The new Mac mini is almost certainly coming

[sublunar]

I'm sure it's already been linked to earlier in the thread, but John Gruber has said on his podcast (in a recent episode, a few shows back) that he thinks the Mac Mini is done and will quietly disappear from the site sooner than later. Nothing particularly shocking, a lot of people believe the same, but I think if anyone is holding out for new Mac Mini updates at this point - well you're just setting yourself up for disappointment.

I wouldn't be surprised if they thinned the line up to basically iMac and MacBook/MacBook Pros. Their ceasing to make Apple displays probably signals their intent is to kill off all remaining Macs that need to be plugged into an external display.

And an 8k iMac Pro next year.

In all seriousness, we should really check on the Mini at every hardware event because that's where it'll get retired, after the launch of something that will finish it off.

There's not enough profit in the Mini for Apple, it has to be superseded by iPad Pro plus iCloud, and there has to be a compelling offering for a low end new Mac Pro for the refugees who would have bought souped up quad core Minis in the past.

If, for example, Ryzen prompts a move towards a price war with Intel we might reap some benefits in a cheaper Mac Pro with fewer compromised design decisions.

Bear in mind one glimmer of hope here for people looking for Ryzen. The current MacBooks have USB-C but NOT Thunderbolt 3. This is something that's bound to confuse consumers though.

Without Thunderbolt 3, a USB3.1 Gen 2 port is limited to 10Gbps (roughly the speed of Thunderbolt 1) which is still handy. A Ryzen powered Mac without Thunderbolt 3 ports would be incapable of using the LG Ultrafine 5k 27" monitor although it should be able to drive the 4k one.

They could find a way to add Alpine Ridge controllers in to bring it back up to speed, and then throw in one (yes, just one) AMD Vega GPU.

Would Apple want to open the door to AMD CPUs knowing the Hackintosh brigade would pounce on it?
[doublepost=1487811076][/doublepost]Look at this from Zotac. An i7 + Nvidia GTX 1080 in a small case but with a water cooled solution.

 

[Crosscreek]

Would Apple want to open the door to AMD CPUs knowing the Hackintosh brigade would pounce on it?

They will be hacked without Apples support sooner or later. There have been AMD hacks already.

 

[sublunar]

They will be hacked without Apples support sooner or later. There have been AMD hacks already.

Yes but are they stable?

Either way, you just have to wonder if the video editors that the 2013 Mac Pro was aimed at would return for a Ryzen-powered 'Mac' with M.2 slots for internal storage if all models had at least 8 cores and 16 threads? Yes, Vega isn't due yet but that gives room for a future upgrade if the initial models come with a AMD RX480.

 

[Crosscreek]

Yes but are they stable?

Either way, you just have to wonder if the video editors that the 2013 Mac Pro was aimed at would return for a Ryzen-powered 'Mac' with M.2 slots for internal storage if all models had at least 8 cores and 16 threads? Yes, Vega isn't due yet but that gives room for a future upgrade if the initial models come with a AMD RX480.

I will be surprised if Apple participates in the Pro line desktop. It looks like the MacBook Pro will have the 32GBs of Ram that most people were complaining about for Video editing and an iMac Pro with 64GBs may happen instead of a new Mac Pro.

I think they will start moving some of the line to ARM chips to cut the hackers out altogether in the future but I not predicting a time frame but it's coming.

I doubt we will see any Ryzen Macs and it's too bad in my opinion.

 

[sublunar]

I will be surprised if Apple participates in the Pro line desktop. It looks like the MacBook Pro will have the 32GBs of Ram that most people were complaining about for Video editing and an iMac Pro with 64GBs may happen instead of a new Mac Pro.

I think they will start moving some of the line to ARM chips to cut the hackers out altogether in the future but I not predicting a time frame but it's coming.

I doubt we will see any Ryzen Macs and it's too bad in my opinion.

Without a form factor change (perhaps adding a Mac pro style cylinder leg to an iMac Pro) Apple probably couldn't capitalise on what I think will be Intel's response to Ryzen - the 8, 10, 12 core Skylake-X CPUs which are 140w parts and coming later this year. And they would need an unencumbered Vega GPU to drive an 8k display, for example, which makes it more likely that powerful parts will go into a cylinder rather than behind the display.

I'll agree that ARM powered devices that could be in the future but they'll be in iPads or enhanced AppleTVs rather than a desktop device you plug a keyboard and mouse into. Creating an ARM powered desktop platform might be interesting but that field is immensely limited and not very profitable even if you lock the machine down to a special ARM App store (which Gatekeeper looks after).

 

[Cape Dave]

This is just wrong. So wrong.

View attachment 689758

Horrifying. Just pathetic.

 

[EightyTwenty]

Horrifying. Just pathetic.

Tim Cook must disavow!

 

[DesertSurfer]

Well then, we have consensus. There will almost certainly be a ryzen chip in the new Mac mini. It may be in another form, with another name, but we will almost certainly call it the new Mac mini no matter what Apple says it is. Apple will make lots of money on its new Thunderbolt/Alpine Ridge dongle. And some people are idiots.

 

[Crosscreek]

Without a form factor change (perhaps adding a Mac pro style cylinder leg to an iMac Pro) Apple probably couldn't capitalise on what I think will be Intel's response to Ryzen - the 8, 10, 12 core Skylake-X CPUs which are 140w parts and coming later this year. And they would need an unencumbered Vega GPU to drive an 8k display, for example, which makes it more likely that powerful parts will go into a cylinder rather than behind the display.

The cylinder is a poor design. If they wanted to do it right with proper cooling and Pcie expansion in a tower with a larger PSU and off the shelf GPUs they could make the Mac Pro Great Again.

Ain't the Apple way though because under Tim and Phil they build Appliances.

 

[trifona]

That is 100% false. Totally and completely false.

Senior citizens who don't know any better, maybe. But to say that the average user can't tell the difference between a 5400 spinner and a SSD is crazy. Using a spinner in 2017 is a joke. It's like walking through quicksand. It totally ruins the experience of personal computing for all but the absolute most basic users.

Is a 5400 "enough" for the users you are describing? Perhaps. But so is 2GB of ram and a core2duo CPU from 2007.

Hey now! Fake News! Fake News!

My 2007 core2duo iMac actually has 4GB of Ram and a 7200rpm spinner!

 

[navaira]

cheaper Mac Pro

"You're cute" – Tim Cook

 

[now i see it]

I think the Mac Mini came around & bit Apple in the ass. When the first Mac Mini was debuted by SJ, it was the first small mac that was very affordable. It was also freaking slow and underpowered. Perfect (for Apple).

But over the years it got a lot faster and was still relatively cheap, so the Mac Mini became THE mac to get for a lot of people. That was never the intention of the Mac Mini. The Mac Mini was supposed to be the entry level mac, but morphed into a perfectly fine computer.

That's a problem.
So TC & Co. decided no more of that sheet, & crippled it up some with dual cores & soldered ram and said here's your damn mini. Take it or leave it.

 

[Cape Dave]

Hey now! Fake News! Fake News!

My 2007 core2duo iMac actually has 4GB of Ram and a 7200rpm spinner!

5400 compared to 7200 is like ALMOST winning the lottery. Means nothing.

 

[FrancoisC]

New beta update, new BIOS/Firmware. This one is date February 17, 2017 @ 17h20.

I don't know of a lot of companies that still update BIOS/Firmware for a 5 years old machine!

 

[FrancoisC]

Do anyone here happen to have "single" 16GB DDR3 SODIMM? I remember a while ago someone tried to run 32GB on the mini, and even if the CPU in the i7 quad-core support it, it didn't work. Considering the memory controller is actually inside the CPU, it was either an artificial limitation, or maybe just a bug (I don't think you could get 16GB single stick of DDR3 SODIMM in 2012, I might be wrong)

It'd be fun if that new Firmware fixed that!

More info here, but it's an old article.

https://macminicolo.net/blog/files/can-the-mac-mini-be-upgraded-to-32GB-of-RAM.html

 

[treekram]

Do anyone here happen to have "single" 16GB DDR3 SODIMM? I remember a while ago someone tried to run 32GB on the mini, and even if the CPU in the i7 quad-core support it, it didn't work. Considering the memory controller is actually inside the CPU, it was either an artificial limitation, or maybe just a bug (I don't think you could get 16GB single stick of DDR3 SODIMM in 2012, I might be wrong)

It'd be fun if that new Firmware fixed that!

More info here, but it's an old article.

https://macminicolo.net/blog/files/can-the-mac-mini-be-upgraded-to-32GB-of-RAM.html

My understanding of why you can't put 32GB in the Mini is that you need 4 8GB x8 (width) memory (4 slots). The ark.intel.com article cited by macminicolo, if you dig deeper, gets you to a datasheet where the detailed memory specifications are listed. It does not list support for x16 memory. If you look at the Crucial site, they don't list the data width of their 16GB DDR3 but on the Micron site, the single one they have is x16 (I presume it's the same). I tried searching for 16GB x8 modules but on one site but it only came up with a DDR4 module. If somebody with better technical knowledge of all of this has better insight on the issue, I'd certainly like to have it - memory data width is not something that gets a lot of attention.

(I also see a Kingston DDR3 16GB x8 but it's not SO-DIMM.)

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/core/3rd-gen-core-desktop-vol-1-datasheet.html

 

[FrancoisC]

I am not also not a tech genius, but on Intel's website they list this for the CPU used in the mini, which tell me it's a possibility.

Mac mem: 32GB.

Max channel: 2.

Unless they just mean dual channel?

 

[treekram]

What they say in the datasheet I referenced is: "Using 4Gb DRAM device technologies, the largest memory capacity possible is 32GB, assuming Dual Channel Mode with four x8 dual ranked DIMM memory configuration". The Mini has 2 slots, it seems that 16GB SO-DIMM's are x16, x8 16GB modules are not SO-DIMM (the pictures I've seen show modules with a lot of chips - they won't fit on a SO-DIMM). If there's a 3rd-gen i5/i7 with similar memory requirements in a non-Apple computer that can run the 16GB x16 SO-DIMM's, then we know the chip can support it but if there isn't, then it's probably a CPU limitation.

 

[FrancoisC]

Heh, not happening:

https://communities.intel.com/thread/77083

 

[JamesPDX]

The cylinder is a poor design. If they wanted to do it right with proper cooling and Pcie expansion in a tower with a larger PSU and off the shelf GPUs they could make the Mac Pro Great Again.

Ain't the Apple way though because under Tim and Phil they build Appliances.

The Cylinder could have been better had it only been design big enough to house 4 PCIe, x, whatever cards plus at least two (m2?) flash storage sticks. The thermal core thing was a neat idea. But I do understand that by the time somethin like that was loaded up, it would probably need handles. So yeah, 5,1 chassis. just make it quieter.

Where's my carbon nano-tube Xeon?

 

[DesertSurfer]

The Cylinder could have been better had it only been design big enough to house 4 PCIe, x, whatever cards plus at least two (m2?) flash storage sticks. The thermal core thing was a neat idea. But I do understand that by the time somethin like that was loaded up, it would probably need handles. So yeah, 5,1 chassis. just make it quieter.

Where's my carbon nano-tube Xeon?

Put it on wheels? The new Mac Pro and Mini in a smaller version:

 

[JamesPDX]

Well, it'd be funny to see someone try to steal a box like this. 2x 12Xeon, 128GB RAM? Dual 10GB Ethernet x2? Thunderbolt? Think how many SSD's and GPU's you could jam into this. Or would it just 8GB of RAM, 128 GB Flash, and have four lifestyle USB-C and no Thunderbolt 3 support? And no power cord, but partitioned for glitter and watchbands.

Plus, you can use the extra space for all of those obsolete ATVs and lifestyle products, and whatever else they're going to obsolete this year or this week.

Jobs wept...

While Apple was making watchbands, Boxx made this: <iframe allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" class="wistia_embed" name="wistia_embed" src="https://fast.wistia.com/embed/iframe/5uyun8jp1v" width="480" height="310"></iframe>

 

[Crosscreek]

Well, it'd be funny to see someone try to steal a box like this. 2x 12Xeon, 128GB RAM? Dual 10GB Ethernet x2? Thunderbolt? Think how many SSD's and GPU's you could jam into this. Or would it just 8GB of RAM, 128 GB Flash, and have four lifestyle USB-C and no Thunderbolt 3 support? And no power cord, but partitioned for glitter and watchbands.

Plus, you can use the extra space for all of those obsolete ATVs and lifestyle products, and whatever else they're going to obsolete this year or this week.

Jobs wept...

While Apple was making watchbands, Boxx made this: <iframe allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" class="wistia_embed" name="wistia_embed" src="https://fast.wistia.com/embed/iframe/5uyun8jp1v" width="480" height="310"></iframe>

Wow...That's a workstation!

 

[Cape Dave]

Wow...That's a workstation!

What he said!

 

[SpacemanSpiffed]

Well, I just replaced my my 2011 Mac Mini i7 2.7 with a Zotac ZBOX E1751 due to project specific needs (Intel iGPU that's DirectX 11_1 HW feature level, and 4K @ 60hz display output ).

The E1751 is almost the exact same size as the Unibody mini, though the power supply is external.

I suppose to make up for that, the Zotac has a i7-5775R CPU ... Quad Core, 3.3ghz base, Iris Pro 6200 Graphics. I Installed a 1TB mSata SSD and a 2TB 2.5" HDD and 16GB RAM.

Performance is Wowza!

What's interesting is that the E1751 is already obsolete and discontinued due to newer SkyLake and Kaby Lake CPUs.

Still, it's existence is testament to what Apple could do with the Mini... if they wanted to. if they wanted to..


*As for why the 2011 Mini was being under used: I have 2 13" MacBook Pros and a 2012 i7 Mini also at my desk, sharing 2 keyboards and 3 monitors.