“Compared to the prior generation, the new Mac mini is a veritable powerhouse packed in the same diminutive square. You can even upgrade the RAM after you buy it, a rarity among Apple products,” Michael Simon writes for Macworld. “But in 2018, the new Mac mini feels like more of a concession than an innovation.”
“After four years, Apple basically gave us the barest minimum Mac mini upgrade to get us through the next four years. I have little hope that Apple will pay any attention to the Mac mini until sometime in 2022, if it ever does,” Simon writes. “With the exception of the MacBook Pro, Apple tends to upgrade its Macs just enough so it can safely ignore it for a few years.”
“Who’s to say the new Mac Pro won’t be just as disappointing? I have no doubt that it’ll be loaded with the latest Xeon processors, gobs of RAM, and loads of storage, but will it deliver the innovation and ease of use that professionals really want?” Simon writes. “While I was once confident that the extra time Apple is taking means it is tweaking, fine-tuning, and refining the design, the Mac mini makes me skeptical… What if Apple merely tweaks the case and adds a few Thunderbolt 3 ports?”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The current Mac Pro (trashcan) design is dead. Apple cannot simply tweak that design (à la Mac mini) and deliver a salable upgrade, much less one that’ll have long-suffering pros lining up to buy them.
For us, the new Mac mini doesn’t create any more concern over the next-gen Mac Pro than wasn’t already there in spades (due to the extreme lateness in replacing the current Mac Pro’s dead-end design).
