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The new Mac mini is almost certainly coming

Indeed - " The new Mac mini is almost certainly coming..."

Behold:

Mac products vintage in the United States and Turkey and obsolete in the rest of the world

Mac notebooks
  • MacBook (13-inch)
  • MacBook (13-inch, Mid 2009)
  • MacBook (13-inch, Late 2009)
  • MacBook Air (Mid 2009)
  • MacBook Air (13-inch, Late 2010)
  • MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2009)
  • MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2010)
  • MacBook Pro (15-inch, Glossy)
  • MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2009)
  • MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2.53GHz, Mid 2009)
  • MacBook Pro (17-inch, Mid 2009)
  • MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2010)
  • MacBook Pro (17-inch, Mid 2010)
Mac desktops
  • iMac G5 (20-inch)
  • iMac G5 ALS (20-inch)
  • iMac (20-inch, Early 2009)
  • iMac (20-inch, Mid 2009)
  • iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2009)
  • iMac (21.5-inch, Mid 2010)
  • iMac (24-inch, Early 2009)
  • iMac (27-inch, Late 2009)
  • iMac (27-inch, Mid 2010)
  • Mac mini (Early 2009)
  • Mac mini (Late 2009)
  • Mac mini (Mid 2010)
  • Mac mini Server (Mid 2010)
  • Mac Pro (Early 2009)
  • Xserve (Early 2009)
  • Xserve G5 (January 2005)
Peripherals
  • AirPort Extreme 802.11n (4th generation)
  • Apple Cinema Display (30-inch DVI Early 2007)
  • Apple LED Cinema Display (24-inch)
  • Apple Studio Display 17
  • Apple TV (1st generation)
  • iSight
  • Time Capsule 802.11n (3rd generation)

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Front page article said (Inthink) only early 2009 Mini. TBH it makes little difference to me as I can't imagine what I'd take my late 2009 into an Apple store for
 
Jambalaya said:
Front page article said (Inthink) only early 2009 Mini.
Click to expand...

I posted the link to Apple's site with all the details. The 2009 and 2010 are now considered "vintage". As they explain, computers between 5 to 7 years old are "vintage" and aside from a few exceptions, will not have hardware support from Apple. Computers older than 7 years are "obsolete" and get no support without exception.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201624
 
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now i see it said:
Apple can use whatever adjective it wants. It's just a word. I prefer to think of my old Apple crap as stately.
Click to expand...
Experienced.

I worry that my husband's iMac (2011) is going to become Experienced very soon. Although that power button will probably give up approximately one day before then. We'd replace it with a Mac Mini which is almost certainly coming, but, you know, it will probably be a Hac Mini after all...
 
MarkusL said:
The new Mac mini is almost certainly obsolete when it's coming.
Click to expand...
We're so "today's hardware at all costs" obsessed. Apple just wants us to buy their potato, if it runs OSX without any hitches, then why do we need top-spec anything? Especially when the top-spec stuff is offered in the trash can, but it's too expensive, they want it from the potato?
 
cgdrummer said:
We're so "today's hardware at all costs" obsessed. Apple just wants us to buy their potato, if it runs OSX without any hitches, then why do we need top-spec anything? Especially when the top-spec stuff is offered in the trash can, but it's too expensive, they want it from the potato?
Click to expand...

Er, why can't we have "top-spec" anything? Or, really, even medium-spec "today's hardware"? It isn't like Apple is hurting for cash right now, or that they are a second-rate hardware producer. Certainly, they make more money by selling us cut-rate hardware at exorbitant prices; but, they could probably increase their market share by selling high-quality hardware at decent prices, the way other hardware producers do.

A decade ago, OS X was enough of a reason to buy Apple hardware, even if that hardware was inferior or obsolete. But then, a decade ago Apple's hardware wasn't inferior; it was almost as cutting-edge as the competition. Today, though, OS X has much fiercer competition, and Apple's hardware is definitely not keeping up.

It doesn't take a lot of effort to see that Apple's offerings in the desktop PC market just don't compete these days. The stuff offered by other manufacturers provide better performance, more features, lower prices, and decent ease-of-use.
 
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cgdrummer said:
if it runs OSX without any hitches, then why do we need top-spec anything?
Click to expand...

Nonsense. B&H sells 22 different configurations of the Mini at prices ranging from $449 to $1999. That should leave plenty of options between your "potato" and my "top spec" Mini. Why should the whole market dumb itself down to your lowest common denominator?

And at the top end, why should we pay $1999 for a design that's over two years old and is 40% less powerful than the four year old model it replaced?
 
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So...IF Apple plans on releasing a new Mini (and iMac and/or Pro), is there any date that is more likely than others? Any planned event that could also include it, etc?
 
Trusteft said:
Haha ha, so astonishingly clever!
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And yet, as good an answer as any. Apple's increasing focus on the iPhone has left their Mac products to wither away. Long ago, you could count on some sort of fall Mac event every year, often some sort of spring event, and quite possibly some sort of announcement at WWDC. But as time has passed, the events have become fewer and farther between, as have the updates to the Mac line.

The last time the Mini was even mentioned at an Apple event was over two years ago at an iPad-centric event. My understanding is that they spent about 60 seconds discussing the update, and then moved on to other matters.

By all appearances, Apple has very little interest (if any) in the Mini any more. Whether it receives any press at an upcoming event, or whether it even receives a future update, is at this point anybody's guess.
 
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In the past, sometimes the mini was silently upgraded with zero fanfare. Just a press release and a "New" badge magically appearing next to it in the online store. Other times it got a short mention. So there's no telling what will happen. The Mini was Jobs' idea. We don't know if the rest of the board back then was ever very enthusiastic about the thing. I'm thinking not. And it shows.
But the new mini is just around the corner...
 
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jpietrzak8 said:
Er, why can't we have "top-spec" anything? Or, really, even medium-spec "today's hardware"? It isn't like Apple is hurting for cash right now, or that they are a second-rate hardware producer. Certainly, they make more money by selling us cut-rate hardware at exorbitant prices; but, they could probably increase their market share by selling high-quality hardware at decent prices, the way other hardware producers do.

A decade ago, OS X was enough of a reason to buy Apple hardware, even if that hardware was inferior or obsolete. But then, a decade ago Apple's hardware wasn't inferior; it was almost as cutting-edge as the competition. Today, though, OS X has much fiercer competition, and Apple's hardware is definitely not keeping up.

It doesn't take a lot of effort to see that Apple's offerings in the desktop PC market just don't compete these days. The stuff offered by other manufacturers provide better performance, more features, lower prices, and decent ease-of-use.
Click to expand...

Jean-Louis Gassée, who was a top executive at Apple before leaving the company to spearhead the Be Box and Be OS, has an idea of what’s going on.
 
MarsViolet said:
Jean-Louis Gassée, who was a top executive at Apple before leaving the company to spearhead the Be Box and Be OS, has an idea of what’s going on.
Click to expand...

Honestly, I've gotta disagree with this assessment. To my mind, classifying the entire PC market as a "declining market" is roughly the same as classifying the market for sedans as a declining market: sure, public transportation is becoming more widespread, and alternatives like Uber make it easier than ever for people to live without owning a car. But that doesn't really mean that the auto market is going to disappear, or that it is no longer profitable. Jean-Louis Gassée is missing the point -- certainly, you can race to the bottom, and destroy your profits that way. But that doesn't mean the market disappears. If HP bankrupts itself, its customers will naturally migrate over to Dell, or to Lenovo, or whoever is still producing the goods that they need. Because, make no mistake about it, people still need PCs; whether for the office, or for gaming, or whatever.

Sedans have been around for the better part of a century. They may slowly be going out of style, but they are still a very popular product, and probably will continue to be for quite some time to come...
 
jpietrzak8 said:
Er, why can't we have "top-spec" anything? Or, really, even medium-spec "today's hardware"? It isn't like Apple is hurting for cash right now, or that they are a second-rate hardware producer. Certainly, they make more money by selling us cut-rate hardware at exorbitant prices; but, they could probably increase their market share by selling high-quality hardware at decent prices, the way other hardware producers do.

A decade ago, OS X was enough of a reason to buy Apple hardware, even if that hardware was inferior or obsolete. But then, a decade ago Apple's hardware wasn't inferior; it was almost as cutting-edge as the competition. Today, though, OS X has much fiercer competition, and Apple's hardware is definitely not keeping up.

It doesn't take a lot of effort to see that Apple's offerings in the desktop PC market just don't compete these days. The stuff offered by other manufacturers provide better performance, more features, lower prices, and decent ease-of-use.
Click to expand...

I'm giving the impression that I like having no chance to upgrade RAM and storage in the MM or MBP. I'm just trying to see it from their side of it, perhaps. I agree with your assessment, it's just that it looks like Apple is still operating under the impression that MacOS is the reason to still buy their computers, for the small yet mighty crowd who haven't left yet to build their Hackintosh. I won't hold my breath that they might see the error of their ways.

I'm also saying that they won't make the MM super powerful when they want you to buy the iMac or the MP. Else, why bother offering other machines?
 
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jpietrzak8 said:
Honestly, I've gotta disagree with this assessment. To my mind, classifying the entire PC market as a "declining market" is roughly the same as classifying the market for sedans as a declining market: sure, public transportation is becoming more widespread, and alternatives like Uber make it easier than ever for people to live without owning a car. But that doesn't really mean that the auto market is going to disappear, or that it is no longer profitable. Jean-Louis Gassée is missing the point -- certainly, you can race to the bottom, and destroy your profits that way. But that doesn't mean the market disappears. If HP bankrupts itself, its customers will naturally migrate over to Dell, or to Lenovo, or whoever is still producing the goods that they need. Because, make no mistake about it, people still need PCs; whether for the office, or for gaming, or whatever.

Sedans have been around for the better part of a century. They may slowly be going out of style, but they are still a very popular product, and probably will continue to be for quite some time to come...
Click to expand...

“Will the PC category keep declining until it disappears?” was a rhetorical question. Gassée’s point is that Apple, having recognized that the Macintosh market is in decline, is milking the Mac for higher profits rather than engaging in a race to the bottom with other PC makers such as HP. This suggests that the Macintosh is being phased out. A few years down the road Apple could be selling “iBooks” again, but in this case they’d be laptops with ARM processors running iOS.
 
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Trusteft said:
So...IF Apple plans on releasing a new Mini (and iMac and/or Pro), is there any date that is more likely than others? Any planned event that could also include it, etc?
Click to expand...
I believe the date that is more likely than others is "never".

http://www.vox.com/new-money/2016/11/27/13706776/apple-functional-divisional

If GE can build jet engines, tidal energy farms, freight rail data systems, mining equipment, and medical devices, how is it that the world’s most valuable company can’t find the time to make a full line of personal computers and PC peripherals alongside its market-leading smartphones and tablets? The answer goes back to Apple’s corporate structure, which, though fairly common for a startup, is extremely unusual for an enormous company.

[...] Apple isn’t like that. If you look at their executive team you’ll find that there’s no senior vice president for iPhone who works alongside a senior vice president for Mac. Nobody is in charge of Macs or iPhones or iPads or really anything else, because Apple is almost entirely functional.

[...] The upshot is that even though regularly updating desktop Macs should not be that difficult, objectively speaking, it tends not to happen in part because it’s not anyone’s job to make it happen. The functional organization values collaboration on top corporate priorities above all else, and that means basically everything comes ahead of desktop Macs. Admitting that they can’t work at all on peripherals is, in that context, a step in the right direction.
Click to expand...

This is what I feel as well. Instead of trying to vary their income – which would require complete shake-up of the management – they are narrowing it further. Having Ive in charge of ALL design, Cue in charge of ALL cloud services and nobody at all in charge of Macs results in, well, what we see. We now have an iMac without any USB-C, Mac Pro that hasn't been updated for years, Macbook with one USB-C and Macbook Pros with two or four Thunderbolt 3s. Some devices have a headphone jack and some don't. There's an iPhone SE but no iPad SE or Mac SE. Imagine if there was a Mac department solely responsible for the computers.

I used to think people who said Macintosh Inc. should become a separate company were bonkers, but now I agree. Just create a daughter company that focuses only on that, bring back Steve's quadrant with added Mini (i.e. pro + general laptop, Mac Pro + iMac + Mini), drop everything else and update the damn things regularly. Matthew Yglesias, whose article I link to, has a very good point:

Even if Apple does make a new Mac Pro at this point, buyers wary of the possibility of years-long gaps between updates will still find themselves thinking that people in the market for desktop workstations may need to look beyond the Mac.
Click to expand...

I don't think they are consciously dropping Macs. I think they just can't figure out how to make them magically update by themselves while there are important things, i.e. iPhones to make. See also losing Thunderbolt Display, Airport, Time Capsule, delays with AirPods and releasing iPhone 7 without proper camera software. (I'll leave the poor Crapple Music out of this.) Solder all you want but give us the LATEST equipment and don't gimp bloody Mini so that 2014 model is worse than 2012.
 
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If you look at what happened to the MacBook Pro it is obvious that everything will be glued and soldered including SSD options.
If there ever is another Mini there will probably not be any aftermarket upgrade path do to planed obsolescence.
 
Great point about GE :) It is amazing how one product with a tiny 5 inch screen and its bigger brother totally sucks the life out of an almost trillion dollar company so that it cannot even see anything else in its lineup except for maybe music downloads, emoji's and watch bands. I am glad I jumped ship. It was getting embarrassing. Has Godot arrived yet? No? Keep waiting :)

Lord knows that wireless router must have put quite a strain on the like 20,000,000 engineers at the company :)
 
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The difference between GE and Apple is that Apple wants to maintain their 'startup structure', with small teams all working tightly together. They simply move people over to work on different projects instead of having a bazillion employees doing everything.

Now this approach may have worked in the past but it's obvious Apple has grown too big to maintain this philosophy. It's just such a stab in the back to everyone who has invested so much into their eco system.
 
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Cape Dave said:
Great point about GE :) It is amazing how one product with a tiny 5 inch screen and its bigger brother totally sucks the life out of an almost trillion dollar company so that it cannot even see anything else in its lineup except for maybe music downloads, emoji's and watch bands. I am glad I jumped ship. It was getting embarrassing. Has Godot arrived yet? No? Keep waiting :)

Lord knows that wireless router must have put quite a strain on the like 20,000,000 engineers at the company :)
Click to expand...

Apple has become a company of the mantra we can't be bothered.

It's too bad. We are entering the era of mediocrity, with companies like Apple leading the way.
 
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