seeing prices between $175 - $200. I absolutely know that Apple gets a better price than I would, but retail is around the price that Apple is charging for the upgrade.
I think the real issue is that people are always certain that they MIGHT upgrade a machine in the future, so I'll buy the low end config and then in some period of time upgrade the RAM. What Apple's moves are doing are requiring us to think about it today. I don't see really what the big deal is...
Perhaps these configurations and costs are most advantageous to what I suspect is Apple's largest customer on these machines: itself. I suspect that Apple is jamming these new data centers full of these motherboards and want to hit specific power consumption numbers and we, the consumers, get to buy them.
I also suspect that Apple is either taking on Intel failed stock CPU's and/or using their own assembly failures. These are not bad CPU's per se, they just fail the qual step on power (typically). This saves them a ton of money and makes their COGS very appealing.
And lastly, a previous poster pointed out that this release seems like a Plan B...betting that there's something with a Broadwell in it, maybe with a new industrial design. Intel isn't shipping the Broadwell line anytime soon, so it was time to ship this.
Purely my thoughts/opinions....
my issue was with uncommon torx - one that the article authors had to fabricate to tool to remove.
Yeah, I for the very first time got an out of memory error message the first day I ran Yosemite, but it hasn't done it since. it is utilizing more RAM than Mavericks, but I'm HOPING that this issue gets taken care of with the 10.10.1 update which is being worked on.
Other than the memory issue, I've have no other problems yet. It's been pretty good of an update. Making/taking calls from my iPhone 6 is freakin cool. Great feature.
The only gripe I have is that iTunes doesn't have the side bar anymore and that some apps have almost no room to grab the window so I can move the window. That's a little annoying.
So much wrong in this post I don't know if you're a shill, or you're just drinking the coolaid.
The typical lifespan of any computer is, how long the hardware lasts, and more importantly, how long the usefulness of that hardware is. Just because a computer is 10 years old, doesn't mean it suddenly doesn't work, or doesn't still accomplish useful activities.
Source: Working in software industry, where many clients, competitors and vendors are all using hardware of different platforms and responsibilities that range in age from months, to decades of age.
MTBF is an estimate calcluation and is not, in anyway a guaranteed lifespan estimate on hardware. it stands for "mean time between failure". And the key word is "Mean". What does "Mean" mean in this meaning (see what i did there). It's a mathematical statement that equates to "average". And if you don't know what "average" is. I can't help you. Thats grade 5 math.
Typical Lifespan is not 3 years. That is Apple's typical software support lifespan. However, outside of the Apple software, typical lifespan is longer. Windows sofware support is typically over a decade. Unix LTS variations goes for long time. Many hardware vendors even provide lifetime warranties on some of their parts (Kingstom memory is guaranteed for life). This 3 years is an arbitrary number that exists almost entirely in the OSx/iOS world.
I can guarantee you, again from real working experience as a vet in the IT industry, many places use hardware that is much older than 3 years. Many clients I deal with still are running Windows XP based hardware (quite succesfully, as scary as that is)
No different than the storage on an iPhone. What's a 16GB USB thumb drive cost these days, $8 or so? Apple probably pays 1/2 of that. And they get away with charging $100 more for $4 more of flash storage (16GB to 32GB).
The Core i3 in the 2011 iMac is as fast (according to Geekbench) as the 2014 1.4Ghz MacBook air. It is also 64bit.
I am sure a similar modern Haswell i3 would be at least as fast and much cheaper.
My point was: if Apple were shooting for a minimum level of performance at the lowest price, they could have done it far more cheaply, and therefore made an even greater profit margin.
All most people using it for a music server need: Wifi or Ethernet, HDMI and possibly an ability to attach to some external storage. They do not need thunderbolt since USB3 achieves this fine.
Does it matter to have TB2? It does if it is pushing up the cost for them unnecessarily. Or Apple could have sold at the same price and made more profit.
Personally I think two TB2 ports are potentially great - or a least they would have been if the processor/graphics were matched so that the computer could *smoothly* drive 2x27 inch displays. But if it can't, why bother with 2xTB ports?
Honestly: a quad i7 + IrisPro would be an upgrade. But the model they released is just a total mess of mixed messages/direction.
I am sure a similar modern Haswell i3 would be at least as fast and much cheaper.
My point was: if Apple were shooting for a minimum level of performance at the lowest price, they could have done it far more cheaply, and therefore made an even greater profit margin.
All most people using it for a music server need: Wifi or Ethernet, HDMI and possibly an ability to attach to some external storage. They do not need thunderbolt since USB3 achieves this fine.
Does it matter to have TB2? It does if it is pushing up the cost for them unnecessarily. Or Apple could have sold at the same price and made more profit.
Personally I think two TB2 ports are potentially great - or a least they would have been if the processor/graphics were matched so that the computer could *smoothly* drive 2x27 inch displays. But if it can't, why bother with 2xTB ports?
Honestly: a quad i7 + IrisPro would be an upgrade. But the model they released is just a total mess of mixed messages/direction.
I don't think Apple wants anymore 32 Bit OS X products out there as that means they have to keep supporting both sets of code. That wouldn't be a good idea, plus an i3 is a slow poke. I've used Windows on it and it's painfully slow, basically unusable for normal people.
Lots of people use MacMinis for music servers because they are small, attractive, easy to set up, have all of the right ports in the back and they are affordable. So I don't think trimming down the ports would have been a good thing for certain markets these things are sold in.
The problem is that they can't make enough profit margin if this thing goes down too much further. I know most people don't like hearing that a company is making money, but that's why they're in business. Apple is trying to maintain a certain pre-tax and post-tax profit so they do have to keep that in mind, reducing this thing down too much and then the warranty support calls and break fix starts to pull down the margins much faster, because those don't change all that much.
If it goes down much further, they'll end up making $5 (just a number I threw out) a unit after it's all said and done. I don't they want to end up like that. The accountants, Board of Directors and shareholders don't want to see a product like this making the same amount of post tax profit as a Lightning cable.
Sorry to disappoint you, but I have been analyzing Apple as a company to understand how they do things since the 80's.
yeah, I know other companies have i3 based products, but Apple is done with 32 Bit code and they are NOT going to produce a line of computers that loses money.
Why do you think companies that mfg PC's can't bring in more than 6% Net Profits? they lose too much money on the low end products. They are more concerned with market share instead of profits.
I've got 30+ years in the IT industry along with a finance, procurement management and technical degree, and I've been analyzing Apple's business model since the mid 80's, when I learned what to look at. I have friends over the years that have worked at Apple in various positions and I have worked on their products as a tech in the mid 80's for a couple of years, I have also worked for top Apple resellers selling tons of Apple products to corporate and government accounts. Seriously, Apple has no use for the ultra low end, that's why they developed the iPad is because they can't make any money from cheap laptops and desktops. That's why the iPads start at $250. They simply don't want to en up with small profit margins.
Best practices for an iT department is to keep the product for 3 years. The lifespan might be longer if it's taken care of, but I'm talking about the average lifespan of the first owner. I worked for one of the largest global resellers back in the late 90's for over 3 years and we all got trained in Best Practices for managing IT. That's what they indicated was what Corporations should do to manage their desktop and laptops. That's how I've been trained. My last iMac I had for 3 years and it was barely usable. It functionally worked, but the parts become more scarce and at some point Apple ceases to have parts on hand.
If Apple only offers a 3 year service contract, then a company would have to find someone else to offer a company extended service contracts and it just gets too costly from that standpoint. That's why a BUSINESS should turn their desktop/laptops as soon as the 3 year service contract is up. That's what they call BEST PRACTICE. I know a lot of people in IT don't manage their IT using Best Practice approach, but some do.
Yeah, I know some businesses use PCs that are older than 3 years, but they aren't as usable. I know on in particular that's still using XP and their systems are constantly breaking down, the employees hate using XP.
Mainframes are a little different as they get extended service contracts for them through IBM and the mfg that sold them the units. It's all about how long they can get service contracts.
We can talk BUSINESS but then you should consider:
1) Apple is not existing in Enterprise Environments
2) A product lifecycle of 3 years is not acceptable in terms of costs. The products must be evaluated, tested, integrated into the current infrastucture and rolled out. These efforts exceed by far the costs of new PC's.
3) Large companies implemented XP, skipped Vista, implemented W7, skipped W8/8.1 and will probably implement W10 again. This does not fit to your 3 years "Best Practice".
...
4) All this is offtopic and has nothing to do with the soldered RAM and Apple.
Of course the MBTF is just an average. But engineers will decide what components to choose depending on the product/price point, that's why you'll see far more reliable HDD for servers, storage systems, etc. is because they last longer and are far more reliable than the cheap hard drives in a $250 laptop. Higher MBTF components are usually more expensive and more reliable. But engineers use that as part of the component selection process. I've worked closely with engineers designing equipment for commercial and military applications so I know what engineers use as part of their component selection. They don't just grab the cheapest hard drive they can find.
Yeah, I know people still use XP, but since XP is not supported anymore, people that still use XP are completely foolish. They use these old systems because they are running their business on a shoe string and for some businesses that would be unacceptable for some they don't mind. The place I know that still uses XP has employees that are unhappy with the computers they use because they have too many problems due to old hardware becoming flaky and a VERY slow interface, and they are always having problems which hurts productivity and moral. But the business owners don't care. It's called poor management.
If I was a consultant helping a business and they had outdated desktops running XP, I would either suggest they change over as quickly as possible or I might refuse to deal with them as a client because they don't want to progress how they run their business. But that's just me, I have little tolerance for business owners that keep their heads in outdated technology. My father was working at a company that bought DIY computers and I explained to him how much they were wasting on support costs they didn't realize. They had engineers making in excess of $100K a year that were supposed to design products to sell, but they spent some of their time fixing their own computers since they couldn't get a service contract with no-name computers. Imagine that, getting paid to design a product but your job ends up being a lowly service technician. That drove their company into the ground and they eventually had to sell the business to a larger company. is that the main reason why they sold the business? NO, but it's definitely a contributing factor when you are paying $100K a year for someone to fix a $2,500 computer that should be under a service contract that only costs $250 for three years. Go run the numbers for a person that you are paying $100K+ to fix a computer when it normally takes a tech making $15 an hour. They wasted so much money on this and these high paid engineers weren't doing what they were hired to do which is to design new products.
Have you ever seen a Total Cost of Ownership calculator that was created by major consulting companies that manage large IT groups? I've seen plenty of them. I've used them to calculate the Cost of Ownership between DIY and a name brand computer and you would be shocked at how much they REALLY cost. seriously, anyone that has IT experience as a manager should have these tools, if they don't, then they don't know their true costs and they can't manage their side of the business effectively. When I worked for resellers, all of the major PC mfg had these, consulting groups that managed IT used them. I eventually went to work for a Enterprise Software company that developed their own specifically tailored for their software. Without these tools, one doesn't fully understand the costs involved. But if you want to be blind to these costs, that's your choice.
I had a large customer at one point that was so mismanaged, they were wasting so much money on IT and I had meeting with some of their top management and after I left that reseller, I found out that the customer implemented just about everything I was telling them to do. What was their cost savings per year? $10 Million. A YEAR. Just buy doing some sound business decisions to get their IT managed properly. What did they do?
They first stopped dealing with all of their PC vendors except one. They chose one vendor for all of the laptops, desktops and servers, they bought 3 year service contracts, they trimmed down the number of models to just a small handful, each IT staff was trained on each model they used, they cycled the systems 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 so they now how much to budget. They also had to train people and figure out how many people they really needed and they brought down the number of staff required because they had 5 to 6x the industry average. I've worked with top people that developed world class Support groups, so I've picked up a LOT of useful experience and knowledge over the years as to how an effective and efficient IT staff should be run. it's a very interesting part of the industry to analyze. You'd be amazed at just using some sound business logic can save money.
What does all of this have to do with soldered RAM? Two things. Soldered RAM lowers production costs and it should also lower support costs due to a more reliable computer. That helps Apple make the profit margin requirements.
Apple has to analyze THEIR business model for production,just like a company has to analyze their business model for supporting their IT costs. It's all about fine tuning the business model to run more efficiently, cut cost when they can, make a more reliable product/service to retain decent profit margins.
FYI, there are large companies that are adopting iPads instead of PCs, and there are companies that are buying more Macs than they used to and some companies are adopting the BYOD model. Cisco, for example, has about 30% of their employees are using Macs and then another percentage (I think they at over 10,000 of their employees use iPads), GE has been adopting iPads and Macs slowly over the past few years. They ran some pilot projects and there are some of their business units that offer Macs for their employees if they request them. I know of plenty of smaller businesses that have completely switched from PCs to Macs, iPhones and iPads and they couldn't be happier. Apple is getting a lot more Enterprise business with iPhones and iPads, which eventually leads to Mac sales, so they are slowly getting more Enterprise business.
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