Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Here is my prediction:

Apple hasn't upgraded the Mac Mini on Tuesday. With them ramping up this huge production chain in the US I would guess they will use the Mac Pro chassis for the upcoming Mac Mini refresh. It will be like the xMac everybody was dreaming about. Standard CPUs but discrete graphic cards (read: not the mobile chips found on the iMac).

It doesn't work (from a marketing standpoint) to have a $3000 computer look like a $600 computer, although goodness knows the Mini already looks better than anything it competes with.
 
Anyone else sick of waiting and waiting for ACCURATE info about performance and upgrade-ability of various components....:mad:

Please Apple....give one to MacFixIt ASAP!!!!
 
the same thing was said with the pseudo-MXM cards that shipped in iMacs a few years ago. never happened.

being a proprietary format, expect to be stuck with what it came with unless you score an upgrade off ebay or direct from Apple. slight chance, some heinously overpriced upgrade... my memory recalls the $500 premium they wanted for Radeon X800 cards on G5 when the PC counterparts were selling for $150....

apple has made it clear user upgradability/expansion is nowhere near a priority. expect to be locked into what your machine came with, especially with 1st revision hardware.
 
Cook innovation contribution.
Mac-Pro_2013_Mac-Pro_2013.jpg
 
Last edited:
Here is my prediction:

Apple hasn't upgraded the Mac Mini on Tuesday. With them ramping up this huge production chain in the US I would guess they will use the Mac Pro chassis for the upcoming Mac Mini refresh. It will be like the xMac everybody was dreaming about. Standard CPUs but discrete graphic cards (read: not the mobile chips found on the iMac).

I have a brilliant idea! They should build such a product, with consumer-oriented parts. A high-powered headless consumer desktop.

Don't call it "xMac" or any variant. They should call it..... the Macintosh. :eek:

(the problem is that the original Macintosh had a built in display-- so that's basically what the iMac is now)
 
Now that's innovation.

Wrong. Non-user replaceable chips is innovation. Maybe not something you wish for, but a novel thing, idea, or technology.

In actuality, this is NOT innovative because it is keeping it the same as before.
 
Thunderbolt video cards are possible. There are a lot of "pro card pci-express" options out there, like from Sonnet. I think their just has to be will power and a market reason for a company to actually figure out how to make one.

With all the power of osx being able to push processing power unto the graphics card, that might be a valuable and feasible option.
 
Yes, finally a user replaceable part that matters! :p

Yeah? I wonder what one would do with the pulled parts? It's not like they can be sold to Joe, the PC user at discount, hence the conundrum.
I think the stock GPUs are fast enough for the stock CPU(s). Otherwise, one can sink thousands more into the system.
 
Upgrade anyways

You can always upgrade your GPU to something that is mac supported by Nvidia by just putting a graphics card in an external PCI chasis connected via thunderbolt.

done.
 
very surprising that a small French website like Mac4ever could have exclusive information nobody had so far... :rolleyes:

Their information is just that the GPUs are on daughter boards that are connected via a proprietary connector. So nothing theoretically prevents you from removing the cards and put new ones instead. It's like saying that the GPU of some older iMacs were user-replaceable because they were connected via MXM.
 
I can see the GPU not being "officially" user replaceable due to the thermal core center. I bet there is a decent amount of thermal paste between the GPU die and that thermal core and/or heat spreader that mates up to the thermal core, and then some thermal pads for the GPU ram chips. Just something for users to potentially botch when upgrading.

We'll see whats up when iFixit and others get their hands on it and rips it down!
 
Here is my prediction:

Apple hasn't upgraded the Mac Mini on Tuesday. With them ramping up this huge production chain in the US I would guess they will use the Mac Pro chassis for the upcoming Mac Mini refresh. It will be like the xMac everybody was dreaming about. Standard CPUs but discrete graphic cards (read: not the mobile chips found on the iMac).


My quote from a few days ago (different Mac Pro thread):

I’d like to see the same case, but with less costly components (i.e. consumer grade), like an iMac-in-a-tube … user accessible HDD/SSD, RAM, maybe a more desktop grade GPU … just supply your own monitor :D

:D
 
You can always upgrade your GPU to something that is mac supported by Nvidia by just putting a graphics card in an external PCI chasis connected via thunderbolt.

done.

With less bandwidth available to it than the internal PCI-e lanes afford (and something that doesn't effect me but will others - probably no ability to use Apple's displays, at least not fully, if you get them since standalone video cards don't do thunderbolt typically, and the bandwidth wouldn't be there anyway)
 
Cook innovation contribution.
Image

The people who post this image aren't actually the target market for the MacPro. If you were, you would already own the old MacPro with many of the peripherals you show in the right side. So, the new MacPro actually reduces the space the equipment takes up. I know that's true in my case.
 
It's rather strange that there aren't more user-replaceable parts considering the case design has a locking switch on the back which makes it easy to lift up and remove the entire casing.
 
Of course... PROPRIETARY. Everything Apple is trending that way. Not a good sign at all.

Just solder it to the board so you have to replace the system in 2 years if it fails.

ie... laptop memory in retina MBP
ie... provide a proprietary connector for the SSD like the retina MBP. Make users pay the Apple Tax to upgrade.

I love the 2011 Apple, 2013 Apple, not so much anymore. Its too bad.
 
The 27" iMac (along with the 24" iMac) has always had a separate daughter card for the GPU, and there are some upgrades that you can buy for those (although hard to find and have issues). So I don't see why someone wouldn't make a replacement for the new Mac Pro.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.