They updated the FireWire drivers in the first OS X 10.8.5 beta (delta version):
https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/17457731/
Unlikely that they do this now only for the Thunderbolt/FW800 adapter.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Mac mini 2013/2014 refresh.
- Thread starter animatedude
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/17457731/
Unlikely that they do this now only for the Thunderbolt/FW800 adapter.
My bet is the mini will stay very much the same, but just include the Haswell inners. I would like to see higher graphics, but I think they'll share the same as what the MBA line carries. In fact they all will, MBA, mini, rMBP and cMBP; look at the history for the last several years.
I use two Gbit ports on the 2.6ghz mini, one Ethernet and one Tbolt. I run them aggregated to produce a dual Gigabit Ethernet connection. I know they will not do it but I prefer the mini to have two Ethernet.
Never said they'd keep Firewire. I'm sure they won't. My original post said "Firewire and/or Ethernet," but by now people know better than to think they'll keep firewire after it was dropped on everything else Apple makes.
I'd wager it's an approximate 7 years of availability on at least one product line they sell, of course we're now past 10 years of availability for FW 800. Perhaps it will be dropped for the 2013 or by the 2014 model at the very latest. They'll still sell the Thunderbolt to Firewire adapters for those who require it after the physical port is dropped.
Last edited:
I'm picking the release order like this:
MacBook Pros (late July)
iMac and Mac mini (mid August)
iPhone(s) and iOS 7 (Late Sept/early October)
MP, rTBD and Mavericks (early November)
That will be cool, specially if the Retina Thunderbolt Display makes it.
Do you think it will be released before the rumored iTV? Will it be 4K??
Will they release the iMac and Mjni before the new MacPro??
But does that deliver a full port? Or just the data-part. Essential part of Firewire is the big power supply! I can use my music interfaces either on FW, or on USB with separate power supply. The second option sucks!
----------
The average between architecture updates is about 450-500 days (G4-CoreSolo-CoreDuo-Core2Duo-Sandy-Ivy) with not much spread (small deviation). So expect early 2014.
It supplies up to 7W of power. So if your interfaces require no more than that, you're fine. Otherwise, you'd need separate power.
if you want the best gpu yes the i7 4950 is the fastest
the one below has a faster cpu core but lousy graphics
http://ark.intel.com/products/75131/Intel-Core-i7-4900MQ-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-3_80-GHz
in the world of apple hoping the new mini gets the i7 4950 is most likely just that a hope. the better model mini bto for the most part in the second best cpu so apple will offer the second best and third best for the quad more often then the first and second .
http://ark.intel.com/products/family/75023
worse case they offer this
http://ark.intel.com/products/75119/Intel-Core-i7-4702MQ-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_20-GHz
I can see them giving this as it has a 37 watt vs 47 watt tdp
Last edited:
How do you know that? Did they tell you how many they have and purchase?
I asked them and they would not tell me.
The i7-4702MQ is a strange chip, decent price and lower TDP but at the expense of overall speed (only 2.2GHz) and the graphics aren't anything to write home about either (HD4600). Every Macbook Air has HD5000 graphics so it's difficult for me to see Apple crippling the next Mini with anything less in terms of graphics with 4k displays coming soon. Could you see this chip inside a 15" Macbook Pro?
If they were going radical, could Apple just drop all the quad core chips from the Mini so they could reduce the size of the overall package and not have to worry so much about overheating and possibly cannibalising the forthcoming Mac Pro? It strikes me at the moment that people who buy an i5 base model 2012 Mac Mini have a 35w CPU housed inside a unit designed to cope with a 45w cpu. Do base model buyers have overheating problems to the extent that the quad core 2012 owners have?
Apple could decide to use only those 28w i5 and dual core i7 cpus that seem destined for the Retina Macbook Pro 13, both of which use HD5100 graphics which would be nice for connecting to a future 4k display.
http://ark.intel.com/products/75992/Intel-Core-i7-4558U-Processor-4M-Cache-up-to-3_30-GHz
http://ark.intel.com/products/75991/Intel-Core-i5-4288U-Processor-3M-Cache-up-to-3_10-GHz
It might even be fun to see how small Apple could make a Mini if it were solely powered by the 15w U series CPUs used in the Macbook Airs. They probably wouldn't be very attractive to existing Mac Mini users though as the price would be kept high by the cost of the cpu alone and the lack of overall performance.
Obviously Apple would have to offer an inexpensive Mac Pro (using E5-1620 v2?) for reasonable prices to replace a quad core Mini if it were removed from the range.
Last edited:
well one problem they have is zotac's zbox the newest one has the i7 3770t chip
http://www.zotacusa.com/zbox-id90.html
same size as the current mini and it has a better quad core then the 2012 mini. as for smaller the intel nuc has over heating issues as does the gigabyte brix.
I would be quite happy with a quad i7 4850 just have to wait.
No hard number but have a look a their public comments on their blog when the new mini's are released. They've had prior knowledge of the last few Mac Mini updates, with reviews minutes after Apple's public release. Including when the shape change happened. They are clearly buying enough stock for Apple to care what they think.
That in no way means that MacMiniColo is one of the biggest buyers of Mac Minis like you said. If prior knowledge of Apple products equates to being one of the largest purchasers of Apple products then the NYT and Jim Dalrymple would be two of the biggest purchasers of Apple hardware that exist. MacMiniColo is a colocation facility which means that a good number of the Mac Minis in their facility are not owned by them.
Apple doesn't care what people think and they have a long history of releases to show for it. The very few times that they have admitted they did something wrong was because consumer backlash forced it and not because they cared what people think.
I'd like to see a Mini with that i7-4850HQ too, the Zotac is currently unpriced so we don't know what value for money it is. The low power desktop chip would never be used in a Macbook Pro so it's hard to see Apple plumping for the Haswell equivalent i7-4770T.
What we could say is that thanks to Tim Cook's supply chain expertise we can see that parts for the Mini come out of various Macbook Pro parts bins. If the classic Macbook Pros are in danger I doubt that Apple would want to use such low order parts specifically for a Mini. It's more likely they would plan to use something that's going in a Retina model and in my view those are likely to value GPU over a little more CPU grunt and latterly less cpu power, smaller size and quiet over powerful, big and noisy.
See the new Haswell Macbook Airs for an example - they have gone from 17w CPUs to 15w CPUs, from 1.7GHz to 1.3GHz but in return have gone from HD4000 to HD5000 graphics. There could be a significantly thinner MBA when Broadwell comes round if, as mentioned elsewhere, they didn't have time to tinker with the MBA case for Haswell because they wanted to show something off at WWDC.
The improved graphics chips are, in my view, there to make sure of good display performance on 4k displays which surely can't be far off whether Apple make one or a 3rd party 4k monitor ends up on the market.
This is how I conclude that the Retina Macbook Pro 13 is going to provide the basis for the dual core Minis going forward but it's harder to conclude what the plan is for any quad core Mini given that the 15" cMBP could be axed in the next round of updates and there's a bit of a question mark over whether Apple would axe a discrete GPU such as the NVidia GT750m to make a thinner Retina Macbook Pro 15" using an i7 quad with Iris Pro 5200 at the expense of gaming and ultimate Photoshop CUDA performance.
If there is a prospect of the classic Macbook Pro 15" surviving it could mean that the case itself is going to continue to support a discrete GPU such as the NVidia GT750m and the classic model would live on with a TN screen as it does now.
The question then is what CPU/onboard GPU combination would they pair with the classic MBP that would then get used in the Mini. Yes, we'd love an Iris Pro 5200 capable CPU but I think Apple would be silly to cripple a quad core i7 with HD4600 graphics when the potential dual core Mini could come with a CPU that carries HD5100 graphics.
Finally, the fact that a Mini might have to cope with a 47w cpu option alongside a 28w cpu option leads to a bit of a logic leap in which Apple drop the quad core Mini entirely so they can design an even smaller Mini with a lower thermal profile, rather than keep the bigger case going. Could Apple produce a cheap enough quad core Mac Pro to fill the gap above a dual core Mini?
Last edited:
of course they could but past history says they won't. I dropped off most of the post as i agree with all of it.
What I find interesting about the 'new' mini to be is there are 3 small pc's and I host of directions for apple to take the mini towards.
I am looking forward to the choice they make.
Wasn't the point of the quad core to use it as a small server, so the machine always had a trade off of GPU for CPU power?
Still if they could make a smaller cheaper dual core you could buy and have redundancy if you using them as servers.
Yes, but my post was always with one eye on the Tim Cook philosophy of reducing the supply chain - using components in use elsewhere to reduce costs.
Apple are moving to PCIe flash, so it makes sense for the next Mini to accommodate that if they wish to offer Fusion drives on the next iteration.
There's also the question mark over what if any quad core i7 mobile cpu they would use as it's strongly dependent over what their plans for the Macbook Pro 15 range is.
They should also be mindful of avoiding cannibalisation of the Mac Pro by any top of the range quad Mini, especially if they have plans to offer a really low end quad Pro.
Tied in with that is the idea that they could revolutionise the Mac Mini case if they didn't have to design for a 47w TDP cpu and only had to worry about a 28w TDP cpu.
If a low end quad Mac Pro with dual W5000 Fire Pros and E5-1620v2 came out for a price of £1500-1800 (depending on the size of the Flash drive), Apple would not want people comparing it with a quad core Mini loaded to the gills with Iris Pro 5200 graphics and optional PCIe flash would they?
For a unit to sit under your TV, a 28w Mac Mini would be a nice and very quiet alternative, with flash and fusion drive options pushing the price up into the bracket where the quads would have been.
- Standard SSD (w/ at least 128GB)
- Discrete GPU on the more expensive models
- 8GB RAM
Am I dreaming?
- Discrete GPU on the more expensive models
- 8GB RAM
Am I dreaming?
Clearly, yes.
Apple can design the 2013 Mac mini thinner, even if they use HDDs + PCIe-SSDs:
http://www.wd.com/en/company/pressroom/releases/?release=61ae4202-70b0-4bad-a810-a40e9affccf7
5 mm, 7 mm WD Blue specs:
http://www.wd.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=800#tab3
The only problem is, that the new WD HDDs use the SATA 6 GBit/s interface, which means they are probably unstable in MBP-Opti-Bay configurations.