Unfortunately they'll probably conclude that there isn't sufficient demand for a headless Mac, and will cease production.
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New 2014 Mac Mini Has Soldered RAM, Not User Replaceable
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Before potentially looking quite daft and sending commentary to Apple, I would hope people get more than one tweet to confirm this news. Contrary to some here, I have not seen any more than that, certainly not "hundreds of confirmations" as one claimed in this thread.
Also, what's up with the Friday afternoon stories from MacRumors being typically negative recently?
Also, what's up with the Friday afternoon stories from MacRumors being typically negative recently?
Sources Probably Correct
The source is probably correct.
Apple has updated their manual/support guides on their website and you can now compare the 2012/2014 models for their pictures/wording.
The 2012 model information guide talks about RAM upgrades and installing more RAM, however the 2014 guide does not show this.
Also the 2014 quick start user guide, it shows a picture at the base of the mac mini. If you look, the dimples for the user to turn the bottom panel has been removed and doesn't state this is now user removable.
2012 Guide (Page 4)
http://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/1000/MA1631/en_US/mac_mini-late-2012-quick_start.pdf
2014 Guide (Page 4)
http://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/1000/MA1687/en_US/mac_mini-late-2014-quick_start.pdf
So as you see, they do not 100% allow you to upgrade their machine and is probably sealed with adhesive/tamper screws. With all the reports of LPDDR3 being soldered on and the fact apple has now sealed the base, it won't be upgradable one bit other than the HDD maybe (but still having to void wattanty to open base), still hoping a teardown will appear soon though.
I myself will probably buy the mid range and attach an external SSD drive to boot from, if the 5200rpm winds me up too much. As I prefer the extra GPU speed from the newer processors.
The source is probably correct.
Apple has updated their manual/support guides on their website and you can now compare the 2012/2014 models for their pictures/wording.
The 2012 model information guide talks about RAM upgrades and installing more RAM, however the 2014 guide does not show this.
Also the 2014 quick start user guide, it shows a picture at the base of the mac mini. If you look, the dimples for the user to turn the bottom panel has been removed and doesn't state this is now user removable.
2012 Guide (Page 4)
http://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/1000/MA1631/en_US/mac_mini-late-2012-quick_start.pdf
2014 Guide (Page 4)
http://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/1000/MA1687/en_US/mac_mini-late-2014-quick_start.pdf
So as you see, they do not 100% allow you to upgrade their machine and is probably sealed with adhesive/tamper screws. With all the reports of LPDDR3 being soldered on and the fact apple has now sealed the base, it won't be upgradable one bit other than the HDD maybe (but still having to void wattanty to open base), still hoping a teardown will appear soon though.
I myself will probably buy the mid range and attach an external SSD drive to boot from, if the 5200rpm winds me up too much. As I prefer the extra GPU speed from the newer processors.
2012 manual clearly calls the bottom of the Mini a removable panel. 2014 does not. It's official.
Just because the bottom doesn't have the dimples doesn't mean that it isn't user serviceable. I had one of the original minis and you had to use a putty knife to open the case to upgrade the ram but it was possible. Not friendly but possible.
I know you were trying to be funny, Macdick, but let's think about this for a second. And first off, here it is already OS X 10.10 and both my 2010 Mac Mini and my 2010 MacBook Air with their Nvidia GeForce 320Ms are still supported. They started on OS X 10.6. So...
Anyway, since Apple switched to these integrated Intel GPUs, it's most likely they'll all share the same long life. It doesn't seem that there's been any show-stopping interface changes between HD 3000, HD 4000, HD 5000, and Iris. I could be wrong, but my 2012 i7 Mac Mini is definitely worth the risk.
Get your de-soldering tools ready! Time for some hardcore tinkering! Who's up for that one?
While we're at it, lets replace the CPU to an i7 Quad Core!
A 2 years old mac mini is looking a lot more attractive.
Pretty much.
Aren't the pro's and mini's manufactured in the US now? Sadly, apple brass will probably blame the lackluster sales on US manufacturing, versus the horrible bean counter inspired specs/pricing of both offerings.
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The lack of quad core is just as bad, if not worse. The sad truth is that there is a cornucopia of objections one can make with this new release.
The ram chips are almost certainly bga chips so good luck hehe. The cpu is probably soldered on too
Most users won't be doing multi-core tasks on a Mini. For most things, faster cores will beat more cores. The percentage of people that are power users and the mini is the best machine for them is very small. Most people will go for an iMac for power usage, with a small percentage of users that need even more power going for the Pro. The Mini has just been moved back to the position it was created for. Honestly, I'd love if there was still a quad core option, but it just doesn't make sense for Apple. For a server, it would work, but Apple hasn't had success with servers and I can very much understand dropping them. Overall, I'm happy with this upgrade. The major weakness of the Mini has long been the HD4000 graphics, and having an Iris iGPU is a huge upgrade.
Do you think it's possible that just the outer shell of the mini is now sealed shut but the internals are all the same meaning you can still change out the ram but if you break the seal you void the warranty? That is a better senario, maybe "not user replaceable" just means there are no tabs to unlock the base but inside is still the same as last years?
None, nada, zilch. It's soldered. It's really soldered. It can't get any more soldered than it is.
So, if I'm interested in home video editing
is the mid-2012 Mac mini i7 my machine? How much better are Iris graphics than the 4000? How much will four cores be better than two newer ones?
Should I care?
is the mid-2012 Mac mini i7 my machine? How much better are Iris graphics than the 4000? How much will four cores be better than two newer ones?
Should I care?
This is true - however, the lack of quad-core is something that's actually confirmed at this time.
Now, the impact on performance will have to wait on benchmarks.
To be clear, I'm as disappointed as everyone else. But I'm also willing to wait to see what's actually true before writing emails and spouting reactionary posts...
I think it's really funny that about 10 years ago, Mac users prided themselves on the fact their favorite computer was the choice for the creative industry. It was the computer for people who were knowledgeable, and who did things with that knowledge.
Going by this thread, if you bring that up now, a fair number of people are gonna pop in and say "Macs aren't for neerrrddds, it's the computer for dumb-****s who don't care about stuff like that", as if that's somehow a point of pride.
Think Different indeed.
I use the i7 quad every day for photoshop, illustrator, and indesign. The video is not an issue at all. No lag whatsoever and I use a Cintiq 22HD in addition to another HD monitor.
Sure, but all of those parts are still removable on most high end systems.
If the argument was about consumer systems becoming more integrated sure, that makes sense and that's where things have been heading since the 1990s with the iMac Bondi Blue.
But the original statement was that NO system was going to have removable parts, which is gibberish. The cloud computing that we rely on more than we do our RAM allotment runs on 24/7 running machines that have hot swappable parts all the way up to the mobo. These infrastructures won't tolerate the idea of turning off a machine and throwing it in the trash.
Then you have the mid tier systems used in many content creation sectors that also need the 24/7 reliability found in systems that can remain running while a HDD, RAM, Mobo, Ethernet, etc is removed for repair or integration. Those systems usually need multiple configurations and PCI cards hooked into different pieces of hardware for redundancy and connectivity. Avid ISIS based systems need faster NIC cards that are compatible with Avid hardware and maybe even FIBRE channel that's preferably NOT external and taking up valuable rack space.
In the end, it's okay to assume that the future of computing is going to based in novelty systems . . . .that's fine and has been talked about for longer than most users on these forums have been alive.
But to say that everyone in every industry across the board should be fine with 16GBs of RAM total is absurb.
Lastly, even After Effects is a mid tier piece of software. Running it alone might only require up to 4GB of RAM on the Mac, but on PC based systems it can use up to 8GBs and that's normal for some deeply layered comps.
Then there's software like Avid Media Composer which uses more system resources than most can imagine. It's wicked fast, and even faster when running the ISIS clients and connecting over networked shared storage and some of the freelancers I work with have MC running along with After Effects, Photoshop, and maybe a Sorenson Squeeze encode running, all of which are RAM heavy apps.
Again, that's not to say that the Mini would be used in that environment, just that soldered RAM is perfect for consumer systems, but it's not the best solution for all systems across all industries.
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I think Apple will have had to perform some serious miracle if they can pull it off, like their current mid-tier being faster than their previous quad-cores. The $499 might be OK with being weaker on the benchmarks, but I think it will be disappointing across the line.
I'm seriously thinking Apple is running out of steam and momentum since Steve Jobs died.
Sorry, you are forced to buy a monitor you don't need, which happens to be attached to the computer you desire, spend 4 times as much for a Pro, or go buy a wintel machine.
Sorry, Apple doesn't want to meet your needs, and they don't want your business anymore.
The MR "article" on benchmarks just came out:
Faster in single-core performance
Slower in multi-core performance