The new Mac mini is almost certainly NOT coming

[Cape Dave]

If they were to wait until October for a new Mac mini, would they include the 8th-gen Coffee Lake chips, since rumors say mobile chips would be the first ones to be released?

As a side note, I read this comment about Intel's new strategy for 14nm in 4 generations: "So they went from Tick-Tock to Tic-Tac-Toe, and now they're going eeny meeny miny moe?"

That is funny, LOL!

 

[bopajuice]

That isn't what you said.

"Are you really equating unix/Linux to the disaster that was/is the DLL and registry setup of windows? For system stability, they are night and day."

That is what you said.

Sounds like we have a measuring contest going on. My earliest computer experiences started with Fortran. Can I get in on this pissing match?

 

[vrBrew]

Sounds like we have a measuring contest going on. My earliest computer experiences started with Fortran. Can I get in on this pissing match?

You can do whatever you want.

 

[flyinmac]

The new Mac Mini:

The new Mac Pro:

 

[EnderBeta]

Does it run MacOS and iWork / iLife?

I only use productivity programs for work. Work pays for a Office 365 subscription for me. So I use the office programs. I can't use Excel on the Mac because it doesn't have the full support of visual basic behind it. Word and Power Point are ok on the Mac but if I have to run Excel in the VM I might as well install the entire suite in the VM.

Increasingly I find that my gaming machine is looking to be my work machine in the office. Which is fine because it is even after a year a total and complete monster of a machine. It's large but I did that on purpose for air flow to achieve good cooling with a low amount of heat and ease of upgrades in the future. Being a machine in a fixed position I don't need or want it to be measured in millimeters.

I love my iMac. I cart it around in a Pelican case so it serves pretty much the same function as a MacBook Pro for me. Primarily if I go to a job site I'm working from a fixed position day to day with outlet power so it works for me. I have to edit interfaces for Crestron and AMX panels so the more screen real-estate for Photoshop and the development tools for the panel the better. A 15" MacBook Pro has too many cooling issues, low end specs and now needs adapters for everything. The iMac has just enough cooling for the CPU but is vastly inadequate for the graphics chips. I still use Ethernet ports. At government facilities wireless is a quick way to get in very deep trouble. For whatever reason Apple in their infinite wisdom dropped the 17" MacBook Pro from their product line. That was the first sign looking back that Apple under Tim Cook's reign was going to eventually collapse.

However I want a tower based Mac for home operations. I refuse to deal with laptop components when at my office and in that regard my iMac is a love hate sort of thing. I tend to still work from my iMac in the Office but the gaming machine is faster, runs cooler and is much less audible.

Honestly on a professional level I could just as easily drop Mac entirely at this point. It's a really bitter pill to go from seeing how amazing they where at Savannah College of Art & Design back in the early 2000's to what they have become now.

When my currents Macs that I have in my signature reach their end of life I'll be replacing them with PCs. The mini I'll build myself in a Mini ITX case. The iMac and the MacBook Pro I have will be replaced with a single larger and more powerful workstation desktop replacement laptop.

That is unless Apple wow me and does it sooner rather then later. A proper tower based Mac and a mobile workstation class laptop. The iMac can stay as it is. I think the Mac Mini can go away if the Tower based Mac has an reasonable power to cost ratio with Core i5/i7 and consumer cards ranging from all the graphics performance level tiers and then have the same tower Mac available as a Pro machine with workstation class parts in place of the consumer parts. Costs are reduced because it's still one line of machines so they can consolidate the product line but at the same time make a lot of people very happy. It's time for to put up or become

.

 

[Partron22]

I'd even put up with a bulbous blue and white thing, if it were user modifiable:

 

[EnderBeta]

I'd even put up with a bulbous blue and white thing, if it were user modifiable:
View attachment 691060

Put up with? That case is a classic!

I love how the motherboard comes out on the door and everything is so accessible even for what was closer to the size of a mid tower then a full tower.

My favorite look of that design was the Graphite G4 because of the front but the quick silver wasn't bad either.

 

[Cape Dave]

I'd even put up with a bulbous blue and white thing, if it were user modifiable:
View attachment 691060

I'll take one, but only of it comes in "Puke Yellow"

 

[Count Blah]

I'd even put up with a bulbous blue and white thing, if it were user modifiable:
View attachment 691060

I have ole blue

and

sitting in my house today, I need to learn to let go. The days of Apple supporting MAc users wanting to actually open their, their family's, their friends, etc... machines are LONG GONE

Funny/sad as Apple used to advertise the easy access to the innards - See the loop in the blueberry, above the Apple logo?

 

[bse5150]

This has, quite simply, not been my experience. The performance of my Macs has been rock-solid; I've let them run for months at a time between reboots, with no ill effects.

Same here.

 

[EnderBeta]

I have ole blue

and

sitting in my house today, I need to learn to let go. The days of Apple supporting MAc users wanting to actually open their, their family's, their friends, etc... machines are LONG GONE

Funny/sad as Apple used to advertise the easy access to the innards - See the loop in the blueberry?

It's so sad that those are becoming relics.

<sings> where have all the Macs gone <sings> in tune of where have all the cow boys gone.

 

[Boyd01]

Haha, I had a blue G3 like that and also the big blue and white monitor, seemed huge but I guess it was only 21" or maybe even 19". It died after about 6 months so I returned it to Apple for warranty work. When it came back, the included paperwork called it an Apple "Moby Monitor" I had to go out to the UPS truck when it returned because the female driver couldn't handle the huge box by herself.

Had one of the graphite G4's as a server at work, I always thought it was the best looking one. And I had a dual G5 as my main machine for a number of years. That was the heaviest computer ever made, and also the hottest. One day it was just dead, wouldn't start. Nothing obvious wrong, probably a bad power supply. Didn't even waste any time on it, my 15" Core2Duo MBP was already twice as fast.

I still have one of the mirror door G4's up in the attic. Took it down to play with last winter and it was working fine. Went out of the room for a few minutes and it was dead. Just took it back up to the attic since that was easier than throwing it away.

Now I also had a PowerMac 8100 that I got around 1996 to run Adobe Premiere (version 1.0 IIRC). That was the worst case design I have ever seen, it was a major job just adding RAM that involved removing many parts, screws and connectors. And remembering how to put it back together was even harder. That machine had 48MB of RAM (all I could afford) and people would come visit my office just to see such an amazing machine, LOL.

But really, I like my quad 2012 mini better than any of those, and it certainly was a LOT cheaper.

 

[EnderBeta]

Haha, I had a blue G3 like that and also the big blue and white monitor, seemed huge but I guess it was only 21" or maybe even 19". It died after about 6 months so I returned it to Apple for warranty work. When it came back, the included paperwork called it an Apple "Moby Monitor" I had to go out to the UPS truck when it returned because the female driver couldn't handle the huge box by herself.

Had one of the graphite G4's as a server at work, I always thought it was the best looking one. And I had a dual G5 as my main machine for a number of years. That was the heaviest computer ever made, and also the hottest. One day it was just dead, wouldn't start. Nothing obvious wrong, probably a bad power supply. Didn't even waste any time on it, my 15" Core2Duo MBP was already twice as fast.

I still have one of the mirror door G4's up in the attic. Took it down to play with last winter and it was working fine. Went out of the room for a few minutes and it was dead. Just took it back up to the attic since that was easier than throwing it away.

Now I also had a PowerMac 8100 that I got around 1996 to run Adobe Premiere (version 1.0 IIRC). That was the worst case design I have ever seen, it was a major job just adding RAM that involved removing many parts, screws and connectors. And remembering how to put it back together was even harder. That machine had 48MB of RAM (all I could afford) and people would come visit my office just to see such an amazing machine, LOL.

But really, I like my quad 2012 mini better than any of those, and it certainly was a LOT cheaper.

I think you are missing the point that while yes the mobile computers caught up to a machine after years they certainly have not caught up to what a new tower of the time would have been capable of. Least of which being a clutter free internal expansion. There really only needs to be two wires (power & AV) for the machine outside of gaming and even then a wireless keyboard and mouse is usually fine.

The fuss about not having desk clutter for the All In One which is a misnomer when you see all the external drives attached to it.

 

[Boyd01]

I think you are missing the point

No, I think you were missing my point. I was just reminiscing about old Macs I have owned, as others were doing. I wasn't trying to make any serious point about Apple vs other companies.

Anyway, I thought the point of this thread was The new Mac mini is almost certainly NOT coming.

 

[EnderBeta]

No, I think you were missing my point. I was just reminiscing about old Macs I have owned, as others were doing. I wasn't trying to make any serious point about Apple vs other companies.

I didn't mean to offend if that was the case but then your message was waffling around a bit because when you said, "
Didn't even waste any time on it, my 15" Core2Duo MBP was already twice as fast." it sure seemed like you where implying that desktops where on the way out.

 

[Boyd01]

" it sure seemed like you where implying that desktops where on the way out.

That's ridiculous. I meant exactly what I said. I didn't waste any time or money fixing an old PowerPC computer because I had a new Intel computer that was much faster.

I bought two Mac Minis in 2016, I understand the value of desktop systems.

 

[EightyTwenty]

The OS slowness lasts long beyond the startup process. Enjoy the 10+ bounce startups, finder that seems to be often lost, etc...

Hell, even opening new tabs in your web browser is a chore.

The whole thing is like walking through quicksand.

 

[jpietrzak8]

Hell, even opening new tabs in your web browser is a chore.

The whole thing is like walking through quicksand.

Huh. New tabs open instantly for me. This on an instance of Chrome that has been up and running for two weeks now. Maybe something is off with your browser?

 

[bse5150]

.

 

[Count Blah]

Huh. New tabs open instantly for me. This on an instance of Chrome that has been up and running for two weeks now. Maybe something is off with your browser?

Every browser but yours, apparently.

 

[jpietrzak8]

Every browser but yours, apparently.

But man, I've gotta wonder if maybe I could help! Maybe there's a configuration problem somewhere? Maybe people are hitting limits on RAM? I can see no reason why people should continue to use a browser that can't perform properly...

 

[Boyd01]

Just tried this on my base 2014 mini. It took 6 seconds for the Safari Window to open initially. After that, I could open tabs and switch between them instantly. Not counting the time it took to open a site in each tab, because that takes forever on any computer with my Verizon DSL that rarely reaches 1mbit/sec. But I opened different sites in 6 tabs and could instantly switch between them.

It took 12 seconds to open System Preferences, that's what always amazes me. Again, I only use the 2014 mini as an iTunes server so none of this is much of a big deal.

 

[cynics]

Just tried this on my base 2014 mini. It took 6 seconds for the Safari Window to open initially. After that, I could open tabs and switch between them instantly. Not counting the time it took to open a site in each tab, because that takes forever on any computer with my Verizon DSL that rarely reaches 1mbit/sec. But I opened different sites in 6 tabs and could instantly switch between them.

It took 12 seconds to open System Preferences, that's what always amazes me. Again, I only use the 2014 mini as an iTunes server so none of this is much of a big deal.

Opening tabs should integral function of the browser. If opening a tab (the tab itself not the content) isn't near instant I would say RAM or some sort of software conflict is going on.

I've also had issues with System Preferences on my iMac (HDD). It's loading all the sub categories when you open it. I notice this when going directly to display preferences and time machine preferences too, takes forever. Once its loaded its fast to close and reopen making me think its HDD related.

 

[now i see it]

me think its HDD related.

It's definitely HD related.
I installed El Capitan on a mechanical HD in an old Mac Mini and opening System Preferences was slow as molasses.

I then installed El Capitan on a SSD & booted it off an external enclosure via FireWire 800 (old Mac Mini) and it it was much quicker, but not really fast.

I then installed the SSD inside the computer and System Preferences launches very fast and everything is quick on the old machine.

If you're experiencing lags using Finder or core Mac services/apps, it's the HD (or lack of SSD)

 

[cynics]

It's definitely HD related.
I installed El Capitan on a mechanical HD in an old Mac Mini and opening System Preferences was slow as molasses.

I then installed El Capitan on a SSD & booted it off an external enclosure via FireWire 800 (old Mac Mini) and it it was much quicker, but not really fast.

I then installed the SSD inside the computer and System Preferences launches very fast and everything is quick on the old machine.

If you're experiencing lags using Finder or core Mac services/apps, it's the HD (or lack of SSD)

Ya ya, I know its a bottleneck. I know what the issue is and I know the solution so its not too bad. Unlike when you don't know why something is slow, which is frustrating.

Many people just like to blame the HDD for every slow down though, and that isn't always the case.

With APFS we should see improvements across the board. Finally people that say the OS is optimized for SSD's will be somewhat correct (the file system is what causes SSD optimization and APFS offers that). But even HDD's users will see benefits with with AFPS since it will prioritize user initiated foreground access.

You mentioned you upgraded your Mac. Which model was it and which SSD did you use? I'm considering doing the same myself.