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Today confirms that Apple has total spite for mini owners at this point

Micky Do said:
Spiteful comments…… insulting even……..

To be expected in a rather bad tempered thread.

To be expected from a dilettantes, who crave bragging rights to the latest bauble, that is just a little "better".

There is a Mac Mini in the line up that can be optioned to meet a range of needs. A good choice should see a typical user right for a good few years.

Serious professional power users would probably find more satisfaction in Apple's jewel, the Mac Pro. Sure, it costs a pretty penny, but amortised over several years, and upgraded as necessary, it would probably be better value than keeping up with the cutting edge Mini minded geeks.
Click to expand...

2012 - 2014 The fastest Mac Mini available was a quad-core
2014 onwards The fastest Mac Mini available is a dual-core

It's that simple!

Telling people they "have options" by spending 3 x more than they would have spent on the previous model to buy a Mac Pro isn't an option at all.

Claiming anything with a quad-core is for "professionals" is nonsense. It's for whoever could use the CPU power. We're not all video editors and it's not unreasonable that "new" systems beat the CPU performance of the previous models they're replacing.

It's also not too much to expect that people on a budget might want to upgrade their RAM at a later date and pay more up front for a faster CPU. Previously another £150 got you a 2.3Ghz quad i7 which doubles the performance of the 2.5Ghz i5 and a 1Tb HDD which doubles the storage. It was a very value for money system and also offered user-upgradable HDDs.

Similarly, when the Mac Pro came out in 2006, there was an option of a lower end BTO option of a dual 2GHz Xeon instead of 2.66Ghz. It was £1,399 but that's not the point when todays' headless desktop options are:

A dual-core 3Ghz Mac Mini wiith less CPU power than the 2Ghz 2011 server model.

A quad-core 3.7Ghz Mac Pro with equal CPU power to the 4Ghz BTO quad i7 iMac or the 2.8Ghz BTO quad i7 Retina Macbook Pro.

It IS rediculous and nothing but dismissive sarcasm to suggest the Mac Pro is now the new option for people who previously only had to pay £150 more than the base price to get significant speed gains on a Mac Mini that's also user upgradable.

It's also the height of arrogance to claim only the self-proclaimed "Professional" needs a quad-core i7 in the first place.

I've got a 2009 Mac Mini. It replaced a very old dual CPU G4 I'd held onto for too long because the G5 was unimpressive and I decided against a used Mac Pro for cost reasons. Over a system 7 years older, it offered massive performance gains.

I "could" previously buy a brand new Mac Mini with a CPU offering over 4 x the performance of my current system for the same retail price as my existing Mac Mini was originally, thereby justifying it's cost. Now I can't and I'm forced yet again to rely on the used market.
 
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barkmonster said:
2012 - 2014 The fastest Mac Mini available was a quad-core
2014 onwards The fastest Mac Mini available is a dual-core


I "could" previously buy a brand new Mac Mini with a CPU offering over 4 x the performance of my current system for the same retail price as my existing Mac Mini was originally, thereby justifying it's cost. Now I can't and I'm forced yet again to rely on the used market.
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We can't say we didn't see this coming because we all talked about soldered ram and non upgradeable HD but we did not see the elimination of the 4core not being offered.
 
Crosscreek said:
We can't say we didn't see this coming because we all talked about soldered ram and non upgradeable HD but we did not see the elimination of the 4core not being offered.
Click to expand...

Exactly! The soldered RAM and non-upgradable HD would have been a tough pill to swallow if it came with the 2.2 and 2.5Ghz quad i7s from the 2014 Retina Macbook Pros but the CPU boost would have made it a at least bearable.
 
barkmonster said:
Exactly! The soldered RAM and non-upgradable HD would have been a tough pill to swallow if it came with the 2.2 and 2.5Ghz quad i7s from the 2014 Retina Macbook Pros but the CPU boost would have made it a at least bearable.
Click to expand...

I agree, I wouldn't have liked it but I would have tolerated it. For the Thursday event I expected one of three things:

  1. Nothing.
  2. A glued, soldered and fanless Broadwell Core M "Mac nano" type of device, with the real minis untouched until they could also go Broadwell.
  3. "Same as the 2012 mini but with Haswell", with a 10% chance for a $50 price cut to reflect that Haswell is already old.

2 or 3 would have sent me reaching for my wallet (including 3b, soldered RAM but sane pricing of the upgrade), but I'm not impressed by what we got. I did not expect simultaneous price increases and performance cuts, topped off with a removal of user serviceability. And I did not expect it to start at $899. I'm not counting the joke configurations.
 
Zellio said:
It's Tim Cook's Apple. Steve Jobs made interesting new products. Tim Cook moved Apple manufacturing overseas.
Click to expand...

I bought my late 2008 Macbook under Jobs, assembled in and delivered from China. Very few things are American Made these days, Levis, Vans, (Etc) and the majority of Apple Products are not American Made these days.
 
mtneer said:
Apple is probably keenly aware of the weight of their customers loyalty and would have considered reactions such as yours in making their choices. They have done it in the past and suffered no ill effects, and they are willing to roll the dice again. Looking at the number of people defending choices made on the Mini and the iPad Mini 3 as somehow being best for the consumer, I think Apple has a lot more slack on that rope they can use on their customers.
Click to expand...

Those same people would be cheering if Apple bought up all the millions of unsold Zunes, put an apple logo on them, and marketed them as new apple creations.

You can ignore the folks who are happy about paying more for less, they are trolls of a different kind. The worst kinds. The ones that kick you, while you are already down.
 
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