The most expensive Mini ever? It's costing an ARM and a leg to use it for just a year!
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The new Mac mini is almost certainly coming
- Thread starter GabrieleR
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Not finally..... New Mac Minis have bee coming for years, at varying intervals, and will almost certainly continue to do so.
Demo is the keyword.
I'm talking GA.
MSFT now have a lot more developers on macOS/iOS/iPadOS than 15 years ago, though.
So it could mean there's new hardware for Christmas.
It would've been nice to see Lightroom Classic working rather than the CC version, but good to see PS working.
it'll be interesting to see if the newly compiled binaries will work with older legacy plugin's like my Nik filters.
2014 - 2018 -2020 are pretty much recycling of same. They are not "new" product.
I fail to see your point......
New Mac Minis have been coming since 2005, at varying intervals, and will almost certainly continue to come.
These new ones should start shipping this week according to the keynote. $500.00 for the Universal App Quick Start Program and $100.00 for a Developer account, so it's $600.00 for the whole year, or less time, at Apple's discretion. I will be waiting for the new products to launch by the end of the year, probably around December 31, 2020, or something.
With the switch to ARM, I could easily see the Mini go back to being updated yearly, or at worst semi-annually... almost certainly.
That would be my hope, anyway.
It could just as easily be cancelled
Honestly, the only reason Apple used the Mini for the dev box is that they wanted something cheap, quick, and easy to fill this short term gap. The Mini fits that the best. After that? You've got the MBA starting at $1000 and the iPad Pro starting at a bit less than that (and they will soon mostly run the same software). The Mini has never sold well. So it wouldn't surprise me if they just cancelled it
Now with that said... Once Apple starts full production of PC level ARM processors, they're going to end up with quite a few that pass all the tests but only bin to a low speed. Maybe they could use some of them for a MBA / MB. Maybe. However many of them would probably be considered "worthless" to Apple for any other computer. Apple could decide then to keep the Mini around just to soak up some of these otherwise worthless chips (with Apple's alternative being throwing them away, since they're definitely not going to sell them on the open market). If Apple would keep the cost of the rest of the components down, then they could easily make a $500 Mini again. Low speed, high core count parts would also be useful for a lot of datacenter server tasks
A little while ago, right after the new iPad keyboard started shipping, my granddaughter spilled water on her MacBook Air. Grandpa to the rescue! 😂 I thought she might be a perfect candidate for the iPad Pro, but when I priced them, was surprised to see that the cheapest one (including keyboard) was about $300 more than a base 8gb/256gb MacBook Air. So I got her another MBA (and she promised to be much more careful with it).
But maybe prices have changed since then? Or perhaps refurbs are available (there weren't any at the time)?
You can get the 11" ipad pro for $799 brand new and a KB for it for $100. Like I said, a .bit. less, but not much less. Apple really, really, likes that $1000 price point...
$ or £? I paid £2500! Still I know that although a new Mac mini is most certainly coming, it won’t be coming to this house for a good few years (otherwise Mrs AFB will kill me!).
New Mac Minis will almost certainly continue to come at irregular intervals, as they have done in the past.
I could well be an early adopter of the ARM Mini, as I was with the 2005 original Mini. I am on only my second Mac Mini since then. I anticipated the 2018 incarnation would be my third, but with specs an price more appropriate for a pro than an average Joe, I passed on that one.
As a desk-top, I would expect a Mac Mini to be an infrequent purchase, one that would last a while. Thus I don't give a hoot if updates are somewhat infrequent. Just that new Mac Minis continue to come from time to time, as technology moves on in some significant way, is fine by me.
Oh ye of little faith..... Cynics have been predicting the demise of the Mac Mini since mid 2007.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/place-your-bets-how-long-until-mac-mini-updates.327396/
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Not sure what the iPad has to do with anything. But there’s less reason than ever to cancel the Mini with the switch to ARM.
At the end of that event, they talked about ARM Macs coming soon. While saying this, they had the Mac Mini box on the screen behind him. While it's likely the dev box people mentioned above, I'm crossing all my fingers it's an ARM Mac Mini going retail. People keep talking about an ARM MacBook being the 1st ARM Mac, but I'm hoping for the Mini.
The first ARM Mac for general sale will have an integrated multi-touch screen, because how else are they going to drive home that iPhone apps are now first-class on macOS? Big Sur chunking up some UI elements also points to this.
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iPad doesn't run macOS. I wish it did because my iPP would get used a lot more if I could do software development on it.
My bet is on the nextgen iMac and MBP with Apple Silicon having touch screens in addition to traditional input.
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If that was true, it would have been part of the WWDC developer sessions and it would have been reported.
That being said, touch may come to macOS 11 down the road, but it will not be in Big Sur.
One fun thing - one of the Apple Silicon Macs doing demos was driving the Apple Pro Displays.
Between that and the work with AMD on custom designed highest end GPUs being announced and released first on Mac Pro - I wouldn’t put it past Apple to have Apple Silicon be able to connect to the beefiest of AMD GPUs. Al Macs going Apple Silicon in 2 years? Makes Mac mini a good stop gap sweet point to see how the desktop Macs change in the next 2 years.
Between that and the work with AMD on custom designed highest end GPUs being announced and released first on Mac Pro - I wouldn’t put it past Apple to have Apple Silicon be able to connect to the beefiest of AMD GPUs. Al Macs going Apple Silicon in 2 years? Makes Mac mini a good stop gap sweet point to see how the desktop Macs change in the next 2 years.