Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
The new Mac mini is almost certainly coming
- Thread starter GabrieleR
- Start date
-
- Tags
- mac mini new mac mini
- Sort by reaction score
Well I'll take post 2005 to claim the mini is not coming. They could have easily updated the chip in the mini without radically changing anything some time ago. However seeing the Air's chipset in the new imac at the new price has been a really underwhelming experience for me at least. It has however been fun reading these posts.
I agree & disagree. Obviously the iToy market is the lion's share for Apple right now. Looking at their bottom line, I would guess that desktop machines make up the smallest piece of the pie behind iToys & laptops. So I agree with you that their primary focus is on iOS & iToys.
But I somewhat disagree that they are deliberately pushing away computer users when you look at all of the integration features that they built into Yosemite. One would think that it would be foolish of them to continue to neglect or abandon the dedicated desktop market. The new MacPro shows that they still want to play in that space for professionals. The problem is that a MacPro is way more than most consumers want or need and the price is not consumer friendly. Their biggest gap is that they don't have a good current consumer solution for people who don't want their all-in-one iMac machines. The Mini fills that gap, but at 2 years old, the technology is too old for most people to pull the trigger unless that absolutely need to.
My hope is that Apple is trying to do a complete cross platform re-leveling of all of their desktops to ensure that all these cool new features of Yosemite will work seamlessly. I'm hoping that a new Mini will come out with all the hardware bells & whistles to make it take full advantage of being a powerful Yosemite flagship Mac desktop head unit.
......of course, I've been hoping for that for about a year now!
2005 - the year his Steveness revealed the mini. Let's hope we won't have to wait till 2015 for the next one...
Don't forget that Apple is crippling its desktop software to not do anything that the iToy version can't do. All in the name of having a consistent experience across devices.
I agree with you to an extent, but that also highlights the problems with Apple for computers these days. The "cool new features of Yosemite", are minor bells and whistles that might be fun to play with but don't change the core usability of the computer to get a job done. Absolutely it's great that Apple is working to add them and keep some dazzle on the computer for consumers.
But to re-level their whole line with a focus on what is ultimately iToy functionality is silly.
I also don't understand this mindset of being on the newest version of everything is always better. It gives you all the latest little bells and whistles, but not everyone cares if the computer they edit images on can make phone calls on their iPhone. Sure most people here want the latest, but I don't get why people here talk about a high adoption rate of the latest version as a sign Apple is better.
How are they crippling OSX? What functionality have they taken away from OSX or scaled back to make it seamless with iOS?
If anything, they are making their desktops lean more towards their laptops. I always hated the removal of the optical drive from the desktops. It's not a portable machine. It doesn't need to be less than a pound & wafer thin. I much prefer the mid-2010 MC270XX/A mini that was unibody & had an optical drive.
You win the prize.#2000
Noooooooo. I was watching this waiting for the opportunity to steal post 2000.
What prize did I miss? An exclusive 2014 Mac Mini?
Do you think "most people", as in the typical non-propellerhead Mac buyer, has any clue about such matters? They look at it, play with it in the store, see the 2.xGhz dual or quad core description and what size memory or storage.
They don't care if their well is Broad or Has, nor whether the bridge is Sandy or Ivy. What they're looking for is whether they can get to Facebook, Pintrest, email, pull photos off their phone and send them to grandma.
I will agree 100% with you on this...Everyone sees these keynotes & gets all excited about the Shiny balls of Siri & voice calls from the laptop & the ability to start a doc on your iPad & then transfer it to your iPhone & then transfer it to your iMac. But after they play with it for a week, the shine wears off the ball, & no one uses the features anymore.
But Apple's focus is still on the shiny balls & their ecosystem as a whole. There is not a product that I can think of that Apple is selling right now that won't interact in one way, shape, or form with almost every other Apple product in the ecosystem. Yes, it is not perfect that they are beholden to this faux harmony, but it's also nothing new. This has been Apple's stance for years. And the more they push out the shiny balls starting at $29 & going up to $5k+, they will always have people wanting to get the latest & greatest.
I'm not an early & often adopter. I'm on the iPhone "S-cycle" meaning I won't be getting a new big screen 6 later this year. I still have an iPad 2. My current "desktop" is a 2007 MBA, my media center is a 2009 Mini, and all three of my AppleTVs are pre-1080 HD. My MacBook Air is the most recent computer in my arsenal & it's a mid-2011 model. What ticks me off is that for everything in that list, I can get a model that has been redone in the last year (15 months on the ATV)...except for the mini. And what sucks is that is the one thing I really need right now.
Am I looking through propellerhead glasses? Probably. but I also think that consumers are a little more tech savvy these days. Maybe not to the point of knowing the difference between the chips, bridges, or drives, but I think after decades of the 2-year disposable PC, consumers are a bit more wary of the shelf life of a technology product.
I also think that the people who are not so savvy are looking at this new iMac that we all hate, but I guarantee they all love because it's ever so close to the magical $1000 price point and has everything they need. The mini is really more suited for the propellerheads.
A 1.4GHz Haswell cannot really be compared to any PowerPC, ARM or whatever processors Intel had back in 2004 that ran around that speed. It can generally carry way more instructions per clock. 1.4GHz is a base speed, for that matter, and it will generally go higher than that when put to work.
By making the price $1099, I believe Apple has hinted that the Mini will stay alive. It is still the ONLY sub 1000 Apple desktop. That is the niche market it provides and the iMac has not replaced it (just yet).
You need to keep in mind that many people don't actually look at specs, they buy a computer in the line-up they want, and many want the cheapest option available. For casual users, a dual-core i5 with 8GB of RAM and a 500GB HDD is more than enough.
As an example, this is a perfect computer to buy for kids that need to do their homework. They don't need a ton of power, this is a desktop so there's no reason to drop it, and it is cost-effective for a Mac.
Would a professional use this? Or a picture editor? video editor? No, but that doesn't mean this computer won't sell and that there isn't a market for it.
Correct. It is ignorant to draw any meaning from comparing comparing clock speeds between different CPU architectures.
The 1.4 cpu is not a bad cpu. Its almost twice as fast as my 2010 mac mini and that computer runs pretty well. I would not be opposed to having a smaller mac mini with that cpu or the 1.7ghz variant at a cheaper price. Would be a nice little mac. That cpu in a new mac mini with PCIe fast storage and 16gb of ram configurable for $599 would be a great mac.
Lets face it any current day cpu is way fast enough for most users. The hard drive is the bottleneck and that is why the Macbook air feels so fast. The imac with the same internals and an archaic 5400rpm hard drive is just nonsense on so many levels. Especially at a starting price of $1100.
For how many average joe consumers is the hard drive really a bottleneck though? With 8gb of RAM as standard it really isn't as slow as people keep making out; I have two 4gb RAM Mac Minis (2009 and 2011) each with 5400rpm hard drives and for office and web-browsing use the really don't slow things down much at all. Putting the machine to sleep instead of shutting it down also largely eliminates delays from switching on/waking up to the system being usable. The only area where it really falls down is if you want to do a lot of editing of home videos or something, but it's still usable enough IMO, either that or some form of gaming, but the processor isn't a great choice for that anyway. So personally I think it makes more sense to have the more affordable hard drive as standard, especially as it offers a lot of capacity for anyone that wants to download HD videos (such as from iTunes).
SSDs are great for performance, but I just don't think they're really necessary for the kind of users this new iMac model is aimed towards. Apple wouldn't switch SSD for standard anyway except as part of a larger iMac refresh, this is just an extra model introduced at a more appealing price for new users; anyone that really needs a bit more performance should know enough to get the one of the better models, or get a build-to-order SSD/Fusion Drive.
Also, it's worth remembering that Apple hasn't axed any iMac models to make room for this new one, it's simply just a new entry point, they're still offering the same solidly performing higher end models. Hopefully this means they'll continue to do the same with the Mac Minis, but maybe we'll see a similarly specced dual-core Mini as an even cheaper entry point, whenever Apple do get around to updating them; it'll be ideal for casual computer users, and as long as we still get good quad-core options the mini will continue to fit those of us who need to get more done on one (but for whom the new Mac Pro is simply overkill).
incorrect, a Ghz is a Ghz! I made no mention of performance. I am aware that a Haswell CPU completely destroys a CPU from 2004 or 2006. Apple has halved the cores, halves the Ghz and reduced the GPU from last years model iMac.
First of all no computer should have a 5400rpm boot drive period. Secondly the only way you might think its ok is if you never had an SSD as your boot drive.
I picked up a current mac mini on craigslist last week. It had the stock 5400rmp hard drive in it. The kid said he was selling it because it was too slow. I knew better. While we were trying to get his personal files off of it the mini dragged along slow as molasses. It was just a joke. I got it home and slapped an ssd in there and its light years faster at every single thing. Its unbelievable really. Your computer is constantly accessing the hard drive all the time to do tons of little tiny things and an SSD makes it non existent. I refuse to use a spinning hard drive any more for a boot drive. Won't do it. Never again and you know what, I don't have to because SSDs are now very cheap. Why punish yourself when you can get one for under $100 on amazon all day long. Even the cheapest crappiest SSD is going to improve performance of your OS 10 fold. No, an SSD is a must today.
As far as I'm concerned, any computer sold today without a solid state boot drive is crippled from the start and should be avoided. The cost of adding an ssd must be calculated from the start.
This is the first time I can remember where Apple has reduced the specs of a product this drastically. The 2011 mac mini server has a slower Cpu then the 2010 but has 100% more cores. The 12 Core Mac pro is slower then the 6 Core. But in each case the performance is more because of Core count and architectures.
The 2014 iMac specs are based on price point and price point alone, i kinda agree with it but have a fear that this will trickle down into other products. I would not want to see a 2015 iMac with an A9 Arm cpu and have apple say that its the same performance as a 2014 iMac.
The fact is that the 2014 iMac is slower then a 2011 Mac mini! This does not look good for the future or the mini or other apple products. I hope i'm wrong and Apple releases a kick ass 2014 Broadwell mini.
Last edited:
The new SSD's coming out are around $100 for a 250gb with read and writes around 500.
The perfect boot drive to hold your OS and Apps and makes the Mini a screamer.
I couldn't go back to a spinner either for boot. I've been spoiled.
Let me add though, I don't see the purpose to use them as a data drive. Spinners are cheap storage.
Last edited: