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Mac Mini End Of Life?
- Thread starter Dont Hurt Me
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So, if I have a Core2Duo PC, are there any other requirements to allow me to run Tiger or Leopard on it? I really want a real new Mac since my Mac towers are getting old. Apple does not make a mid tower, I will not buy an AIO, but I would consider an upgraded Mini. Maybe a Hackintosh is in my future.
The lack of a mini-tower and refusal to upgrade the mini is driving lots of people into the hands of a hackintosh. Apple should wake up.
You should look at the insanelymac website for hardware requirements. They are the experts and its not like any old piece of kit will run OSX or run it smoothly.
You should look at the insanelymac website for hardware requirements. They are the experts and its not like any old piece of kit will run OSX or run it smoothly.
I may be wrong, but I think 'lots of people' is probably a pretty small number in terms of marketshare, and even those people are probably not among the customers any incarnation of the mini is likely to attract. People who build their own PCs are different than most PC users, non?
As I mentioned above, I think hackintoshers are awesome and I respect the effort tremendously, since Apple doesn't make a machine like the one they want...but I don't see the 'movement' getting big enough to make a noticeable dent in any Apple sales.
What I fear for the mini is that even people like me, who don't need more than a mini and don't care much about being on the cutting edge of technology, will eventually be scared off by the ever-increasing disparity between hardware quality and price...when I bought my mini after the little update in August I was mildly enthusiastic, but 10 months later at the same price and specs?
Well we can speculate about number of users until the cows come home since no one seems to have any hard data either way. I do know that it has gotten to the point were commercial organizations are now offering pre-built hackintoshes with Leopard installed so there is no need to build your own or even have knowledge of how it is done (although I suspect at this point that still might be a handy skill to have around when using a hackintosh).
Just from what I have gathered on this sites and a few other sites that are more geared towards the mini, there definitely seems to be a greater willingness to try the hackintosh route. Surprisingly this is usually not completely about cost but also about modern technology which the mini is now woefully lacking.
Agreed; all we know is that Apple continues to sell the mini well enough to keep it around, at least so far. Whether any of the myriad alternative reasons that can be found in the previous 1300 posts are part of the equation will remain a mystery...
I followed the Psystar development pretty closely, and I have a hard time taking them seriously...but I agree that the fact they exist at all says something, at least. Your point about needing to understand how to hackintosh even to use a premade gig is a good one; there isn't enough reliability there to attract users unwilling to learn how to jerry-rig themselves, which probably eliminates a good portion of their potential clientele.
Agreed here too...except for the fact that all the posters in the world on mac sites who talk about hackintoshing still represent a tiny tiny portion of Mac-buyers. I know there's no way to put numbers on something like that, but I just don't see it being a big enough problem for Apple to worry about, at least not for now...but who knows how it will evolve.
There are more than 5200 entries for "hackintosh" on the GeekBench web site. These are people who are willing (and able) to build their own machines. How many people without these skills would be willing to buy a mid-tower around $1500? I bet it's 20x more, easily. That's 100,000 people and $150 million in revenue. Not chump change, in my book.
The very fact that you got this number from a site called "GeekBench" pretty much makes my point: more than 99% of the personal PC-buying world will never visit such sites, because we're not computer geeks. Besides, even if every one of those posts represents a real hackintosh, 5200 is an insignificant number in the global computer market...and multiplying it by a hunch of 20X is not a meaningful addition to the discussion.
I can't believe people are arguing with the rather plain suggestion that people who build their own computers from scratch and then install proprietary system software on them are a tiny fraction of the PC market for which Apple is competing. Tiny fraction to be respected, yes...but tiny nonetheless.
pent up demand
While it's certainly true that the group of people who desire, and are capable of, building a "hackintosh" in response to the Mac Mini's lack of updates is quite small, I think it signals a wider dissatisfaction with the Mini's current combination of H/W specs and price points. (i.e. its cost/benefit ratio is increasingly veering towards suckitude)
So it's not that the "hackintosh" hardware geeks are a large, potential customer base, but rather that they, along with the presence of a company like Psystar, are serving as the proverbial "canary in the coalmine."
Apple really needs to get a Mini out there soon with a Penryn CPU, Superdrive, a gig or (preferably) two of RAM, and improved graphics (at least Intel GMA X3100) at no more than the $599 price point to compete with the least expensive Wintel machines & attract Switchers...
While it's certainly true that the group of people who desire, and are capable of, building a "hackintosh" in response to the Mac Mini's lack of updates is quite small, I think it signals a wider dissatisfaction with the Mini's current combination of H/W specs and price points. (i.e. its cost/benefit ratio is increasingly veering towards suckitude)
So it's not that the "hackintosh" hardware geeks are a large, potential customer base, but rather that they, along with the presence of a company like Psystar, are serving as the proverbial "canary in the coalmine."
Apple really needs to get a Mini out there soon with a Penryn CPU, Superdrive, a gig or (preferably) two of RAM, and improved graphics (at least Intel GMA X3100) at no more than the $599 price point to compete with the least expensive Wintel machines & attract Switchers...
Yep!
It baffles me why people here think Apple hasn't done the math. Of course they know the market. They have solid numbers, not just ones based on conjecture. They also know all the hidden costs and the potential net profitably (if any).
Reality check: Apple is a corporation. A well run and very successful one. If they think there is an opportunity to improve their bottom line in a way that fits their business objectives, they will take it.
Yeah, I wanted a Mini-tower, too. Or at least a Macbook speced Mini. But Apple decided it was not in their best interest to give me either. (At least not yet.) So be it.
BMW hasn't given me a $15,000 hybrid either.
Yep!
It baffles me why people here think Apple hasn't done the math. Of course they know the market. They have solid numbers, not just ones based on conjecture. They also know all the hidden costs and the potential net profitably (if any).
Reality check: Apple is a corporation. A well run and very successful one. If they think there is an opportunity to improve their bottom line in a way that fits their business objectives, they will take it.
Yeah, I wanted a Mini-tower, too. Or at least a Macbook speced Mini. But Apple decided it was not in their best interest to give me either. (At least not yet.) So be it.
BMW hasn't given me a $15,000 hybrid either.
Apple has made mistakes in the past and will make mistakes in the future. Your post assumes they are incapable of error, which they are not.
No, no, Samdog, Shikimo... It's not about demand. It's about (price) * (margin) = (profit) and the cannibalization of higher-profit Macs.
Lots of people are begging for an xMac, but even if Apple goes ahead and builds one of the hundreds of user-submitted $800 "MacMini-killers," turns around and sells it for $1600 (and boy would it sell!), they still won't make nearly the profit of selling a $2000 iMac built from $1000 worth of parts.
The margins are both 50%, but the iMac forces you into a higher price-point for comparable performance, and contains many "planned obsolescence" tactics with that display & non-user-serviceable parts, therefore securing a greater profit for Apple over time.
As long as Apple continues to pigeon-hole consumers into these high-margin product lines, their profits stay astronomically high. An xMac, however, would introduce significant cannibalization of sales from not only the iMac, but also the MacPro... (which is currently Apple's cheapest user-upgradeable PC at $2799, recall).
The reason we don't have an xMac is greed. Period.
-Clive
Lots of people are begging for an xMac, but even if Apple goes ahead and builds one of the hundreds of user-submitted $800 "MacMini-killers," turns around and sells it for $1600 (and boy would it sell!), they still won't make nearly the profit of selling a $2000 iMac built from $1000 worth of parts.
The margins are both 50%, but the iMac forces you into a higher price-point for comparable performance, and contains many "planned obsolescence" tactics with that display & non-user-serviceable parts, therefore securing a greater profit for Apple over time.
As long as Apple continues to pigeon-hole consumers into these high-margin product lines, their profits stay astronomically high. An xMac, however, would introduce significant cannibalization of sales from not only the iMac, but also the MacPro... (which is currently Apple's cheapest user-upgradeable PC at $2799, recall).
The reason we don't have an xMac is greed. Period.
-Clive
^^^
Yes, since Apple has done NOTHING with Psystar, looks like they're leaving it to the hackers to make the "Tower Macs" instead.
Apple believes that, as far as their customer base, demand would be too small a percentage to make an entirely new product.
Yes, since Apple has done NOTHING with Psystar, looks like they're leaving it to the hackers to make the "Tower Macs" instead.
Apple believes that, as far as their customer base, demand would be too small a percentage to make an entirely new product.
No, that's not at all what I said. This has nothing to do with demand.
There are plenty of users who might not know much about computers but know enough to need (or at the very least think they need) an upgradeable Mac. Evidence of this can be seen in the Windows PC market, where AIOs and SFFs have all but completely failed to penetrate the market.
It's about being funneled into Apple's high-margin product lines. End of story.
-Clive
What are the advantages of a Hackintosh over Psystar?
My laptop has a Core2Duo. Can I make it a Hackintosh?
Psystar is a hackintosh. It's just underpowered for what you can get with a biys system.
Check the HCL for laptops to see if yours is there.
I agree with that analysis 100%; however, this sub-debate was about whether or not there are enough people ready and willing to hackintosh, out of frustration with the perceived gap in the Apple lineup, to have an effect on Apple's product line. WERE there to be enough interest in hackintoshing to significantly affect AIO sales, as was suggested above--an occurrence that in my opinion is completely impossible for reasons already stated--demand WOULD very much enter the equation...but it's not going to happen, and thus the current situation you so accurately describe is unlikely to change. Demand can almost always change market conditions, but it's rarely as simple as the 2-D graph in a macroeconomics textbook, and in this example it's proven to be a sluggish, weak element...which is just how Apple likes it. What company doesn't want to be able to tell its customers what they want to buy, and then have them go out and do it in droves? Whether that's corporate success or corporate brutism is a topic for another thread...
One big factor why AIO's, etc. have failed to "penetrate the (PC) market" is the high sales in PC laptops & their competitive pricing, usually matched by high-spec components. That takes us back to the general argument that most of Apple's computers are selling at premium prices without the specs to match their PC counterparts.
I mean, for the price of some MacBooks, you can get Acer laptops (et al) equipped with BR drives, 8600M & better video cards, etc. These of course make great desktop replacements for many consumers, as well as keeping the advantage of portability for those times you need it. IMO, that's the main reason PC AIO's don't sell better & why Apple's philosophy of producing clutter-free computers is a winning one.
That said, I think the Mini should have been upgraded weeks, if not months, ago.
But it's that high margin that allows Apple to stay in business. What you call greed is what pays for all those software engineers that research and develop OSX. Dell can survive on low margins because it has barely any R&D and no software development to speak of. For better or worse, this is the situation Apple is in, the hardware has to have a high profit margin to fuel the operating system development.
Shikimo and Clive at Five, I think you both nailed it. It's exactly why I broke down and got a Mac Pro after a very long period of holding out against all hope for an xMac, a better Mini, or even just an iMac with a HDMI or DVI input. Apple has me by the shorties and I'd hate them for it if they didn't make such a damned good operating system.
The silver lining of Apple's shrewdly sparse product line is that it seems to make Macs hold their value for longer. Selling a used Mac can soften the economic blow when buying a new one. Of course I'll still be eating mac and cheese for a while.
pretty much any PC can be hackintoshed. I ran OSX on my homebuilt AMD X2 for a while, it worked great. The 2 things you want to watch out for are sound and ethernet, some chipsets still don't have those working. I still have it installed, but hardly use it because updates are a real pain. Any system update or security and even sometimes minor ones can bork your system. Yu end up waiting for someone to post a patch for each update and even then you might have to do some fiddling.
It's not terribly hard work, but in the end I found that it detracted from my enjoyment of using OSX on hardware that was meant to run it.
With Psystar in the mix now I think it's only a matter of time before Apple does something to put an end to it and that's a shame, because I have a huge appreciation for the people who've done the work to get OSX86 to run on vanilla PCs.
Mac Mini could be a great alternative
It could be a very good alternative but, it needs to have better specs.--at least equal to a MacBook Pro. The video capabilities need to be upgraded worst of all. It will run my 30" cinema display but, doesn't have resolution.
It could be a very good alternative but, it needs to have better specs.--at least equal to a MacBook Pro. The video capabilities need to be upgraded worst of all. It will run my 30" cinema display but, doesn't have resolution.
I never said any such thing. I simply tried to say they calculate their strategy based on what they perceive to be Apple's best interests, and they take factors into account that many here seem seem to ignore, using information few of us have.
While he doesn't seem to think so, it was an abbreviated and simplified version of much of the argument Clive At Five made later:
I'm sure they also consider the higher cost of supporting another platform, the additional inventory, R&D, and other factors that impact profitability. That's why my previous post used phrases like "net profitability" and "improve their bottom line."
You call it greed, which is pejorative. They are trying to maximize profits for their owners (shareholders).
That's the only reason any business enterprise exists: To make a profit. A few succeed spectacularly, many only moderately, but most fail, and ultimately cease to exist.
All of that said, it does not dismiss the possibility that Apple is making a mistake that is negatively effecting "the bottom line" in the long term. Clive calls it greed. I call it "being too conservative".
As a person that wants to see more choices in computer products, I want to see Apple spend a little of that 2b$ and produce one more model of computer. That's it. Not 10 more, just one more.
Yeah, in the short term, it's probably not going to make them a lot of money, but the market they are ignoring is the path to long term profits. If they don't go after it, macs will remain a "fad" and fads pass all too quickly.
I wouldn't give a crap if I didn't like the software and hardware they make. But being greedy myself, I want to see the platform grow as that benefits me as a user of that platform. I don't care about the "statement" using a mac makes. I care about the functionality I get from using one. For those that use macs as "bling" they'd be happier if Apple stayed the course they are on and kept them a niche product.
JMO, I reserve the right to be wrong.
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