Happens on all OS's. Feel sorry for the wife. I am sure you remind her daily that MacOS is the way to go right?
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The new Mac mini is almost certainly coming
- Thread starter GabrieleR
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Happens on all OS's. Feel sorry for the wife. I am sure you remind her daily that MacOS is the way to go right?
Firstly, HDDs are not good enough for the low-end iMac nor for the Mac mini. Have you ever tried a Mac running Mac OS X 10.9.5 or above on a mechanical hard drive? Because 10.9.5 was so slow on my stock HDD that it's what made me replace the HDD in my mid-2010 Mac mini for an entry-level SSD (a Kingston SV300, 120GB).
More recent versions are even slower than 10.9.5 on HDDs and Apple are giving a really bad image of Macs by still selling them with "spinners". You pay more to get "the Mac experience" or "the Mac quality" and all you get is a really, really slow computer? Come on. To make matters worst, Apple are using 5400 RPM drives instead of 7200 RPM ones.
Secondly, SSDs are not expensive anymore. Stop believing the prices Apple charges for upgrades and their fat profit margins and look at actual retail prices. Apple could use the slowest SSD connected to a regular SATA port and it would still run circles around any "spinner".
On NewEgg.ca, the lowest-priced 500 HDDs are around 50~60$CAD from Western Digital, Toshiba and Seagate. On the same website, a Kingston A400 120GB SSD (SATA III) is on sale for 40$CAD, the Kingston UV500 120GB SSD is 47$CAD and at 63$CAD you can get a Kingston UV500 (M.2) 120GB SSD. So can we please stop saying that a 120GB SSD is more expensive than a 500GB mechanical hard drive? Because not only is it not true, but it can actually be roughly 33% cheaper.
Or are you telling me Apple cannot do what I did with a simple search that took me less than 60 seconds?
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It has almost nothing to do with drive cost and everything to do with average ASP. The mini can’t be a viable lineup going forward if a majority of buyers would buy an 8G/256GB SSD model for the entry level $499, with little reason to upgrade.
The way Apple lineup pricing works is a relatively inexpensive entry level model with upgrades that get the ASP to a point where a company like Apple, with 120,000 employees and a billion dollars per month R&D spend, can thrive. The company has a huge overhead, and you can’t just ignore that. It’s got to be built in to the price.
If you really want to play the component cost game, you can try. To sell for $500 the components shouldn’t cost more than $200. Put numbers to these components and try to figure out how Apple can sell a $500 mini
CPU
Motherboard
RAM
Storage
Power supply
Case/misc
It gets a lot easier as the selling price goes up, but you’re going to find it pretty tough to make the numbers work for a $500 entry level mini.
Yes, I have tried a Mac running OS X 10.9.5 or above running a HDD. I am using an early 2009 Mac Mini with 5Gb RAM and a HDD running OS X 10.11.6 right now (updated late last year)..... and I recently acquired a 2017 MacBook Air, which has 8GB RAM and an SSD, and is running the latest MacOS, so I can compare.
One thing that I can say is that, using the Mini I don't often see spinning balls these days than when it was running OS X 10.8. I was slow to do the update from Mountain Lion, partially based on the story that more recent iterations of OS X would not work well with a HDD..... A fallacy in my experience.
Boot time for the Air is much faster than the Mini for sure, but it is irrelevant. The Mini on 24/7 (except for the odd power cut or occasional restart). It wakes instantly from sleep mode. Likewise, the Air is generally in sleep mode when not in use.
Opening an app takes a little longer on the Mini, but not so much so that it is a bother. I can take a moment to do something else when an app is opening anyway. In general, however, the apps I use frequently are already open, so in use it is not a biggie.
Finding files does take a little longer on the Mini, but again, not usually so much so that it is a bother. Frequently used files open quite quickly. If a file takes a little while to open, once again it is a moment I can use to do something else. In practice I work with only a few files at any time, so again it is not an issue for me day to day.
It may be a different story for someone who is frequently opening and closing different apps, and / or files, but for me in day to day use the difference between time using a computer with an SSD or a HDD is not significant in day to day use.
SSD makes sense on a portable. It is more robust so it can take the knocks a bit more, and it is smaller and lighter. On a desktop, for someone seeking maximum performance, or who is frequently opening different apps and files stumping up the extra cash for an SSD could might also be worthwhile. But where maximising storage is of greater priority, HDD remains more cost effective by far. For those seeking some of the benefits of both, Fusion Drive is an option.
I fail to fathom the elitist attitude of SSD snobs, who would deny others the HDD option that may be more suited to their situation. HDDs are still cost effective, still have their place, and will be with us on lower end computers of all brands for some time to come...... including the new Mac Mini, which is almost certainly coming.
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They could just use the perfectly capable 28w quad (giving a 50% increase in grunt over the 2012 quad, and a better iGPU than the 45w), thus requiring no more redesign or mods than an updated motherboard.
(Assuming they don't go for a new form as well, which is always possible.)
No offense mate, but your talking absolute rubbish. there is nothing elitist about an ssd in 2018, it's also a very reasonable request for a mini form factor system.
Your opinion, your gobbledygook, your choice, and I'm not your mate.
Average Joe that I am, I reckon it's good that the new Mac Mini is almost certainly coming with a range of storage options to suit different budgets and requirements.
I don't think that anyone should buy a brand new Mac, and discover that apps take so long to open, they must "take a moment to do something else" while they wait.
I have High Sierra running on a 2012 mini, one of the few Macs I have yet to upgrade with an SSD. And it is not a pleasant or quick experience at all. The different an SSD makes is very significant, even when doing something as simple as booting the system and launching a web browser.
Doubling the cores from 2 to 4 or RAM from 4 GB to 8 GB doesn't make as much of a difference for light users as adding an SSD would. Anyone who buys a brand new Mac in 2018 deserves at least a Fusion drive.
Sorry but the only thing that’s certain is it will come with ssd, as it quite blatantly will be based on the mini system with the Intel i7-8809G that was released by intel at the start of the year.. and this came with m.2 slot only.
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I don't think that anyone should buy a brand new Mac, and discover that apps take so long to open, they must "take a moment to do something else" while they wait.
I have High Sierra running on a 2012 mini, one of the few Macs I have yet to upgrade with an SSD. And it is not a pleasant or quick experience at all. The different an SSD makes is very significant, even when doing something as simple as booting the system and launching a web browser.
Doubling the cores from 2 to 4 or RAM from 4 GB to 8 GB doesn't make as much of a difference for light users as adding an SSD would. Anyone who buys a brand new Mac in 2018 deserves at least a Fusion drive.
Fusion is a band aid on a deep wound.. It’s 2018 and macs of any flavour are expensive. It’s about time we demanded some respect from Apple and got a fair spec, and that means ssd.
If it's not viable for Apple to sell an entry level Mac mini for 499$USD then they wouldn't have it listed on their website.
Apple also does not offer an SSD option for the entry-level Mac mini, putting an artificial cost barrier for users who want an SSD. This situation is similar to only putting powerful GPUs with powerful CPUs in iMacs. Some users might need a powerful CPU only but are forced to buy a useless GPU with their iMac.
I don't care one bit about Apple's expenses, the number of employees, etc. We know from numbers published by Apple that Macs only make roughly 10~12% of their profits, and the Mac mini is probably 10% or less of that number. Apple could sell the entry level Mac mini at cost and it would barely be a rounding error on their balance sheets. But it would also mean more Mac users and more people paying for Apple services (music, cloud storage, switch some of them from Android to iPhone, etc). But for that to happen, they have to be happy with the low-end Mac mini.
As for trying to push potential buyers to higher priced models, surely you realize that it only works on a small percentage of buyers. Being the entry-level model means it's targeting people with less buying power and for them it's either the entry-level Mac mini or a PC. You can't upsell to people who can't afford it.
You just came up with an impossible target cost of 200$USD for the parts of the 500$USD Mac mini when we don't know how much Apple currently pays for the parts.
We do not know the costs of industry standard parts when purchasing at Apple's level. For example, while I was able to find three 128GB SSDs for around 40~60$CAD, we have no idea how much Apple would pay for the same part since they order a few million parts per year. But my search did show that even at retail prices, for a single unit, 128GB SSDs are cheaper than 500GB HDDs. The only thing that changes for Apple is that they would make even more profit for each Mac mini sold instead of only making more profits for the other two models.
There's also components with a completely unknown cost, such as the motherboard, power supply and case since they're all custom-made for Apple. And given the age of the parts used in the Mac mini motherboard, their current cost should be nowhere near the cost in 2014.
Ah - suddenly you claim your right to have a differing opinion. Perhaps you remember that next time you call people asking for an SSD „snob“ or „elitist“ ...
It's true we don't know how much Apple pays for the parts but the fact is that over the years Apple don't make as much margin on the Mini to keep the price 'low'. This can be cited as a percentage of the retail price but it will certainly be seen as an absolute amount which is significantly less than could be earned off an iMac which costs over twice as much. I'll cite an old article from Appleinsider but I do recall Phil Schiller making a comment about accepting a smaller margin on the Mini - it might have been at a previous product unveil.
Apple are employing classic upselling marketing tactics (I call it the rule of three) to get average selling price up - the bottom of the range one is there simply to make the middle one better, and the top one will get a few more takers because they've already convinced themselves that the line is good value because of the entry level model.
You can't blame Apple for using artificial tiering to get people to pay more for their specific Mini. Your example of needing to buy a higher SKU Mini just to be able to select an SSD in the build is a classic move for car manufacturers.
Most people's beefs with the way the Mini has gone in 2014 (on this forum anyway) is more to do with the upper models being poor value technically than the base model being rubbish. Upon launch the dual core CPUs available were the best in their class but majority of the controversy has been over lack of user upgradability and the missing quad core option which was probably down to Apple cost cutting (using 1 motherboard design instead of 2).
Apple desktop products are only 20% of the Mac business, with the iMac the majority of that. The Mini is increasingly a rounding error within a rounding error. Part of this is the fault of
The fact of the matter is that the base models of the Mac Mini and 21.5" iMac - glaringly so - are priced down to an entry level but specified in such a way to make the other models look a better deal. It's the same principal across all Apple products.
Those people who can't afford more than the base models? Apple aren't too interested, and are very uninterested in those of us here who claim they won't pay because it's 'too expensive'. They'll simply direct you to a more affordable product such as the iPad.
Typically, Apple make less profit at the start of a product's manufacturing run than they do at the end. They just don't nickel and dime their own price (or officially put sales on) and this - along with relatively lower supply - keeps demand and used prices up.
Yes, the 2014 Mini is very poor value now and continues to be poor value especially with the possibility of a slot-in replacement appearing at similar price tiers very soon now (tm).
Whatever happens at least we’ll have an update finally... won’t we?
I do think Apple was waiting on quad core 28W CPUs before updating, otherwise they could have done CPU updates (at the least) already, before these 8th gen.
When I saw the 2017 iMac 1080p with socketed DDR4 instead of LPDDR3 I thought we were going to get a mini update; but without a quad core part, it would mostly be a RAM and TB3 update. The timing was off, and by waiting until the Coffee Lake 28W quads were released, it’s going to be a much better update.
But it won’t be hexacores that some want; they could do it with the 45W parts + dGPU but at the prices Apple would charge I don’t think the volume would be there. And that would be a lot of heat, they’d have to improve the thermals. I just don’t see it but who knows they could surprise me.
re: the CPUs Apple uses in the entry level iMac 1080p, they’ve always been 15W parts. In 2014/2015 from the Air, then 2017 from the nTB MBP since the MBA stayed with Broadwell. Mainly for segmentation to keep from running into the model above it I think, and to encourage buyers to make that move up.
For instance in 2017, the 15W makes sense, it gives the 1080p a 2.3GHz CPU vs the 3.0GHz in the model above it (the iMac 4K). Even the slowest 28W part is 3.1GHz, which would be confusing if they used it in the entry level since it would give it a higher clock than the model above it.
It would have been far simpler for Apple to use Kaby Lake CPUs as used in the 2017 MacBook Pros and the base iMac 21.5" 2017 - the Mini could then have been excused for having fewer cores (2 cores, 4 threads) but I think engineering resources were already stretched with the keyboardgate, iMac Pro, and the modular mac Pro. With Coffee Lake around the corner the product differentiation would have been built in apart from the fact that the Mini would appear to have higher clock speed due to having just 2 cores.
There's so many different ways for the 21.5" to be specified to avoid conflict with the upper SKUs. The extra threads in most of the mobile offerings is a bit headache inducing while clock speeds, as already cited, will also muddy the water. Would adding Kaby Lake G CPUs across the 21.5" range have helped? Those also have hyper threading turned on and are increasingly less likely to be used in an Apple product now that we see they didn't go into any of the high end 2018 MacBook Pros.
Could Apple even consider using T series CPUs which are desktop CPUs running at a lower wattage in the base iMac? They would need to add a cheap AMD Pro 550X GPU to an i5-8400T (1.7GHz, 6 cores) or i5-8600T (2.3GHz, 6 cores) to ensure graphics performance was acceptable. The upside is they can use the same motherboard and socket across the iMac range.
The current Mini shell was only ever rated for 45w TDP and even then it was thermally tight for the 2012 owners - no chance of 45w + dGPU, or Kaby Lake G in the existing case and Coffee Lake is looking even more thermally difficult.
The ideal should have been a 15w Coffee Lake part with Iris Graphics but even though early benchmarks suggest the UHD620 in the so-called i5-8265U is a significant improvement over the one in the i5-8250U. I think the replacement for the MBA gets this CPU so the Mini matches it across the board.
Professional users needing better graphics performance buy an eGPU.
Don’t forget “geeks” and “dilettantes”, his other insults of choice.
That's okay, I'm waiting for the MacBook Air update!
I feel a lot more hopeful about... nah, still feeling helpless.
Not long now and I’m almost certain that Apple won’t disappoint you, Mickey!
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I think you meant to post to the eternal pessemist’s thread!
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/the-new-mac-mini-is-almost-certainly-not-coming.2009792/
If you need a MacBook Air now, then why wait? Get one now..... I just did and it is loaded, ready to go with files and apps I'll be needing in class for the term ahead, which starts today.
My earlier post re HDD and SSD in use was based on my experience to date with both.
My opinion is that it is that HDD, Fusion Drive and SSD are suited to different desktop users with different expectations, requirements and budgets. In the iMac range Apple has sensibly decided to offer the range of options, and is almost certainly likely to do likewise for the new Mac Mini that is almost certainly coming.
In the MacBook range Apple went all SSD several years back because it's size, weight and robustness make it way more appropriate than a HDD for use in a portable computer.
Your dogmatic opinion is that SSD should be the only option in a Mac Mini. I fail to fathom why, beyond ensuring that the low end Mac is affordable to patricians, but beyond the means of the average pleb. Elitist rubbish, I reckon.
A surreal exchange that beats like a clock in the forever kingdom of "the New Mac Mini is almost certainly coming" mixed with all sorts of "genius knowledge" in the absence of specifics from Apple - this and the relentless lack of logic in Apple's departure from transparency and delivery and you have a really interesting mix.
Not to impede anyone from pontificating or lapsing into a circular drone - it's all good because if Apple had any real seeds we'd all be doing something else - I sincerely hope!
and to set it straight ... a computer is generally about getting something done - if the job at hand is being handled in a manner that satisfies who really cares what anyone else thinks or calls a line of reasoning.
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I'm calling BS. I have two Airs and a mid spec 2014 Mac mini that I bought new in 2017. It had a 1TB HDD and was painfully slow. I mean really really slow. Granted if you started the machine, opened all your programs you wanted to use, and then closed them, you might find if you clicked them again the start up times for the programs may have increased, but unless you kept the computer running and opened everything first, it was really slow.
I replaced the HDD with a Samsung EVO SSD and it was night and day faster. On par with my 2014 and 2015 MacBook Airs. Not sure where you are coming from.
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