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The new Mac mini is almost certainly coming

So with Intel removing tick-tock releases that means Apple will be unable to refresh their computers every year.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-kills-tick-tock-cycle,31472.html

Apple relies on consumption and planed obsoleteness to sell more devices. They make more money off the IOS App Store than they can ever hope with OS X.
IOS devices can be upgraded every year because Apple controls the in house chip design.
The alternative for their computers is either slow sales because refresh Intel chips will be 1 1/2-2 year cycle or port OS X to their own chips for yearly refresh.

You might argue that well....what about BootCamp? I don't think Apple cares because MS apps are available in IOS and thus no need for BootCamp any longer.

Apple chip development has matched the performance of Intel chips on the lower and mid levels.

Apple may phase this in over time but I see this coming with the push towards IOS becoming Apples main OS while weaning us off OS X X86 computers.
 
Crosscreek said:
So with Intel removing tick-tock releases that means Apple will be unable to refresh their computers every year.
Click to expand...

In the best case, Intel moving away from tick-tock releases could inspire Apple to move away from their "a broken clock is correct twice a day" release schedule.

And as has been discussed many times in this thread, Apple being able to refresh their computers every year means very little if they are not willing to refresh their computers every year anyway.
 
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MarkusL said:
In the best case, Intel moving away from tick-tock releases could inspire Apple to move away from their "a broken clock is correct twice a day" release schedule.

And as has been discussed many times in this thread, Apple being able to refresh their computers every year means very little if they are not willing to refresh their computers every year anyway.
Click to expand...

That's just the point. They are at the mercy of Intel which as we know Apple does not want to be controlled by anyone.
 
Crosscreek said:
That's just the point. They are at the mercy of Intel which as we know Apple does not want to be controlled by anyone.
Click to expand...

Well, it's hardly Intel's fault that the Haswell mini came out in 2014 instead of 2013. They can put their goods on the market but they can't put a gun to Apple's head and force them to buy them. If Apple skips every second processor generation, is Intel supposed to compensate by releasing two processor generations every year?
 
Serban said:
so we have rumours that point to an silent update for the 12" Macbook
we have rumours about the MBP updates for the wwdc
we know that the imac and maybe the mac pro will get updates in late 2016
but, for god sake we have any rumour about an mac mini ?
Click to expand...
A silent update where we can have a 2014 mac mini with a quad core is ok for me, there will probably be none or nearly no rumours about such silent update.
 
MarkusL said:
Well, it's hardly Intel's fault that the Haswell mini came out in 2014 instead of 2013. They can put their goods on the market but they can't put a gun to Apple's head and force them to buy them. If Apple skips every second processor generation, is Intel supposed to compensate by releasing two processor generations every year?
Click to expand...

The Mini is inconsequential to Apple. The important products that make money are laptops and iPhone/iPads.
The Mini could go away and not hurt Apple in the least.
 
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Crosscreek said:
So with Intel removing tick-tock releases that means Apple will be unable to refresh their computers every year.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-kills-tick-tock-cycle,31472.html

Apple relies on consumption and planed obsoleteness to sell more devices. They make more money off the IOS App Store than they can ever hope with OS X..
Click to expand...

Well given the mini hasn't changed forever its not 100% true is it :)
Mini is pretty much dead and totally irrelevant to the market. I've swapped mine over for a NUC now.
 
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AFEPPL said:
Well given the mini hasn't changed forever its not 100% true is it :)
Mini is pretty much dead and totally irrelevant to the market. I've swapped mine over for a NUC now.
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I paid the stupid $100 Apple tax to upgrade my iPhone 5S to a 64GB SE but I will not pay the Apple tax on a Mini anymore.
 
Crosscreek said:
The Mini is inconsequential to Apple. The important products that make money are laptops and iPhone/iPads.
The Mini could go away and not hurt Apple in the least.
Click to expand...

+1

piechart.png


And the iPad not so much anymore either. Its declined year over year for roughly 2 years now, IIRC. Also, Cook hinted that the iPhone would see the first year over year decline ever in the current quarter. Maybe the 5se was released now as an attempt to sneak in another few million sales before the end of the quarter?

Back to your point though, the Mini is a small piece of a small, declining piece of Apple's revenue. Any other manufacturer would at the very least update the processor in the Mini, from Haswell to Broadwell, since the processors have been available for quite a while now (and of course Skylake as well). And the cost to do so would be marginal at best, since they updated the 13" Macbook Pro which has the same processor line. 4k support, better graphics, lower power consumption, etc. yet they just don't care.

The best explanation I can come up with is they truly believe that computer sales are going to decline even despite their best efforts in the Mac so they throw as little money at the line as possible. As a consumer it sure is frustrating, especially when something like the Skull Canyon NUC is around the corner.
 
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tubular- said:
+1

And the iPad not so much anymore either. Its declined year over year for roughly 2 years now, IIRC. Also, Cook hinted that the iPhone would see the first year over year decline ever in the current quarter. Maybe the 5se was released now as an attempt to sneak in another few million sales before the end of the quarter?

Back to your point though, the Mini is a small piece of a small, declining piece of Apple's revenue. Any other manufacturer would at the very least update the processor in the Mini, from Haswell to Broadwell, since the processors have been available for quite a while now (and of course Skylake as well). And the cost to do so would be marginal at best, since they updated the 13" Macbook Pro which has the same processor line. 4k support, better graphics, lower power consumption, etc. yet they just don't care.

The best explanation I can come up with is they truly believe that computer sales are going to decline even despite their best efforts in the Mac so they throw as little money at the line as possible. As a consumer it sure is frustrating, especially when something like the Skull Canyon NUC is around the corner.
Click to expand...

Thanks for posting this. What you say makes some sense, but it looks like Apple makes at least 50% more on computer sales than on Watch sales, and they are quite willing to put lots of time into the Watch (pun intended). Maybe the Mini would get more attention if it was wearable. Even if something represented 1% of sales, why would Apple throw away 1%? If they do want to get rid of 1% of their revenue, I will take it! ;)
 
theid said:
You can get those things and more in exactly 8 weeks, without waiting for Kaby Lake, if you pick up a NUC6i7KYK.

Also don't forget that Apple's current trend is to remove useful ports and solder in low spec chips, giving them a much shorter usable life. So don't get your hopes up.
Click to expand...

Not exactly, in the SkyLake in order to get those features you need an extra chip.
This is something, I assume, Apple doesn't like.

KabyLake will integrate it on the Chip level hence it will fit much more this design paradigm.
 
jpietrzak8 said:
Actually, no. The computer industry as a whole has gone through an incredible amount of effort to standardize daughterboard connections, specifically to avoid expansion cards being tied to a single motherboard manufacturer. The current standard is PCIe; the slot form of PCIe is found in pretty much all Windows PCs, as well as in the (pre-2013) Mac Pro. A variant of the PCIe standard can be found in some other Mac models as well, for supporting internal drives.



Yes, to an extent; bandwidth and speed are throttled whenever you are forced to move data across a wire. Thunderbolt is faster, and therefore involves less throttling; but it still is not anywhere near the amount of speed you can get from a direct connection between two PCBs.



I think you could make a fairly decent argument that the MacBook is Apple's best seller because Apple doesn't offer a conventional desktop computer (with expansion slots). If Apple ever does decide to compete in the desktop computer world, I think they could easily dominate the major manufacturers.



Er, say what??? :) If you go into any retail store that sells computers (other than Apple computers), or browse the website of any company that sells Windows PCs, the default product shown to you is that mini-tower box that can fit a motherboard, a couple of expansion cards, a couple of internal drives, and one or two front-facing drives. Sure, there are all-in-ones and micro-pcs available (just like the iMac and the Mini), but these are niche products; the main product sold in the Windows world today is still a box into which you can stuff all your components. It takes up less space, it requires fewer cords, everything can run off a single power supply, and components can be added or removed as the user prefers.

For many people, this approach still makes a lot of sense.
[doublepost=1458877663][/doublepost]

Well, heck, let's just take that all the way to the extreme: have Apple create a Mac Micro, which contains OSX (on a ROM or some such, the way they used to do in the old, old days), and let the user plug it into an external box that contains its own graphics card, drives, power supply, and CPU. In short, a full-fledged PC. If Apple can't be bothered to create a conventional desktop PC, but is willing to let you connect to external expansion cards (graphics cards and the like), I don't think this would be much more of a step... :)
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Fair enough. For the record, re: PCIe, I was mainly referring to Apple designs. Even in the 90s Apple had an annoying habit of designing cases that would not accomodate full height cards, thus requiring support for multiple card designs.

That said, I did think Thuderbolt 2 had more or less eliminate the need to have a card plugged directly into the MB. My only question now is, is there any expansion hardware that actually needs to be plugged into a MB, where the speed reduction over Thunderbolt 2 cable wouldn't be acceptable.
 
If you had TB3 devices daisy chained - e.g. monitors, external drives inc SSD, things like RAID arrays, (eGPU), networking etc ?
You're sharing the bandwidth between all the devices, so having 2x with TB3 would help with being able to use the devices at the same time. Kind of useful if you're using a monitor & external drives for example.
 
tubular- said:
+1

piechart.png


And the iPad not so much anymore either. Its declined year over year for roughly 2 years now, IIRC. Also, Cook hinted that the iPhone would see the first year over year decline ever in the current quarter. Maybe the 5se was released now as an attempt to sneak in another few million sales before the end of the quarter?

Back to your point though, the Mini is a small piece of a small, declining piece of Apple's revenue. Any other manufacturer would at the very least update the processor in the Mini, from Haswell to Broadwell, since the processors have been available for quite a while now (and of course Skylake as well). And the cost to do so would be marginal at best, since they updated the 13" Macbook Pro which has the same processor line. 4k support, better graphics, lower power consumption, etc. yet they just don't care.

The best explanation I can come up with is they truly believe that computer sales are going to decline even despite their best efforts in the Mac so they throw as little money at the line as possible. As a consumer it sure is frustrating, especially when something like the Skull Canyon NUC is around the corner.
Click to expand...

You aren't very good at math, am I right? That "small, declining piece of Apple's revenue" grows in value every year and it was never as big as it was in 2015. 2015 was the best year ever for the Mac, in sales, revenue, consumer satisfaction and reliability scores.

The decline is only in % points, because the rest (iPhone net sales, Services, others) have grown so much faster. Those 9% Mac Net Sales are the envy of the industry, and more valuable than all PC sales from all competitors combined. And growing, while competitors are declining and average selling prices dropping.

If the Mac Mini isn't relevant for the Mac business, that's only because the iMac + rMBP + rMB are by far the best computers on the market and together make the mini irrelevant.

If you need a desktop Machine like that, for some reason, maybe you should look at other offerings. It's your money, but Intel has been providing more or less 0% performance gains for the last few Gens.
 
That was in reference to sales of Apple products in general. I'm not saying it doesn't bring a few people in but it's nothing that Apple relies on.

That lat time Minis were introduced at WWDC 2014 they may have got a 2 second mention.
 
until the apple watch will not be as big as the iphone is, they cant get rid of the mac
they need the mac mini, the macbooks (air can go away), the imac and mac pro
[doublepost=1459023008][/doublepost]but it is nice to see that mac sales is equal to ipad. for the last 2-3 years ipad was in front so i think apple cant remove mac from the list since is meant to be on second place next year
 
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People shouting doom and gloom for Mac are a bit off.

We are in an interesting time where services have over taken software. apple want us to use them, they need to provide hardware to do so.

I'd love to see Apple make a new mini with gpu. I don't see it happening. I'd also love to see Apple license OS X to third parties. I don't see it happening.
I really want my headless iMac...
 
Devie said:
People shouting doom and gloom for Mac are a bit off.

We are in an interesting time where services have over taken software. apple want us to use them, they need to provide hardware to do so.

I'd love to see Apple make a new mini with gpu. I don't see it happening. I'd also love to see Apple license OS X to third parties. I don't see it happening.
I really want my headless iMac...
Click to expand...

Sounds like doom and gloom to me.
 
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Cape Dave said:
14 inch MacBook Air with Retina screen, CPU Boost, all around boost, and USB C x2 would make me run to the apple website real quick. Space Gray please!
Click to expand...
I think the Air line will be retired (more or less), but a 14" MacBook is a lock. [I think the 13" Air will linger as the 'entry'/education model when the 2012 MBP is finally retired.]
 
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yes since ipad is declining year after year and the mac sales growing, im guessing Apple will remove the ipad mini, and focus only on the 2 pro models and starting focusing more in Mac area
i am sure this year with the new mac coming, redesign macbook pros and imac and maybe the mac mini and mac pro....mac will outsell the ipad. And with prediction that iphone will see a declining , Apple will need the Mac more than ever for the last 4-5 years
 
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I don't think the Mac story is over by a long shot.

But how it unfolds from here is far from clear.
 
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