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High-End Mac Mini Said to Feature Thinner Design With 'Plexiglass' Top, Magnetic Power Port

mabhatter said:
The large scale buyers of Mac Mini use them in racks. They aren't going to want to manage power supplies too.
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I had a couple of the power brick Mac Minis in a colo. You do what you need to do. I believe some of the 1U racks for minis had a holder for the power supplies, since there was a lot of extra space in the rack enclosure.
 
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I loathe power bricks. That’s why I have a PoE switch. My WAP is powered by PoE. A few Raspberry Pi’s powered by PoE. I doubt Apple would do it, but I’d love a Mac Mini powered by PoE.
 
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oneMadRssn said:
Eh, the new iMac does not have an integrated power supply for the first time ever in the history of iMac. That is not a rumor, nor a mismanagement of design engineering. That was an intentional decision made by someone at Apple, and in my opinion, a very bad decision for many technical reasons. But also, on a marketing / culture basis, it also goes against Apple's ethos of having everything integrated and all-in-one.

They could have made a power supply small enough and thin enough to fit in that chassis. They chose not to.
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Eh, did someone claim the external supply on the iMac is a rumor? In this thread we're taking about the Mac mini, which had an external supply for its earlier versions.

Regarding the iMac which you brought up for some reason, seeing as though a power supply with desired power output requirements would not fit into the interior of the thin new iMac design requirements, it was an easy choice to make it external.
 
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MacBH928 said:
You mean... an iMac?
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IMO the iMac has two notable disadvantages compared to a Mac Mini
  1. Mac Mini is the only way (at least now) to get 2 matching monitors.
  2. A monitor has a useful life that is longer than the computer attached to it. Now that Target Display Mode is gone, when the iMac becomes obsolete you have to recycle the perfectly-good monitor.
 
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NYC Russ said:
I loathe power bricks. That’s why I have a PoE switch. My WAP is powered by PoE. A few Raspberry Pi’s powered by PoE. I doubt Apple would do it, but I’d love a Mac Mini powered by PoE.
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An M1 mini draws 39W at CPU max. I have to assume that is without any accessories drawing bus power. TB3 from memory allows up to 15W per port, so for a four port device allow another 60W. USB-A ports I think are up to 7.5W (excluding USB-PD), so thats another 15W. No PoE standard supports that level of power, and even if it did, the cost of a switch to provide it, is prohibitive for the benefits (which I still don't really see).
 
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dlewis23 said:
I'm ok with a external power brick on a Mac mini this size. But you are still thinking in the terms of an Intel CPU's when it comes to the fan. Even if they put a CPU with double the power of the M1 in a mini this size they would not need a big or powerful fan. It's just not needed with an ARM cpu with the power requirements we have seen so far.
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Even the M1 thermal throttles in a fanless machine. That's why the current Mac mini is faster than the MB Air despite having the same exact CPU.
 
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opeter said:
I'm sorry, I may have written vaguely. I thought the case itself could change a little bit. That doesn't mean it should become smaller.
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... so "smaller redesign"... you meant a redesign with a smaller scope of change?


I really didn't read it that way, so if that was your meaning, that's on me... I guess?
 
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God of Biscuits said:
If it's got the same power brick as the iMac, why would it have an ethernet port *ON* the machine itself?
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This would allow them to put two Ethernet ports on the Mac Mini. One is a "two for one" so they save the space on "2nd" port. Since a substantive number are deployed in server farms this gives one port on the system that can be 10GbE. The 2nd port on the power brick could be for the administrative "back end" network that is completely separate ( private network/addresses for VM machine maintenance etc. ).

As someone pointed out the 1GbE Ethernet controller would be on the logic board. Apple would upsell replacement power supplies for $30 extra for the embedded Ethernet patch cable ( after making everyone pay for the 2nd Ethernet controller anyway).

Wouldn't be surprising if there were a decent number of Mini's in those server farms with USB Ethernet adapters plugged in for the second network. This could be incrementally cleaner ( although there is now brick placement management to do on the shelf where the Minis are hosted. And that is traded off with thinner Mini's so more room on the shelf. ). If Apple put some effort they could have a octopus junction box that could plug 8-12 Minis into that could collect all of power points together for a whole (or half) a shelf. I doubt they'd do that but maybe some 3rd party would make one.

Apple's gimmick put embedded the Ethernet wires in a power cable also may not work so well at 10GbE. Especially if trying to traverse longer distances. If they ever want to move up from 10GbE in systems several years down the road then all the more likely.

The render doesn't have 2 other ports ( 3rd and 4th TB port ). The problem with making the Mini thinner means they would have more issues with edge space. The vent on the current one is layered under the TB ports. If have to bring the vent inline with the rest of the ports ... that puts more pressure to "double up" functionality on a port. Unless Apple has done something useful like put them on the front also, the vent on back ( and front , if get rid of the air flow input from the bottom.) there will be a crowding issue.
 
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trip1ex said:
sounds like this would be the mainstream mac mini.
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Eventually, yes. The "max" and "mainstream" will probably share the same case. There has been just one mini case design that got tracked into multiple purposes ( e.g., drop CD slot for second HDD... but overall case metrics the same ). Last 2-3 iterations it is the same thing externally.






trip1ex said:
and looks like the new mac mini design would also function as your trackpad. lol
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No. but wouldn't be surprising to get a fingerprint sensor.
 
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Robospungo said:
You envision Apple laptops being made 4 times thicker to accommodate that giant magnetic plug?
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It won't be literally the same one. But the same design, yes.

People confuse MagSafe and Magnetic connector. And they are going to be equally confused when the new MBP's launch with this same type of magnetic connector and it not have anything to do with the original spirit of "MagSafe".

Back when MagSafe first launched, the product it launched on weighed over 6 pounds. That was heavy enough to not get yanked off the table when a MagSafe cord was pulled. Today the 13" MacBook Pro weighs only 3 lbs, and the upcoming redesign will probably weigh even less. At a certain point, MagSafe can't serve its purpose, as the device will no longer stay on the table when the magnetic cable is yanked.

Anyway. With Apple embracing a new Magnetic power cord design on 2 desktop products (thus far) and rumors of a magnetic power cord coming to the redesigned MacBook Pro, it isn't hard to see where it is going.
 
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theluggage said:
Eh? Preserving the MAC address is only an issue because the Ethernet is built into the PSU in the first place. Congratulations - you created a problem and solved it on one go.

So, yes, it's easier to swap an external power supply if it fails... but external power supplies are more vulnerable and complicate cable management. In enterprise environments with enough desktop Macs to make PSU failure an issue they'd probably swap out the whole computer anyway and use a management system (without which Macs, with their embedded, encrypted SSDs, are pretty useless in an enterprise) to migrate the user.
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I did not mean to say that putting the ethernet jack on the power brick was a good thing - would obviously be better if there was just a standard power cable coming out of the iMac. But if Apple insists, at least the MAC address is associated with the iMac and not the power brick.
 
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How the hell is Mr Prosser going to fit Thunderbolt plugs in there?

********MacMiniByProsser.jpg
 
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Making the mac mini smaller does nothing to increase its usability. It's already quite small. Rather than minaiturizing it - make the empty space inside usable. If they gave it an easy flip-top to access the internals to get to four m.2 slots and non-soldered ram access - now that would be a big winner for consumers and server use. An external power brick is dumb but acceptable if they pack the machine full of slots (for added space and better cooling). Otherwise it would be another poor design choice.
 
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zorinlynx said:
Why the crap does the Mac Mini need to change to using an external power brick? One of the nice things about the Mac Mini is its lack of such a brick.

The first iteration of the Mac Mini had one, then moved away from that. It feels like we're sliding backwards?
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Apple has forgotten what nice design is. Just look at the new iMac… *vomits*
 
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