“According to Bloomberg’s very connected Mark Gurman and Debbie Wu, Apple is planning ‘a professional-focused upgrade to the Mac mini desktop later this year,’ and ‘new storage and processor options are likely to make it more expensive than previous versions,'” Michael Simon writes for Macworld.
“That’s a lot of words for not really saying anything at all. While Gurman and Wu are basically confirming Ming Chi-Kuo’s earlier report that the long-in-the-tooth mini will be getting an update before the year’s out, they leave an awful lot of blanks to be filled in between now and its release, presumably sometime in mid- to late fall,” Simon writes. “Even if they’re right about the new pro focus, everything else about the new Mac mini remains a mystery.”
Simon writes, “But if Apple is indeed giving the Mac mini a reimagined revamp, there are a few things it absolutely needs to include if Apple hopes to return it to its glory days.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Hear, hear for high-end BTO configs, a plethora of ports, and a CPU and RAM that’s not soldered to the logic board!
SEE ALSO:
Apple preps new low-cost MacBook Air with Retina display and pro-focused Mac mini – August 20, 2018
Apple’s preparing a slew of new products for this fall – July 18, 2018
I have two 2012 minis. One of them I bought the day the 2014 one came out…because of the 2014 one. I wonder if I’ll be inclined to buy another one the day this one comes out?
Users wil certainly reply they want an easily opened and upgradeable Mac Mini.
Apple and other mfgrs may want “planned obsolescence”, but the world moves on in quality and governmental requirements for users ability to repair devices.
Can you imagine a vehicle which needed to go to the “dealer” to get tires or an air filter change?
All ready EU members are considering rules requiring various forms of repairability.
My belief is that ultimately “PCs” will have 10-15 year lifespans (as some are now.) That is just like cars that are taken care of well. The brands with the longest life are very likely to be the ones who achieve dominance in their niche, in my opinion.
Toyota is a car manufacturer that comes to mind when talking about long trouble free life times. I and a friend have had Highlander’s which went for over a dozen years w/o anything but tires and routine checks.
“Can you imagine a vehicle which needed to go to the “dealer” to get tires or an air filter change?”
Yes. Yes, I can. Any mechanic who has worked on a car that is less than two years old has run into the problem that only the dealer can supply the necessary filters, shock absorbers, gas springs for the aft hatch, etc. so, yes, I can certainly imagine that. It is fact.
Do I like it? Not at all. I despise having to go to the dealer to buy parts that are significantly marked up.
I liked the original design of the Mac mini where the HDD and RAM were easily accessible via the bottom panel. I liked the cheesegrater Mac Pro with its aluminum chassi and easily removable side panel. The internals of that Mac Pro were beautiful – technology as art. I cannot tell you how many times I wowed PC users by opening my Mac Pro.
But I will also say that portability and miniaturization involve compromises. The MBP is an incredible feat of engineering that has been copied by its competitors. If you want a heavier, inch-thick laptop with removable panels and such, then the MB and MBP are not for you.
considering you can get a fully accessible and user upgradeable intel box thats as small or smaller then a mac mini that has more ports, more power, better graphics for a fraction of the cost should tell you that the mac mini is a dead end.. unless they can bring it under 400 dollars which a decent cpu/gpu/ram/ssd combo.
hackintosh an intel quad core 16GB nuc that fits in the palm of your hand instead.
This.
The value paradigm that’s being offered on the WinTel side is what’s illustrating Apple as being “doomed”…or more accurately, shooting themselves in their own foot due to negligence of basic business and giving away the Farm.
Right now, could use an i7 hex with 1TB SSD and 64GB RAM for a project. And at commodity prices it should be a lot closer to $500 than $5K …
User upgradeability is anathema to Apple. I would be shocked if they introduced a Mac mini with standard RAM slots, M.2 drive port and SATA ports.
That wouldn’t be so bad if they sold one with good specs out of the box with upgrades that were reasonably priced. Which also would surprise me.
Base model with 8GB RAM 128GB SSD for 499 would be nice. That would make upgrades to 16GB RAM 200 dollars and 256 for 200 dollars. uggh.
Have any of you actually seen the inside of the mini? All this talk of pro level, when it is basically a pretty low end comp with laptop type parts inside. If Apple charges any higher that 700, only a blinking idiot would buy one.
I’ve purchased over 50 MacMinis over the years – primarily for my clients. I have about 10 in my garage that are G4 or Core Solo / Duo. Most just need hard drives.
I will never recommend them again. Apple keeps pulling things out of the box, and charging more. I swear it’s like Jean Louis Gasee has taken over or something. Total arrogance and gratuitously expensive. AND – their software is going steadily downhill since they got rid of Forstall. I now use one of several intel boxes and Ubuntu for everything. 1/2 price works great. DONE with Apple.
In my view, this is Apple’s last chance. If they don’t make a headless desktop that can be tweaked, repaired and changed like pretty much every other headless desktop on the market, they’ve lost me to a Hackintosh.
If, on the other hand, it’s user serviceable and made with good specs, I’ll be lining up for one!
The answer to the question/headline is this:
Keep Jony Ive the hell away from it and let the engineers have their way. Ive would make a car with no doors or windows out of a single block of “al-u-min-e-um”.
Hear hear. Ive is smart, but he was restrained by Steve Jobs. Without the guiding hand, he’s run amok. Furthermore, he clearly does NOT understand software and the concept of “affordables.” Also, his minimalist crap was first foisted by Microsoft a half-decade previously, with much frustrated screaming on the part of the poor buggers who had to use it.
Form should follow function.
In the full article he says, “When the mini came out in 2005, it had a neat trick, the door on the bottom to replace memory.”
That’s wrong! When it came out in 2005 it’s trick was needing a PUTTY KNIFE to open it up. 😉
The door on the bottom was when it was updated in 2010 to the aluminum and that really was a neat trick. I remember changing the memory with ONE HAND while my other held the phone I was talking on. 😉 Now that’s a “Neat Trick” 😉