Apple CEO Tim Cook: Mac Mini Will Be 'Important Part' of Future Product Lineup

[SSDGUY]

We know Tim Cook is lying because he says that same load of crap about every product. Take a look at the empty promises with the Mac Pro and how it's doing.

Apple doesn't care about it's consumers.

It certainly doesn't care about the ".1% of the population" that create stuff — at least not like they use to, when we were a significant and dedicated customer base — loyal to the platform when others bailed. Not asking for a red carpet or trumpet fanfare, just a reasonable array of pro desktop product offerings with timely updates.

 

[dcmbrown]

I run my work desktop with a Late 2012 model with an extra full height 4TB drive stuffed inside. This was back when there was a special drive kit to add a second drive even though it required some modifications for a 4TB drive. The 2014 model hasn't decreased in size so I can only assume that the components inside are larger. It would be nice if they used a non-proprietary M2 main ssd and allowed for an extra drive to be installed as well without turning the device into an octopus like the Mac Pro.

 

[jscooper22]

It's been a month since this thread started, I've stumbled on Cook's quote a number of places since, and it dawned on me at some point that it sounded like a politician addressing/not-addressing a constituent's concern. "An important part of our line-up" could mean anything, from a suped-up Apple TV / entertainment box, to mashing it with the MP into some rehash of the G4 Cube.

I have 50+ users all on Mac and sooo don't want to bring Windows into my data center (they build their stuff with massive enterprises in mind, so it's bloated and buggy). But if Apple doesn't do something, REALLY soon, I'll have to. As it is, this week I had to hook up an OWC RAID chassis to an old MBP run replace my almost-dead xserve backup server. I won't do that with a live production machine and I won't shell out what Apple charges (even for a mini, considering its specs) for three-year-old technology.

Sorry, second IPA after a long week and I'm venting, but this is getting ridiculous. My staff will not be sharing our projects with partners & clients via iCloud for more reasons than I care to express right now. I need infrastructure. And if I have to bring more Windows into my server room to do it (bad enough I needed an AD Domain Controller) it's only a matter of time before I start adding Win workstations to the mix.

Jeff

 

[obiwan]

It's been a month since this thread started, I've stumbled on Cook's quote a number of places since, and it dawned on me at some point that it sounded like a politician addressing/not-addressing a constituent's concern. "An important part of our line-up" could mean anything, from a suped-up Apple TV / entertainment box, to mashing it with the MP into some rehash of the G4 Cube.

I have 50+ users all on Mac and sooo don't want to bring Windows into my data center (they build their stuff with massive enterprises in mind, so it's bloated and buggy). But if Apple doesn't do something, REALLY soon, I'll have to. As it is, this week I had to hook up an OWC RAID chassis to an old MBP run replace my almost-dead xserve backup server. I won't do that with a live production machine and I won't shell out what Apple charges (even for a mini, considering its specs) for three-year-old technology.

Sorry, second IPA after a long week and I'm venting, but this is getting ridiculous. My staff will not be sharing our projects with partners & clients via iCloud for more reasons than I care to express right now. I need infrastructure. And if I have to bring more Windows into my server room to do it (bad enough I needed an AD Domain Controller) it's only a matter of time before I start adding Win workstations to the mix.

Jeff

Yeah I agree - Tim Cook's response is such a non-answer, that it's almost like he doesn't even know it exists.

The thing that gets me the most is that Apple don't seem to care that some company's whole tech-strategy could be hanging off the back of what Apple decide to release (or not). If Apple are not careful, their whole eco-system could implode - because people are simply fed up of waiting on Apple's ludicrous timescale. If this was any other business they'd almost have a moral obligation to keep their products updated in a more timely fashion. (I know they don't have any moral obligation at all, and this is all dictated by market forces - but I almost feel like they should have some moral responsibility to ensure they look after their user base). This is a massive shift in direction since Tim Cook took the reigns, and now they are only concerned about keeping their bottom line.

 

[Abazigal]

Yeah I agree - Tim Cook's response is such a non-answer, that it's almost like he doesn't even know it exists.

The thing that gets me the most is that Apple don't seem to care that some company's whole tech-strategy could be hanging off the back of what Apple decide to release (or not). If Apple are not careful, their whole eco-system could implode - because people are simply fed up of waiting on Apple's ludicrous timescale. If this was any other business they'd almost have a moral obligation to keep their products updated in a more timely fashion. (I know they don't have any moral obligation at all, and this is all dictated by market forces - but I almost feel like they should have some moral responsibility to ensure they look after their user base). This is a massive shift in direction since Tim Cook took the reigns, and now they are only concerned about keeping their bottom line.

I would argue that Apple has always been like this from the start - even during Steve Job's reign. Look at the MacBook Air - it basically gave up everything in pursuit of thinness and lightness. It just so happened that the radical redesigns that Apple did with their Macs so happened to suit your needs at the time. But knowing Apple's propensity for removing stuff, it would only be a matter of time before you were left behind. Think of it as two curves meeting at a tangent and are now starting to deviate away from one another.

The issue here is that both Apple and the pro market haven't changed. In this regard, I don't think it's really anyone's fault. Apple has a clear vision of how it wants to push the Mac forward (take elements of the mobile world to come up with powerful machines that can then end up pushing mobile devices to become even better). The problem is that this vision does not match the vision held by some pro Mac users, who basically just want the Mac to stay unchanged, save for incremental spec boosts every year. They are happy with the current status quo as they know it and don't want Apple to change ever.

Sure, the politically correct answer for Apple to give would be "We will take your feedback into consideration", but seriously, I think we all know better. While I agree that Apple should listen to the concerns of pro Mac users, the company should (and needs to) ignore laundry lists of MacBook Pro feature requests and suggestions from Mac users and specifically avoid bending over backwards just to cater to this niche group of users. I also disagree with the idea of splintering the Mac line to cater to both professionals and casuals.

Not least because I believe Apple has more than enough data to determine whether something genuinely is an issue or not (such as the much-criticised butterfly keyboard, or even the touchbar). What I am seeing here is pushback from a very small and exceedingly vocal group of critics. I empathise with your despair over how Apple's products no longer seem to meet your needs, but it would be arrogant and presumptuous to assume that you somehow have the "right" to dictate how Apple ought to design their products.

That said, I do agree to an extent that Apple does have obligations towards its current Mac user base. It seems to me like Apple is trying to hold on to the old 2x2 product matrix while still trying to cater to as broad a user base as possible, something I feel is no longer sustainable today. If you ask me, I feel there really needs to be only 3 main Mac product lines - Macbook (basically the existing MBP; scrap the Macbook as we know it), the iMac and a souped-up Mac Pro for the real power users. Ditch everything else, while continuing to push the iPad as the portable Mac for the masses.

 

[tubular]

Apple don't seem to care that some company's whole tech-strategy could be hanging off the back of what Apple decide to release (or not). If Apple are not careful, their whole eco-system could implode - because people are simply fed up of waiting on Apple's ludicrous timescale.

That's the point. They only have a certain amount of time left to turn the ship. The April announcement was spurred by the knowledge that they were *so* close to disaster with the pro community that their usual tactic -- stony silence on upcoming products -- wouldn't suffice to get them through the year or more before the reasonable, feasible pro machine we've been screaming for actually could appear. They had to tell us up front that they were turning the ship, rather than showing us some time in 2018 (if even that), or they knew they'd lose a good chunk of their bulk-buy high-end users for good.

On one hand, it's good to know they finally heard our screaming. On the other hand, it shouldn't have gone that far.

 

[Miss_Mac]

I can only hope Apple's mistakes in software and hardware will lead better quality control and thinking about users more than they have recently. Rethink the keyboards and perhaps some base models, and please, please right the ship as far as software. Some minor bugs are fine, but what happened with High Sierra worries me.

It would be neat if the next Mac Mini incorporates some of the current Mac Pro concepts at a nicer price.