5 Reasons to Get Excited About the New Mac Mini

[raythompsontn]

I think your perception is highly skewed by small sample size.

I don’t doubt that. As I said, it was my perception. The last big corporate purchase in which I was involved was 500 units. Five laptops for some traveling people and 495 desktops, well NUCs, not really desktops, but not laptops. Running Windows.

Will the Mac Mini change all of that? Cost wise it would be cheaper than a laptop even when adding the monitor, keyboard and rodent. Apple is betting a lot that it will be a popular machine. I may even get one.

 

[l0ken]

Could be .. but I suspect the chipset the base Mini will have won't
You'd mentioned the base model in your post I think

and yes, i was talking about the base model

 

[webkit]

Will the Mac Mini change all of that? Cost wise it would be cheaper than a laptop even when adding the monitor, keyboard and rodent. Apple is betting a lot that it will be a popular machine. I may even get one.

I don't think the new Mac mini is different enough from the old Mac mini(s) to meaningfully shift sales away from laptops. Previous Mac minis were similarly inexpensive compared to laptops too.

According to the CIPR data for the U.S., Mac mini accounted for around 1% of total Mac sales in 2023. Even if sales doubled for the new mini, it would still only be around 2% or so.

 

[zarmanto]

I don’t doubt that. As I said, it was my perception. The last big corporate purchase in which I was involved was 500 units. Five laptops for some traveling people and 495 desktops, well NUCs, not really desktops, but not laptops. Running Windows.

I find NUCs to be an interesting phenomena -- and ironically, very much a parallel to the new Mac Mini which started this discussion. NUCs are designed to be just about as small as you can make a full fledged computer, and still (charitably) call it that. That said... the demographics of your specific target audience probably has a great deal to do with your particular desktop vs laptop numbers -- though without more information about your end users, I could only make wild speculations as to the core reasons. I imagine the fact that you're specifically leaning towards NUCs plays a particular role, though.

Globally, the market is indeed skewed strongly in favor of laptops these days, both in business sales and home computer sales -- even outside of the Mac user demographic. Here's a quick graph to support that statement:

That data is from 2022, (source) but as I'm sure you can imagine, the figures seem to be continuing to trend downward for desktop computers.

Mind you, personally I still love my iMac and that big beautiful 5K display... but if I'm being honest, it doesn't get nearly as much use as my gaming laptop, these days. 🤷‍♂️