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Late 2014 Mac Mini Benchmarks Indicate Decreased Multi-Core Performance
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Do you really need an increased multi-core performance?! That just sounds like yesterday. Decreased performance is the buzz of the cool kids today. Be kool!
Well the refurb good as new with 1 year warranty is $589 on apples site but supplies are limited as you can see:
http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/specialdeals/mac/mac_mini
When they showed up on Friday, all three 2012 models(i5,i7 and i7 server) they sold out in about an hour. Who knows how many there were but I suspect there will be more.
I can't confirm, but I have always suspected Apple takes retail leftovers that didn't move and puts them in a generic brown box and sells them as "refurb" Maybe when BestBuy et, al turn in their excess supply they will show up on Apple's site.
If you are really curious about the used market, just go to ebay and clicked completed/sold listings on the left panel. You'll see what people are getting. Keep in mind there are a lot of small business owners who have made it a cottage industry of upgrading the RAM and the drives and selling for a small profit on ebay. You'll see a ton of those in the completed listings.
...and I think this is exactly where Apple may be very wrong...a lot (and I mean A LOT) of those people are multipliers (e.g. family and friensds ask them what computer, phone, ... to get).
Letting those multipliers down can hurt business big time...
johnnyturbouk
macrumors 68000
of course, and now introducing apple's new A69xxx processor
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Lol- this remark may cause a mass macrumors divorce drive, a bid to save energy!
PS you contribute this advice to forums over at moneysavingexperts
.Anything special case that start by booting OSX via the Legacy BIOS (which Apple doesn't support) and then extra weirdness, instead of EFI isn't something one should reasonably expect Apple to develop and support. The other hack I've seen mentioned involves (I somewhat hazily gather) replacing the boot.efi file on a Mavericks installation with a custom 32-bit bootloader. The 32-bit EFI runs this, and it somehow brings up the 64-bit kernel, and includes a shim to pass EFI calls back down from the 64-bit world to the 32-bit EFI. Apple would be understandably loathe to develop and support this somewhat weird workaround in their codebase for a relatively small number of old machines, even assuming it could be made solid enough to be more than an ingenious hack for enthusiasts.
The real question is whether it would have been possible to retroactively create a 64-bit EFI for early Intel Macs that had 32-bit EFI but 64-bit CPUs, so they could boot 10.8+ "normally". There might be some showstopper issue with the low-level hardware. Aside from that, it comes down to "X amount of effort and investment to do this for N number of target machines", and it is hard to know how unreasonable Apple's decision was without knowing those variables.
Presumably it was only that 2006-2007 macpro1,2/2,1 batch that were under consideration. My late-2006 iMac, for instance, would probably be excluded from 10.8+ anyway because of underpowered video hardware, as I think even some later low-end 64-bit EFI machines have been?
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Hi everyone, this is my first and the last post on MacRumors, just want to voice my dissatisfaction.
I am a tech enthusiast, like windows, linux, own an iPad and an old iPod touch + nano. The new mac mini was supposed to be my next desktop replacement since I wanted to try out the Apple ecosystem. With upgradeable ram and 2 hdd it seemed as a perfect match since I already own a dual monitor setup and have no need for a laptop. Needles to say the new mini announcement has been a huge disappointment.
I am EU based so already have to pay quite a lot on top of every US costumer. With this new business strategy it seems Apple simply doesn’t care for a beggar like me, instead they target either completely clueless costumers and corporate ones who, in need of a better hardware than the current Mini, will have to buy iMacs. It’s a big **** you to every tech-concious costumer but hey, apple can cause it’s apple.
On the bright side it’s nice to see so many similar voices of dissatisfaction even on an Apple centric forum, something unheard off a few years ago. That said, this hardly matters as desktops are a marginal chunk of apple’s profit and most tech blogs, especially those US based, will continue to suck up to them since all the apple events are a huge part of their ad revenue.
</end of a pointless rant>
I am a tech enthusiast, like windows, linux, own an iPad and an old iPod touch + nano. The new mac mini was supposed to be my next desktop replacement since I wanted to try out the Apple ecosystem. With upgradeable ram and 2 hdd it seemed as a perfect match since I already own a dual monitor setup and have no need for a laptop. Needles to say the new mini announcement has been a huge disappointment.
I am EU based so already have to pay quite a lot on top of every US costumer. With this new business strategy it seems Apple simply doesn’t care for a beggar like me, instead they target either completely clueless costumers and corporate ones who, in need of a better hardware than the current Mini, will have to buy iMacs. It’s a big **** you to every tech-concious costumer but hey, apple can cause it’s apple.
On the bright side it’s nice to see so many similar voices of dissatisfaction even on an Apple centric forum, something unheard off a few years ago. That said, this hardly matters as desktops are a marginal chunk of apple’s profit and most tech blogs, especially those US based, will continue to suck up to them since all the apple events are a huge part of their ad revenue.
</end of a pointless rant>
directly from apple.
http://store.apple.com/us/product/FD388LL/A/refurbished-mac-mini-23ghz-quad-core-Intel-Core-i7
You should sign up for alerts on refurb.me - this site can send you a text message when the mac is in stock.
FRYs is selling brand new ones for $699 [2.3 i7] - I cancelled my original 2014 Mac Mini and purchased the 2012 from Frys the other day.
Sucks
And this is where the end begins, with the media. Their crap-ola stories of where they think the market is going, is nothing more of what they try and do, and that is CONTROL the MARKET. First and foremost saying the Desktop is Dead. It's serious right now, there are no machines for $1,000 from Apple for you to hook up a monitor to. WOW SICK! This is REALLY BAD. I mean yeah I use a laptop 80% of the time, but I need a desktop for a server to hook up hard drives too for storage, etc, but man I don't want to get the Server boys started, I think they already left the building tho...
Sucks
damn...
And this is where the end begins, with the media. Their crap-ola stories of where they think the market is going, is nothing more of what they try and do, and that is CONTROL the MARKET. First and foremost saying the Desktop is Dead. It's serious right now, there are no machines for $1,000 from Apple for you to hook up a monitor to. WOW SICK! This is REALLY BAD. I mean yeah I use a laptop 80% of the time, but I need a desktop for a server to hook up hard drives too for storage, etc, but man I don't want to get the Server boys started, I think they already left the building tho...
Sucks
damn...
Quick question: I have a mid-2010 2.66GHz Core2Duo Mac Mini with a 320gb HD and 8gb RAM. I use this computer exclusively as a HTPC, playing hi-res audio through my home system, ripping CDs and transcoding audio, and as a music server, not just in my house, but streamed remotely to my iPhone.
I've been frustrated with how sluggish it is, and was anxiously awaiting the new update. Instinctively, I went all-out and pulled the trigger on the new 3.0GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i7 with 16gb RAM and 1TB Fusion Drive. I went nuts because I don't plan on replacing this one for quite a while. That was before I read about the benchmarks and how much slower this "update" is.
So my question is, should I cancel this order and get the comparable late-2012 model (2.6GHz Quad-Core i7 with 16GB RAM and 1TB Fusion Drive) for the same price from B & H? Given my main use for the Mini, would I even benefit from quad-core over dual core? My main concern is speed and processing power, but I can't imagine ever having to upgrade from 16gm of RAM, so the soldered RAM of the new model doesn't bother me.
Thanks in advance.
I've been frustrated with how sluggish it is, and was anxiously awaiting the new update. Instinctively, I went all-out and pulled the trigger on the new 3.0GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i7 with 16gb RAM and 1TB Fusion Drive. I went nuts because I don't plan on replacing this one for quite a while. That was before I read about the benchmarks and how much slower this "update" is.
So my question is, should I cancel this order and get the comparable late-2012 model (2.6GHz Quad-Core i7 with 16GB RAM and 1TB Fusion Drive) for the same price from B & H? Given my main use for the Mini, would I even benefit from quad-core over dual core? My main concern is speed and processing power, but I can't imagine ever having to upgrade from 16gm of RAM, so the soldered RAM of the new model doesn't bother me.
Thanks in advance.
I'm in.. I just ordered one... here in three days
I decided after reading articles from various places, especially Intel that this was the machine for me.
I have been looking to use a mini to set up a media center as some of you have. It looks like the number of cores will be pretty much irrelevant for me for this purpose. I already have an older model 27" dual core i5 iMac. It's overkill for me and probably would be for many other people.
Anyway, the claims about the iris gpu looked like it would be better for my purposes than anything that came before it. Much better looking at the specs. After watching some fast moving games in video comparisons on older machines compared to the iris, they were good but side by side comparisons showed definite almost imperceptible choppiness in the action on the previous, older gnu's. Slower frame rates.
Yes there's less cpu for the money and all the other drawbacks but as a dedicated media server I'll bet the one I ordered (the $699 iris gnu unit) will be great. And I'm willing to bet that that is one of the reasons Apple is going this route. I think they know that people use these for media a lot. And is Apple eventually going to make a sort of mini computer that is a soldered in integrated unit that mainly handles media well as a high end Apple TV? Will the Apple TV and the mini sort of merge with the same processors but one end will be like the Apple TV is now and the other end be more mini like so that it is more controllable with a usable OS for modifying it? Getting out of the apple ecosystem on an Apple TV is hard coded. A higher end apple TV that allows computer functionality could be the choice for one model of a future media machine.
After I'm set up I'll let you know. We cut the cord long ago. We do amazon/netflix, popcorn time, and torment downloads for video and music. We're a couple of old farts that love our media. Things have come a long way.
In 1989 I purchased a 40 meg... (yes meg) HD to put into a $2600 7mhz Mac SE for $550. I thought I'd never need any larger storage device. Just a tidbit of random info. Like I tell my PC friends.... trust Apple, they know what's good for you... (well maybe no iOS 8 huh?)
I decided after reading articles from various places, especially Intel that this was the machine for me.
I have been looking to use a mini to set up a media center as some of you have. It looks like the number of cores will be pretty much irrelevant for me for this purpose. I already have an older model 27" dual core i5 iMac. It's overkill for me and probably would be for many other people.
Anyway, the claims about the iris gpu looked like it would be better for my purposes than anything that came before it. Much better looking at the specs. After watching some fast moving games in video comparisons on older machines compared to the iris, they were good but side by side comparisons showed definite almost imperceptible choppiness in the action on the previous, older gnu's. Slower frame rates.
Yes there's less cpu for the money and all the other drawbacks but as a dedicated media server I'll bet the one I ordered (the $699 iris gnu unit) will be great. And I'm willing to bet that that is one of the reasons Apple is going this route. I think they know that people use these for media a lot. And is Apple eventually going to make a sort of mini computer that is a soldered in integrated unit that mainly handles media well as a high end Apple TV? Will the Apple TV and the mini sort of merge with the same processors but one end will be like the Apple TV is now and the other end be more mini like so that it is more controllable with a usable OS for modifying it? Getting out of the apple ecosystem on an Apple TV is hard coded. A higher end apple TV that allows computer functionality could be the choice for one model of a future media machine.
After I'm set up I'll let you know. We cut the cord long ago. We do amazon/netflix, popcorn time, and torment downloads for video and music. We're a couple of old farts that love our media. Things have come a long way.
In 1989 I purchased a 40 meg... (yes meg) HD to put into a $2600 7mhz Mac SE for $550. I thought I'd never need any larger storage device. Just a tidbit of random info. Like I tell my PC friends.... trust Apple, they know what's good for you... (well maybe no iOS 8 huh?)
I would say the only downside would be...
If you are going to use one as an HTPC, the only thing that would be sluggish, would be if you are going rip a video in handbrake, but who does that anymore, I guess... I mean there isn't even a CD/DVD drive connected. Things are changing!
But you went with a supped up 3.0 gHz version so you should be fine. I would stick with the dual TB2 and the better video processing. Another thing is the Fusion drive on that one will have the SSD half for the extra speed you'll need. to get thru the speed bumps ...
If you are going to use one as an HTPC, the only thing that would be sluggish, would be if you are going rip a video in handbrake, but who does that anymore, I guess... I mean there isn't even a CD/DVD drive connected. Things are changing!
But you went with a supped up 3.0 gHz version so you should be fine. I would stick with the dual TB2 and the better video processing. Another thing is the Fusion drive on that one will have the SSD half for the extra speed you'll need. to get thru the speed bumps ...
I guess it looks that way if you drink Apple kool-aid. This is about users having options. Being able to upgrade Ram or installing some affordable SSD's have been removed from the 2014 Mini at the same time that that they have reduced performance by 50% in some areas.
The kool-aid must be getting stronger because last year you said
"This is reason #2 why I would not buy a 2012 iMac 21.5"- no user upgradeable RAM so we are forced to pay Apple prices. And they call that brilliant design. If they keep this up... people do not like to be treated like stupidos and do have options."
https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=17866728#post17866728
Not only has Apple been keeping that up but the doubled down on their bet. Not only are things not upgradeable but the have reduced performance on the 2014 base iMac and the 2014 mini's.
You should look up the word hypocrite!!