I don’t understand why a Apple hasn’t lowered the price on the 2018 Mac Mini. The base model is still $800. That seems too high for a 1.5 year old headless entry level Mac with 128 GB of storage.
It's Apple's modus operandi that the price point remains the price throughout the lifetime of a product with very few exceptions. It runs counter to how PC prices 'depreciate slowly over a matter of months before a product is replaced with new CPUs etc. But it keeps residuals high.
It also makes the opening price a 'bargain' comparatively speaking during the lifetime of a product. Where it goes wrong is when the product vastly outstays its welcome. 2 years is stretching it but the 2013 Mac Pro (6 years) and 2014 Mac mini (4 years) really took the biscuit.
The original Mac mini case solution was designed to cool 45w CPUs, and the cooling solution was enhanced to manage the 65w TDP from Coffee Lake desktops. There's probably no doubt that it could deal with the equivalent Comet Lake S CPUs which could allow an 8 core, 16 thread i9 SKU.
It's this cooling solution that makes me wonder if adding a 45w H series Comet Lake CPU to the Mini is a better bet for sustained CPU work even though it will probably be a hard sell in terms of benchmarks.
Some users may disagree with the efficacy of the heat output from the 2018 Mac mini, of course, and others would point to the expense of adding an eGPU to the package to make it a headless all-rounder that many are looking at.
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Never said Apple would or should completely dump the Intel relationship. It’s about second sourcing, the 101 of purchasing, to avoid being to dependent on a single supplier.
Apple could keep Intel in the “Pro” devices, but switch to AMD for non-Pro machines. They may even kill two birds with one stone and differentiate the mini in “Pro” (Intel, more expensive) and consumer (AMD, less expensive). With the price hike that came with the 2018 minis, there is now lots of room for a more affordable desktop Mac, which the mini had been for many years.
Side effect: Gaming capabilities would be improved (Apple Arcade) and a multi-monitor / high-resolution setup would be less of a problem (if any at all), which the current mini’s Intel iGPU seems to be for quite some users.
Got to consider how much of Intel's discounting includes hefty exclusivity bonus.
Bear in mind also that the Mac mini can't cool a Ryzen 65w CPU which would require a dGPU - and Colo companies could not care less about extra integrated GPU power.
Apple Arcade is going to be better off staying with the ARM platform, gaming on the macOS platform will be limited to years overdue PC ports - Metal needs years of development and I still don't see Apple doing a Microsoft and paying for exclusive development of macOS gaming titles when they could be making an ARM based AppleTV games console instead.
There might be space for a $2k Mini Pro but Apple seem intent to making users buy into the iMac platform for that sort of money.
