The new Mac mini is almost certainly coming

[philipma1957]

I'm wondering why people still think it's about not undercutting the iMacs. Apple sure didn't have that issue years ago with the 2012 Mini

My thinking is that Apple decided 3-4 years ago that we're now in the "Post PC" future and that the < $1000 space would be taken up by iOS devices, most notably the iPad replacing everything for low end computing. That was definitely the trendy way to think at the time. That would also explain the period of neglect the entire MacOS lineup went through until recently. It would also mean in Apple's eyes that the Mini (+ MBA) would be the "enemy" of the iPad Pros and Apple would have pre-decided that the iPad Pro would win

the 2012 still had a max of only 16 gb. and imacs were doing 32gb. i had 3 of the quad cores I built them for friends and they still run well today. they were more for audio work then visual. I never said they are protecting the iMac by keeping the mac mini down. I said killing off the iMac is what they should do as the iMac is an anchor sinking the desktop lines. The post pc is bs if you are in a stationary spot nothing performs like a good pc with the screen of your choice.
I would love to have ipads and a real mac mini with solid performance. the lenovo m700 is really good gear apple should be embarassed to pass off the mac minis they do now as worthwhile gear. or the iMac or the mac pro.

 

[Denmac1]

New Mac Mini is coming out tomorrow, since I just bought one today.

Nothing fancy a dual core 2012 with 8GB of RAM in a single stick with a 240GB SSD for $350. Should be a nice improvement from my 2009 13" MacBook Pro.

Just what I was going to state. The Apple Store has 2014 refurbs and was thinking of just buying one in case my 2012 Mini can't be upgradable past the next OS.

So when is TC & Co. going to get that even if the market is small, the Mini is still the gateway....

 

[Boyd01]

Nothing fancy a dual core 2012 with 8GB of RAM in a single stick with a 240GB SSD for $350. Should be a nice improvement from my 2009 13" MacBook Pro.

The 2012 mini should run circles around your 2009 MBP. I replaced my 2008 15" MBP (c2d 2.4ghz) with an i5 MBA in 2011 and it was twice as fast!

 

[reallynotnick]

The 2012 mini should run circles around your 2009 MBP. I replaced my 2008 15" MBP (c2d 2.4ghz) with an i5 MBA in 2011 and it was twice as fast!

Yeah I wish I had sprung for a quad core Mac Mini in 2012 if I had known there would have been such a drought of desktops, but even 5 years late and a dual core is going to be a nice improvement. And it's so cheap I'm assuming if something does finally come out I can flip this with very little loss.

I'm just impressed my 2009 MBP is around kicking. I've had it in clamshell mode for literally the last 4 years. I just really need something that can run the latest OS, has USB 3 and isn't painfully slow.

 

[Miat]

The iMac is truly what held apple back in desktops. Worst decision they every made was to not drop it and go with killer mac minis and solid mac pros .

Couldn't agree more.

Apple made a big mistake with prioritising AIO desktops. Might be good for the short term profit margin, but it is terrible for the longer term health of the overall Apple environment.

 

[orbital~debris]

Rene Ritchie mentioned on a MacBreak Weekly episode fairly recently that he was forced to pick up a Mac Mini for a family member despite resenting paying for three-year-old machine. When he set it up, it was preloaded with El Capitan. That's not a good sign...

To counter that…

I bought a mid level Mac mini a fortnight ago in the U.K.

It was loaded with macOS Sierra and only a recent point release out of date.

CoconutID indicated it was built at the end of April 2017.

 

[CWallace]

Apple made a big mistake with prioritizing AIO desktops. Might be good for the short term profit margin, but it is terrible for the longer term health of the overall Apple environment.

Short term? The line is almost two decades old!

Today, the iMac makes up some 95-96% of Mac desktop sales. Without it, Mac desktop sales would be closer to 200,000 a quarter than the current 1,200,000 a quarter.

Steve launching it was one of the best moves Apple Computer ever made and why Apple Incorporated still makes computers.

 

[philipma1957]

Short term? The line is almost two decades old!

Today, the iMac makes up some 95-96% of Mac desktop sales. Without it, Mac desktop sales would be closer to 200,000 a quarter than the current 1,200,000 a quarter.

Steve launching it was one of the best moves Apple Computer ever made and why Apple Incorporated still makes computers.

They have no vision it is dead and instead of admitting that it is dead they killed off the mac mini and the mac pro. To make people think it is the one or is that the all-in-one.
No more complicated then that.

Anyone with the real vision they claim to have would kill the iMac and make killer mac minis and correct the mac pro.

I do not want 21 inch and or 27 inch screens. I want 40 to 60 inch screens. With a secondary smaller screen if needed.
The mac mini can have 32 gb ram it can have an i7 6700t cpu it can have a 2 tb ssd and a 1 tb m2 pcie.
All in this foot print

the lenvov m700 is 7.05 inch by 7.20 inch by 1.36 inch‎

www.lenovo.com/psref/pdf/ThinkCentre.pdf

this is 2016 tech. So the imac died in 2016

I can build an i7 6700t with 32 gb ram and one 1tb ssd with 1 2tb hdd

for 1050 attach it to my 48 inch tv and I am done.

and in a year or 2 same idea just add an external gpu box. So basically imac's are fully obsolete and on apple life support.

Draining the life from the mini and the pro

 

[Miat]

Without it, Mac desktop sales would be closer to 200,000 a quarter than the current 1,200,000 a quarter.

We don't and can't know that without competitive options being available from Apple for the desktop form.

Maybe the reason people are buying AIOs is that Apple have ignored, and perhaps even deliberately crippled, the alternative forms of desktop to try forcing desktop customers onto AIOs.

How hard is it to regularly upgrade to the current generation of chips? Doesn't exactly require any serious redesign of the Mini, for example. They could quite plausibly sell a lot more of them if they did keep it up to date.

 

[CWallace]

We don't and can't know that without competitive options being available from Apple for the desktop form.

Apple Mac sales have generally trended higher since 2011 with their highest peaks since 2014.

Maybe the reason people are buying AIOs is that Apple have ignored, and perhaps even deliberately crippled, the alternative forms of desktop to try forcing desktop customers onto AIOs.

Well the pundits have been saying Apple crippled the line in 2014 by making the Mac Mini dual-core (though you really have to blame Intel for that since a quad-core CPU was not available in Late 2014) and the Mac Pro a cylinder so one could argue the only "good" Mac desktop was the iMac, but then the iMac has been Retina since late 2014 (27") which for many is probably a major selling point, as is the AIO form factor (since new Mac customers likely are either migrating from legacy PC hardware peripherals they want to upgrade or are new customers who do not have said peripherals).

They could quite plausibly sell a lot more of them if they did keep it up to date.

I'm not sure Apple would sell a lot more, to be honest. IMO, the Mac Mini is more a computer for niche cases than mainstream ones. As such, I expect it has always been the poorest-selling Mac in the lineup and the people who do buy them, buy them more for their suitability to task than their performance. Yes, more performance would open up more niches, but again, the overall market would still be limited.

And I believe this is reflected in the update schedule - prior to the Late 2014 update, the Mac Mini was updated in Late 2012, a period of two years. So we've seen two updates in five years.

 

[toke lahti]

Short term? The line is almost two decades old!

Today, the iMac makes up some 95-96% of Mac desktop sales. Without it, Mac desktop sales would be closer to 200,000 a quarter than the current 1,200,000 a quarter.

Steve launching it was one of the best moves Apple Computer ever made and why Apple Incorporated still makes computers.

Apple's global market share of desktops is around 4-6% depending on a source.
I believe it would be good for macos and software for it, if it would be higher.
I also believe that the market share would be higher if Apple would offer more competitive headless mac.
4k (and beyond) tv's and monitors make headless computers very compelling for people who want to use desktops and decide what kind screens they wish to use.
Obviously, imac pro won't help with this. People are buying imacs because there's no good choise.
My opinion is biased, because I hate Apple's double glossy glassed screens. (And my 17" mbp with matte screen needs refresh.)

 

[Count Blah]

Well the pundits have been saying Apple crippled the line in 2014 by making the Mac Mini dual-core (though you really have to blame Intel for that since a quad-core CPU was not available in Late 2014)

And here is where I stopped reading.

The i7-4765T and i7-4770T(quad core/multithreaded with TDP of 35 and 45W), were both released a full year earlier, in 2013. The "problem" was that they required a different motherboard than the anemic dual core offerings Apple used in the gimped 2014 MM release. So the richest company in the world, could not manage to handle the daunting task of incorporating two different motherboards in an entire product line. You know, something every other computer company in the world can do.

It's a case of lack of want - not wanting to lose sales of MBP, iMac, Mac Pro anymore to the mighty Mac Mini. You just can't have that.

I know you'll ignore all I've typed, and simply come back with some cute quip, but that won't negate the facts.

 

[CWallace]

The i7-4765T and i7-4770T(quad core/multithreaded with TDP of 35 and 45W), were both released a full year earlier, in 2013. The "problem" was that they required a different motherboard than the anemic dual core offerings Apple used in the gimped 2014 MM release. So the richest company in the world, could not manage to handle the daunting task of incorporating two different motherboards in an entire product line. You know, something every other computer company in the world can do.

Because they didn't want to have to stock two motherboards when they could wait for Intel to ship the Socket 1168 quad-cores and use one motherboard for both? I don't recall any Mac in the past decade that required multiple motherboards to accommodate CPUs with different core counts (the Cheese Grater Mac Pros had different motherboards for single or dual CPU configurations, but they could take CPUs with different core counts).

It's a case of lack of want - not wanting to lose sales of MBP, iMac, Mac Pro anymore to the mighty Mac Mini. You just can't have that.

But Apple was fine to lose sales of the MBP, iMac and Mac Pro ( ) to the Mac Mini from Early 2005 to Late 2014...

 

[Jedi]

FWTW ,

I bought a 2014 MM last Nov. i5-2.6 / 8 GB -R / 256SSD , aside from not being up to par with other Mac`s , it handles the updates and new software just fine. My stumbling block is I can no longer get 1024 X 768 res. and that was perfect for computer stuff , I was able to get that res with my 2010 as well as the first MM, Now I must settle for 1344 X 756 , if I go the next best my F8K tv will not allow me to make any adjustments to color / tint and every thing is washed out.

I am getting used to 1344 X 756 ( weird res ) , HOWEVER , if any of you data cramming Mac OS geniuses out there can find me a Terminal command string to get my res to 1024 X 768 , I would be most grateful , thank in advance.

The MM , sad to even think this , may very well go the same route as the iPod Nano

Later

Gary 

 

[Crosscreek]

FWTW ,

I bought a 2014 MM last Nov. i5-2.6 / 8 GB -R / 256SSD , aside from not being up to par with other Mac`s , it handles the updates and new software just fine. My stumbling block is I can no longer get 1024 X 768 res. and that was perfect for computer stuff , I was able to get that res with my 2010 as well as the first MM, Now I must settle for 1344 X 756 , if I go the next best my F8K tv will not allow me to make any adjustments to color / tint and every thing is washed out.

I am getting used to 1344 X 756 ( weird res ) , HOWEVER , if any of you data cramming Mac OS geniuses out there can find me a Terminal command string to get my res to 1024 X 768 , I would be most grateful , thank in advance.
You might try ResX
The MM , sad to even think this , may very well go the same route as the iPod Nano

Later

Gary 

You might try this.

http://www.madrau.com/

 

[Jedi]

Hi C ,

Thanks , I am going to ask them about there 1024 X 768 I know it will do it , the question is what will my Sammy F8K think of it ? Will I be able to using the tv controls or will it be like that washed out res ____ who knows until you try ,and the do have a 10 day trial , and for 16 bucks , it might be worth it.

Have you personally used it ? If so , can you like set up 1024 X 768 @ 60Hz and have that be it , or do you have to change the res every time you open an app ?

Thats what I plan on asking them , OK , thanks again

Take care ,

Gary 

 

[Crosscreek]

Hi C ,

Thanks , I am going to ask them about there 1024 X 768 I know it will do it , the question is what will my Sammy F8K think of it ? Will I be able to using the tv controls or will it be like that washed out res ____ who knows until you try ,and the do have a 10 day trial , and for 16 bucks , it might be worth it.

Have you personally used it ? If so , can you like set up 1024 X 768 @ 60Hz and have that be it , or do you have to change the res every time you open an app ?

Thats what I plan on asking them , OK , thanks again

Take care ,

Gary 

You can download and try for free.

 

[Jedi]

Hi C ,

Yes I saw that , and you can try it for 10 days , then you must enter a code somewhere.

The reason I have not done so yet is because changing the res really messes up my Sammy , it freaks out

Even if I have to boot in safe mode to trouble shoot , it will take me out of 1344 X 756 and default to 1080 P , then I have to goto Pref. hold Option or Control while selecting what res I want , find the one that works then restart.

I know not that much , but if SwitchRes does not work , then I have to uninstall , look for hidden system files and all that .

I know I am looking for an easy way out . U bet !!

Take care , and thanks again ,

Later ,

Gary 

 

[now i see it]

I haven't looked at this thread in a long long time.... and it's still going!

To put things in perspective, Apple spends over 10 Billion (with a B) dollars every year on R & D. In the last three years that's over $30,000,000,000 spent on stuff that most likely will never amount to anything. Easily 10 billion gone up in smoke. Nothing to show for it.

How much does anyone really think Apple cares one nickel about the Mac mini?
There's zero evidence (except it getting lip service at a meeting) and zero historical precedent. The love affair with the MM has to end. It's dead. Time to move on.

 

[masterbaron]

What are you kidding ... it took a lot of R&D to make a campus that looks like a laptop at 35,000 feet. Imagine the number of cores running in that thing - seriously.

Time to move on ... you mean like a NUC since $4000 is a bit much as a replacement for the MM ... I'm afraid so!

 

[MRrainer]

I believe not much R&D is going into the Mini because, realistically, there's not much of a ROI to be had - even if you count all the halo-effects of a number of potential switchers.

It would be interesting to know how many people (outside those posting here) who have bought a NUC or some other derivative instead of a Mini would have bought a Mini if the one available was more powerful and modular.

My guess is that number is really, really small. Probably less than buyers of Apple Watches.

The iMac exists because some people want a neat desktop that doesn't totally suck in performance. They also don't care about dual screens or screens at all. They just want one nice screen and a computer that is largely invisible and inaudible most of the time.

The iMac delivers on that (when it's not too stressed-out by games or benchmarks or ripping videos).

Clearly, it would be nice to have a modular, entry-level Mac.
But if you look at the numbers, the amount of people who buy such a thing in the form of the Windows-Intel/AMD combination is also clearly shrinking each quarter.
There are really only two segments that show growth: ultra-cheap or high-end.
You can guess which end of the market Apple wants to be with.

 

[nutmac]

I believe not much R&D is going into the Mini because, realistically, there's not much of a ROI to be had - even if you count all the halo-effects of a number of potential switchers.

I agree. Unless miniaturization (NUC or otherwise) brings higher profit margin, which is certainly possible (e.g., cheaper packaging, lower transportation, less material), I don't expect any sort of redesign for Mac mini.

Let's face it. Mac mini is essentially iPod touch of Mac lineup. On rare occasions when it is updated, it's already partially outdated with last generation components.

My gut feeling tells me Mac mini is alive and well, because its form factor allows wide range of niches that other Macs cannot fulfill as well. But my expectation is low.

 

[DesertSurfer]

Just above this reply window, I see Amazon trying to sell me "the world's smallest Windows PC!" But I already have the world's smallest MacOS computer, the (2012) Mac Mini.

 

[cube]

Just above this reply window, I see Amazon trying to sell me "the world's smallest Windows PC!" But I already have the world's smallest MacOS computer, the (2012) Mac Mini.

A Windows stick PC is much smaller than a Mac mini.

But if it's not for ultra portability, I will not bother with an Atom-family desktop (and not at all with a similar laptop or Chromebook).

 

[Crosscreek]

The 2014 will probably remain to rot on the vine until Apple EOLs it.