“Apple’s Mac mini celebrated its third birthday this week, marking three years since the device was last updated,” Juli Clover reports for MacRumors. “The lack of attention Apple has given to the Mac mini has left many Mac users wondering about the future of the machine and whether there are updates to come.”
“MacRumors reader Krar decided to email Apple CEO Tim Cook to get an update on the Mac mini and he received a response,” Clover reports. “Cook said it was ‘not time to share any details,’ but he confirmed that the Mac mini will be an important part of the company’s product lineup in the future.”
“With 2017 coming to a close, we’re not likely to see a new Mac mini until 2018 at the earliest,” Clover writes. “A refreshed machine could use Kaby Lake Refresh chips, and as all chips appropriate for the Mac mini feature four cores, a new machine would likely reintroduce quad-core performance.”
Read more, and see Cook’s email, in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Ah, the ever-extensible pipeline.
Sometimes Apple, the world’s most profitable and most valuable company, still operates as if they only have five guys from NeXT working around the clock trying to do all the work on a shoestring budget. — MacDailyNews, April 4, 2017
SEE ALSO:
Apple’s embarrassing Mac Pro mea culpa – April 4, 2017
Who’s going to buy a Mac Pro now? – April 4, 2017
Mac Pro: Why did it take Apple so long to wake up? – April 4, 2017
Apple sorry for what happened with the Mac Pro over the last 3+ years – namely, nothing – April 4, 2017
Apple to unveil ‘iMac Pro’ later this year; rethought, modular Mac Pro and Apple pro displays in the pipeline – April 4, 2017
Apple’s apparent antipathy towards the Mac prompts calls for macOS licensing – March 27, 2017
Why Apple’s new Mac Pro might never arrive – March 10, 2017
Dare we hold out hope for the Mac Pro? – March 1, 2017
Apple CEO Cook pledges support to pro users, says ‘we don’t like politics’ at Apple’s annual shareholders meeting – February 28, 2017
Yes, I just bought a ‘new’ Mac Pro (released on December 19, 2013 and never updated) – January 4, 2017
Attention, Tim Cook! Apple isn’t firing on all cylinders and you need to fix it – January 4, 2017
No, Apple, do not simplify, get better – December 23, 2016
Rare video shows Steve Jobs warning Apple to focus less on profits and more on great products – December 23, 2016
Marco Arment: Apple’s Mac Pro is ‘very likely dead’ – December 20, 2016
How Tim Cook’s Apple alienated Mac loyalists – December 20, 2016
Apple’s not very good, really quite poor 2016 – December 19, 2016
Apple’s software has been anything but ‘magical’ lately – December 19, 2016
Lazy Apple. It’s not hard to imagine Steve Jobs asking, ‘What have you been doing for the last four years?’ – December 9, 2016
Rush Limbaugh: Is Apple losing their edge? – December 9, 2016
AirPods: MIA for the holidays; delayed product damages Apple’s credibility, stokes customer frustration – December 9, 2016
Apple may have finally gotten too big for its unusual corporate structure – November 28, 2016
Apple has no idea what they’re doing in the TV space, and it’s embarrassing – November 3, 2016
Apple’s disgracefully outdated, utterly mismanaged Mac lineup is killing sales – October 13, 2016
Apple takes its eye off the ball: Why users are complaining about Apple’s software – February 9, 2016
Open letter to Tim Cook: Apple needs to do better – January 5, 2015
Mac Mini Pro!
You already have a MMP. It is affectionately known as the Trash Can.
Apple needs to update its Macs annually without fail. The mini is a relic, just like the stupid trashcan. Style before substance at the Cooked Apple.
Yea, right. Talk, talk, talk about the mini, for years now.
Give us a truly updated and upgradable Mac Mini. I need a new headless server and Mac Minis make great servers.
When years go by without changes or steady improvements, dead-ends or at the very least price drops to the Mac line that is the very definition of grossly incompetent management.
The Mac Dept. needs it’s own extremely attentive staff constantly striving for improvements and making customers delighted and happy – or a Business 101 approach.
Pul-LEASE! no more speeches where it gets to the point you have to reassure customers “how important” this or that is to the company. We’ve heard it WAY too often. We should NEVER have to hear it because you will have already addressed it with satisfying products. You should be mortified and embarrassed to have it get to that excusatory point. Real action, not “reassuring” ephemeral words, is all we need.
And no more resting on your Mac laurels if you want the job – because that’s what it takes. Just talk to customers and take a trip into their world to get clued in.
Excellent points! I hope Apple is reading …
Really?
Not to mention the last Mini was a giant step backwards.
Real computer companies ship products, not empty promises.
How about Mac Pros??
Bloody hell you have a short memory it’s not many years ago that practically every computer company did that. Indeed it’s only Apple’s lead that got the lines of HP and others off their lazy asses. Sadly of late they passed their cushions onto Apple sadly. I think there are only so many cycles you can get away with that so hopefully they will get a shot up those asses, especially now that with all sorts of home automation both it and AppleTV have whole new possibilities available.
There is a temptation to sympathize with Spy, but I know all to well the limitations in a company when you have a whole range of products and simply can’t update everything every year or two.
There are a limited, (even though large) set of people to handle major upgrades which have multiple significant products to deal with.
Apple has an embarrassment of money resources to ensure every single item gets regularly updated, with plenty left over for profits and dividends. As MDN says Apple needs to stop acting like 5 guys are running crazily around trying to get things done and leaving too many things undone in the process, even though it certainly appears that way.
You make many great points expounding on MDN’s take.
The resources versus the results is astoundingly ABSENT.
What the hell are they doing inside Apple? Primo spaceship work digs, highest market cap on the planet, billions of idle cash in the offshore banks and not a care in the world.
Except when it comes to the pariah Mac Dept. Sad …
HP makes an X2 mini that opens for user access, goes all the way from i3 through Quad Core i7 to Xeon, can be had with NVIDIA discrete GPUs, and has a 3 year warranty for less than Apple sells an i5 dual core with Vampire video for that is sealed shut.
Apple needs to up it’s game.
Yup you are spot on there but just maybe the belly dragging days are coming to an end with the stick they have been taking this past 18mths and more. If they were working the way SJ reportedly had them doing then I dread to think what if actually was in that period and beyond.
If HP were smart, they’d make this little beast Hackintosh compatible. They’d have a million orders tomorrow from disgruntled Mac mini owners willing give an OS transplant a shot. I’ve got a few uses for a Mac mini, but won’t buy the current 3-year old model.
If that was a mac mini, I’d buy two tomorrow.
HP knows what they’re doing.
Tim Cook doesn’t.
I’m afraid I’m going to have to agree with MDN on this one. There is no excuse for the lack of even simple upgrades to the Mac mini. If you need more vice-presidents to get the job done, then do it!
Doesn’t seem to be Apples way does it annoyingly, they let things slip just so they can find an excuse for a big public relaunch for publicity so the new version looks that much better by comparison. Don’t think that tactic works these days as the opposition have raised their game and know where the money is to be made so that their cheap profit free junk can do the job of seeking market share.
The stupid part of all this is that you don’t need a squadron of top-flight engineers to create a better Mini. It wouldn’t take a huge budget to engineer a decent upgrade that would use basically the same form factor.
It would be nice if you could open it and add memory and upgrade the hard drive though. Make the case about a half inch wider, put in two captive Phillips head screws, and there you are. Have airflow slots along the bottom edges to allow for faster processors.
I just want to upgrade our quad core i7 Mini to a new model… (2012 was a long time ago). Had to skip the last refresh with only dual core CPU’s available for us. Even with 16 GB and a 1 TB SSD, it is showing its age.
I want to get a newer MacMini that supports 4K video. My 2012 i7 quad-core is powerful enough but the integrated Intel GPU is completely outdated. I’ll be getting a 4K HDTV next year and I want an updated MacMini to power it. I have my fingers crossed. I honestly don’t understand why Apple can’t do as much as HP when it comes to designing a mini-desktop. Is it possible that no Intel integrated GPU can drive a 4K display smoothly enough? If not, I may have to look for another solution. Apple is really disappointing me. If cheap streaming boxes can support 4K, then why not the MacMini?
Tim Cook just loves to talk.
Shut up and show some real Mac products already.
Dude, get a grip on reality. Cook was responding to an email.
You said it ALL. Time for empty talk is OVER. Put up or SHUT UP …
This email, if genuine, can serve Tim Cook well when he pleads insanity in the shareholder civil suits filed against him claiming incompetence and malfeasance by Tim during his tenure. Surely, this proves the main does not have a working brain. Or, maybe he is working on a stand up comedy act for some San Francisco night clubs.
Seems to me only Apple can do this (delay, delay, delay) and get away with it. 3 years is like a hundred in the computer industry.
forward all complaints to:
Pipeline Timmy
CEO, Apple inc.
One Infinite Circle Jerk
Cupertino CA
Since Tim Cooky took the helm, Apple has morphed into increasingly money/profit savvy company. It’s only recently when shareholders kicked his lazy ass, he jumped and had his VP’s arrange a hasty and unprecedented public apology for not not taking care of anything but iPhone (i.e., no focus on Mac line of products). Cooky suggesting that Mac Mini is in pipeline although unable to share any detail is indeed a good sign. I want a Mini upgrade. But being money first, he is not going to announce it until sometime after the announcement of iMac refresh.
No, if you’re talking about Macs, nowadays, a good sign is actually… you know, buying one. 🙂 Anything else is just vaporware.
….he will fúck-up the iPhone too, just give him time.
We may already be seeing that with the lackluster sales of iPhone 8 and reports of people saving money and choosing the 7 instead. And the other factor not to be discounted is the pent up demand for X that may change the entire dynamic.
I’m not qualified to accurately judge what Apple should be doing, but do have a few thoughts:
If they have not done so, kill production of the 7 line after the debut of 8. For the few very worthy improvements in 8, raise the price a modest $50, not $150 which smacks of greed.
And if pipeline Tim did not learn by now, Apple customers WANT THREE SIZES of iPhones — SMALL (SE), MEDIUM, LARGE.
Simple! Everyone is happy …
2020 IS considered the future 😉 And “Doorstops for the new spaceship campus” could be considered an important part… IT CHECKS OUT!
I’d say… don’t hold out hope. There is a very good chance that this will be fine for those with an iPhone and want an inexpensive computer to access photos and create videos on.
…it will be an important part of our future line up.
Oh god, what are they going to do to it? We just want a computer with ports, a hatch, nonproprietary screws and no glue.
Hmm. That HP computer looks interesting.
Bring back Tevanian.
He’d better say that. I keep sending him pictures of the bunny… UPGRADE THE Mac mini OR THE RABBIT GETS IT.
For such a “future minded” company, I’m tired of waiting for the future of the Mac. Year after year after year. I’m sick of hearing about iPhones.
We should threaten to boycott the iPhone until Macs are the best PCs on the market.
There IS a future to the Mac, it’s the same future as MacOS9 and the Apple II if you get my drift.
Tim Cook is aware of the new fangled invention called TV.
Now Tim Cook is made ware that Apple produces a product called Mac Mini.
You can’t slip anything past old Timmy.
I really cared and waited patiently for the new mac mini, but got fed up when they gimped it. It forced me to learn to build a hackintosh. After that I ended up converting all my old PC’s to hacks.
If these get interconnected on a pile and usable in an efficient cluster, Apple will blow everything with it!
It could even replace the sole MacPro forever!
They either won’t be very powerful (think primarily a wireless charging stand for your iPhone) or they would be cost prohibitive to ensure they’re powerful enough to satisfy the pros (think iMac Pro).
Even if you had all the money in the world, it could not buy UNLIMITED access to talent and innovate people. Just as there has always been one Apple, you can’t merely hire great and talented tech people. There is only a limited pool of ones that think different to draw from.
And your point is the the richest company in history cannot hire innovative people?
Two words: Scott Forstall.