The design seems to be outdated but it's functional. Let's make it the Thinnest Mac ever. In addition, can we at least get it in new colors, please?
I don’t think the Mac mini’s all that “mini” anymore — since its initial release. It’s certainly short; it isn’t tall. But if the aim is to keep it appealingly small, I’d think Apple would’ve done to the Mac mini what they’ve done with the Apple TV — which is now
really mini.
I remember being disgusted with the very first Mac minis — they were essentially desktops that used underpowered laptop components — laptops minus the mobility. Looking at the specs, they were effectively “non-mobile” MacBook Airs at the time. GPU-wise and everything. The appeal wasn’t power. The whole appeal seemed to be, “
Garsh! It’s so small!”
They have come a long way in terms of power and performance since, but after so long, they’re not so “mini” anymore, as the marketplace definition has changed since its introduction back in 2005. Lately, PC makers have copied the Mac mini — except many of them are more powerful and significantly
smaller.
P.S. For use in data centers or University projects I’d like to see Apple offer a suitably priced option (that wouldn’t appeal to consumers, but to businesses and enterprise data center customers, University students, scientist, etc.) for a Mac mini with a 25GBPS Ethernet port or a 40GBPS Ethernet port (or 100GBPS?!). And possibly
dual Ethernet ports — which an increasing number of PC motherboards are now coming equipped with.
The issue, I suppose, would be whether or not a different, discrete Ethernet controller IC on the logic board of the Mac mini would be required to support higher than 10GBPS Ethernet. That could be too costly for the number of such Mac minis that would be manufactured/sold.
But a University project of creating a bonafide
SuperComputer from racks and racks of hundreds of Mac minis is intriguing. It’s been done before. (See: System X [“ten”] by Virginia Tech’s Advanced Research Computing facility in 2003.)
