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Mac Mini Prediction

elcid said:
Thinner is in in apple's mind. I doubt it will get any bigger, or smaller, so I doubt that there will be a dedicated graphics card.

Give me better speeds and Santa Rosa and I'm game. Id like dedicated but it would throw it into another price bracket and TBH I doubt it would fit.
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Apple could do what they did with the MBP. Those have NVidia 8600's in there. Therefore, they can fit it in the Mac Mini.

Edit: Heat can factor in but they could switch the casing to be all aluminum like the MBP is to conduct the heat out a bit more.
 
dbam987 said:
Apple could do what they did with the MBP. Those have NVidia 8600's in there. Therefore, they can fit it in the Mac Mini.

Edit: Heat can factor in but they could switch the casing to be all aluminum like the MBP is to conduct the heat out a bit more.
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Those high-end mobile GPU's are expensive, too expensive as the Mini is usually at the $599 price point..

EDIT:

I looked up at hp.com their low-end laptops allow you to upgrade from the X3100 integrated to the 128MB NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS for $70.

Apple can do it I guess if you make it an BTO option only.
 
gkarris said:
My point is the trend AWAY from the optical drive, to save costs and/or space...
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What trend?

A single model's departure from optical drives is a "trend"? I sure hope you don't do statistics.

dbam987 said:
That means something is definitely up. Apple may very well dish out a serious update to the Mac Mini's, or get rid of them altogether. I doubt the later, as Apple would have said something about them rather than let it die quietly. Therefore, I can see a serious update to the Mac Mini's:

  • Dedicated graphics option
  • Up to 4 GB memory, thats user-replaceable
  • 500 GB HD, spinning at 7200 RPM's, also user-replaceable
  • $499 model: 2.0 GHz Penryn, 2 GB memory, 320 GB HD, Intel X3100
  • $599 model: 2.4 GHz Penryn, 2 GB memory, 500 GB HD, NVidia 8600 GT w/ 256 MB
  • $699 model: 2.8 GHz Penryn, 2 GB memory, 750 GB HD, NVidia 8600 GT w/ 512 MB

All that is my wish-list actually.
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They are losing money on those specs, that is for sure. It will never happen even if you insert a "1" in front of all those prices.
 
Keep it real...

I don't think anyone should expect anything more than the x3100 as a GPU upgrade in any future mini. Apple has a clear design concept for both the mini and the MacBooks; that they are for basic users who have basic requirements of their machines. I think Apple would view it as a margin/profit cutting excess to put anything other than an integrated solution into those systems and if IBM had offered one back in the PPC days they wouldn't have gone with the Nvidia or ATI stuff then either.

IF Apple was going to bump the mini I don't think it would be more than a cost efficient slide into Santa Rosa to simplify their supply line by using the same parts as the MacBook line. I'd expect at most to see a line spec equivalent to the MacBook/BlackBook. That'd be something like this:

$599 Combo Drive
2 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo (4mb shared L2 cache)
1GB DDR2 667Mhz RAM (2 slots, upgradable to 4GB)
Intel X3100 GPU

$799 SuperDrive
2.2 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo (4mb shared L2 cache)
1GB DDR2 667Mhz RAM (2 slots, upgradable to 4GB)
Intel X3100 GPU

Then, depending on their stock of hard drives they'd probably bump the systems to 120GB on the low end and 160GB on the high end with a 250GB BTO option. I don't expect any neat stuff like SSD BTO options or a dedicated GPU BTO option because it would be extra effort in design and/or supply with not likely any positive impact on sales or margins.

Regardless of that being a letdown for some people I think that small bump would make the mini a great value again where I find it a little suspect right now since I consider the GMA 950 to be completely obsolete technology.
 
Game Hunter pretty much nailed it. The Mac Mini upgrades will simply update the Mini to be on the same supply-chain as the Macbook (as in the past). This means: SR chipset, new GPU Intel X3100, and hopefully larger drives. It would be nice to have a 7200RPM BTO hard drive option, but that's probably a pipe dream, too :)

A penryn chip in the Mac Mini at a sub-$1000 price-point? Yes, and I'd like a new Mercedes for under $20,000 please...thanks!
 
Machines really need to be able to upgrade to 4 Gigs now, with all the fancy OS's out there.

I was just at an MS Seminar, you can tell they're a rich company. The presenters had really nice upscale HP notebooks and IBM Thinkpads that ran Vista Ultimate/Office 2007 flawlessly (first time I've seen Aero run nicely in person).

Talking with one of the presenters, he did say that Vista (any version) really needs 2 Gigs minimum, and 4 Gigs if you want to run Office 2007 with it.

I would imagine the same will hold true for Apple, especially when 10.6 is out - 1 Gig bare min, 2 Gigs will be the comfortable working min...
 
Vista Needs 2 GB Memory

On my desktop I found 2 GB to be absolutely required for Vista to run very well. It can be run on 1 GB of memory alone but expect your hard-drive to work overtime with the swap space.

I just wish that I could run Vista virtually through VMWare Fusion at a decent performance. Its too power hungry.
 
low cost refurb any indication?

From the Apple Store:
Refurbished Mac mini 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
(if this link expires, it was to a refurb of the $799 model for $679)

Never seen one that reduced in price, but then again I'm not familiar enough with their refurb pricing to know if this might be standard for, say, a beat up unit? I had previously only seen $80-100 drops in refurbs of that model. If it is unusual, then maybe this is an indication that those babies are soon to be discontinued??
Or maybe I'm just fishing. Either way, that's a decent price...
 
enigmatut said:
From the Apple Store:
Refurbished Mac mini 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
(if this link expires, it was to a refurb of the $799 model for $679)

Never seen one that reduced in price, but then again I'm not familiar enough with their refurb pricing to know
Click to expand...

When they were upgraded to C2D in August, the refurb CoreDuo models were $479/$429 for the superdrive/combodrive models.

I tried to purchase a superdrive refurb but they sold out before I could get one in my cart.
 
look chaps the mini has its position, its Apples low priced budget system.

It does what it does well, if you guys want Dedicated GFX, Firewire 800, Desktop Harddrives It will take 2 things.

1. For a PC company like ASUS to release a device which is such, forcing apple to do something about the mini, right now it has no competition, you can build a PC to the same spec of the mini, but the cost is probably more then a mini (infact its probably the only product that apple sells that actually beats its competition for price, but the truth is the Mini PC market isnt in the same league as the Laptop or Desktop market)

2. Apple bring out a new Product a Mac Midi or Mac Gamer that is in between the Pro and Mini, I doubt we will see any new products this year after apple releasing the MB Air

The mini does what it does very well, I like most of you would like it to do more, but apart from cast offs from the Macbook components I seriously doubt it will happen
 
Ironduke said:
darfel said:
I would buy one if they upgraded the video.
Click to expand...
for playing hidef material?
Click to expand...

I don't pretend to speak for darfel, but I'm also more or less waiting for them to update the graphics.

I think the current GMA950 can play hidef material ok so it's not that, but it's a futureproof issue. I'm worried that more things like this will be an issue, including some of the eye candy in the OSX.6 operating system.

The other thing I'm waiting for is raising the RAM ceiling to 4GB, another futureproof issue.

They could be shipping a mini with X3100 and 4GB RAM today were it Steve's will.
 
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