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Mac mini 2015

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xmlninja

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 10, 2010
175
218
Considering the new macbook it should be possible to make a much smaller Mac mini than the current ones? Im seriously lacking a mid tier model with decent ram and flash storage. My Mac mini 2008 still works and its powered on 24/7 but its getting closer to becoming dead for each day but I can't see my self replacing it with a HDD based computer :)

What do you guys want from next Mac mini models?
 
Essentially exactly what's in the Haswell minis except replace Haswell with Broadwell and add Iris 6100 graphics.

Edit: Quad-core would be nice with Iris Pro 6200 but I doubt it would happen.
 
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We've seen post after post like the OP's for the past few years here at macrumors.

This begs the questions:
WHY should the Mini be made any smaller than it is now?
Is this strictly a matter of style?
Form over function?
What about the issue of connectivity?
How useful is a "desktop" computer that doesn't have enough connections in the back?
Why buy a "smaller" Mini, if any serious user is going to have to buy a "dock" along with it, just to connect to the thing?

EVERY connector on the back of my own late-2012 Mini is filled right now, with the exception of the SD card slot.
 
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Only way I will update anytime soon is if they bring back a dedicated GPU.

OS and applications are too video intensive for video to be sharing memory bandwidth along with the system. Bandwidth not the amount. It's a bottleneck.

Using the 'U' ultra-low power Intel chips is a joke also, Mini does not have the power restrictions of a battery. It should be engineered to handle at least the 'M' series of more power oriented mobility chips.
 
Menel said:
Only way I will update anytime soon is if they bring back a dedicated GPU.

OS and applications are too video intensive for video to be sharing memory bandwidth along with the system. Bandwidth not the amount. It's a bottleneck.

Using the 'U' ultra-low power Intel chips is a joke also, Mini does not have the power restrictions of a battery. It should be engineered to handle at least the 'M' series of more power oriented mobility chips.
Click to expand...

Then a Mac Mini isn't for you.

You need a 15" rMBP with 750M, or an iMac with dGPU, or an nMP.
 
Menel said:
Only way I will update anytime soon is if they bring back a dedicated GPU.

OS and applications are too video intensive for video to be sharing memory bandwidth along with the system. Bandwidth not the amount. It's a bottleneck.

Using the 'U' ultra-low power Intel chips is a joke also, Mini does not have the power restrictions of a battery. It should be engineered to handle at least the 'M' series of more power oriented mobility chips.
Click to expand...

Not so much 'M' but 'HQ' quad-core with Iris Pro.
 
@Menel: We won't see a dedicated GPU in the Mac minis. Ever.

Anyway, I do also hope, that they will upgrade the CPU in the Mac mini to Broadwell or Skylake later this year.
Or at least it would be nice, if they would update the Mac mini in 2016.
 
If Apple did give the Mac mini a discrete GPU, people would say "That's it. That's all they gave? They could have given it this. Apple sucks!"
 
Ice Dragon said:
Essentially exactly what's in the Haswell minis except replace Haswell with Broadwell and add Iris 6100 graphics.

Edit: Quad-core would be nice with Iris Pro 6200 but I doubt it would happen.
Click to expand...

So you're cool with a spinning hard drive in 2015?
 
EightyTwenty said:
So you're cool with a spinning hard drive in 2015?
Click to expand...

Definitely not but unfortunately space trumps speed in the minds of some or at least in the minds of Apple brass. The only reason I haven't gotten the new Mini is because (in my mind) I have to spend $500 on upgrades between 16 GB of memory, 256 GB PCIe SSD, and Applecare.
 
Ice Dragon said:
Definitely not but unfortunately space trumps speed in the minds of some or at least in the minds of Apple brass. The only reason I haven't gotten the new Mini is because (in my mind) I have to spend $500 on upgrades between 16 GB of memory, 256 GB PCIe SSD, and Applecare.
Click to expand...

You could just go for a 1TB Fusion Drive and 8GB of RAM...which are both reasonably priced.
 
I'm honestly not sold on the Fusion drive. I would rather have pure flash and 16 GB of memory even though I don't do anything that memory intensive. On my current mini, I have noticed 8 GB just isn't enough for Chrome and several tabs at once.
 
Ice Dragon said:
I'm honestly not sold on the Fusion drive. I would rather have pure flash and 16 GB of memory even though I don't do anything that memory intensive. On my current mini, I have noticed 8 GB just isn't enough for Chrome and several tabs at once.
Click to expand...

Chrome is a piece of crap on OS X. It's a resource hog.

If your RAM pressure is green, you don't need more RAM. Free RAM is wasted RAM, and free RAM values are irrelevant from Mavericks onwards because of RAM compression and caching.

You don't know how much of a benefit FD can be until you try it. For the most part, it's as fast as a pure SSD setup.
 
Should I instead switch back to FF? I'm used to Chrome so I don't see myself switching back anytime soon. I'm still on Lion honestly. I figure I'll upgrade with my new Mac.
 
My hope is that they will continue to keep the mini in the line up for as long as they are selling physical computers. I do appreciate the fact that Apple has a low cost entry point for users to get into the OSX world. I assume though that it will get smaller.
 
yjchua95 said:
Chrome is a piece of crap on OS X. It's a resource hog.

If your RAM pressure is green, you don't need more RAM. Free RAM is wasted RAM, and free RAM values are irrelevant from Mavericks onwards because of RAM compression and caching.

You don't know how much of a benefit FD can be until you try it. For the most part, it's as fast as a pure SSD setup.
Click to expand...

Chrome is a resource hog on any machine, it would seem.

"Free RAM is wasted RAM," - It isn't wasted. It's excess, at that moment, but not wasted. Wasted RAM would be software that consumes more RAM than it should, like Chrome, or like OS X needing a whopping 3.9GB of RAM on fresh startup idle.

I'm still a fan of the full SSD option so that everything is fast and you have complete control.
 
xmlninja said:
Considering the new macbook it should be possible to make a much smaller Mac mini than the current ones? Im seriously lacking a mid tier model with decent ram and flash storage. My Mac mini 2008 still works and its powered on 24/7 but its getting closer to becoming dead for each day but I can't see my self replacing it with a HDD based computer :)

What do you guys want from next Mac mini models?
Click to expand...

If they do this, I hope they'll introduce a Core i7 Mac Pro with a single GPU for prosumers. As it stands today, the mini doesn't serve that group anymore, let alone if they were to switch to Core M.

But realistically, I think prosumer Mini users will have to get used to the idea of switching to an iMac one day.
 
Cloudsurfer said:
If they do this, I hope they'll introduce a Core i7 Mac Pro with a single GPU for prosumers. As it stands today, the mini doesn't serve that group anymore, let alone if they were to switch to Core M.

But realistically, I think prosumer Mini users will have to get used to the idea of switching to an iMac one day.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I think the midrange "prosumer" market has wanted a headless midlevel Mac ever since the transition to Intel. Something with roughly the power of an iMac, but where we don't have to keep paying for new displays, and something that at least some expansion and upgradeability inside, with discrete graphics (preferably with upgrade potential). It's pretty sad that the price points for headless desktops go straight from under $1000 to $3000+ with nothing in between.
 
Fishrrman said:
We've seen post after post like the OP's for the past few years here at macrumors.

This begs the questions:
WHY should the Mini be made any smaller than it is now?
Is this strictly a matter of style?
Form over function?
What about the issue of connectivity?
How useful is a "desktop" computer that doesn't have enough connections in the back?
Why buy a "smaller" Mini, if any serious user is going to have to buy a "dock" along with it, just to connect to the thing?

EVERY connector on the back of my own late-2012 Mini is filled right now, with the exception of the SD card slot.
Click to expand...

This. Except my sd slot has a permanent resident too.
opeter said:
@Menel: We won't see a dedicated GPU in the Mac minis. Ever.
Click to expand...
Really? It's been done before. I have one.

Ice Dragon said:
If Apple did give the Mac mini a discrete GPU, people would say "That's it. That's all they gave? They could have given it this. Apple sucks!"
Click to expand...

True. It would never be allowed to compete too strongly with iMac/nMP
 
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