Absolutely! I love the concept of the new Mac Pro, but it's 100% WAY out of my price league for years to come. I'm a musician/composer/producer and don't need all the video stuff. What I need is CPU power and RAM. An updated Mac Mini with an 8 core high-end non-Xeon processer would be nearly perfect. Also, while they are at it, could Apple please lower the upgrade pricing on built-in SSDs and RAM. It's just... crazy, and it's a factor that keeps me from replacing my 2009 5,1 Mac Pro. Or just change the Mini's internal design to allow for more user upgradability.
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New Mac Mini Please.
- Thread starter olduser007
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Absolutely! I love the concept of the new Mac Pro, but it's 100% WAY out of my price league for years to come. I'm a musician/composer/producer and don't need all the video stuff. What I need is CPU power and RAM. An updated Mac Mini with an 8 core high-end non-Xeon processer would be nearly perfect. Also, while they are at it, could Apple please lower the upgrade pricing on built-in SSDs and RAM. It's just... crazy, and it's a factor that keeps me from replacing my 2009 5,1 Mac Pro. Or just change the Mini's internal design to allow for more user upgradability.
Likely intentionally. Apple could have given us a lot more desktop power, cheaper, but chose not to. I look at the Mac Pro, and think of an extended middle finger.
I know what you mean, and I agree that the new Mac Pro seems geared towards the super high end market
However, this machine can also be seen as a statement to all pros/semi pros: "We at Apple are 100% dedicated to delivering professional tools for the pro market". This comes after almost a decade of debate and doubt among pro users - and maybe even among Apple themselves. It seems they have woken up from the "iEverything dream cloud". So, hopefully the glass is now half full, and they will continue along this (re-found) philosophy and deliver substantial upgrades to the Mini line (or whatever Machine/form factor could fill the gap between the 2019 Mac Pro and the current Mac Mini).Received a I5/8GB/256SSD unit from Apple last week. Nothing but problems from day 1 relating to T2 and external boot drives. The unit totally died yesterday and goes back. Will receive a new unit tomorrow. Maybe the second unit experience will be better...
Apple only update the form factor of their important products (iPhones/iPads) every 3 years, so how are they going to completely revise a much less relevant product after 1 year?
At best we can hope for is:-
Small revisions to the Mac Mini for better cooling, higher turbo-ing, lower temperatures under load (scarily high right now), and eventually Thunderbolt 4 (so maybe you don't need that PCIe slot so much)
A new "Mac" which is a smaller version of the mac pro with great cooling, and just one or two PCIe slots (I want this so much to replace the old $2200 Mac Pro)
[doublepost=1561025653][/doublepost]
This is the sad truth.
At best we can hope for is:-
Small revisions to the Mac Mini for better cooling, higher turbo-ing, lower temperatures under load (scarily high right now), and eventually Thunderbolt 4 (so maybe you don't need that PCIe slot so much)
A new "Mac" which is a smaller version of the mac pro with great cooling, and just one or two PCIe slots (I want this so much to replace the old $2200 Mac Pro)
[doublepost=1561025653][/doublepost]
This is the sad truth.
Ed wrote:
"Received a I5/8GB/256SSD unit from Apple last week. Nothing but problems from day 1 relating to T2 and external boot drives."
The VERY FIRST THING you need to do*, if you want "external" boot drives, is to boot to the recovery partition, open Startup Security, and set it for "no security" and "allow booting from external media".
It wouldn't hurt to leave Filevault turned OFF, as well.
I do all these things, and booting from externals is no problem on my 2018 Mini.
*One other thing:
You MUST create at least one administrative account BEFORE going to the recovery partition (as described above). Startup Security won't open properly without one -- it may ask you for an administrative password.
"Received a I5/8GB/256SSD unit from Apple last week. Nothing but problems from day 1 relating to T2 and external boot drives."
The VERY FIRST THING you need to do*, if you want "external" boot drives, is to boot to the recovery partition, open Startup Security, and set it for "no security" and "allow booting from external media".
It wouldn't hurt to leave Filevault turned OFF, as well.
I do all these things, and booting from externals is no problem on my 2018 Mini.
*One other thing:
You MUST create at least one administrative account BEFORE going to the recovery partition (as described above). Startup Security won't open properly without one -- it may ask you for an administrative password.
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It'd be really nice to see a trashcan mac pro with consumer grade parts in it. Why waste a great design? The design was bad for workstation level machine, but it's going to rock for Mini Pro.