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Apple's Latest Mac Mini Turns Four Years Old Ahead of 'Pro-Focused' Refresh Expected Later This Month
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Still don't see how the savvy consumer is being victimized here.
Do your due diligence. Don't like it; don't buy it. Simple.
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First article doesn't mention anything about thinness; just maybe Apple needs to relax the noise-spec a bit and let the fans crank up. But it doesn't seem like the momentary dips in clock speed (10 seconds in one test, 1 second in another) significantly impacted the performance even in a balls-to-the-walls CPU test. Pretty damned great for a machine you can barely hear. Try that with your typical Windows wind-tunnel machine!
So, it sounds like a minor software tweak to the fan controller driver, or a Utility to gain some manual control over same, and the iMac Pro should be up to any task you can throw at it without throttling.
IOW, there is nothing wrong with the hardware design; it just needs a little software tweaking.
Or, you can just use a fan control utility, like this free one:
https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/47386/macs-fan-control
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Well Cook says a lot of things that are just patently false, like every time he says the word "Incredible".
[doublepost=1539814338][/doublepost]Designing a new Mac mini is really easy. Make a box with CPU, PowerSupply, and installable RAM. Period. No storage, no GPU. Allow the users to hook up whatever storage and GPU they want. Yes storage and GPU vendors will have to get Apple's blessing, not everything is going to work. But let the vendors do the work and Apple gets out of this business that they don't want. This reduces development, manufacturing, and testing costs and keeps Apple power users in the Apple fold.
embarrassing, you could pretty much take one of the Intel NUCs, slap a silver enclosure around it and Apple would yell "our best mac mini ever" and never a truer word wouldbe said!
LOWER energy demand? No thank you.
2080 Ti is 250w, RX Vega 64 is 295w, Threadripper 2950x is 180w, 2990WX is 250w, 9980XE is 165w, Xeon W-3175x is 255w. A Mac pro better has PROPER components.
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And where do you think all the apps on your stupidly high price-to-performance fancy portable device are developed on? Freaking chromebooks?
I suspect the real reason is that there simply isn’t much reason for the Mac mini to exist these days.
In this day and age, more users are entering the Apple ecosystem via the iPhone, rather than through the Mac. You don’t really need an entry level Mac desktop for users seeking to dip their toes. In that regard, what role is the Mac mini even supposed to play these days?
It’s easy to claim that Apple can cut a few corners and just ship some spec bumps every few months. This is no different from saying Apple can just put some GPUs in a box and ship a new Mac Pro. In reality, Apple’s focus shouldn’t be on ho-hum spec updates or efforts to merely give consumers what they think they want.
Instead, I would argue that Apple's resources are best spent on trying to truly push product categories forward. Not to mention, we all know that Apple would just face fresh criticism around minor updates and unimaginative refreshes not going far enough.
In this day and age, more users are entering the Apple ecosystem via the iPhone, rather than through the Mac. You don’t really need an entry level Mac desktop for users seeking to dip their toes. In that regard, what role is the Mac mini even supposed to play these days?
It’s easy to claim that Apple can cut a few corners and just ship some spec bumps every few months. This is no different from saying Apple can just put some GPUs in a box and ship a new Mac Pro. In reality, Apple’s focus shouldn’t be on ho-hum spec updates or efforts to merely give consumers what they think they want.
Instead, I would argue that Apple's resources are best spent on trying to truly push product categories forward. Not to mention, we all know that Apple would just face fresh criticism around minor updates and unimaginative refreshes not going far enough.
Unethical to sell 4 year old technology like this. For shame Apple.
With Mojave Apple phased out support for Thunderbolt 1 & 2 so in order for it to work on 2012 and 2014 mac mini you need to use a patch called purge-wrangler.
I agree. I want to buy a desktop mac (I used a Mac Pro until 2 1/2 years ago) for my non laptop mac needs, and I don't want to buy the current Minis. The current iMac I would buy, once I upgrade to 16GB and have at least 256GB of storage (I would use an external SSD drive for additional storage I already have, or maybe go 1TB Fusion) costs $1799 at Apple. Less third party site.
I would rather go about $1000 with a Mini.
I wonder how many suckers they have everyday that purchase these things, thinking they are getting decent technology?
Most commoners trust that Apple wouldn't sell them ages old technology, when in fact they will and they are... and what's kind of funny but also disheartening is how hard it is to find exactly what generation of Intel processor you're buying. They really need to pull these off the shelves are lower the price. $1000 for a four year old computer is highway robbery.
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Hackintosh is work but for me, it's well worth it. I use them for things like controlling media servers and cameras. I get it running right, and I don't touch it unless there's an update I absolutely must have. If you buy the right hardware, building them isn't too bad. Just finished a MacBook Pro equivalent with a i5-7200U processor for $350... bought it like new on eBay. Works like a charm!
Most commoners trust that Apple wouldn't sell them ages old technology, when in fact they will and they are... and what's kind of funny but also disheartening is how hard it is to find exactly what generation of Intel processor you're buying. They really need to pull these off the shelves are lower the price. $1000 for a four year old computer is highway robbery.
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Hackintosh is work but for me, it's well worth it. I use them for things like controlling media servers and cameras. I get it running right, and I don't touch it unless there's an update I absolutely must have. If you buy the right hardware, building them isn't too bad. Just finished a MacBook Pro equivalent with a i5-7200U processor for $350... bought it like new on eBay. Works like a charm!
Making it more expensive is idiotic but what else would I expect from that douche Cook
Just had a thought. Sneak into Tim's garage, weld all the components of his BMW together, then weld the hood shut. Tell him that when something breaks, he just needs to buy a new one.
Unfortunately, he likely wouldn't see any issue with any of that.
Yeah, these are still great little machines, particularly with the sensible upgrades (16GB RAM and an SSD).
I replaced my 2011 i5 MacMini media server with one of these because it wasn't going to be able to run Mojave, and was getting a bit slow. I was so impressed with the upgraded 2012 Mini - which cost only $600 - that I bought another one, the CTO 2.6ghz i7 version as my home office "Mini Workstation". It's a really potent little box.
If you're prepared to live "behind the curve", you can get a lot of performance for the buck with these. Depends on your use case I suppose, but they easily handle anything I throw at them, PLEX, home server, iTunes, Spotify, video transcoding, design work...
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I feel your pain. I’m doing the exact same thing in an advertising agency. Currently planning to replace one of my 2013 Mac Pro servers with a NAS, and probably not that long till the other one goes too. Sad, but if Macs don’t evolve, there’s really no other choice.I run the IT for a 65-person Mac-based architecture firm. For years we scoffed at windows-based data centers and offices: juggling upgrades, licenses (excuse me "CALs"), and meh hardware. Since the discontinuation of the Xserve, and Mac OS X Server was turned into an app, a poor one at that, I have been struggling. What does one do when a clearly superior product throws in the towel? I am now running a combination of Minis (File and Kerio server) connected to Promise RAIDs, a few old MP 5,1s, and a (gasp) couple HPs I had no choice but to budget for last year. I fear it's a losing battle and my last remaining "servers" will be replaced by Windows or NAS. I'm afraid any updated Mini or Pro at this point (don't misunderstand I hope I'm wrong) may be too little too late.
You can be a professional like a lawyer or YouTuber of programmer and still not be comfortable with cracking a computer open to modify the innards. There’s nothing about the “pro” moniker which suggests that they have to be tech savvy in that regard.
Apple may very well be headed this direction and may be why it's taking so long to see replacements for the mini and Mac Pro. Are they designing a single modular desktop that can be configured to meet both roles? Maybe.
My guess - neither.
What I suspect Apple wanted to do was to (eventually) streamline the Mac lineup to just the MacBook and iMac (with pro variations of both). Have the iPad be the computer for the masses, and eventually retire the Mac mini and Mac Pro.
They only started working on a new Mac Pro after the massive backlash from the pro user community.
We might see a new Mac Mini, and I am genuinely curious to see what they end up doing with it. But I think their definition of “modular” is not going to what you expect when you hear the term.
Don't be fooled: Apple is intentionally 'defocusing' the Mac lineup. As for the trashcan Mac Pro, well they said they consulted industry and professional users to come with that, then they admitted failure, now they're saying they've got a new panel of professionals to advise on the upcoming design. So what confidence are we supposed to have that this new advice is any better than the last? Marketing is basically propaganda and like any good marketer or propagandist Apple is constantly reinventing their message which often means erasing their previous messages from the record; just like when they said the 3.5 or 4" iPhone (I can't remember which) was "just right". Now they don't sell anything smaller than 4.7". Apple likes to project themselves as always right and ahead of the curve, but the reality is this isn't always the case. There can be no better example of this than the Mac Mini. It's embarrassing that Apple still sells that outdated junk.
The iPhone X also proves that Apple could've easily fit a much bigger battery in the iPhone 6-8 if they bothered to implement the same stacked board design, but they chose not to because they don't want you to have batter life that's too good. The additional power requirements of the X forced them to put in a bigger battery to maintain the standard that they're aiming for in the previous phone.
The iPhone X also proves that Apple could've easily fit a much bigger battery in the iPhone 6-8 if they bothered to implement the same stacked board design, but they chose not to because they don't want you to have batter life that's too good. The additional power requirements of the X forced them to put in a bigger battery to maintain the standard that they're aiming for in the previous phone.
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Apple's A12 processor used in the current iPhones has faster single core SPEC INT scores than the "current" mac mini. That's how pathetic the line up is now.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13392/the-iphone-xs-xs-max-review-unveiling-the-silicon-secrets/4
The 2014 mac mini is running Haswell processors, a generation older than Skylake.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13392/the-iphone-xs-xs-max-review-unveiling-the-silicon-secrets/4
"... we see that the A12 outperforms a moderately-clocked Skylake CPU in single-threaded performance"
The 2014 mac mini is running Haswell processors, a generation older than Skylake.
I had to retire my 2009 Mini this summer. I built a PC with Hackintosh-compatible parts, but never got around to Hackintoshing it. I put Windows 10 Pro on it, as I knew I would in addition to Mac OS, and didn't hate it. I'm still using it.
The Pro version gives me enough control over updates and some intrusive stuff, and a third party tool gives me more control over the intrusive stuff, that there's very little left to hate. Settings are a disorganized mess, but search works well to find them. All my music production stuff has Windows versions and almost all of them are free to transfer. The plus side of Adobe's rental software is you can switch between Mac & PC. iTunes made a mess of my library, so I'm happy to leave that behind. I'm still looking for a replacement for a music player called Vox. All the MP4 videos I've downloaded on the Mac play just fine in Windows.
I love having a video card!
I built the thing in a beautiful case with a white/black theme inside and out. It's quiet, upgradable/fixable and I got first-rate components for not a lot of money. As my sig says, I would have paid more for a third as many cores and half the RAM if I had bought a fourr-year-old Mini.
And I have a video card!
The Pro version gives me enough control over updates and some intrusive stuff, and a third party tool gives me more control over the intrusive stuff, that there's very little left to hate. Settings are a disorganized mess, but search works well to find them. All my music production stuff has Windows versions and almost all of them are free to transfer. The plus side of Adobe's rental software is you can switch between Mac & PC. iTunes made a mess of my library, so I'm happy to leave that behind. I'm still looking for a replacement for a music player called Vox. All the MP4 videos I've downloaded on the Mac play just fine in Windows.
I love having a video card!
I built the thing in a beautiful case with a white/black theme inside and out. It's quiet, upgradable/fixable and I got first-rate components for not a lot of money. As my sig says, I would have paid more for a third as many cores and half the RAM if I had bought a fourr-year-old Mini.
And I have a video card!
About three years ago I wanted to upgrade -- I looked at the Mac Mini, waited 8-9 months, and after nothing being released, I decided to switch to a PC.... and yeah, I'm glad I did. Can't believe it's been 2 years or more since then and they still haven't released a new model... it's such a joke.
I was such a fan of Apple and happily paid a premium for using OS X, and whilst I still think the OS is great... the hardware situation is just horrendous.
I was such a fan of Apple and happily paid a premium for using OS X, and whilst I still think the OS is great... the hardware situation is just horrendous.