“Prompted by a MacRumors reader on the future of the Mac mini, Tim Cook replied that the mini will be ‘an important part of the company’s product lineup in the future,'” Riccardo Mori blogs. “It was last updated in October 2014, which in tech years is a long time ago. That last refresh was a bit controversial, too, because the 2014 Mac mini was a step back in terms of upgradability and versatility when compared with its 2012 predecessor.”
“It’s a true pity that Apple has been neglecting this Mac. I still think there’s a market for a compact, affordable Mac such as the mini, though I presume the dream of Apple’s current executives is that people would all choose an iPad over a Mac mini in that price range,” Mori writes. “I think Bob Burrough (who previously worked at Apple) has best articulated Apple’s lack of interest in the mini when he tweeted:”
Like how would they answer “Why didn’t you update the Mac mini?”
— Bob Burrough (@bob_burrough) October 20, 2017
The only answer is “Oops. We forgot.”
— Bob Burrough (@bob_burrough) October 20, 2017
“Still, Cook says they’re not leaving the Mac mini behind,” Mori writes. “What’s next for this machine, then? I’ve been thinking about a few possible scenarios…”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: So…
I am basing my opinion on what I have seen from the past couple of Mac Mini updates.
Slimmer, smaller, sealed, not upgradable.
But it will look really, really cool. Worthy of an announcement video about how it was created.
I’m eager to see the video announcing how a smaller, slimmer, sealed, and nonupgradable Mac Mini is worth the money needed to purchase dead end technology.
Unfortunately, you might be right. I hope not. Poll says it all.
While I have no personal need or desire for a Mac Mini, the way it has been ignored for so long is just another warning sign that Apple no longer values the Mac or we Mac owners very much. It is another reason why I keep my old Mac running and have not yet pulled the trigger on a new Mac. I can’t help wondering if I will be buying into what will soon be an ORPHANED system. Very sad.
Maybe the iPad will get so powerful that all we have to do is hook it up to a big monitor and ZAP! we have a new super duper iMac equivalent. Maybe. Or maybe we will see the Mac lineup waste away. I won’t be spending much money on them until Apple gives us an affirmation.
The next evolution of the Mac Mini is simple: your iPhone.
Imagine simply plug in your iPhone into power and it connects wirelessly with the monitor and keyboard and mouse. Done.
It’s not a matter of if, it’s a question of when. And with iCloud (files) now fully integrated… it’s fast approaching.
Expect the MacBook Air and other portable products to follow.
Agreed. The iPhone is so powerful now that all you’ll need soon is a Monitor, keyboard, Magic Trackpad and Dock.
Mac Minis make great headless servers.
What’s a server without head???
Oh, wait-
Not if i am locked into an ios store. Not going to happen. Some of us believe in personal computing instead of ceding all data control to a corporation that you imagine to be benevolent …. today.
It seems applecynic has created a new username.
Why can’t ipads be like that ? Damn ! If I could plug my iPhone into a 9.7in “shell” and have a 9.7″ iPad, then plug it in to a 12.9in “shell” and have a 12.9 iPad, holy F that would be awesome !
My personal hope is that we see two minis, but I bought it.
One small sealed unit at a great price and one a little larger than the current model with upgradeability. Sort of a mini pro.
I don’t know, it looks like the trashcan is the mini pro and nobody truly likes it. For a desktop, Apple needs to put their engineers in the lead and sideline the marketing and designer douchebags for once. All Jony did with his cute trash can was remove Apple from power computing buyers for the last 4 years. A mini pro makes no sense — like the trash can, you get the worst of the mini nonexpansion plus the price of a pro. Can’t do that again or the Mac will only wither further. I would rather see Apple move back to plastic cases and other obvious cost savings before letting Jony thermally constrain another Mac.
Three sizes makes sense to me, and every desktop deserves basic user expandability.
Mac mini with dual 2.5″ drive slots, upgradeable ram, soldered cpu and integrated gpu
Mac – bigger with dual full 3.5″ drive slots, twice the ports, user replaceable gpu
Mac Pro – beast with the works upgradeable to be as powerful as the fastest wintel box on the market.
One more thing: if you’re going to push usb-c, then get on with it. Just give buyers a handful of free adapters with each purchase instead of being so goddamned cheap, Apple.
The Mac as a whole is taking a back seat. Older than the mini, is the Pro. So go figure. Headless Macs are not Apple’s favorite. They even dumped Apple Cinema Displays. Vote on what you see, not on what you are told.
I just upgraded my iMac. It was a while to get to 7th Gen Core i7. The iMac Pro will be cool or hot no matter how you look at it. But headless Mac certainly are missing the love.
Would be funnier if Tim had answered, “what’s a Mac Mini?”
It’s evident from the past three years that Tim Cook hasn’t a clue what a Mac Mini or a Mac Pro should be.
I’ll bet he did say that under his breath before emailing another variation of the pipeline/wait canned response.
I would love to see a game show where executives would publicly be asked to race to navigate to a specific current product information page on their company’s website without using the search box. I would be willing to bet half of the Apple execs would not be able to locate some products at all.
Alex Trebek: “This Apple product allows you to connect your iPad Pro to a modern 4K television with integrated digital audio/video wire.”
Ive: “What is my custom private rose gold Alooooominyum Pencil?”
Cue: “I only watch the Warriors live.”
Ahrendts: “Well the Milanese Loop is, you know, um, kinda like a wire, you know. I mean it totally connects women to the world of tech and, um, I really believe, like, that is what Apple is all about. You know?”
Williams: “Can I phone a friend? Foxconn should know where that might be.”
Iovine: “Dude like I am so cool, in my day we just did drugs in the studio … like, what was the question?”
Cook: “We couldn’t be more excited to offer this new technology whatever it is you call it. It’s part of our DNA and we know only Apple can offer this to our consumers. I have legions of lawyers to ensure that. So when our exciting pipeline ripens the spilled milk on the vine, the synergy will align and we will be so proud to sell you something truly great. Now here’s Phil to actually say something that makes sense.”
Schiller: “Well, we don’t care about that market too much. Not enough money to be made. If we can’t tie you to the iOS store, what’s the point? So we have no product roadmap there for now. But when Jony is done polishing his car collection, he will let us know when we can look at it again. right now Apple is offering products that support a dozen different ports with no plan to simplify life for the user. Call Belkin.”
Trebek: “Sorry, you were all so close! The right answer is that only Apple makes a Lightning-to-HDMI adapter at the outrageous price of 49 dollars !
Stay tuned, we will back for the second round of Apple Customer Jeopardy after a short break!”
Tim Cook, bringing yesterday’s technologies and designs to you tomorrow.
How about a “Mac” to go along with the Mac Mini and Mac Pro?
The only Mac’s my wife and I have owned in the last decade are Mini’s. Right now, we have 6. I use them as Media centers for 2 4k 65” TV’s, and as our main workstations. 4 are 2012 i7’s w/16GB, the media Mini’s are 2014 i5’s. Because Apple has neglected them, I’ve been forced to perform mods myself, putting a 2TB SSD in one, and 1TB SSD’s in 2 others. Even though they are 5 yrs old, I still use them for Photoshop & Premier. They’re faster than you’d think, but I never thought I’d still be using them in 2017/18. One is a server, on 24/7 for 5 yrs. I’ve never had a single problem with any of them, but I’d jump to a newer one quickly if it had SOME expandability, especially memory. Get with it Tim!!!
Careful what you wish for, whatever the new Mac Mini ends up being could be a less reliable downgrade from what you have now 🙂 How do you keep track of 6 Macs in the rotation? One MacBook and iPhone are a handful enough for me to keep organized.
Apple seems to be overthinking the MacMini. It should just be a small yet easily upgradeable desktop computer. Let users build their own CTO models from a variety of components. Building a mini-desktop shouldn’t be equated with rocket science. All Apple has to do is copy Hewlett-Packard’s mini-desktop if Jony Ive can’t figure it out.
All Apple has to do is start with the 2012 MacMini as the base and work up from there. However, make the storage a little more accessible and internal airflow more robust. I really don’t understand Apple at all. Why does it take three years to upgrade something as simple as the MacMini? It really isn’t that complicated.
Why?
Because a straightforward upgrade isn’t Sexy and won’t advance the PM’s prestige or career.
Some of us do not want an iMac and want a desktop computer. The Mac mini market does not have to be just a cheap model crippled in features and power.
A Quad Core CPU
A Discrete GPU as a BTO option
User memory expansion
Access to the HD/SSDs to upgrade or replace
That is really not that hard, now is it?
Just hire Woz to take care of it after all he did the Apple I and Apple II, hardware & software pretty much on his own and they were easy compared to slapping in off the shelf CPU, GPU & drives in a Mini. Then upgrade them with new Tech same size each year.
I’m sick of all the minimalism. There are some things we need.
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