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Mac Mini To Be Discontinued?
- Thread starter Planner Dude
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Or maybe the Mac Shuffle. No video out, and it loads the next program randomly.
Steve's going to come out with the Mac Shuffle around his neck!
No, it'll be clipped to his pants pocket. (Sorry, couldn't resist.)
I love that image. A Mac Mini sized device clipped to your shirt using a giant built-in clip
What a shame
The mini got me into macs. I wated to trial them before biffing out the PCs. It was a hit with my wife and it lined up with the platform being used by my teenagers at high school.
What did I like about it ? It wasn't intrusive. It made bugger all noise and it was cute. But in the Apple world - nothing lasts for-ever. And every product is an innovation on the previous. I'm sure they'll live on, in all the internet auction sites around the world and like the models before them they'll command reasonable coin. However I've since gone on to buy the more serious Mac 2C duo stuff and promote Apple with one of those dumb cute stickers on my car. Cheers
The mini got me into macs. I wated to trial them before biffing out the PCs. It was a hit with my wife and it lined up with the platform being used by my teenagers at high school.
What did I like about it ? It wasn't intrusive. It made bugger all noise and it was cute. But in the Apple world - nothing lasts for-ever. And every product is an innovation on the previous. I'm sure they'll live on, in all the internet auction sites around the world and like the models before them they'll command reasonable coin. However I've since gone on to buy the more serious Mac 2C duo stuff and promote Apple with one of those dumb cute stickers on my car. Cheers
Yep, and eSATA and an expresscard slot.Mac Mini will not be discontinued in the way most are thinking. It is going to be revamped to take a 3.5" hard drive while still using the laptop style combo/superdrive. Slightly bigger (and I mean slightly), faster Core 2 Duo processors, same great price ... great refresh. Wait and see. You heard it here first, folks.
This rumour sounds plausable, but an update also does.
The "I need a cheap mini tower with expansion slots" lust has been around since Steve Jobs took over the company again. The idea is recycled year after year and often pleases potential switchers who like to think the Mac is a PC.
While it would be a great machine for people who don't need Xeon's, it does not seem likely based off history.
The "I need a cheap mini tower with expansion slots" lust has been around since Steve Jobs took over the company again. The idea is recycled year after year and often pleases potential switchers who like to think the Mac is a PC.
While it would be a great machine for people who don't need Xeon's, it does not seem likely based off history.
News flash the Mac is a PC, not some kind of mystical tool solely reserved for the creative arts crowd.
Time for a change.
Apple still needs a lower end mac for people that are thinking of switching. I'm not worried that they will come out with something new to replace the mac mini.
Apple still needs a lower end mac for people that are thinking of switching. I'm not worried that they will come out with something new to replace the mac mini.
I PROMISE you, you'll notice a faster HDD more than you'll notice the switch from CD to C2D, even a switch from a 1.66ghz CD to a 2ghz C2D. You'll obviosly see a boost in stuff life video encoding, etc with a better CPU, but for the other 90% of the time when you are using the computer, a faster HDD will make a much bigger difference.
The GPU is, of course, another story... the GMA950 is pretty... subpar... but that again depends on what you're doing. If you're not using Motion enabled apps or playing games, you'll notice a faster HDD way before a better GPU.
Anyways, if we're lucky we'll get a mini tower with a PCI-X slot for a GPU and a 3.5" HDD and 5.25" optical drive. If we're fortunate, we'll get a mini in an AppleTV esque sized mini with an X3000 and a 3.5" HDD. If we're out of luck it'll be an update of the mini with 1gb RAM and a C2D. If god/Steve hate us, the mini is a goner.
Well, I use my Mini as a computer. And keep in mind, this thread is no indication what the larger Mini-userbase is like. Hell, if we watched the AppleTV-threads, it would seem like most people are hacking the devices, when I bet maybe bout 5% are doing it, if even that. The regural users simply do not care to post in threads like this, or even particiapte in these kinds of forums. I would say that the people who spend their time in these kinds of forums are the "above-average Mac-geeks". The normal users spend their time doing other things.
And would it be bad for Apple if people used Mac Minis as their mediadevices, instead of AppleTV's? Why should Apple care? They would still get their money.
Not really. Remember this: iPhone, iPod and AppleTV: What do they all have in common? They all rely on a computer to function properly. So computers are at the very core of Apple's product-lines. It's the glue that ties them all together.
Their talk of the "digital hub"-strategy is not simply bunch of BS, it actually does make sense. The Mac is that hub, and it has several branches branching from it: iPod, iTunes Store, AppleTV and iPhone.
welcome to my living room
the mac mini needs to be recreated as a more portable entertainment device. there is currently not much difference between a mac mini and a mb. the recent rumors of ultra portable macs leads me to think that they will fill this need with a cheaper smaller mini. everyone i know in my college town has atleast one computer in the living room for playing music and viewing videos. The need for a multi functional portable is evedent in a town where 90% of people play dvds on there ps2. A ultra portable mac mini would provide a cheap solution to a entertaimnent center full of media devices. though there would still be the need for a tv and speakers. the next ipod may be the new ipod Macro. a pocketsized device thattakes what you ipod does and adds basic computer conveience to help keep us enetertained, lets face it, apple is quickly becomming an entertainment company. lets hope they keep striving to aide in the creation of the things that entertain us.
the mac mini needs to be recreated as a more portable entertainment device. there is currently not much difference between a mac mini and a mb. the recent rumors of ultra portable macs leads me to think that they will fill this need with a cheaper smaller mini. everyone i know in my college town has atleast one computer in the living room for playing music and viewing videos. The need for a multi functional portable is evedent in a town where 90% of people play dvds on there ps2. A ultra portable mac mini would provide a cheap solution to a entertaimnent center full of media devices. though there would still be the need for a tv and speakers. the next ipod may be the new ipod Macro. a pocketsized device thattakes what you ipod does and adds basic computer conveience to help keep us enetertained, lets face it, apple is quickly becomming an entertainment company. lets hope they keep striving to aide in the creation of the things that entertain us.
Yes, I accept that OS X (or at least versions of it) are fundamental to Apple's long-term strategy & I'm not suggesting that Macs aren't important to Apple; they surely are. I'm confident that Apple will never abandon developing new Mac computers, etc. But I don't think that, currently, Macs are a priority for Apple, as is reflected in recent decisions they've made.
Like any shrewd business, Apple will focus their greater resources on what's most profitable now & what's likely to be so in future. That's unlikely to be Macs, even though the user base keeps steadily rising.
Apple know this, otherwise why would they discontinue the Mini (if this proves to be the case?) rather than making it more attractive to switchers, et al, by giving it some decent updates? If they release a consumer upgradable tower in its place, I'll happily eat my words before buying one as soon as possible! But I'm not too confident that they will release such a Mac. Instead I expect them to drop the price of their 17" iMac combo & have that as their entry-level desktop. I hope I'm wrong about the consumer tower.
You can buy an external though: honestly, are people so blind that they can't seem to see external/3rd party solutions?
External Firewire units aren't as fast as internal SATA drives. Also, it's generally a bit more convenient to have all of your stuff in the user folder on the boot drive. And having a big internal drive (or two) and no external means less clutter and cabling on your desk.
That's 1 more thing to buy. The whole philosophy of Macs is that they are simple and easy to use. Non cluttered. But if you have to connect external hard drives and other things to it to make it usable to you, well then that gets messy.
More importantly to me, there's the issue of only one FW port. If one is using their mini for digital audio applications for instance, it would be nice to have the faster drive on deck to leave the FW's resources for session files, etc.
There are some applications (like audio) that run most efficiently having their session files on an external drive, while having a fast system drive for running the application.
There are ways around this (i.e. daisy-chaining), but that could be easily avoided with an additional port. It's quite annoying when you know the CPU is surely able to handle the task, otherwise.
I don't see why people are saying that the reason Apple would discontinue the mini would be because they didn't want it to effect AppleTV sales. The base model mini costs twice as much as the Apple TV, and when people add upgrades to it, it can cost up to three times more. Why would Apple want to sell these people a $300 AppleTV when they want a $800 mini? They're obviously going to make more money on the mini.