The 2014 base model Mini shares the MBA CPU of the time - HD5000 - which is NOT Iris Graphics. I guess Apple determined it wasn't good enough to drive retina graphics. HD5000 is the same class of graphics as HD620.
The higher wattage parts are able to sustain higher performance for longer be it driven by higher CPU clock speed or graphics performance. That's the main difference with all the CPUs. You can add more CPU cores, GPU Compute Units etc, you keep increasing the TDP. Even within the CPUs themselves you could run 15w CPUs at 25w (TDP-up)
to allow slightly higher base frequency.
In terms of performance, look at the so called poverty spec 15w CPU that Apple happen to use in the MBA (it's a Broadwell chipset which is actually a generation NEWER than the Haswell part in the 2014 Mac Mini) and also until very recently the
2015 21.5" base model iMac. When that iMac got refreshed for
2017 after an 18 month gap it got a bump only to the latest generation 15w CPU as used in the 2017 MacBook Pro. In itself that was quite a bump - from 1.4Ghz to 2.3Ghz and from HD5000 graphics to Iris Plus Graphics 640.
And yet that iMac STILL doesn't get retina graphics while the same combination in a MacBook Pro non touch bar DOES. The iMac has native resolution of 1920x1080 while the MacBook Pro non touch bar is 2560x1600.
I'll be watching with interest when the iMacs get refreshed because logically next time out the entire range goes retina and when that happens Apple will surely use a desktop i5 CPU+GPU like the other SKUs in the retina 4k range because the retina 21.5" iMac is DCI-4k 4096x2304.
Assuming engineering costs must be added in any time a line needs to be refreshed, I'd say that the old style Broadwell MBA remains because it's easy to keep churning those out year after year as long as the parts remain available. They could keep selling them for some time to come at little extra cost. It's all down to maximising the profit and loss.
The same theory exists for the Mac Mini using Haswell parts. Logically on the next refresh they'll have an Apple USB-C monitor available and will want to give it the capability to run a 4k or 5k display with acceptable performance. Thats surely the point when they have to get rid of the antique MBA and the 2014 Mini as the last remaining machines with Thunderbolt 2.
We agree that 32Gb in a laptop is not possible because apple use LPDDR3 and not DDR4. I reckon Apple just won't make the engineering change to allow 32Gb. We simply won't see it on a consumer mobile CPU based product.
Hampering performance isn't sufficient criticism to have affected Apple in any way when they put 1.4Ghz MBA CPUs into Macs with spinning hard disks. It's just building things down to a price.
Coming up from below this entire time is the iPad range. Look what you can buy for low end Mini money and many people have Cloud based solutions for storage. Hopefully this and the possibility that the modular Mac Pro gets a price tag significantly close to the iMac Pro we then get a space in the range for a headless desktop range from $1000-$2500 which is what loads of people in this thread are really interested in.
I keep returning to the thought of Apple not wanting to threaten the iMacs as 4 core 8 thread devices, which is why I go dual core and low energy for Mac Mini. Even putting 28w Iris Plus Graphics in would make the 13" touch bar MBP look overpriced. Strip the box down, get rid of 2.5" hard drives and start the range with SSD only so Jony Ive can create a ever so tall and thin case for optimal wifi. That's why I think the Mini will get 15w CPU across the board and users can get performance boosts by adding eGPU and external storage.
If the existing case must remain then why not engineer a huge heatsink inside for even more silent running?
