Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Mac Mini to Lose Its USB-A Ports Later This Year

Zdigital2015 said:
Apple has been telegraphing this for TEN YEARS, it’s not a premature decision. Good grief, is Apple supposed to leave USB-A on there forever? Then no one moves on and we end up with PC motherboards still sporting VGA ports 20 years past when they should have been removed. Sorry, time to move on, it’s really not that difficult.
Click to expand...
You can telegraph as long as you want, if there are barely any less USB-A devices and cables than when you started “telegraphin”, then it’s still early.

Apple is not “supposed” anything, they do what they do. It’s just the fact that it’s still early. They might not care that it’s still early and that’s fine, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is.
 
StellarVixen said:
Still nowhere near ubiquity of USB-A today. I am almost 100 percent sure in 10 years there will still be millions of USB cables and devices out there. In 2008 floppy drives were already gone
Click to expand...
That’s because accessory manufacturers and computer makers refuse to get with the times and ditch type A. The more vendors ditch it the sooner it’ll die
 
HobeSoundDarryl said:
That's not the issue. The rumor is LESS PORTS, going from either 2T + 2USB-a or 4T + 2U to perhaps 2 or 4T ports and 0U. Each Thunderbolt port allocated to a $2-$3 adapter is quite the waste to convert it to "lowly" USB-A.

Issue 2: the driver of this is apparently to roll out a shrunken Mini... but to get back ports one needs, right next to that Mini in the space saved by shrinking it will be this hub or these dongles to recover ports existing Mini already offers built in.

In other words, some of us believe Apple is going to cut the quantity of ports and are trying to rationalize it to the rest of us with lines like "just spend more" (to buy back whatever they take away). With that mentality, we can hope they sell us an empty box and we can just spend more to buy back ALL of the individual parts of a Mac sold as separate pieces. Just subtract all of it and let us tell each other to just spend more to buy it back.

And why is Apple going to potentially do this? The rumor is to deliver a smaller Mac Mini... a DESKTOP computer that doesn't need the old "thinner & lighter" mentality as we don't carry it around in a pocket or treat it as any kind of mobile computing device at all. To me, shrinking Mini is like getting a tattoo: you get the immediate reaction to the new tattoo and then the "hit" is over... and you just live with the tattoo. I take no issue with form factor evolution at all... but will push back as a CONSUMER when it's accomplished by substation of consumer utility... to be recovered by buying something else to put back what is taken away.

Remove 2USB-a but add 2 more Thunderbolt 4s? OK, that's quite an upgrade in consumer utility (almost no net impact with some added value upside). Remove 2 USB-a and replace them with nothing is simply utility subtraction, fixable- as in all such maneuvers- by spending more... but why do we consumers desire and rationalize "spending more" for less utility? Rhetorical: we believe Apple wants to do this so whatever Apple wants is what we want.

Note how the subtraction in this rumor seems to have no connection to a lower price either... only higher spending by buyers to buy back what is removed... likely to cut costs of the device and fatten the margin a bit more... especially if Apple is then the one to also sell the adapter/hub/dongle as an add-on because people don't know better and pay the Apple premium for the Apple hub.

Shareholders rejoice! 💰💰💰
Click to expand...
You hit the nail on the head. Apple would love to release a port-less MacMini the size of your thumb, but such a thing would be nonsensical. Who cares that it weighs only 10 grams and fits in your pocket, when it requires a bunch of adapters and bolt ons and overheats after 2 mins of heavy use...

By the way, I was surprised that the base MacMini came with only 2 USB-C ports. Gosh they're stingy with ports! It's a desktop, not a super-light laptop! Let it have ports!
 
  • Like
Reactions: fooobar and DownUnderDan
1725227782916.jpeg

Too soon, like it usually is. Budget for a box of third party hubs and/or adapters to make your elegant desktop mac look even more elegant by comparison to the technical spaghetti emanating from it.
 
  • Like
  • Love
Reactions: _Mitchan1999, fooobar, drrich2 and 1 other person
I actually threw such a fit over my mac mini 2018 and it's crappy bluetooth, that I got them to send me a usb-c to usb-a adapter so I could plug in my logitech mouse adapter without having to buy anything else to make my mouse work with my $1000 new mac mini. The bluetooth is terrible in these if you have any usb things blugged in due to interference. And I think also they threw in a SD card to USB-C adapter too because I had a lightning and 30pin ipod versions that where no loger usable and they dropped that too. I was ready to return the mini and my recent iphone and give up on Mac once and for all.
 
HuskerNKS said:
So, we are holding an entry level consumer mac to Server level port requirements for a rack/datacenter? I have seen that a few times today watching this thread. I am all for USB-A ports if there is room, but talking about VGA is funny. If you need servers with all the legacy ports, you shouldn’t be using a Mac mini. I know people put minis in data centers, but that isn’t apples focus with this product.

All the other USB-A arguments are fair, we all have different needs.
Click to expand...
So where is the rack mount server? I know you aren’t saying drop 20K for that cheese grater thing they sell. A company with a mobile app needs something to compile it. 100% on Apple for not offering something affordable to do so. We don’t need a 20K desktop to push app updates once a month.
 
Does Apple ever do anything that doesn't tick people off?
I can't stand Tim Cook, I really can't stand the guy.
 
  • Sad
Reactions: Chuckeee
gco212 said:
This is highly unlikely to be the reason for the change. It's not a size constraint.
Click to expand...
Externally it may not seem so, but consider the internal connection. it’s quite a reduction in size switching to C, never mind that the connector doesn’t have to go as far inside the computer to begin with.
 
Stromos said:
So where is the rack mount server? I know you aren’t saying drop 20K for that cheese grater thing they sell. A company with a mobile app needs something to compile it. 100% on Apple for not offering something affordable to do so. We don’t need a 20K desktop to push app updates once a month.
Click to expand...
Great question. They really have two options. The $7,500 (base) Mac Pro, which may be better than farming 5-10 Mac mini’s or not depending on your workflow, or the Mac Mini. If you are literally just compiling on 1 Mac mini, complaining about lack of usb-a seems like a stretch to me. That would make sense if you had an entire rack of them. As many have said, we all have different needs.

Edit: I have seen folks virtualize MacOS for this exact need very successfully as well.
 
Last edited:
Jamie0003 said:
Did you know alternative desktop computers exist? Crazy I know
Click to expand...

You’re right, I should switch from Mac to Windows because the new Mac mini doesn’t have any USB-A ports. And I should probably stop feeding the trolls too.

Seriously though, I can see both sides of the argument here. Yes, needing to buy adapters or hubs is wasteful if you still need USB-A. Having two unused ports on your Mac for its entire lifetime is also wasteful if you don’t need USB-A. Apple has to make the call to switch at some time, and there will always be arguments about when is the right time.

Soldered in SSDs? Well that behaviour is a little harder to defend.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
  • Love
Reactions: drrich2, freedomlinux, ric22 and 1 other person
HuskerNKS said:
Great question. They really have two options. The $7,500 (base) Mac Pro, which may be better than farming 5-10 Mac mini’s or not depending on your workflow, or the Mac Mini. If you are literally just compiling on 1 Mac mini, complaining about lack of usb-a seems like a stretch to me. That would make sense if you had an entire rack of them. As many have said, we all have different needs.

Edit: I have seen folks virtualize MacOS for this exact need very successfully as well.
Click to expand...
Considering that’s not legal my company has to work with the legal options.
 
StellarVixen said:
You can telegraph as long as you want, if there are barely any less USB-A devices and cables than when you started “telegraphin”, then it’s still early.

Apple is not “supposed” anything, they do what they do. It’s just the fact that it’s still early. They might not care that it’s still early and that’s fine, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is.
Click to expand...

Excuse me? There are significantly less non USB-C devices and USB-C cables are everywhere.

Every mouse sold today, every new phone, every external drive, every games controller (and so on) is USB-C today.
 
This is such a nonissue. For most of the USB A that matters, the last thing I want to do is plug something in behind a mini. This is what any number of adapters and port replicators are for. If you need/want this you should own an adapter already.

(I’m still annoyed we lost a Thunderbolt port on the MacBook Pros for… HDMI. No, no, who needs a god port capable of multiple HDMIs, DisplayPort, 10G Ethernet, power, or literally any port you could ever need for one HDMI port. WTF?)

As long as Ethernet is there, even if it’s iMac style, awesome. (And of not… also available for USB-C.)

What I’d love to see more than anything on the Mini is external power. Being able to power off a USB-C monitor would be really cool.
 
  • Like
Reactions: throAU
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back