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Kick Butt Mac Mini..what would you pay?
- Thread starter fourthtunz
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I think the Pro is going to top out way above $5000, B&H Photo has pricing going up to $8000 for the current machine. And isn't $5000 supposed to be the base price of the iMac Pro? In announcing the new Mac and iMac Pro's, I got the idea they were after people who wanted top specs and didn't care how much they cost.
So I don't see how the Mini would fit into a merged line like this. $500 isn't going to be enough to even buy an empty box at their prices.
I think the Pro is going to top out way above $5000, B&H Photo has pricing going up to $8000 for the current machine. And isn't $5000 supposed to be the base price of the iMac Pro? In announcing the new Mac and iMac Pro's, I got the idea they were after people who wanted top specs and didn't care how much they cost.
So I don't see how the Mini would fit into a merged line like this. $500 isn't going to be enough to even buy an empty box at their prices.
The iMac Pro has an impressive screen and it's an all in one. The Mac Pro shouldn't be nearly as pricy since it's just a box. Knowing Apple, they'll make some aesthetic design like the trashcan and charge an arm and a leg for it anyways. I can see why the iMac should be good looking but a desktop box doesn't need to look cool/pretty IMO. I just want it to be functional. I suppose they could keep the Mini/Pro separate, but I have a feeling they will meet in the middle and offer significant upgrades from Basic to Pro level to offer just one desktop since the desktop box seems to be severely neglected lately. Anything is better than the status quo
That was my thinking. IMO, everything they said about the "Pro" models suggested high performance for people with money to burn. The iMac and laptops are for the rest of us. And the Mini may just go away.
For many years there have been quite a few of us on here who have been wanting something between the Mini and the Mac Pro. Given Apple's strategy of late I'd bet my house that it's not going to happen any time soon. I think your choices are either an old Mac Pro (waste of money in my opinion) or build a PC and either configure it as a Hackintosh or put another OS on it - Windows or Linux. Look at what you really do with your computer and decide - your workload should drive what apps, OS and hardware you need. I decided to ditch Apple and built a Windows PC after selling a 2013 Mac Pro. Got a 6-core i7, 128GB RAM (I run VM's with big memory requirements), and a 1TB PCI-e SSD. I was able to reuse my GPU (GTX 980 Ti) from my last PC and I had a load of 1TB Samsung SSD's that I've put into a storage space. Overall it beats anything Apple makes for what I want to do. Your requirements will probably be different to mine, but write them down before you make any hardware decisions and look at what you really need.
Next Mini will almost certainly be Core-m based.
Anything else would be akin to a NASA announcement of contact with an Alien civilization (IMO).
The modular Mac Pro OTOH....
But that's really a dark horse. I suspect it will be well into 2018 before we get any news on this.
Though, I would say it's really difficult to build something that is scalable from the very low end (something like Xeon 12xx-series) to the very high end E526xx and stays affordable on the low-end
Anything else would be akin to a NASA announcement of contact with an Alien civilization (IMO).
The modular Mac Pro OTOH....
But that's really a dark horse. I suspect it will be well into 2018 before we get any news on this.
Though, I would say it's really difficult to build something that is scalable from the very low end (something like Xeon 12xx-series) to the very high end E526xx and stays affordable on the low-end
I'm doing music so my needs aren't as much to run Protools,live and logic.
I still think not everyone wants an iMac.
It would be nice to have something more powerful than the current mini that you don't have to pay $5000 for.
But yes for now the Hackintosh makes sense.
For what I'm doing the next move would be an old 12 core mac pro, those rock for music production and can be
had for around $1200. Too bad Apple isn't interested ;(
So long as you are sensible with your hardware there seems to be reasonable support for Hackintosh online. I've not done it personally as I don't trust Apple to destroy my machine with an update, but it does offer the performance you need for the price you want.
No doubt it can be done but from what I hear that would be the problem, updates would always be a hassle.
Also I wouldn't save that much and the 12 core mac pro can do everything I need.
Right now I'm on a 2012 MacBook Pro quad and its enough for now.
I'd still love to see a kick ass mini!
It's the issue with updates that's always kept me away from Hackintosh. I've just gone with a Windows PC instead.
If the 12 core mac pro works for you then get one - just don't pay too much for it as they are ancient now.
If they killed the imac dinosaur I would consider buying an over priced mac mini beast for 1500.
32gb ram with an i7 quad thunder bolt 3.1 and a 1 tb ssd would be good. But I may never buy an apple again as they just like the dinosaur the imac and have murdered the mini and mac pro for a POS
They should go back and look at the old 1984 commercial they did to see how far off mac/apple they became.
32gb ram with an i7 quad thunder bolt 3.1 and a 1 tb ssd would be good. But I may never buy an apple again as they just like the dinosaur the imac and have murdered the mini and mac pro for a POS
They should go back and look at the old 1984 commercial they did to see how far off mac/apple they became.
Luckily the hardware is well built and you can put faster processors in them..I'm looking at a 12 core 3.33
You may as well go Hackintosh or a Mac Pro.... $3000 for a mini? That's a loaded iMac....