“The Mac mini arrived in 2005, several months after its potential existence was basically denied by Apple,” Gene Steinberg writes for The Tech Night Owl. “At $499, the Mac mini was strictly no frills, without a keyboard, mouse or display. If you wanted to upgrade memory or change out the hard drive or other parts, you had to use a putty knife or a similar tool to open the case. I wonder, in passing, what the designers were thinking.”
“Evidently the message got through, for a time. A major revision to the form factor, priced at $599, included an easy-access slot at the bottom for RAM upgrades,” Steinberg writes. “But it went away in 2014, when Apple released a tepid refresh at $499 that followed through on the approach taken with notebooks. RAM was soldered to the logic board.”
“There it stood until Apple marketing VP Philip Schiller was asked about the mini during that roundtable with a handful of tech reporters in early April. Although it was largely focused on Apple’s failure to deliver an upgrade to the Mac Pro since 2013 — and the promise that a redesigned model was under development — Schiller did make a notable comment about Apple’s cheapest Mac, saying, ‘the Mac Mini is an important product in our lineup and we weren’t bringing it up because it’s more of a mix of consumer with some pro use,'” Steinberg writes. “Could Apple truly build one with more powerful parts and not detract from the basic simplicity and compact design of the original?”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We’d love to see an updated Mac mini with user-serviceable RAM and truly powerful BTO options. Would you?