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1000 idiotic posts can not change the math of technology. To put it simply the people complaining have no idea where technology is going. To get faster computers have to get smaller, that is what process shrinks do. DIMMs are however very far from most processors these days in an electrical sense and that is a problem. Expect things to progress like this in the future to address the issue:

By pointing out that the thread had run 100 post, I was referring to the sentiment of Macrumors user many of whom are obviously disappointed but Apple design.

Shipping soldered RAM is not about speed, it is about making products smaller and possibly cheaper to manufacture, and also about Apple's profit margins. The new Mac mini is in many ways slower than the old one. Do Apple's fastest, highest-end computers, the Mac Pro have soldered RAM?
 
Soldered on memory, decrease in CPU performance from past years, the fact that it still comes with a 5400RPM drive in the low-rent configuration..... A steaming pile of FAIL.
 
1000 idiotic posts can not change the math of technology. To put it simply the people complaining have no idea where technology is going. To get faster computers have to get smaller, that is what process shrinks do. DIMMs are however very far from most processors these days in an electrical sense and that is a problem. Expect things to progress like this in the future to address the issue:

1. Soldered on RAM operating at much higher speeds.
2. RAM integrated into the processor module. (Intel is working on this right now).
3. RAM attached to the processor die in a 3D stack.
4. RAM on the SoC.

The path before us is laid out by the physics of electronics.

Frankly RAM is like the spinning hard drives of a few years ago, it is incredibly slow relative to the processor. To fix that you need new technologies and structures. All one has to do is to look at bit at some of the proposed high performance RAM solutions that are being developed. The days of DIMM making sense will quickly go the way of the floppy drive.

Your post has nothing to do with the issue at hand. Current RAM technology has next to no benefits with being soldered to the main board. There is next to zero benefits to the Mac Mini having soldered RAM, it's just Apple being Apple.

The Mac Mini is a decent low-cost entry level Mac that still costs a lot of money for many people. Having the ability to upgrade it later allows these people to add a bigger/faster HDD or RAM as and when required, or simply upgrade if they wanted to.

There are 1000's of micro PC's that allow you to fully interchange every single component so there is no valid reason whatsoever for Apple's design decisions with the latest Mini.

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Apples are cracking down on Apple-tax evaders...

Well done, that was hilarious :D
 
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I, too, have a late 2009 27" iMac with the 8 GB RAM I got it with originally, and it's holding up well. I use it for professional software development and frequently have a large number of apps and browser windows open. At the moment I have Xcode, Eclipse, Photoshop, Flash, Preview (with some PDFs and graphics open), Word, Excel, Pixelmator, TextMate, Textwrangler (because it handles very large JSON well), Mail, Fetch, Activity Monitor, around a dozen Safari pages, bmGlyph, a terminal window. mySQL is started. I open and close iOS Simulator as needed. I put a 600 GB SSD in it, but never had reason to upgrade the RAM. The two things it currently does not do well -- compile large amounts of code, especially C++, and simulate Retina devices -- would not be significantly improved with more RAM.

So I think your assertion that the other poster's 8 GB is only good because he doesn't multi-task much is crap. And your previous assertion that each version of OS X requires almost twice as much RAM as the previous one is absurd. People might take you more seriously if you did make such wildly inaccurate comments. I would generally like Macs to be more upgradeable but if voices like yours are the loudest ones, I don't think very many people will be swayed.

Once again, someone is arguing with me based on their use of NOT a MAC MINI!

What is the point of making that argument?
 
So I think your assertion that the other poster's 8 GB is only good because he doesn't multi-task much is crap. And your previous assertion that each version of OS X requires almost twice as much RAM as the previous one is absurd.

yup if that were the case the 2GB needed just to get to see the Lion desktop would have become 4GB for Mountain Lion, 8GB for Mavericks and now be sitting at 16GB for Yosemite

Plain fact of the matter is the last OS update that needed twice the RAM of its predecessor was Lion which took SLs 1GB base config and increased it to 2. Every other release since then has had a similar memory foot print to Lion

4GB will give user 2GB (enough for general tasks) whilst 8 will weigh in at three times that; with 6GB for them to play with

Plenty of reasons some folks might need to go 16GB RAM, but multi-tasking and staving off imaginary memory-hogging future OSX updates don't strike me as being amongst the sensible ones.
 
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Besides the lack of a quad core processor option, the lack of being able to upgrade your own RAM seems very shortsighted. Especially given that the 2014 Mac mini is no different size wise than the 2012 Mac mini.

Waiting two years for some hardware downgrades is a disappointment.
 

Yeh, thats shocking and bizarre at the same time.
I mean what is going on with Apple?

Since the iPhone 6 and iWatch launch, their products and launches have been rather mediocre.
There's way too much emphasis on size and looks and feel of the product than the actual technology.
The recent event seemed really rushed, as many people have mentioned. Where is the enthusiasm over the products they're selling?
What was the true meaning of "It's been way too long"? If they were talking about the Mac Mini then why not spend a little more time talking about the device.

But as for the tech, the iWatch looks chunky and clunky. The Mac Mini is as per the above link. There was no iPT or Nano update. No retina MBA. There was no mention of the iPad Air 2 having 2gb ram.
Apple really don't seem to be inovating. Yosemite looks similar to the old Windows vista with translucency and a side bar with widgets.
Even the dock looks more like Windows now.

I can't help but feel that things have not been the same since Steve passed. Have the guys running Apple lost touch with what the consumer wants? Apple used to give us more than what we expected which is why there was always a huge buzz around every product launch. Now we only seem to be getting mediocrity and even disappointment.
:(
 
Again, this bears repeating: this mac mini is being designed by people who are experienced engineers. If the average consumer doesn't know about the value of upgradeable RAM, the Apple engineers certainly do. They're the same team that designed the 27" imac with the RAM doors that open and close, and the Mac Pro, which has user upgradeable everything. So this decision that is being made to solder RAM is either coming from upper management, or it is being designed by people who have spent their entire lives working on computers, and know the value of upgradeable parts.

I don't know how anyone can see this as anything but extremely petty bean-counting.
 
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.

......... You really think that is the situation where the graphics would have problems? In Creative Suite? People complain about the performance of HD4000 for games, not editing pictures. And, you definitely don't need a quad-core for those things, either. I can run anything I'd ever need on my 2014 13" rMBP of nearly identical hardware to the top-of-the-line 2014 Mini. Including those apps. Hell, I could run Creative Cloud versions of those without any substantial lag on my 2009 15" C2D MBP.
 
Inexpensive? The price of the the new mid range mini with 8gb RAM and upgraded with the 256GB SSD option is not terribly far from what I spend on my gaming rig 2 1/2 years ago and that old system will run circles around the new mini. Yes, the new mini is a fine machine and I'm considering one because it's small, quiet and energy effecient unlike my PC which idles at 140w and can't sleep because of overclocking. But I'd not call it inexpensive. Only the base model is reasonable, but a 5400rpm HD these days is just...ugh. I moved to SSD 2 1/2 years ago. Once you've done that, there's no going back.

Expense is relative.

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Is that you, Phil Schiller?

No.

Of course you knew that.

You meant your comment as an insult.

Why?

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It used to fulfill two rolls - yours and poeple who needed a headless quad-core that could support more demanding tasks. Now it only fills one. Since you got what you want, the others should shut up, right?

Let them eat cake.

Did I tell anyone to shut up? You should read and think, but no, don't shut up. Scream and scream and scream all you want. In the mean time, it's a fine machine for lot's of people. Like I said, I hope you get what you want. All the best.
 
Unfortunately, the only way a message can be sent to apple about stuff like this is for customers to vote with their wallets. As long as people are still lining up with wads of cash in their hands, they have no incentive to do anything differently.

All the ios 8 issues? Hasn't slowed people down clammorong for a new iphone.

Sloppy OSX code (and I'm talking back to at least snow leopard)? They keep selling MacBooks and keep churning out buggier and buggier releases.

It's clear they're now focused much more on how thin and beautiful they can make iPhones and iPads than producing quality software, and are only interested in producing appliances instead of enthusiast computers.

I'm just about done with them. If Yosemite is a big pile of fail, and they're now going to treat all of their computers as disposable commodities, I'll just have to go back to the windows world. I'm tired of rewarding them for their lackluster QC.
 
"It's been way too long"

Yeah, it's been way too long to wait for an updated mac mini only after all this time and after all the advances in technology since 2012 to find that what Apple is giving us is a lower powered more expensive and non-user upgradeable version.

What a joke.
 
No.

Of course you knew that.

You meant your comment as an insult.

Why?

I'm returning the gesture. Nobody (well, except you and an isolated few others perhaps) believes that what you said:

"These are fine, inexpensive machines for most tasks...It's a fine little computer at a good price."

is true. Clearly, they are not "fine" computers at the price. They are far from it, as is attested by the vast majority of sentiment of over 1300 comments within 48 hours on this thread. To assert otherwise is to insult our intelligence, which is something that I would expect Phil Schiller to do.

In the 24 months since the last mac mini was released one would have imagined that, generally, technology has improved, and 2012 technology has collapsed in price. Tech gets better, faster; the same tech becomes cheaper.

Of course, if one were to look at the 2014 mac mini, one would perhaps come to the conclusion that technology has gone backwards, and become more expensive.

You might think that makes a "fine" machine at a "good" price. But you're on your own.

Apart from Phil Schiller, and Tim Cook, of course.
 
But that's always been the case, sockets or not, so it's not a valid point.

It has always been the case. But in the past, you had the option of telling Apple to keep their additional 8GB, $200 RAM, and you could go to OWC, or someone else later, and buy the entire 16GB yourself for $100. Now Apple is putting you in the position of either ponying up the $200 for 8GB at the time of purchase, or not being able to get the upgrade at all. So yes, it is a valid point.
 
Once again, someone is arguing with me based on their use of NOT a MAC MINI!

What is the point of making that argument?

I stated my conclusion quite clearly. You could not have missed it if you read the post.
 
understand they need to push the Mac Pro. Both are compact desktops and now they are more alike than ever in terms of small and powerful. In my office we use Mac Minis in production departments (audio and video) when the Mac Pro show up they almost ask the GM for a replacement but the GM asked: Can you do the work with the Mac Minis? All of them said "Yes" so... no Mac pros for us. Now I bet all of us will need a better Mac Mini and when that day show up the Mac Pro will be the FORCED choice for all of us!

They needed to screwed the Mini in favor of the Mac Pro. This is no science.
 
It really is.

They all think they should be able to edit Spielberg movies on it just because.

Buy a Mac Pro. You can add extra RAM to it. 99% of the population will never crack open their computer to put a new HDD, RAM etc. They will buy and plug wires into ports.

Yet the thread will continue to grow with random complainers that don't represent the real world at all. Pity.
 
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