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1TB NVMe SSD is like $200-300, but Apple wants an extra $600? I'm losing faith in the brand when Cook's agenda is to just stamp luxury all over everything but not actually offer increased value. A mild disappointment on the pricing, but otherwise looks like a good product.

Yeah, the prices of SSD upgrades are ridiculous. Add in the fact that it's soldered down, move your storage external.
 
Exactly, its 2018, not 2020. 8GB is pretty much a standard configuration on computers. I am not quite sure why you would call it unusable, but expecting a mini office desktop with 16GB as standard config is not very reasonable in 2018, especially at that price point. You don't even get 16GB as standard with tower desktop PCs.

Sorry, but "at that price point"? The price point is exactly the problem. Mac mini used to start at $499.00 now they are $799 almost a 70% more.
 
I can’t believe that no one has mentioned they removed the “audio in” jack. I use this all the time when I import music from my turntable (vinyl records) on my 2012 Mac mini.

Why would they remove audio in jack?

Because you can do it with Thunderbolt if need be. Very very very few people likely ever use it. Why add the extra expense for every customer for something so few use.

Here's an adaptor if you really need it.

https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MU7E2AM/A/usb-c-to-35-mm-headphone-jack-adapter
 
I can’t believe that no one has mentioned they removed the “audio in” jack. I use this all the time when I import music from my turntable (vinyl records) on my 2012 Mac mini.

Why would they remove audio in jack?

Just get a cheap generic USB audio dongle.
 
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It's a modular system with the ports it has. Buy an external drive for cheap and add as much storage as you want. It's not hard.

1) I love throw away comments like "It's not hard." Does the petulant behavior somehow make your point better?

2) It actually is a bit of a pain in the rear. Have you attached cheap external disks and done things like use them for your home directory? Its slow, the reliability is terrible. You have the nuisance of having this thing dangling off your computer all the dang time that will royally f- things up if you unplug it by accident at the wrong moment as you fiddle with something. Its just an overall un-fun prospect. And with maybe 50GB of useable space left after formatting, OS install and a decent set of apps, there isn't a heck of a lot of room left for the ordinary shared, home PC use.

At 799 you shouldn’t have to do that..

And that's really the point. $800 usually gets a pretty nice, uncompromising machine. I mean, this thing doesn't even ship with a mouse and key board, right? Am I reading this correct? At $800, that's just sad. Most of us here are Apple users. We're used to the Apple-tax, but I'm a little shocked at this one. Apple as a whole has been implementing a lot of price creep lately. But in other devices we had things like the touch bar or edge to edge OLED screens to justify it. This is a substantial price hike for a pretty dang pedestrian device.
 
1TB NVMe SSD is like $200-300, but Apple wants an extra $600? I'm losing faith in the brand when Cook's agenda is to just stamp luxury all over everything but not actually offer increased value. A mild disappointment on the pricing, but otherwise looks like a good product.

They have always charged out the wazoo for storage and RAM upgrades. I got an iMac last year with only 256 gig SSD and I'm using an external bootable SSD with 500 gigs. I did pay the Apple premium for a RAM upgrade on that computer, but it's worth the money because upgrading the RAM is a lot harder than hooking up an external SSD.
 
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I3,128gb SSD,no gpu, 800$ + taxes = greedy apple.

Lol... guys like me have been asking for exactly this for years. I knew apple was going to raise the price of the mini. I don't care. I plan to get one and an external GPU so I can dual boot into windows for gaming. Really happy with this upgrade. I can toss in more RAM myself for much less than apple charges and we will see in a week or so whether I can do the same with my own SSD.
 
I can’t believe that no one has mentioned they removed the “audio in” jack. I use this all the time when I import music from my turntable (vinyl records) on my 2012 Mac mini.

Why would they remove audio in jack?

Most people who record audio use an audio interface. You can find some fairly cheap ones for this purpose.
 
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NO! The i3 is a quad core chip! Historically quad core was only for i5's. In fact, this is the first generation that the i3 has ever been a true quad core chip. So, for example, if we were still using 7th gen intel terminology, this would be an "i5".

This i3 is clocked the same as the i3-8100 @ 3.6GHz a quick search would show:
Passmark of: 8095 and single thread rating of : 2103

The best quad core ever offered previously was the i7-3720QM.
Passmark of: 8123 and single thread rating of: 1817

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i3-8100+@+3.60GHz&id=3103
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-3720QM+@+2.60GHz&id=895

So you are at worst equal to the previous best processor ever offered and your single thread power would be 14.59% better.

For a base CPU, its pretty damn good.

You're basically paying $800 plus tax for a 2012 Mini and you think that's pretty damn good? Only if you guys would know how to rationalize and not buy based on emotions.
 
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Heard so much from many of you regarding wanting a refresh. Now that we have a refresh which of you is actually gonna buy one?? I’m guessing very very few. Which is why we won’t get another refresh for 100 more yrs!!!! RIP MM
 
Doesn’t look like a major iMac update is forthcoming, but maybe a speed bump will show up after the event?
It looks like they are working on a redesign for it. Thinner bezels, likely will see that in March or at WWDC along side an updated iMac Pro and maybe the Mac Pro or a preview of it.
 
I can’t believe that no one has mentioned they removed the “audio in” jack. I use this all the time when I import music from my turntable (vinyl records) on my 2012 Mac mini.

Why would they remove audio in jack?

It's not a huge loss, honestly. The Mini never had a built-in mic before so if you wanted to do FaceTime or Skype or whatever you were going to either plug in a cheapo mini-jack mic or, preferably a USB mic. USB mics aren't exactly hard to find or expensive.

And for any more serious audio work, you would want to look into a decent digital interface instead of some old analog mini-jack connection anyway. If I was spending hours and hours recording and editing and tagging vinyl recordings, I'd sure as heck be chasing after the best fidelity I could get.
 
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The i3 in the new Mac minis is on par with the i5-7500 or even better, than you can find in the 2017 iMacs 4k and entry level 5k.

If it is this CPU or similar:

Intel Core i3-8100:
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i3-8100+@+3.60GHz&id=3103

R69rfsC.jpg


Intel Core i5-7500:
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i5-7500+@+3.40GHz&id=2910

GhntOsy.jpg

Which makes it interesting that the iMac is not receiving updates at the same time here. Doesn't it seem odd that the Mac Mini is now faster than the iMac?
 
128GB of storage for the $799 model?!? The old $499 model had 500GB!
128GB of ultra-fast PCIe-based storage vs 500GB of ultra-slow 5400RPM mechanical hard disk drive storage.

128GB should be plenty of storage for the OS and applications. Either order one with more than 128GB or simply connect an external drive via either USB3 or USB-C/TB3.

On my old mid-2010 Mac mini that I upgraded myself, the OS and applications are on an entry-level 128GB Kingston SSD and my files are on a 7200RPM Western Digital Black 750GB drive that is connected internally via SATA and replaces the optical drive. I did this because the 2010 Mac mini only has USB2/FW800 so SATA was a much faster option. With the 2018 Mac mini, an external drive connected via either USB3 or USB-C/TB3 will be even faster.
 
This has just caused me to rethink my storage paradigm. Now, I will go for less storage and invest in the QNAP TB3 NAS and external SSDs. The access speeds of TB3, USB3, and 10Gb Ethernet make it functionally fast enough.

Now, the system storage is just that, my data will be external.

I think the idea from Apple is to have external data storage - or at least to make it a viable option.
 
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