Will the next Mac mini have a redesign?

[addictive]

We expect the iMac, MacBook Pro and possibly the MacBook Air to have a redesign when new products are released in 2021. But it strikes me as entirely possible that Apple could give the Mac mini a redesign too. The M1 or it's successor doesn't run with the heat associated with Intel CPUs and with the SoC everything takes up a little less sleep.

Does it make sense for Apple to make the Mini smaller or is the current footprint suitable for everyone (would enterprise benefit from smaller models?)?

Clearly we are hoping for an improvement on the I/O from the M1 Mac mini.

 

[salamanderjuice]

Uhhh. You can already buy the M1 mini and it looks exactly the same as the 2018 Intel mini except with 2 less thunderbolt ports and a different color.

Apple has been so conservative with Mac designs this past decade I doubt they'll do anything for the M2 or M1X or whatever mini. Maybe if they make a 2 in 1 MacBook we'll get something fresh but they only seem interested in aluminum slabs with black glass accents these days. Last original thing they did was the 2013 MP and they walked it back to a riff on the cheese grater.

 

[pldelisle]

The design of the mac mini has always been the same since inception. I don’t count the removal of the DVD drive as a « redesign ». It’s the only « Major » change that happened since the inception of the mac mini. The design has converged, it’s optimal and can accept even higher powered SoC, so 99.9999% it will just never change.

 

[OldMike]

The design of the mac mini has always been the same since inception. I don’t count the removal of the DVD drive as a « redesign ». It’s the only « Major » change that happened since the inception of the mac mini. The design has converged, it’s optimal and can accept even higher powered SoC, so 99.9999% it will just never change.

In my opinion there were only two versions of the Mini. The original PowerPC G4 version (which also had a following Intel version in the same body), and then the current version - both with and without DVD drive.

I have owned every model of the Mac Mini and personally love the current design (sans Bluetooth issues). I agree also that its optimal and now that we have switched over to Apple Silicon, basically sky is the limit in this form factor.

There are also several companies that have made major financial investments in infrastructure surrounding rack mounting this form factor, and I am sure they are hoping that the design doesn't change drastically as well. I feel bad for Mac Stadium's latest round of major infrastructure upgrades in order to accommodate the 2018 Mac Mini's power and cooling requirements. That was a costly expenditure that was ultimately completely unnecessary .

 

[Erehy Dobon]

There are some plausible downsides to a Mac mini chassis shrink.

One is the number of connectivity options, meaning external ports.

The second is higher heat in the same space.

It should be noted that the Mac mini's power supply is housed within the unit, it is not a wall wart.

That leads us to another major issue. Noise. A smaller enclosure would be subject to more heat but smaller diameter fans need to run at higher speeds to evacuate the same amount of air. That means more noise. It's the same issue with the small fan in my bathroom's ceiling vent.

 

[Fishrrman]

If I recall, a number of companies buy dozens/hundreds of minis and use them "in racks" as servers, etc.

If Apple changed the external case size and shape, they wouldn't fit into the same racks any longer. Hence, the form factor remains the same as the internals change...

 

[4sallypat]

If I recall, a number of companies buy dozens/hundreds of minis and use them "in racks" as servers, etc.

If Apple changed the external case size and shape, they wouldn't fit into the same racks any longer. Hence, the form factor remains the same as the internals change...

Agree - the Mini form factor currently being used has been in place over 10 years now - I have had all of them from 2009-2020...

My organization would freak if the form changed on the Mini - we deploy hundreds throughout the sites as caching servers, file servers, web/app programs, user backups, OD/AD/LDAP authentication - all in a rack environment....