Apple Announces New Mac Mini Starting at $499

[loon3y]

I feel like someone needs to address all of this properly. Yes. The mini's only available as a dual-core machine now. To all of you who think this is a deal breaker, it really isn't. A quad-core processor really isn't a necessary component for Apple's entry-level computer. That optional 3.0GHz dual-core Intel Core i7 is way more than enough power for this machine. The 2.6GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 is perfect for most people. And that machine comes standard with 8GB of memory. 8GB of memory is also more than enough power for a machine in the mini's position. I just hate it when I see people bashing on a product the day it's released! Some people are saying integrated graphics "just don't cut it".

For one, the mini's never had dedicated graphics. Why this is a surprise to anyone is astounding. Secondly (and more importantly), the mini is an "entry-level" computer. I don't think people are grasping this concept. If you want a powerful desktop Mac for intensive video editing and other similar tasks, the fact that you're even considering a Mac mini's pretty humorous. There's an iMac (and even an iMac with Retina 5K display now) or Mac Pro that'll suit your needs perfectly. And in the case that you can't afford either, the mini'll still get the job done. It'll just take longer doing it.

I must admit that I laughed pretty hard when I saw that someone was expecting FireWire in the new mini. Wake up people! It's 2014 out there. And to the people who enjoy using the mini as a server, servers are not processor-intensive machines! They require memory! A lot of memory! And with the mini supporting up to 16GB of memory, you should be fine off. It's nowhere near an astronomical amount of memory, but once again, it's a mini! Buy a Mac Pro! If you're running a business that's big enough to require a really beefy server, you should be able to afford the hardware too.

I get that I've gone off a little bit here, but I feel it's for good reason. The Mac mini's a decent machine that deserves a decent amount of respect. And all things people bash it for are completely unjustified. And as for its upgradeability, the Mac mini hasn't "physically" changed. The memory is absolutely upgradeable. I just can't get over how dense some people are. I hope I've addressed some issues people may have. I'm aware that some people will be pissed at this, but keep in mind that I'm just stating facts. Point me to one thing I'm just "wrong" about. Hope this helped!

So minis are only entry level?


how do you know if the memory is upgradable? the storage?


8GB is not enough for office work. unless your work consists of ONLY using the Mac OS, which isnt applicable to most manufacturers and retail sites.

Unless you have programs that are fully developed in OSX, good luck with that.

We do have iMacs at the office, but theres no need to FILL THE WHOLE OFFICE WITH iMACS.

its costly, and further more i assume all iMacs are going to have ram and storage soldered in like the iMac "entry (crap) level" model.

OSX takes a lot of memory already and they soldered in 8GB of Ram? Its almost like offering 16GB iPads and iPhones when iOS takes 4GB of storage space.



lol at 128GB of SSD. i guess thats good if you're somewhat old or not tech savy and pretty much have a very limited number of programs or apps.

i cant fathom actually doing work on 128GB. Hey i guess you can always boot off your external 512 SSD right?

 

[arkmannj]

THE BEST IMAC (and cheapest!) is a QUAD CORE MINI attached to a $300 27" SAMSUNG (or LG etc etc etc) display, ...


...attached on the back with industrial velcro.


SUPERIOR, CHEAPER, MORE OPTIONS, EASIER (by far) TO REPAIR


I have 2 such "improved" "IMACS"

I'm with you, I'd rather own a mini... I was just saying what I "think" Apple may have been shooting for, and it looks like it is working with some people.

 

[milo]

Most Mini's users chose it because...

Don't make generalizations you can't back up. Many mini users bought the quad core because it was actually decent performance at that price.

I'll believe it when iFixit shows it to us.

This. Hopefully teardown soon, if not today.

A quad-core processor really isn't a necessary component for Apple's entry-level computer.

"You're holding it wrong".

Before yesterday, this wasn't just an entry level computer, it was actually useful for pro work. Taking that away is a perfectly good reason to be pissed.

 

[Decimotox]

from the upvotes im getting, and the lack of any you've gotten, something tells me that a lot more people care about the "crap" than you assume. how juvenile.

I'll jump in here.

People here on macrumors care because 95% of us are fanboys and girls. We are techies who enjoy top specs.

The grandma he was talking about represents the average consumer who needs a home computer or, as Apple boasts, their first Mac. Who, like it or not, make up the vast majority of Apple's customers.

 

[Deepboy]

I don't think people are grasping this concept. If you want a powerful desktop Mac for intensive video editing and other similar tasks, the fact that you're even considering a Mac mini's pretty humorous. There's an iMac (and even an iMac with Retina 5K display now) or Mac Pro that'll suit your needs perfectly

It's not humorous. I'm a freelance photographer. I live with that, but i cannot afford a new Mac Pro, is simply totally out of my budget. iMac has a glare monitor, which doesn't work for me, i don't want to pay for a monitor i don't use; same thing taliking about a Mac laptop.

I already have two monitors, with panels specifically designed for chromatic fidelity, I just need a powerful Mac to connect them, a Mac without any other monitor i'm not interested in.

So Mac Mini choice is not humorous, it's the right one. I don't use intense video task, i rely 90% on Lightroom which doesn't even have Gpu accelleration, so the lack of discrete Gpu is not an issue for me. I need a compuer with good storage and a fast processor, and no matter what Gpu is inside, and without an extra screen. So, simply a damn Mac Mini....

 

[Cave Man]

Seems like a great buy at $499, might have to pick one up.

Yes, it is a great buy.

Sorry for those expecting a Mac Pro at this price point.

No one was expecting a Mac Pro at this price point, so no need for hyperbole.

Might be time for you guys to move up to a big boy machine.

I'm sure there will soon be a lot of new hackintoshes.

 

[bergmef]

To me, the mini was two things:

1. an entry level mac (low end)

2. An iMac without the screen (the old quad core)

I'll be curious to see the benchmarks, mine (early 2009)vs the 2012 vs the new one. I use my current one to change my video to mp4. I figured the quad would be better for that.

 

[Cave Man]

why do you want to go from a mbp to a mac mini? just dont get the base version. and consider an imac. (not the base version either).

The base Mini (and iMac) are perfectly adequate machines, depending on one's needs.

 

[Decimotox]

Simply put, Apple is making their entry-level Mac more affordable to the average customer. A family with kids. A newly married couple needing a good computer. A college student wanting their first Mac.

Dropping the price by $100, regardless of specs, is a great marketing move. They will sell. And they will covert old PC users because of the increased affordability.

 

[loon3y]

i really don't get soldering anything in.

are that they petty that they want to make that extra money just so that we get upgrades from apple from the beginning only?

and if we made a mistake and didnt get enough storage or ram, we have to BUY a whole new computer or notebook?

ridiculous

the only reason why i want to get the iPad Air 2 i because i made a mistake getting the 16GB

 

[dotme]

I own a mini because I absolutely hate the concept of "All In One"

TVs with built-in DVD players were horrible and the player would always fail first. If the display on an iMac goes bad, the whole thing is shot. Bad display on a Mac Mini? Just plug in a new one.

For casual and moderate users, as well as small professionals, your only options for a Mac that are not AIW are the Pro ($3,000 and up) and the Mini.

If the new Mini had a Quad Core option and supported 3 monitors, I'd have been all over that and my lady would have received my current i7 Quad Mini as a hand-me down. But I was worried that the new Mini would have Soldered RAM and still only offer dual monitor support.

Fearful of those possibilities, I took a chance and bought a late 2012 brand new Mini for my lady on Wednesday... the last one they had at my local Best Buy, and paid slightly below retail. Added a 16GB Crucial RAM kit, two Dell 2340M monitors, and she's absolutely thrilled. I second guessed my decision for 24 hours and watched the presentation yesterday with trepidation. No regrets now though.

 

[SmileyDude]

Simply put, Apple is making their entry-level Mac more affordable to the average customer. A family with kids. A newly married couple needing a good computer. A college student wanting their first Mac.

Dropping the price by $100, regardless of specs, is a great marketing move. They will sell. And they will covert old PC users because of the increased affordability.

I really don't think much backlash, if any, is from the new low-end mini. Personally, I think a new low-end mini is a good thing overall. It helps people come over to the platform that may not have even looked before.

But just because the mac mini line has the entry-level model for the entire platform in it doesn't mean that it was a good idea to cut off the quad-core model. This was a marketing decision, not an engineering decision, since the chips are available, the space was available in the case, the power supply was up to spec, etc, etc.

From the perspective of someone who is looking for a new mac, this isn't a bad machine. From the perspective of someone who has waited over 2 years for Apple to update the Mac mini so they can upgrade from the previous one, this is a kick in the face.

That's why people are upset. Apple took away something that people wanted and liked and replaced it with an inferior version after making them wait for so long.

 

[Yvan256]

For one, the mini's never had dedicated graphics. Why this is a surprise to anyone is astounding. [...] I'm aware that some people will be pissed at this, but keep in mind that I'm just stating facts. Point me to one thing I'm just "wrong" about. Hope this helped!

The Mac mini never had dedicated graphics? What about the G4 Mac mini with the ATI Radeon 9200, the 2009 Mac mini with Nvidia GeForce 9400M, the 2010 Mac mini with Nvidia GeForce 320M or the 2.5GHz Mac mini from 2011 with the AMD Radeon HD 6630M graphics processor with dedicated 256 MB of GDDR5 memory?

Just because a GPU shares memory with the system doesn't mean it's not dedicated graphics. It's still a distinct GPU, apart from the CPU.

----------

I really don't think much backlash, if any, is from the new low-end mini. Personally, I think a new low-end mini is a good thing overall. It helps people come over to the platform that may not have even looked before.

There's three things I don't like about the low-end model:

1. Only 4GB RAM. We're in 2014, this is too low even for the entry model. RAM is cheap now, but Apple are still acting and pricing RAM like we're in 2010. It shouldn't cost more than 50$ to go from 4GB to 8GB. That's my cost, as a consumer, for a single stick of RAM. You can be sure Apple pays at most half of that, so that would still be 100% profits on the RAM.
   
2. I assumed all new Mac minis would have an SSD because this was shown to us during the Keynote
   
   
   
   I expected maybe 128GB SSD for the low-end model, imagine my surprise when I saw "500GB HDD" on their website. There's no mention of "optional" or "BTO" either about the SSD on that slide, so that's misrepresentation.
   
3. The CPU is only 1.4GHz. Yes I know about the Turbo mode but I'm guessing the CPU can't be in Turbo mode all the time otherwise that would be its regular clock speed. I expected at least 2.0GHz for the low-end model. The i5 is expensive so I wasn't expecting a powerhouse for the low-end model, but 1.4GHz in 2014 is a joke.

The one thing I'm really glad about is the lower price point, however in Canada it's only 50$ lower, so that's not much of a gain for a CPU that's worst than last week's low-end model.

And we still don't know if the RAM is user-upgradable or not, same goes for the HDD.

 

[recoil80]

Don't make generalizations you can't back up. Many mini users bought the quad core because it was actually decent performance at that price.

I'm talking about people walking into a store and buying the cheapest thing they can find.
Those users buy the 5C with 8GB, the iPad with 16GB and are very happy if Mac mini is $100 cheaper.
Most consumer don't care about specs and $100 can really make a difference. That's why Apple cut the mini's price and since quad core is missing is clear to me they are targeting the kind of people I'm talking about.

Yeah "many" users bought the quad core, but I'm pretty sure they are a minority of mini's sales. Otherwise quad core would still be an option

 

[Decimotox]

I really don't think much backlash, if any, is from the new low-end mini. Personally, I think a new low-end mini is a good thing overall. It helps people come over to the platform that may not have even looked before.

But just because the mac mini line has the entry-level model for the entire platform in it doesn't mean that it was a good idea to cut off the quad-core model. This was a marketing decision, not an engineering decision, since the chips are available, the space was available in the case, the power supply was up to spec, etc, etc.

From the perspective of someone who is looking for a new mac, this isn't a bad machine. From the perspective of someone who has waited over 2 years for Apple to update the Mac mini so they can upgrade from the previous one, this is a kick in the face.

That's why people are upset. Apple took away something that people wanted and liked and replaced it with an inferior version after making them wait for so long.

I totally got you and agree with what you're saying.

The way I see it, it's a marketing decision (as you said) that's designed to get people to look at the iMac. I see the entire Mac mini lineup as entry-level regardless of their specs or BTO's.

Not owning a mini myself (yet), I can't speak to the upgrade part. But I'd imagine I'd feel the same way, pretty upset.

Then again, it's nice to have some peace of mind knowing the 2011-2012 Minis aren't that outdated as compared to the new generation.

 

[recoil80]

I really don't think much backlash, if any, is from the new low-end mini. Personally, I think a new low-end mini is a good thing overall. It helps people come over to the platform that may not have even looked before.

But just because the mac mini line has the entry-level model for the entire platform in it doesn't mean that it was a good idea to cut off the quad-core model. This was a marketing decision, not an engineering decision, since the chips are available, the space was available in the case, the power supply was up to spec, etc, etc.

From the perspective of someone who is looking for a new mac, this isn't a bad machine. From the perspective of someone who has waited over 2 years for Apple to update the Mac mini so they can upgrade from the previous one, this is a kick in the face.

That's why people are upset. Apple took away something that people wanted and liked and replaced it with an inferior version after making them wait for so long.

I feel the same way and I am disappointed by the new Mini, but as I said their target is people who care about price, not specs.
The lack of quad core is a marketing decision, maybe they want people to look at iMacs or Macbook Pros where they have higher margins.

Mac Mini is a good entry Mac for the average customer who just need a PC and now for less than $500 is temped by the Mac and maybe will move to the Apple ecosystem and buy an iPhone and iPad in the future.
And with continuity an iPhone customer may want to switch to the Mac and be ok with the entry level because is on low budget for a PC.

That's a very smart move by Apple, but of course most MR users care about specs and are upset because this Mini is not a power horse.
I'm one of them and I'm not going to buy a Mini, at least until they'll release a truly NEW model.

 

[milo]

Simply put, Apple is making their entry-level Mac more affordable to the average customer. A family with kids. A newly married couple needing a good computer. A college student wanting their first Mac.

Dropping the price by $100, regardless of specs, is a great marketing move. They will sell. And they will covert old PC users because of the increased affordability.

Dropping the price on the lowest model is great, but they could have done that without dumping quad core BTO option. And we'll see if soldered ram is confirmed or not.

I'm talking about people walking into a store and buying the cheapest thing they can find.

But that's not what you said, if you didn't really mean "most mini users" you should have been more specific.

Most consumer don't care about specs...
I'm pretty sure they are a minority of mini's sales.

Again, you're making generalizations and speculating with nothing to back it up.

Otherwise quad core would still be an option

You ignore the possibility that Apple decided that previous quad mini buyers might spend more on an iMac or Mac Pro if they killed the cheaper option. It's easy to offer BTO options, they don't have to be huge sellers to justify making them available. This is all marketing strategy.

 

[Yvan256]

apparently you are NOT familiar with this stuff called MONEY

$500 mac mini

$1100 (base model) macbook AIR

I think you mean $900. And that $400 difference has to account for the display, keyboard, battery and charger and the cost difference between a 500GB HDD and 128GB of PCIe-based flash storage.

So yes, we expected PCIe-based flash storage for all the new minis. That's what it said in the slide, too:

There's no mention of "optional" or "BTO" either.

 

[jtara]

Server?

Pretty-much a non-issue.

The server software is free (it wasn't always), and runs on any Intel Mac. And it's no longer a separate version of OSX, but just installs on top of it.

Only other difference is 2TB drive which, I know, is an issue for some.

IMO the cost of the server software and pre-installation was the original reason for having a "server" edition of the Mini. It made sense to make a bundle to discount the software and to pre-install the server version of OSX. Those are both non-issues now.

 

[bergmef]

You ignore the possibility that Apple decided that previous quad mini buyers might spend more on an iMac or Mac Pro if they killed the cheaper option. It's easy to offer BTO options, they don't have to be huge sellers to justify making them available. This is all marketing strategy.

Unfortunately mac pro is overkill for me and I run mine headless and keyboard less so the iMac is out.

 

[zauriel]

That optional 3.0GHz dual-core Intel Core i7 is way more than enough power for this machine. The 2.6GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 is perfect for most people. And that machine comes standard with 8GB of memory. 8GB of memory is also more than enough power for a machine in the mini's position.

I'm glad you've decided what's "enough power" for everyone else.

For one, the mini's never had dedicated graphics. Why this is a surprise to anyone is astounding.

So I guess the AMD Radeon HD 6630M in my 2011 Mac Mini just snuck in there while I was sleeping? Did I get visited by the graphics card fairy?

And as for its upgradeability, the Mac mini hasn't "physically" changed. The memory is absolutely upgradeable. I just can't get over how dense some people are.

Well then, I guess we can trust your judgment on the new Mini's ability to be upgraded sight unseen, rather than Apple's own site that indicates it can only be upgraded in the online store, and the Apple online reps referenced in this thread that have pretty much all stated that the RAM is not user-replaceable, and the recent history Apple has of doing this in their other Mac products. You're right, we're so dense.

Secondly (and more importantly), the mini is an "entry-level" computer. I don't think people are grasping this concept. If you want a powerful desktop Mac for intensive video editing and other similar tasks, the fact that you're even considering a Mac mini's pretty humorous.

Given that the internals of the higher-end Minis often would match (or come very close to) those inside a concurrent model from the MBP or iMac line, they were hardly all "entry-level". Perhaps in price they were, but the Mini lineup as presented the last couple cycles was adequate for doing video editing (the higher end ones, anyway). Plus, they were upgradeable, both in RAM and drives. For many, the Mac Pro is cost prohibitive and others see no reason to spend $100's extra on an iMac when they've got a perfectly good screen/mouse/keyboard already, and so they look to the Mini line as a viable alternative for what they need. And to a certain extent, Apple obliged. But that relationship seems to be over.

I was heavily considering ditching my 2011 MM for the new 2014 one, mainly for a processor bump (I've got dual core i5 as it is), USB 3.0 ports, and a hopeful improvement in GPU given the age of my card, but at this rate I think I'm better off putting money into sticking an SSD in my existing setup. I'll wait for iFixit's teardown first, but I'm not holding out any hope.

 

[SmileyDude]

The server software is free (it wasn't always), and runs on any Intel Mac. And it's no longer a separate version of OSX, but just installs on top of it.

It's free for member's of either the OS X or iOS developer programs. For everyone else it's $20 (unlimited installs, just like the rest of the MAS). Not a huge deal (I remember when Server upgrades were $999), but just wanted to point that out in case anyone goes looking for a free copy of Server on the MAS and can't find it.

 

[milo]

Unfortunately mac pro is overkill for me and I run mine headless and keyboard less so the iMac is out.

Which is the case for many users.

 

[John.B]

So minis are only entry level?

You can beef them up somewhat with a CTO when you buy them but, yes, the minis seem to be more about the value line, a tool for what we used to call "switchers" (of which I was once one). At least that's my assumption, but I don't think I'm that far off on this.

how do you know if the memory is upgradable? the storage?

CTO when you buy them, not afterwards. Similar to the 21" iMac and the MBA.

8GB is not enough for office work. unless your work consists of ONLY using the Mac OS, which isnt applicable to most manufacturers and retail sites.

Unless you have programs that are fully developed in OSX, good luck with that.

I get decent performance today with Logic, Lightroom, Photoshop, and Aperture on a Mac mini with 8GB running Mountain Lion. Obviously the eventual replacement for that box will have 16GB, especially since the RAM/storage upgrades are now CTO-only. But I'm not suffering with 8GB using some pretty taxing applications. YMMV.

 

[Tough Guy]

it's a low-end machine for low-end computing. what do you expect? grandmas don't need the crap you're complaining about. if you want a high-end or configurable machine, get one of those.

Wrong.

It only became a low end machine for low end computing yesterday when it got gimped. Before that, it was a legitimate desktop computer.