New Mac Mini at Macworld San Francisco 2009?

[illegallydead]

I don't think so...You are not going to get 320GB HD and 4GB of RAM for the same price. The current Mac Pro has 320GB of HD and only 2GB of RAM and it costs $2799 compared to the $599 Mac Mini. Also, compare the sizes of the Mac Pro and the Mac Mini...

That's comparing apples and oranges. There is a very good reason the Pro is so bloody expensive, and the difference is not just HDD and RAM.

The Mini uses laptop components, including a 2.5" HDD (vs. 3.5" in the Pro), a Core 2 Duo laptop model (vs. the Pro's Server-class Xeons), the Mini uses a tiny MoBo, the Pro uses one that can take 2 physical CPU's and up to 8 sticks of RAM.... need I go on? The price difference is there for a reason (part of it is because they are apple and they know that they just CAN charge that much, part of it is the fact that it's specs blow the Mini out of the water.)

 

[angemon89]

So..... case redesign?

 

[Eric S.]

The new Apple mini will be a small mini-tower. Some user-upgradability - but still very restricted compared to the maxi-tower.

That would be nice, but I don't hold out much hope that Jobs will ever favor expandability and customer choice in any Apple computer.

The current mini's specs are so down-rev now that Apple either has to upgrade it or kill it. Even though it's no midrange tower, Apple's lineup would have a big hole without it so I hope we do see a revised mini.

 

[Eminemdrdre00]

Can we drop this please? It's clear to anyone with more than half a brick for a brain that he meant Apple won't build a $500 laptop. Give it a rest.

 

[knightlie]

Maybe an increase in speed (at least 2.5GHz), RAM (4GB), and HD (320GB) would be nice for starters. Price similar to current mini's, keep the firewire, wireless keyboard, wireless mouse, (Standard!!!), mini-DVI port, and do we really need four USB ports?

Yes yes yes, I agree, let's have a well-specced top-of-the-range Mini. I'll be in the market for a replacement for my Core Duo iMac soon, and I'm seriously considering a Hackintosh as I'm not impressed with the new iMacs. A Mini with those specs will be more future-proof for me than my iMac was.

The only issue for me is the mini display port, as I want to use my existing 22" monitor.

 

[fiatlux]

It will be Mini DisplayPort.

That is unfortunately going against the current "bring your own keyboard/monitor/mouse" approach, unless they put a DVI or VGA adapter in the box. Not a lot of people with a (mini) DisplayPort monitor yet.

 

[sine-nomine]

My bet on specs:
Pentium II
10GB hard disk
128MB of RAM
1 USB 1.1 port
1 VGA out
all for the low price of $899

In all seriousness, I bet the biggest upgrade will be the price. I bet the guts will be a slightly downgraded version of the current white MacBook. Basically:
1.83 or 2GHz Core 2
x3100 graphics
1GB RAM standard
120GB hard disk
no FireWire, but no extra USB ports, either
Display Port if Santa Rosa even supports it

And I bet they either kill the base model and jack the price up on the up-level model another $100, or they keep the base model, still with the ComboDrive so no one will want it, and raise the price of both models by $100 - so a very modest performance gain possibly accompanied by a disproportionate price increase. I guess what I'm getting at is that we will not see the Mini become a good buy for what you actually get. I feel like no one at Apple has yet had the idea to actually make the poor Mini worth buying, which is a shame since it could be a sweet little machine.

 

[MacFly123]

Here you have it:

- Aluminum & Black design slightly shorter but wider like the Apple TV.
- Mini DisplayPort (obviously).
- MagSafe power adaptor that will be wonderful with the new LED Cinema Displays.
- New Core2s
- Hopefully they keep the one FireWire! But its possible it will be left out
- Optional second hard drive in place of SuperDrive as well as optional SSDs.
- 2 GB RAM, support for up to 4.
- NVIDIA GeForce 9400M.
- Maybe a new keyboard same as current, but black keys. (like below but without my multi-touch trackpad built in )

And for crying out loud Apple get rid of the forsaken ComboDrive in the name of all that's holy!

 

[Jowl]

Dear Steve,

Quad core Mini
Graphics Chipset capable of 1080p
Blu-ray (I'll accept reader only)
No putty knife to upgrade the HDD/RAM


and I will buy at £500 inc VAT

*carries on dreaming*

 

[yoppie]

I hope this rumor proves true.

 

[Kar98]

Can we drop this please? It's clear to anyone with more than half a brick for a brain that he meant Apple won't build a $500 laptop. Give it a rest.

Oh really? What's your reasoning on THAT?

 

[Lesser Evets]

They really need that 3.5" HD in there.

Aside from that it just needs upgrades on processors.
If they need to make it a little bigger, that's fine.

 

[talkingfuture]

Here you have it:

- Aluminum & Black design slightly shorter but wider like the Apple TV.
- Mini DisplayPort (obviously).
- MagSafe power adaptor that will be wonderful with the new LED Cinema Displays.
- New Core2s
- Hopefully they keep the one FireWire! But its possible it will be left out
- Optional second hard drive in place of SuperDrive as well as optional SSDs.
- 2 GB RAM, support for up to 4.
- NVIDIA GeForce 9400M.
- Maybe a new keyboard same as current, but black keys. (like below but without my multi-touch trackpad built in )

And for crying out loud Apple get rid of the forsaken ComboDrive in the name of all that's holy!

I'd love them to make a keyboard like that.

 

[Barabas]

About 20 days to wait,

I hope it will have FW and HDMI, also a 3.5" HD with capacity more than 320G

I will use it as my HTPC.

[x] All of the above.

 

[SFStateStudent]

without my multi-touch trackpad built in )
And for crying out loud Apple get rid of the forsaken ComboDrive in the name of all that's holy!

+2 on that keyboard. Looks pretty sharp...

 

[MrCrowbar]

I'd love them to make a keyboard like that.

Agreed. The mighty mouse is kind of a failed design in my eyes. If it touches its cable or the flat Apple keyboard, you can't click it, lifting the left finger to right-click is unergonomic. The scroll ball is nice, but there's no way to clean that thing really. But worst of all, the tracking sensor is utter crap. I also don't like the way Macs handle cursor movement, the acceleration curve is just too steep.

The trackpads on the other hand are excellent. I use my Macbook's trackpad much more often than I use my mouse (Logitech G5). So a large glass trackpad would be pretty neat.

 

[motulist]

Apple HATES asymmetry. So it looks cool, but I doubt it'll happen.

Scroll left and right here and you'll see what I mean.

http://www.apple.com/mac/

EDIT: Heck, look at the website design itself. Even the webpage layout looks like you can fold it in half and have the sides match up!

 

[Pigumon]

Hdmi 1080p

This needs to be able to play true 1080P with a minimum of 30fps.

HDMI needs to happen too.

I finally gave to another company because Apple TV and the current Mac Mini can't do 1080P or HDMI, bought an HDX-1000 for $200.

HDMI, Component, 1080P, networked, view youtube and other itv without onscreen garbage (just the video itself), 3.5" SATA drive bay (I've got a TB running right now), built-in torrent, upscales all content to 1080P, much more.

Apple, you made me look elsewhere for something you should have had by now.

I hope I just wasted my money, no really, give me an Apple HTPC!!

 

[winterspan]

Hopefully now Apple have beefed their notebook line pretty well lately, they can finally start getting around to the poor, neglected desktops. The Mac Pro hasn't been touched in over a year

Check out the Mac Pro's (and iMac) graphics card choices.. They literally still have ATI Radeon 2600s as standard card on there still... That is TWO GENERATIONS old. Pathetic!

I pray to the Apple gods to bless me with a core i7 mini but I know they will just put the macbook in a new box :-(

*SNIP* Could see some higher end processors if the iMac moves towards quad cores, but I'm not sure the correct core i7 are ready yet for this...

No chance of an Intel i7/Nehalem. The only Nehalem chips out right now are the high-end (high power) desktop "Bloomfield" chips with Quickpath that use the X58 chipset. The cost of the cheapest i7 and motherboard together would probably be close to $500 alone! The mini will most likely continue to use mobile chips for their low power dissipation, and quad-core laptop codenamed "Clarksfield" i7 chips won't be out until Q3 2009. And the only dual-core Nehalem chips, both mobile and desktop, are the ones with graphics cores integrated onto the CPU package and both have been delayed until early 2010.

Here's my question, if they use a mini-DP, and you don't use a DP monitor, but instead a regular LCD with an adapter, will you not be able to watch HD movies from iTunes? Isn't that part of the DRM issue associated with DP? ....

I'm not sure how it will work with Apple, but the laptops with mini-DP can output a DVI signal with an adaptor cable, and I believe some 3rd party manufacturers are making miniDP->HDMI converters as well. Now, both the HDMI and the DVI spec can support the HDCP DRM, and many DVI-only monitors also support HDCP. So it is theoretically possible, It really depends on Apple's implementation.

This needs to be able to play true 1080P with a minimum of 30fps. HDMI needs to happen too *SNIP*

Agreed. Even if they don't roll out iTMS content right away (or BluRay for that matter) they need to make the AppleTV (and all the Macs) capable of 1080P H264 decoding and output.

 

[Trip.Tucker]

The new Apple mini will be a small mini-tower. Some user-upgradability - but still very restricted compared to the maxi-tower.

One could even hope that it will come in a "smaller" and "larger" model. Same motherboard, but the "larger" model would have space to add a second optical/hard drive and larger PCIe x16 graphics card.

Base model should have GMA or Nvidia motherboard graphics - but with on open PCIe x16 half height slot for a real graphics upgrade.

Here we go :rollseyes:

 

[LeviG]

Well if the price is right (this is important) then it makes sense to produce a new mac mini, it's about time

But from a personal perspective, it better have a way to connect up to a hdmi socket on a tv, I don't mind if its a dvi to hdmi adapter but if they stick just a display port on it, it will lose a huge market (htpc) which I would put money on it being used for as theres no (current) adapters.

Winterspan - there are core2 quad core mobile cpu's out now (or very soon), you can already order/get them in laptops from the likes of dell and hp - they're literally a cpu drop in as long as the cooling is good enough so they're ideal for the likes of the imac and mac mini (not likely anytime soon in my opinion).

 

[Tallest Skil]

I pray to the Apple gods to bless me with a core i7 mini but I know they will just put the macbook in a new box :-(

Pretty much, yeah.

i'd definitely buy one. no way its an i7 though. i love my mac mini!

Props for correct thinking.

Could see some higher end processors if the iMac moves towards quad cores, but I'm not sure the correct core i7 are ready yet for this...

Not until Q4 2009 for either the iMac or Mac Mini.

 

[Porco]

I'm guessing it'll be another nearly-mac, with some things improved and some thing gimped.

I'd be very surprised if it isn't just the aluminium MacBook in box minus the screen and keyboard/trackpad, just like the current mini is basically an old MacBook in a box minus the screen and keyboard/trackpad.

If they bring the specs up as could be expect and they kept Firewire I would be 90% likely to get one, but I doubt we'll see anything that satisfying. I'd also love a Blu-ray option but I guess an Apple-supplied Blu-ray drive will probably debut on the Mac Pro or the iMac, eventually.

 

[bezerk3r86]

Everyone, keep in mind that there are many possibilities for the 'rumored' MacMini update:

1) Apple is a premium seller so it's no reason to see them charge $599 for a base model. They are a hardware company at heart, and they do take pride in their work while giving people the service they expect for their money. The MacBook started off at $1099 before Apple decided to lower it to $999 for the polycarbonate model.
2) Because Apple has now chosen to go with NVIDIA for the chipset and display GPU, they have given MacBook onwers more bang for their money (5x gaming performance and improved rendering when using Cover Flow and using Final Cut Express. I bet people can now run the Adobe Production Suite or Final Cut Studio without any problems). Recall that in the video about the unibody MacBook, the engineer claimed that NVIDIA approached them about putting the 9400M in the desktop but they were interested in putting it into a laptop. they just might make their way to the minis.
3) With OpenCL specs already finalized and AMD/ATI announcing support for them + NVIDIA claims that the 9400M is fully compatible with it, it'll be nice to see who provides the display GPU for the MacMini.
4) Computing power has gotten faster and efficient while also becoming cheaper. It would be no surprise to see a 2.2Ghz Core 2 Duo as a minimum. In addition, the MacBook range now uses DD3 RAM, so they might make their way to the iMacs and minis. It's their chance to push it out to the market for acceptance since it takes less power to run it.
5) For the GPU, they could do some compromises by having a sizeable chunk as dedicated VRAM and the rest being shared from physical memory . For the 9400M, a dedicated 128MB and the remaining shared from memory would give it the 256MB, but there might even be a bid from AMD to replace it with their Radeon chipset. This will give owners more value.
6) Regarding ports and expansion, the minis feature 4 USB 2.0 ports so I guess they would want to keep it that way. Also, a miniDisplay port bundled with a adapter will help gain acceptance from the consumer. FW400 may not be eliminated as it's a standard on their desktop range. Gigabit Ethernet is a given, along with Airport wireless+Bluetooth2.1.
7) An entire aluminum enclosure that would be easily opened for future expandability can be a possibility. Not only lighter but also much sleeker in its visual aesthetics. Combine it with less power intensive componenets that also have less heat dissipation, and you're looking at a possible new HTPC. They might even be able to make it slightly thinner and smaller.

Overall, there are som many things to speculate about the mini but Apple hasn't forgotten how the mini helped push the Mac into households.

 

[Compile 'em all]

No faked specs.

Therefore no sense in discussing further.

But yeah, we knew this.

No one knew anything.