It has a small impact on the revenue, but a large impact to my family. Oh well, at least they got to enjoy Apple/Macs for a little while - until apple became anti-consumer for the sake of making things smaller and maximizing profits to the extreme.
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New Mac Mini Delayed Because...
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It has a small impact on the revenue, but a large impact to my family. Oh well, at least they got to enjoy Apple/Macs for a little while - until apple became anti-consumer for the sake of making things smaller and maximizing profits to the extreme.
Apple aren't anti consumer, in fact to the contrary they are focusing on the majority of their customers current and future. I love my Mini but it's a bit of a sideline product for Apple.
Disposable computers, and not offering features in product lines for the sole purpose of forcing you to move up the product chain to obtain them is pretty anti-consumerish. How is it otherwise?
And moving over to the iPad/iPhone - when $3 of memory = $100 for the consumer, then they are no friend to consumers there either.
I love the products, but i doesn't mean I have to bow down subserviently for fear of upsetting our overlords.
I was still using my base spec (2gb ram, 160gb hdd) 2009 Mini without hardware upgrade in 2013, with the current specs how much upgrade do you really need. The computers today should be good for 4+ years which is way more life than I ever got out of any Windows PC/laptop. Also with USB3 external storage is fast so really it's just the soldered RAM which is an issue. I don't really need a new Mini, I just want one.
I take your point on pricing but Apple is selling iPad/iPhone as fast as it can make then so why not have premium pricing.
I think that's the "problem" (only it's actually a good thing). Even with more professional/demanding tasks a current Mac Mini is more than sufficient. I recently bought one and I use it a) day to day office work b) for photo editing and c) with Logic pro for music production.
It works perfectly fine for all of this. I see no need to buy a Mac Pro at this point (and iMacs are not for me given that I need a different kind of screen). And it's still upgradable to some degree.
And for 99% of normal consumer users demands on hardware are even less than mine. So why would they bother - other than for marketing reasons depending on what their numbers show.
I agree on the "sufficient" CPU power; that's not why I'm waiting.
I want to see what ports the next Mac Mini carries, to see whether there's something there that will help "future proof" (i.e., add a couple more years of service life) or enhance its usability, such as more USB 3.0 or 3.1 ports, TB2, a higher rev. flavor of HDMI, etc.
I also want to see what the graphics will be, as I expect to be sharing a 4K-capable monitor between the Mini and my late '13 rMBP. 4K is certainly not a necessary thing, but having both machines capable of presenting the same resolution would be nice.
If I go "eh" when the new Mini is released, it's a late '12 refurb for me.
Agree with ports and gpu. Also, if they just do a cursory upgrade like they just did with the macbook air, it would be nice if they made it cheaper (like the mba) or if they have the same price for either more RAM or SSD drive standard.
Could get a 2nd gen Haswell this year with PCIe that would allow a lot of those items but I think the 4k will need the Broadwell chip. Broadwell will fit the same socket for a easy refresh.
My Samsung panels automatically adjust to the resolution so the switching isn't an issue. If your device "only supports as high as 1920x1080" most of the new 4Ks can utilize upscaling for 1080p. Unless the on screen or online content displayed by the computer supports 4K then you probably wouldn't notice any difference. Most current content does not support 4K but five to ten years from now when the post Broadwell technology is available that might change. You would probably want a new Mini with better technology than an updated 2014 model Mini at that time anyway.
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I agree completely. When Jobs returned, the first thing he did was slash the range down to size and introduce the iMac as an entry level Mac. For 3 CPU generations, the Power Macs had affordable, user configurable entry level systems with higher end systems offering multi-CPUs, better GPUs etc... Since the iToys, every Mac in their range has slowly turned into a powerful, yet form-before-function glued together fashion accessory, except the Mac Mini because ever since the shift to quad i7s and the fact you can almost predict the future specs of the Mac Mini from the specs of the top Macbook Pro models, it's their most value for money system and the most user upgradable.
Well... I agree that someone, or something, is still posting from the Count Blah account...
I've alerted Tim to your nay sayings and the Macstapo will be soon getting out of their solar powered Mercedes and knocking on your door, and they will be wearing black... turtlenecks.
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I believe it depends on the Haswell flavor -- the Iris Pro graphics in my late '13 rMBP is capable of 4K (the betas of 10.9.3 have 4K driver support, and have been successfully run on the same rMBP as mine). I'd be surprised if the Mothership put a high-end Haswell/Iris Pro CPU in a Mini, but you never know ... so I keep waiting for June to roll around ...
I've alerted Tim to your nay sayings and the Macstapo will be soon getting out of their solar powered Mercedes and knowing on your door, and they will be wearing black... turtlenecks.
Is she cute ?
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Agreed. The 4K point is a good one as I hope my next Mini would last 4-5 years and within that timeframe I'll probably get a 4K TV/Monitor. I think I'll probably buy whatever refresh is released
It's the most affordable Mac you can get. I don't think they'll be dropping it anytime soon, but there is a definite sign of neglect. But then they may adopt the attitude that if you're buying a bottom end Mac you probably aren't worried about replacing it every year.
I hope they NEVER use desktop CPUs. they cripple the i3 and i5 with no hyper threading, and that's a huge deal.
At $100 (or more) less can end up in context where it is a 2 core (4 hyperthread) vs. 4 core ( 4 real cores ) trade-off. And yes there is a big deal to having 4 real ones versus 2 timeshared ones if really pressing the concurrent multiple core workload.
For example the i5-3210M ( $225 2.5GHz http://ark.intel.com/products/65708/Intel-Core-i5-3210M-Processor-3M-Cache-up-to-3_10-GHz-BGA ) versus a i5-4670 ( $213-224 3.8Ghz http://ark.intel.com/products/75047/Intel-Core-i5-4670-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_80-GHz )
About the same price. And addition 1.3GHz in base clock and two more real cores. If have a substantive multicore workload it is pretty clear which one is going to get more work done. The TDP is much higher so be a more radical shift in the system design to use.
Can chop down the huge gap on base clock and be in a bit lower price range: i5 4670T 3.3GHz and down to 45W TDP.
http://ark.intel.com/products/75050/Intel-Core-i5-4670T-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_30-GHz
or a TDP smaller shift like i5-4570R ( $255 2.7GHz 65W http://ark.intel.com/products/76640/Intel-Core-i5-4570R-Processor-4M-Cache-up-to-3_20-GHz ) is a bigger jump across both the x86 and GPU spectrum.
The mobile CPU/GPU are kneecapped also. Hyperthreading on but clock rates dropped. It isn't generally a net improvement on performance ( and/or perf/$ ) just going mobile. The mobile CPU+GPUs make a big difference in battery life but for a mini that doesn't have deep leverage unless in the "mini has to get smaller in volume over time" camp.
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Don't know if anyone has posted this yet... but the new Mac Mini is delayed because.... I want to buy one, and Apple clearly hates me!