The new Mac mini is almost certainly coming

[Neodym]

Where did they find all these Mac engineers to build new Mac Pros, iMacs and Minis if major design changes are coming unless it's more of the same.
They would need prototypes finished, validation testing done, supply, tooling and manufacturing built with late summer or very early fall for October delivery.

They went to Intel for design support with the MP1,1, as they did not have sufficient Intel knowledge in-house. I see no reason why they couldn't repeat that. In 2013 Intel presented its "Group Hug" platform, which would nicely fit to the claimed "modular approach".

And if the next-gen Mac mini's top variant would be bigger, it could be because the high-end mini could double as base module for a Mac Pro 7,1. Synergies and economies of scale. Wouldn't surprise me if the "smaller" mini flavours would be shrunk to AppleTV dimensions then.

 

[philipma1957]

they should simply toss in the towel already go all mobile IOS and be done with it.
They have killed off the desk top. I can't begin to say what I think of their treatment of desktops and os as I would be banned from the site.

But most likely when the 2018 mini comes out I may buy it.

 

[Crosscreek]

Got my hack working with my Nvidia GTX 1070.

 

[Crosscreek]

Last update on this subject but when I added the drivers for the Pascal GPU I got a hell of a bump to my Geekbench scores. Could also be the new Apple file system. What ever it was is good.

 

[curmudgeonette]

AMD Polaris GPU rumors:

Polaris 10 (RX480 and RX470, w/ 256 bit memory) revised to Polaris 20 (RX580 and RX570)
Polaris 11 (RX460, w/ 128 bit memory) revised to Polaris 21 (RX560)
Polaris 12 (RX550, w/ 64 bit memory) introduced

Release date: April 18th

...

Polaris 12 references have been found in macOS. So where would Apple use it? A process of elimination leaves the Mac Mini! Why would Apple use a dGPU instead of Iris Plus as in the MBP13? One reason might be cost. A more likely reason is that Apple may wish to support dual 5K displays on the Mini. The Intel iGPU can't do that. Note that this also implies the Mini might have four USB-C/TB3 ports.

 

[d5aqoëp]

they should simply toss in the towel already go all mobile IOS and be done with it.
They have killed off the desk top. I can't begin to say what I think of their treatment of desktops and os as I would be banned from the site.

LMAO Few points for you to consider

1. Imagine Apple has killed off iMac/Mac Pro/Mac Mini/MBP lines and killed off macOS as well because Apple makes 99% revenue from sales of iPhones and iPads.
2. Now all those people using iPhones and iPads WILL NEED amazing apps.... or not?
3. App development is exclusive to macOS.
4. So how will you develop apps?
5. You need powerful iMac hardware to test/simulate future apps and tweak performance.
6. iPhone and iPad lines are dead without Proper apps development.
7. App development is almost impossible on a tablet. Especially impossible on a wannabe PRO tablet like iPad Pro. You can do all the dance to convince us but no one will ever believe in doing real PRO stuff on a tablet. Coffee shop hipsters and bloggers at sites like theverge, wccftech do not constitute a PRO developer crowd who develop real apps and games.
8. Federighi and Cook were of same views as you till one fine day the above points just hit them.

 

[Neodym]

Polaris 12 references have been found in macOS. So where would Apple use it? A process of elimination leaves the Mac Mini! Why would Apple use a dGPU instead of Iris Plus as in the MBP13?

Another reason could be that the next mini would lack an Iris iGPU due to the absence of an Intel CPU.

 

[Crosscreek]

Another reason could be that the next mini would lack an Iris iGPU due to the absence of an Intel CPU.

May be a good move by Apple to go with AMD. Much potential with the new Ryzen chips.

 

[Neodym]

May be a good move by Apple to go with AMD. Much potential with the new Ryzen chips.

Speculation for the mini:

1. High end variant: Doubles as base module for the MacPro and comes with a big(ger) Ryzen and nVidia dGPU.
2. Middle: Smaller Ryzen with iGPU or Intel w/ iGPU.
3. Low-End: In-house CPU, Apple-ARM based. Optimized for lower cost and small footprint (roughly AppleTV sized). Entry machine for people who don't need/want more oomph and/or run Windows.

Of course, the nVidia driver could simply be for the hinted iMac Pro this year and/or the new MacPro next year. Or perhaps for an eGPU box ...

 

[philipma1957]

LMAO Few points for you to consider

1. Imagine Apple has killed off iMac/Mac Pro/Mac Mini/MBP lines and killed off macOS as well because Apple makes 99% revenue from sales of iPhones and iPads.
2. Now all those people using iPhones and iPads WILL NEED amazing apps.... or not?
3. App development is exclusive to macOS.
4. So how will you develop apps?
5. You need powerful iMac hardware to test/simulate future apps and tweak performance.
6. iPhone and iPad lines are dead without Proper apps development.
7. App development is almost impossible on a tablet. Especially impossible on a wannabe PRO tablet like iPad Pro. You can do all the dance to convince us but no one will ever believe in doing real PRO stuff on a tablet. Coffee shop hipsters and bloggers at sites like theverge, wccftech do not constitute a PRO developer crowd who develop real apps and games.
8. Federighi and Cook were of same views as you till one fine day the above points just hit them.

Sorry my sarcasm was poorly done. My bad.

 

[Micky Do]

Been plenty of sarcasm in this thread, and plenty of folks predicting the demise of the Mac Mini…… nothing new about that. Doubters started predicting it's demise a decade ago. They've long been proved wrong again and again. Now it's for real again….. the new Mac Mini really is almost certainly coming again. Just what form it will take is all that remains in doubt.

 

[0388631]

as I would be banned from the site.

Of what site? This one? Have you been here long?

 

[CaseyGV]

LMAO Few points for you to consider

1. Imagine Apple has killed off iMac/Mac Pro/Mac Mini/MBP lines and killed off macOS as well because Apple makes 99% revenue from sales of iPhones and iPads.
2. Now all those people using iPhones and iPads WILL NEED amazing apps.... or not?
3. App development is exclusive to macOS.
4. So how will you develop apps?
5. You need powerful iMac hardware to test/simulate future apps and tweak performance.
6. iPhone and iPad lines are dead without Proper apps development.
7. App development is almost impossible on a tablet. Especially impossible on a wannabe PRO tablet like iPad Pro. You can do all the dance to convince us but no one will ever believe in doing real PRO stuff on a tablet. Coffee shop hipsters and bloggers at sites like theverge, wccftech do not constitute a PRO developer crowd who develop real apps and games.
8. Federighi and Cook were of same views as you till one fine day the above points just hit them.

If you honestly believe it is impossible for the development envronment for iOS applications can't be ported to Linux or Windows, you are deluding yourself.

I would expect it would be especially easy for the development tools to be ported to Linux, and with a little bit more effort, Windows. Certainly not the impossibility you've invented.

 

[fischersd]

If you honestly believe it is impossible for the development envronment for iOS applications can't be ported to Linux or Windows, you are deluding yourself.

I would expect it would be especially easy for the development tools to be ported to Linux, and with a little bit more effort, Windows. Certainly not the impossibility you've invented.

Well, if Apple was going to just give up on MacOS, the better thing to do would be to give the OS back to the open source community - make it a fork off of BSD.

 

[macjaffa]

The ProDesk just has so much more expansion options than the Mac mini ever did that I'm quite happy with both of them.

what expansion options of the prodesk are you using ?

 

[realitydroid]

Well, if Apple was going to just give up on MacOS, the better thing to do would be to give the OS back to the open source community - make it a fork off of BSD.

And then we'd probably get the mess that has been Linux distros. I can see it now! A new MacOS distro for any configuration you can possibly imagine, most of which would be utter garbage, and a few that are good but spend too much time in reinventing the wheel.

I just left Linux for that reason. Couldn't find a distro that suited me because they all had some issue or another. MacOS, on the other hand, seems to be the perfect middle ground between the ease of use of Windows, and the power and stability of Linux. Don't need it compromised by giving it away to be hacked up to bits.

 

[jpietrzak8]

MacOS, on the other hand, seems to be the perfect middle ground between the ease of use of Windows, and the power and stability of Linux.

And there we have it, folks: people out there now rank macOS as #2 in ease of use behind Windows. Is there any better indicator that Apple, after the massive effort it has spent over the past three decades to create the premium user experience (first with the Classic OS, then the BSD-based one) has finally reached the end of its run?

There's really no other significant advantage to Apple's products. Windows has more software and runs on more machines; Linux costs less (free!) while maintaining greater flexibility and greater stability. No, you buy Apple because you want ease-of-use. Without that, there's really no point in paying the Apple tax for your computing hardware.

 

[realitydroid]

No, you buy Apple because you want ease-of-use. Without that, there's really no point in paying the Apple tax for your computing hardware.

Glad to see that we might have differing opinions as to why I bought a Mac. lol

 

[Rigby]

And there we have it, folks: people out there now rank macOS as #2 in ease of use behind Windows.

At least one person did. Personally I disagree. MacOS is still much nicer to use than Windows 10 IMO, mainly because it doesn't try to be two things at once. Win10 still has a serious case of schizophrenia between desktop and touch (although they are slowly making progress in addressing this, e.g. by moving more and more settings out of the old control panel into the modern-style settings).

There's really no other significant advantage to Apple's products. Windows has more software and runs on more machines; Linux costs less (free!) while maintaining greater flexibility and greater stability. No, you buy Apple because you want ease-of-use.

Different strokes. I prefer MacOS because it combines the advantages of a Unix-system for development (I spend most of my time in Sublime Text and shell windows), while still having good commercial software support for things like Office. The "Apple tax" can be seen as the price you pay for not having to deal with arcane configuration issues as is often the case when using Linux as a workstation OS.

 

[jpietrzak8]

I prefer MacOS because it combines the advantages of a Unix-system for development (I spend most of my time in Sublime Text and shell windows), while still having good commercial software support for things like Office.

This. This is the reason I joined the Apple club, after which I started recommending Apple hardware to my friends and family. It just made way too much sense to marry the world's best GUI to the world's most powerful OS kernel, with support for major commercial software. Add to that hardware that was competitive with any PC, and the Mini was a no-brainer.

At least, it was a decade ago. Now, the hardware is aging, the software is neglected, and the company has its eyes firmly in directions heading away from macOS.

And I don't see why people are still complaining about Linux. I've been testing out a couple of Ubuntu boxes, and sad to say, I never seem to have to crack open a terminal for anything. They've got a complete set of GUI utilities; the update mechanism is fully automated; I daresay they've even gone a ways towards making it look pretty.

 

[realitydroid]

And I don't see why people are still complaining about Linux. I've been testing out a couple of Ubuntu boxes, and sad to say, I never seem to have to crack open a terminal for anything. They've got a complete set of GUI utilities; the update mechanism is fully automated; I daresay they've even gone a ways towards making it look pretty.

One of the things that I don't like about Ubuntu is having become so used to Unity, and now they are no longer developing it and will be replacing it with Gnome 3. Then, of course, are the small bugs that become very annoying over time. Part of macOS that I like is the polish and the time that went into making it work right the first time (not to say there hasn't been problems before).

 

[Rigby]

And I don't see why people are still complaining about Linux. I've been testing out a couple of Ubuntu boxes, and sad to say, I never seem to have to crack open a terminal for anything. They've got a complete set of GUI utilities; the update mechanism is fully automated; I daresay they've even gone a ways towards making it look pretty.

Try getting one-touch scanning using a Scansnap document scanner to work on Linux. It took me hours to get Scanbd to compile and write some custom scripts to get this to work on a Ubuntu box. On Windows and MacOS, you just install and go. Another aspect of commercial support that is rare on Linux ...

I'm a big fan of Linux on servers and embedded devices. But I don't need this kind of trouble on my workstation ...

 

[sleconte]

And there we have it, folks: people out there now rank macOS as #2 in ease of use behind Windows. ....

There's really no other significant advantage to Apple's products. Windows has more software and runs on more machines; Linux costs less (free!) while maintaining greater flexibility and greater stability. No, you buy Apple because you want ease-of-use. Without that, there's really no point in paying the Apple tax for your computing hardware.

I bought a Mac because at the time I thought it was pretty
I think it is true that Windows is easier to use, and of course has more software. I also think Windows 10 is pretty stable - I don't have issues.

I am still a potential customer for a new Mac Mini but Apple, you are really testing the patience and loyalty of your fans.

 

[Crosscreek]

I'm very impressed with the fresh install of 12.4 Sierra on my machine using AFS. It takes less space and increases speed. This was probably developed more for IOS rather than Mac but macOS has benefited from the development.
Beside that macOS is stale in development. Apple changes the name once a year but really adds no new development to it accept for tweaks of new processors and integrated/dedicated GPUs.
Windows 10 and Linux are ever increasing development.
Tim has abandoned macOS to a maintenance OS while putting most of it resources to IOS.
Without developer interest in macOS it will remain in its" stalled form.

 

[CaseyGV]

what expansion options of the prodesk are you using ?

There are something like 8-10 USB ports built in, half of which are USB 3.0 (double what my Mac mini had, and it had 0 that were USB 3). I have an upgraded video card installed in one of the expansion slots also, so if I wanted to, I could drive 4 monitors. There are 4 DIMM slots, so I can upgrade the RAM to 64 GB if I ever need or want to. Just a lot more options available to me that I didn't have before.