It's becoming pretty clear that the future of the Mini doesn't look too good. The 2014 variety is almost certain to be the first in a long line of mods that Apple makes to regain control of the product from end users. I'm expecting the Broadwell variant to be redesigned into an almost MBA size, sans screen, with no access to the internals. But why would you want to? It'll be glued shut, the internal storage will be soldered, the RAM will obviously continue the newest tradition, and it'll still be crippled by supporting a maximum of two displays. The only recourse is what CPU it has but I'm leaning towards no more quad core processors. You don't see a quad core MBA, AFAIK.
So if it will get worse then where does that leave the legacy Minis? In exactly the same position as the 2011 iMac. The 21.5" iMac is still the Gold Standard for upgradable iMacs given you can put up to 32GB of RAM in there and easily pop out the SSD.
The 2012 Mini now holds the same position as the 21.5" 2011 iMac. These Minis will have to do us for a long time until there is a compelling reason to leave the platform. That would be more memory than 16GB (unlikely), quads supported again (doubt it), SSD as standard (yes I can see that), OS support EOL (maybe but 10.10 with 2007 iMac support says otherwise), or simply a faster single threaded processor (not if the 2014 is any indication of the future).
So if it will get worse then where does that leave the legacy Minis? In exactly the same position as the 2011 iMac. The 21.5" iMac is still the Gold Standard for upgradable iMacs given you can put up to 32GB of RAM in there and easily pop out the SSD.
The 2012 Mini now holds the same position as the 21.5" 2011 iMac. These Minis will have to do us for a long time until there is a compelling reason to leave the platform. That would be more memory than 16GB (unlikely), quads supported again (doubt it), SSD as standard (yes I can see that), OS support EOL (maybe but 10.10 with 2007 iMac support says otherwise), or simply a faster single threaded processor (not if the 2014 is any indication of the future).