Honestly, so long as people keep buying $2k computers with HDDs in them, Apple will keep producing them. It's only when people stop buying $2k computers with HDDs in them that Apple will sit up and take notice.
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The new Mac mini is almost certainly coming
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Honestly, so long as people keep buying $2k computers with HDDs in them, Apple will keep producing them. It's only when people stop buying $2k computers with HDDs in them that Apple will sit up and take notice.
Agreed. I will stop. 5400 spinner is a ripoff (in my opinion).
Most with any good sense will pay another $200-400 for an ssd because as the Mini is now a sealed system.
Now if the system was still user repairable such as the 2012 Mini it would not be a big deal at all to replace a faulty HDD.
The argument that the Mini is an entry level Mac and not considered a premium computer is valid along with entry level only requires HDD. The Macbook Air is entry level but comes with SSD.
The external HDD which are so cheap now make a better solution for storage than an internal HDD that you will have to take to the shop or send away to replace. Everyone should have one anyways for backup. If you don't you will end up loosing all your files.
So don't tell me you don't want an external HDD.
Ah, now you've hit my central concern -- Apple's continuing effort to lock out users from swapping components or upgrading features in their computers. I don't think anybody here would be as vociferous about Apple's choice of drive hardware or amount of memory if they weren't so dang insistent on forcing you to stick with that choice forever. Any choice they make will only suit a subset of consumers, and the more they force their one particular choice, the more prospective consumers are going to choose something other than an Apple...
With the coming of the 24 GB SSD based Fusion Drive, I guess there was a good bit of negative comment about the step down from the 128 GB based one. But, yes, it would be relatively cheap to produce, so maybe its time as the base line is nigh.
But still you will have the knockers saying that it is neither here nor there, and it should be SSD all the way, as it is with the Mac Pro and most (all now) of the MacBook range.
On the other hand, with a reasonable amount of of RAM, other than booting and opening apps, a computer with a HDD can perform OK for processing data. Desktops tend to be left on, and in my case, at least, most of the apps I regularly use are usually open.
Apple often does lead with innovations, but not always. It seems more a case of when they have the tech sorted and the time is ripe, sometimes courting controversy in the process.
True.
I struggle with the decision of what to do next, but I have time on my side for now.
The Mac is great for me because I can run my other 2 VMs, Windows 10 and Linux in OS X.
The cost are expansive to do this requiring Ram upgrade and quad core. The 2012 Mini was a no brainer but now I only left with iMac or leave OS X behind and move to a PC which all the apps I use will work fine in.
I don't want an AOI especially one that cost 2K when a PC would be 1/2 the price.
I sure there are others on here that feel the same way.
The actual cost (if Apple passed that on to the customer, instead of just absorbing the difference), is inconsequential to the price point if the mini. We're talking about the equivalent of a cup of coffee.
If your money is that tight then you simply should not be buying a Mac at all.
[edit: just to clarify, I'm referring to the 24GB added for the minimum Fusion]
Why so elitist and judgmental?
It is for the buyer to decide what computer suits their needs, for whatever reason, not some geek saying that Apple should satisfy their desires, and to heck with people on a low income.
My base model 2009 Mac Mini, set up with iWork cost me a month's pay. It should be good for another couple or three years. Many I know who have bought cheaper Windows based computers have replaced them a couple or three times in the same period.
A couple of generations of Mac Mini is almost certainly coming before I replace mine.
What are you talking about? All I'm saying is that the difference in cost of the mini you and I are talking about is negligible. Loose change small.
This is what I was talking about, your judgemental assertion that people without much money should not be buying a Mac.
Mac Minis to suit a range of budgets and needs are almost certainly coming.
If you can afford to buy a mini for $499 then it should be no problem to pay $504. A 1% price jump should not be the difference between getting one or not.
If it is that bigger deal; you've had to save up for years to buy this one computer and it will take you six more months to get that extra $5, then, yes, it is probably unwise to be buying a $500 computer.
That's not being elitist, but rather just practical financial advice.
[And I should know - for a number of years the sum total of my possessions was a tennis racquet and a cheap stereo; my disposable income was in the vicinity of $5 a week. I am far from elitist.]
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You're exactly right! I have no idea why people don't bother to paint their computers green. If you can afford to purchase a perfectly fine working computer that does everything you need at $499, then it should be no problem to pay $504 to get one that does everything you need and is also green! A 1% price jump should not be the difference between getting a bland metallic-colored computer and an obviously superior green-colored computer.
When, in some alternative universe, Apple offers an upgrade either to a fusion drive, or to green, it will be interesting to see how many people choose each option. Unfortunately, you will not be able to have both for $10. Apple doesn't want to overwhelm you with choice.
Well, actually, Apple does offer a Fusion drive as a BTO upgrade to the lowest-end Mini on their website. However, the option currently costs $250.
Shouldn't the Mac mini basically be a Retina MacBook without the screen, batteries, and built-in keyboard and mouse?
A slim aluminum enclosure with budget processor, a certain amount of built-in flash storage, ram, and a single USB-C port (or maybe two)?
Why wouldn't this be the direction they take? Such an enclosure could be made cheaply, with various price points depending on the customers storage needs.
If a customer needs anything more they can plug in a desktop dock and add whatever else they want. Or do it wirelessly.
Honestly, it was a poor analogy the first time you tried it. Apples and oranges.
What you're trying to compare is purely a cosmetic 'feature' rather than the performance based upgrade that speaks to the essence of what computers are specifically designed for.
But by all means, feel free to paint your own one green if that makes you feel better. Might be useful if you keep yours in the garden *camouflage*
Hmm. Why don't we consider this for a moment, then. You state that an SSD "speaks to the essence of what computers are specifically designed for." This means that you are saying the essence of a computer is, literally, the rate at which it can transfer data to and from a long-term data storage peripheral.
Yes, there are situations where communication with long-term storage is significant; for example, interacting with large, random-access databases (large meaning that the data cannot all be stored within RAM at one time). Very large collections of photos are an excellent example here.
However, in my experience, long-term storage is mainly touched when (a) loading a monolithic file or executable into RAM, or (b) storing a monolithic file. So, it is when you start up the computer (load the OS into RAM), or start an application, you are most likely to notice the rate at which long-term data is accessed.
So then: is the quantity of this wait time the "essence of a what a computer is specifically designed for?" Does the difference between a 30 second bootup and a 5 second bootup define whether a computer is usable or unusable, even if there's no difference in performance after the machine boots up? Or after an application loads?
And, if bootup speed is such a concern, I've gotta ask: why do you turn your computer off in the first place? I myself have exactly 0 seconds of bootup wait when I first check my machines in the morning, because I never turn them off.
Similarly, I don't understand why you might be concerned with shaving a few seconds off file saving times; all long-term storage I/O should be buffered. That is, you spool off the data to a background process, and let it communicate with the storage device while you continue to work on whatever you want in the foreground. I/O operations require almost no CPU cycles, so they generally will not affect other running processes.
Anyway, in summary: an SSD does run much, much faster than a magnetic HD. But, except for a small minority of activities, interacting directly with the HD is not something a typical user should need to bother with. I personally spend about as much time considering the appearance of my computer's case as I do twiddling my fingers and waiting for a long-term storage data transfer to complete...
After I replaced the slow hard drive in my 2011 MacBook Pro with an SSD, I was so happy with the result that I no longer feel the need to upgrade any time soon. Or, I could have painted it green. Then it would have been slow, as before, and ugly.
The essence is about getting stuff done - faster. Flash allows you to do more, how much depends of course on your use case, but the point is it does help everyone, (just some more than others).
It's all those micro-waits that I don't miss one little bit. Once you get used to the train coming every few minutes its very hard to be happy with a bus that comes once an hour...
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This is my experience also (and that of everyone I know who has done the same!).
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@jpietrzak8 HDD is the real bottleneck of computers... I could only undestand your position if you have no clue about how hardware works, and it seems its the case, so take here, some real world application:
If you put an SSD on a dual core Macbook Air the overal experience is going to be a faster than a Mac Pro x12 cores with 5400rpm HDD.
But not only faster, also safer, SSD won't broke because it has no mechanical nor movile parts. Durable, they have an stimated life time of 100 years. And the price difference for same GB? 100$ for a random dude, guess how much it will be for a company like Apple... They could just put 512GB SSD for the basic model - configuration and still have a lot of profits.
HDD has been replaced. Just like floppy disks were replaced by Compact Discs. Like flash drives replaced CDs. etc... So you guys can accept it or keep living in the past while talking about how painting your laptop is going to make it better.
If you put an SSD on a dual core Macbook Air the overal experience is going to be a faster than a Mac Pro x12 cores with 5400rpm HDD.
But not only faster, also safer, SSD won't broke because it has no mechanical nor movile parts. Durable, they have an stimated life time of 100 years. And the price difference for same GB? 100$ for a random dude, guess how much it will be for a company like Apple... They could just put 512GB SSD for the basic model - configuration and still have a lot of profits.
HDD has been replaced. Just like floppy disks were replaced by Compact Discs. Like flash drives replaced CDs. etc... So you guys can accept it or keep living in the past while talking about how painting your laptop is going to make it better.
Well, good for you. I'm glad that change made the Mini better for you.
You know what would make the Mini great for me? What would touch the "essence of what a desktop computer is specifically designed for?" I would love to see an actual desktop-quality graphics card. A modern, full-power desktop CPU. Hard Drive bays that can be accessed by the user. RAM that is replaceable. And most of all, the one thing I have missed most since I left the world of PC desktop machines:
A freakin' full-size PCIe card slot!!!!
The computer industry, over the last 3 or 4 decades, has done incredible amounts of work to create a standardized protocol for attaching daughterboard electronics to motherboards. There is an entire world of expansion possibilities out there, from graphics cards, to network adapters, to coprocessor daughterboards, to any number of controller cards for numerous devices. And Apple has turned its back on the entire lot of them.
Anyway, I digress. My point is, I don't personally see a significant difference in saving a few seconds here and there in storage access time, when Apple could easily choose a desktop design that would provide REAL, SIGNIFICANT improvements in performance and capabilities.
If all you can do is switch between a magnetic drive and an SSD, you might as well just change the paint job on your machine, it makes just about as much of a difference.
Uhm, ok. Yeah. The "overall" experience. I'm not sure exactly what "real world" application we're talking about here, but if I were to run a real-world application that takes advantage of multiple cores (say, perhaps, video transcoding, something like what Handbrake does), I have absolutely no doubt that the Mac Pro would run rings around the Macbook Air.
A Mac Pro is a workstation computer, not designed for browsing the net or playing games. The Xeon CPUs are optimized for multi-core processing, rather than single-core speed. As such, I would expect that there are people who will prefer the "experience" of a Macbook over a Mac Pro (regardless of HD, SSD, or whatever), simply because their workload is handled better by a machine optimized to max out single-core processes.
Yup, I would definitely go for SSDs for anything that will get bumped, bounced, or dropped. This isn't such a big deal for a desktop machine, though.
HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH.
Apple doesn't want you to buy the basic model. Therefore, Apple makes sure that the basic model does not get premium upgrades. It is, at least in part, Apple's ability to encourage customers to spend more that explains Apple's massive profits.
True. But you're talking about a complete redesign to the mini; a completely new machine.
The original discussion was about how Apple should include at least the 24GB of flash that they have already designed for a Fusion setup and could do with a negligible hit to the profit margin on each machine to build.
Now, the true reason they don't of course is that they can then charge a ridiculous 'upgrade fee' to get the user experience that they deserve.
Apple used to prioritise consumer experience, but now Spreadsheet Tim studies the bottom line at the expense of everything else. In the short term it makes sense, but in the longer term the erosion of the goodwill and user experience will come back to bite. Hard.
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Apple doesn't want you to buy the basic model. Therefore, Apple makes sure that the basic model does not get premium upgrades. It is, at least in part, Apple's ability to encourage customers to spend more that explains Apple's massive profits.
At least we agree on something. [Although I'd argue some Flash storage is the new base and no longer a 'premium upgrade'. My purchase of a X25-M G2 160GB in 2009, now that was a premium upgrade! *ouch*
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Real word: start-up the machine, restart, open apps, read-write data that's 99% of a computer usage no matter what you do with it, that's why it's called "overall experience" because it applyies to everyone.
Sure because the fact it's over your desktop means that the drive isn't spining right? LOL This one is allmost on the level of the green paint comparison.
Joker atack? You should read more, here, the first I found, have fun http://betanews.com/2014/12/05/modern-ssds-can-last-a-lifetime/
Apple doesn't want you to buy the basic model. Therefore, Apple makes sure that the basic model does not get premium upgrades. It is, at least in part, Apple's ability to encourage customers to spend more that explains Apple's massive profits.
Maybe we should encourage them to go back to core 2 duo cpus for basics models ...