Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Mac Mini to be Discontinued?
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Just shup up with your dedicated vram and psystar, not everybody needs dedicated gpus, the Mac mini is a MINI desktop it's not a mid-range tower desktop system, what do you want to do with your Mac mini: Quad SLI?
FWIW, psystar have beaten themselves, they're just about to close doors, it's a question of months (if not weeks).
But when you can get a E8400 system with 4gb or ddr2 8500 / 1066MHz 2x2gb good timings.
500gb 7200 HD
DVDRW
P45 MB with firewire
good 600w psu
512mb dual dvi 3650 ati card.
PCI WIFI N card with ext antennas
for about $900 before tax and rebates.
Take off $80 if you don't want wifi.
Take off $50 - $20 to drop to ddr2 800 with good times aka only about $20 to get real good ones or $30 - $50 for good but not as good.
Take off $109 for vista home premium oem if you don't want it.
makes a $800 a mini with 2gb of higher cost laptop ram, much slower cpu, on board video that uses system ram, smaller and slower hd look bad.
also forced wifi in a desktop is a bad idea people with E-net do not like the idea of paying for wifi that they don't need.
For less then $800 you can get a amd system with on board that has it's own ram aslo.
I'm thinking that in order to keep the Mini prices low, Apple had to wait for the nVidia chipset to go down in wholesale pricing as they are sold with the MacBooks, otherwise a basic MacMini would've cost at least $699.
Waiting until January to release it would keep the pricing down to $599. But in order to do so, I think the basic $599 model will keep the 1Gig RAM and 80Gig HD.
Snow Leopard is supposed to be a smaller footprint and run very well on systems with as low as 512Megs RAM anyways...
1gb of ram is too small now days. The system may run on 512 but will you be able to use apps with it with out have to use a lot swap?I'm thinking that in order to keep the Mini prices low, Apple had to wait for the nVidia chipset to go down in wholesale pricing as they are sold with the MacBooks, otherwise a basic MacMini would've cost at least $699.
Waiting until January to release it would keep the pricing down to $599. But in order to do so, I think the basic $599 model will keep the 1Gig RAM and 80Gig HD.
Snow Leopard is supposed to be a smaller footprint and run very well on systems with as low as 512Megs RAM anyways...
Can you put all that into an aluminum enclosure that's 6.5 x 6.5 x 2 inches that requires only 5 volts, is virtually silent and has digital optical audio?
Just accept it, you're not going to see a box like you described as a Mini replacement. The Mini, if it is revised, will be essentially in the same form factor that it is now, no matter how much complaining you do. If you want that win box with OS X, build yourself a hackintosh. It's easy.
I use Leopard on my Mini with 512Meg without any problems - as long as you keep it to only 1 or 2 apps open at a time (like Safari and iTunes, or only iMovie).
I can see an nVidia based 2.0 GHz Mini with 1 Gigs RAM and 80 Gig HD go for $549!
The boards have digital audio out. But where is the tower people don't want a $800 - $900 mini system.
I wouldn't be surprised if the mac mini evolves into a netbook/tablet of sorts come Macworld '09. I mean it makes sense to me; essentially they'd be replacing a niche market with a more successful niche market
I don't see how, that's why the MacBook exists.
I want a Mac mini, it suits my needs perfectly apart from it's lack of speed - it needs the same specification as the current MacBooks, keeping it up to date shouldn't be too hard as they're similar architecturally, no? Perhaps they just have a lot of backstock they need to shift..
Yeah, but if apple was to keep decent specs, and just add a touchscreen, what functionality would you lose? The entire point is that this would blow-open the whole netbook market and give apple an opportunity to capitalize on more companies who are thisclose to getting it right. Apple has a history of doing this (ipod, iphone), and i don't see why this could be any different.
The Mac Mini 2 GHz computer has a Geek Bench score of 2592.
The $250 eMachine computers get a paltry 945 Geek Bench score. I hardly think they can be referred to as a pro machine!
Even the mighty PM G5 dual 2.3 GHz has a Geek Bench score of 2052, a whole 540 points lower than the poor Mini.
First, geekbench has little bearing in the real world.
Second, geekbench score doesn't make up for pitifully small 80 and 120 GB hard drives, only 1GB of (non user upgradable) memory, and the lack of a CD-burner. That makes it the most feature poor computer on the market.
That's true. Geekbench measures CPU/memory performance only. While that's certainly critical for system speed, in practice your tasks are much more likely to be I/O-bound, so Geekbench can be a poor indicator of overall performance.
brick mini! ftw!
Now a UNIBODY Mini is something worth speculating about. What advantages would the new manufacturing process bring to the Mac Mini? (apart from justifying the high price)
We know Apple put together a team to gut & redesign the Mini. Much as we'd like it to be, the Mac Mini will never be a desirable machine - neither tech specs nor price (apparently).
But if the Mac Mini was thinner, lighter, how about a glass trackpad on top??
Are we ready for the Aluminium Cube ?
I could wait a bit longer if it was going to get a quad-core...
brick mini! ftw!
Well, if you stack them together and add some mortar, you probably could build something out of them the way they're shaped.
A little too thin and light, but I do like the concept of driving it with the display. Assuming there's a display that's available that people can actually afford that is.
DAMN that looks good. A tad too thin but I see potential. Future netbook material though.
No advantage at all if you ask me!
In case you are wondering die cast is the process used to make disk drive bodies. Heat sinks are often made this way to. If Apple was smart they would integrate thermal management right into the die cast housing.
Frankly I have to wonder just how long Apples machined housings will remain viable. Unibody has to signifcantly increase the cost of the laptop.
Well at this point you might as well wait! I don't know what is going to happen with the Mini but it is pretty clear that MWSF will be very interesting. I'm actually thinking now that we will see two desktops introduced. One would be an even smaller Mini and the other a larger device with desktop hardware in it. The Mac Pro would stay around as a workstation.
This new Mini would be optical disk free. It would support more than 4GB of RAM, an OPENCL compliant GPU and solid state storage. Imagine something no more than 30mm thick and maybe slightly smaller than todays Mini. Like the Mini a great little machine to throw at tasks.
Dave
I really don't see an advantage for the Mini. It's housing could easily be die cast out of aluminum. It would be cheaper by a long shot. Especially when you consider there would be no need for the keyboard cutouts or the speaker grill.
In case you are wondering die cast is the process used to make disk drive bodies. Heat sinks are often made this way to. If Apple was smart they would integrate thermal management right into the die cast housing.
Frankly I have to wonder just how long Apples machined housings will remain viable. Unibody has to signifcantly increase the cost of the laptop.
Frankly I don't understand the thought expressed above as stated here or in various forms else where. The Mini has sold very well for a long time now. It hasn't seen the sales that laptops have seen but laptops are real hot industry wide. The Mini is a very good fit for a number of uses.
That was a joke right? If not then your whole problem is in not understanding who the Mini is targetted at.
Well at this point you might as well wait! I don't know what is going to happen with the Mini but it is pretty clear that MWSF will be very interesting. I'm actually thinking now that we will see two desktops introduced. One would be an even smaller Mini and the other a larger device with desktop hardware in it. The Mac Pro would stay around as a workstation.
This new Mini would be optical disk free. It would support more than 4GB of RAM, an OPENCL compliant GPU and solid state storage. Imagine something no more than 30mm thick and maybe slightly smaller than todays Mini. Like the Mini a great little machine to throw at tasks.
Dave