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Mac mini 2013/2014 refresh.

Tanax said:
.. Or you can just place it at the end of the chain? If you add another TB-device such as an Apple Thunderbolt Display, you'll move your TB->FW to the back of your display instead.
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Because everyone has a grand to replace their current displays with. Cherry picking what I wrote to find a "solution" that confirms my point that replacing Firewire with Thunderbolt is either incredibly costly or flat out impossible by suggesting the purchase of an incredibly costly monitor provides the solution is hilariously irrelevant :)
 
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barkmonster said:
Because everyone has a grand to replace their current displays with. Cherry picking what I wrote to find a "solution" that confirms my point that replacing Firewire with Thunderbolt is either incredibly costly or flat out impossible by suggesting the purchase of an incredibly costly monitor provides the solution is hilariously irrelevant :)
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You missed the point, Mr. Barkmonster.
 
Possibility of a 128 ssd upgrade option in base model?

Anyone think that the mac mini will drop in price?
 
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DanielMac1 said:
Possibility of a 128 ssd upgrade option in base model?

Anyone think that the mac mini will drop in price?
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I don't think it will drop in price. If anything it might go up if Apple really want good iGPUs in the Mini and/or the classic Macbook Pros are discontinued.

There's every chance that there will be an SSD upgrade option, especially with PCIe SSD becoming more popular in this year's refreshed Macs (MBA and new Mac Pro) as well as the Retina machines.
 
DanielMac1 said:
Possibility of a 128 ssd upgrade option in base model?

Anyone think that the mac mini will drop in price?
Click to expand...

sublunar said:
I don't think it will drop in price. If anything it might go up if Apple really want good iGPUs in the Mini and/or the classic Macbook Pros are discontinued.

There's every chance that there will be an SSD upgrade option, especially with PCIe SSD becoming more popular in this year's refreshed Macs (MBA and new Mac Pro) as well as the Retina machines.
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Well apple is in a bit of a spot. They busted a move with the mac pro it is a big change . The macbook air has big improvements it is not a netbook it has some guts. The 11 inch model has a lot of power and graphics it may be able to replace your mac mini and be portable as a bonus.

I really want to see what they will do. With the mini.
 
NewbieCanada said:
I can because:

1) if you connect to a thunderbolt display you get it that way.
2) If you replace it with an additional thunderbolt port you still have the ability to have wired internet and have additional flexibility.
3) 802.11ac (for those who have it) eliminates the speed advantage
4) most people connect wirelessly anyway
5) Apple has always shown itself willing to push people away from tech it considers dying, especially when it can give them extra sales.

To wit:

1) As the Mini, Pro and rMBP were revamped/introduced, they dropped the optical drive.
2) They dropped firewire from the Pro and left it of the rMBP
3) they left Ethernet off the rMBP.

I'm not saying it's definite, of course, but it could easily happen
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no dedicated ethernet means people will be much more reluctant to build "mini-farms".
Regardless of how fast wifi gets, wired is preferable for security and reliability reasons. If you live in an apartment building with everyone using a wifi router, you get much worse throughput than someone in a single family home. The various channels get eaten up pretty fast and your super fast dual band wifi drops to single band on whatever channel has the least noise.
Firewire is a different case. It was never as widely used as ethernet. And even among pro users it is sliding into obscurity.
 
calaverasgrande said:
no dedicated ethernet means people will be much more reluctant to build "mini-farms".
Regardless of how fast wifi gets, wired is preferable for security and reliability reasons. If you live in an apartment building with everyone using a wifi router, you get much worse throughput than someone in a single family home. The various channels get eaten up pretty fast and your super fast dual band wifi drops to single band on whatever channel has the least noise.
Firewire is a different case. It was never as widely used as ethernet. And even among pro users it is sliding into obscurity.
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I totally agree!
 
animatedude said:
you are boring me....tell me something more...juicy! like 40% smaller , PCIe SSD...etc;)
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This is so Cool, I hope they do reduce the size of the mini. Just think they may want to claim the "Smallest Most Powerful (whatever class this creates) computer in the world!)" That would be hot.
On the down side they would probably go the Retina mode and make it with glued on parts.
But what if they could do make the mini really MINI, like 50% smaller yes!
 
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philipma1957 said:
Well apple is in a bit of a spot. They busted a move with the mac pro it is a big change . The macbook air has big improvements it is not a netbook it has some guts. The 11 inch model has a lot of power and graphics it may be able to replace your mac mini and be portable as a bonus.

I really want to see what they will do. With the mini.
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Its reasonable to expect a big change but its tough to guess what it might be.
 
I really like the layout of the mini as it is. I think the only thing I'd like to see change is replacing the FireWire 800 with an additional thunderbolt port so the mini could drive dual TB displays or equivalent. The biggest thing that drew me to the mini is internal upgradability. Having the option to add ram and dual SATA III drives is great. I don't like what they did to the Mac Pro by shrinking it and relying on external expandability. Kind of defeats the clean and compact form factor. I'm afraid that this could also be what's in store for the mini. It will be interesting to see if they go to soldered ram and different drive interfaces.
 
How good are the chances that :apple: releases two different configurations (with different purposes)? :confused:

The Mac mini will change it's shape. It will be more tower-like. However, I don't think it will be round like the new Mac Pro.

The Mac mini will come in two different configurations. The first is based on the mobile Haswell we seen on the latest Macbook Air. It will be the smallest Mac ever. SSD only. This Mac mini will be designed to be used as a small business server (where you don't need that much processing power and energy efficiency is important to reduce costs) and for light desktop use. The form factor could even be half the size of the current Mac mini.

The second variant will be a more powerful variant. I don't think we can see a quad core in these models, because Apple won't cannabilise the Mac Pro. We'll see the Iris Pro graphics. A possibility for a (second) hard drive will exist. Basically this slightly larger Mac mini will use the chipset from the Macbook Pro 13" or 15".

However, for those two configurations, Apple will likely have to strip the "server" from the Mac mini. It is very possible. The only question is, how much attention does Apple pay the desktop market anymore? :confused:
 
Tanax said:
You missed the point, Mr. Barkmonster.
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I didn't. You can't use bus-powered Firewire devices AT ALL with the firewire adapter making a lot of potential uses for a system without firewire worthless no matter how much CPU power the system offers. Nothing with a Thunderbolt throughport is inexpensive and if you wanted to use a non-apple display via 1 Thundebolt port for dual display, that only leaves the firewire to Thundebolt adapter as your sole source of adding both a firewire drive and an audio interface and the apple forums are full of complaints about incompatibility problems using the adapter.
 
COrocket said:
The biggest thing that drew me to the mini is internal upgradability. Having the option to add ram and dual SATA III drives is great.
Click to expand...

Do you mean using OWC kits?

I've thought about doing a 2 x 512 SSD project. I think I'll just wait for Apple to carry it though.
 
zipur said:
This is so Cool, I hope they do reduce the size of the mini. Just think they may want to claim the "Smallest Most Powerful (whatever class this creates) computer in the world!)" That would be hot.
On the down side they would probably go the Retina mode and make it with glued on parts.
But what if they could do make the mini really MINI, like 50% smaller yes!
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Hey Phil, the door is over there, please use it.
 
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DisMyMac said:
Do you mean using OWC kits?

I've thought about doing a 2 x 512 SSD project. I think I'll just wait for Apple to carry it though.
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Yeah, my experience with the OWC kits has been good so far. Definitely do the upgrade yourself. Way cheaper. Given costs it could be a while (if ever) before apple offers something like that. Also it would most likely be in the server model, so that would be an additional expense over a DIY non server setup.
 
It appears that Apple may be using the i7 4950HQ (with Iris Pro 5200 graphics) in a future Macbook Pro. This could be a Retina or non retina version although the story suggests the tested Macbook pro doesn't have built in discrete graphics and the cost of the CPU itself (Anandtech suggest $657 for the i7-4950HQ which may be a BTO top model, with the 2.3GHz i7-4850HQ weighing in at a more reasonable $468) hint strongly towards leaving a discrete GPU out.

If we follow the Macbook Air reasoning, it suggests Apple could be leaning towards longer battery life, thinner case, and less heat throughout their range.

We already know that Apple pushed strongly for Intel to improve their integrated GPU offering in Ivy Bridge but they were knocked back.

While all this should really belong in a Macbook Pro forum, I think there's now a case for those HQ cpus being used in a revamped Mac Mini which would use PCIe flash and perhaps retain a SATA3 drive bay and connector to enable use of a Fusion drive.

Is there any scope for Apple now to include the 'missing' GPU into a revamped Thunderbolt 2 Display to bring some graphics performance for all Thunderbolt equipped Macs on the big display? After all, there's plenty of room for a GPU and a cooling solution inside something that's not too different from an iMac, plus it keeps a very hot GPU away from the main CPU unit...

I know that the Thunderbolt connection could be seriously constricted if it's providing ethernet, USB3, Firewire 800, and perhaps an NVidia GT750m as well though...
 
sublunar said:
I know that the Thunderbolt connection could be seriously constricted if it's providing ethernet, USB3, Firewire 800, and perhaps an NVidia GT750m as well though...
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We'll know after the official Mac Pro introduction. It would make sense if the new MBP models are using Thunderbolt 2.
 
Let us just say that rTBD are coming out this fall. Will HD5000 be able to drive that resolution?
 
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