Probably Intel will keep manufacturing certain class (or classes) of processors for as long, as there is a sufficient demand on them on the market (it is hard to imagine what could possibly prevent them from doing so, from technical point of view, other than the natural manufacturing equipment wear and tear, and even that is not really a serious obstacle, as the equipment can be repaired or replaced).
Well , why not?
Do you have experience on Fusion drive with 32GB ssd side?
Isn't this self-evident? Isn't this this like it has been and will be forever?
Mostly right. You make some interesting points. But defending a 5400 Spinner? Trust me when I tell you this, no one wants that crap. And Apple, believe me when I tell you this, can easily afford a decent SSD. EASILY. And I am not talking that fusion crap. That is just a whole nother level of suck.Isn't this self-evident? Isn't this this like it has been and will be forever?
This isn't binary thing.
I believe that people in charge in Apple think that role of a mac is mainly support iOS ecosystem and they want us users to use iOS devices as our "main computers". This changes a lot, things like what do you buy as a product and what as service and even who owns your data. So, it's natural that even mini "is important to us", but not so important that it used to be. This is again whats wrong with these statements. The question isn't binary. The question is, how important mini is to Apple and how and which way the importance has changed over the years.
If Apple were divided to two companies (I just wish antitrust laws would somehow recognize operating system and UI as important than some hoadware specs) The Mac Company would act very differently than Apple now.
I think mini was a "halo effect" product before, but it isn't that anymore. I guess that fewer and fewer are buying entry level mini and gets so amazed how good it is, that buys next phone, ipad and watch from Apple. And of course laptop and imac.
Entry level mini is for people who has very light usage for it or don't know any better.
2014 entry level model is pretty much same thing than 8GB iphone.
It is only made to show low price and like somebody will never like what Apple does with mini, Apple can always find some people that like 8GB iphone.
And we can all find somebody who is "just fine" with entry level 2014 mini. But there are fewer than before and any step away from the lightest usage makes it garbage. I would find very hard to explain to a customer why mini (even the most expensive mini) cannot handle cheap 4k monitor or television very well. Fortunately the sales people are more gifted to this than me. The gap between a modern computer and mini has widened a lot. And gpu is its weakest point.
Apple could easily and very cheaply make next entry level mini much more powerful. Although, there is much "spinner hate" in this thread, we should remember that spinners are much more faster than eg. a decade ago (when Apple started offering ssd instead of hdd, 2009?). For example IOPS has tripled. Yes, ssd is still 50x more, but still using latest hdd, would make mini faster. And today, just for few bucks more, Apple could offer sshd with 8GB ssd side, which would be "like ssd" in light usage.
I think it is not reasonable to expect Apple to lower much their ssd margins. For mini to be "ssd only" would mean that there's no affordable mini. If they keep similiar pricing, it would be very good for users if base model would be sshd or you could get 1TB sshd for +$50 like you can now get 1TB fusion for +$250.
When macs were more important to Apple than today, they were updated more frequently. If there would be The Mac company, I'll bet that even a mini would get some kind of update every second year. Or price lowered.
I know that there's no official numbers on mini sales, but has anybody seen over the years any estimations based on surveys etc.?
But is there sufficient demand?
You can of course wish that Apple would start to sell ssd's dirt cheap, they have money to do what they want. But do you actually believe that they would do so? This is not about "affording".
Personally I think the halo effect still exists, but in the form of what I'd call an "reverse halo". Quite simply, people who use Macs for their productivity work are more inclined to switch to or stay with an iPhone over an Android device due to their better interoperability with the rest of the Apple ecosystem - in this case, their Mac.
It doesn't really matter that current spinners are marginally faster than they were a decade ago. It's not really even a question of an SSD being 50x faster - it's just that the Mini with a mechanical hard drive is 50x slower than the competition. SSDs are practically the baseline today. Even the low-end netbooks and chromebooks pretty much come standard with flash storage.
I don't really want my songs to play faster. I don't want to watch all my videos in fas-forward. I have no desire to try and play games where Everything flashes past in a blur.
SSDs are wonderful devices. But there are better ways to speed up a computer, such as better CPUs, GPUs, and RAM. It is only because Apple, in their infinite wisdom, have chosen not to allow mini users to even think about these things that the cult of the SSD is so strong in this forum.
Sure they're not telling the audience that there're two os's. Just that this is a Mac and AppleTV in One package, with the price of old Mac Mini.
Or it could be, that iMac Pro is the last Intel machine from Apple, and the Mac Pro will have something new, something not released yet from AMD & Apple.
Apple showed the iMac Pro last week at the Final Cut Pro demo and it is Xeon.
Yes, and therefore I wrote: it'll be the last Intel machine.
