I'm interested in hearing everyones ideas on this
Apple clearly could have updated it anytime they wanted to. So why didn't they?
Apple clearly could have updated it anytime they wanted to. So why didn't they?
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Why has it taken over 4 years to update the Mini?
- Thread starter michael.richard1982
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Because people will compare it to the NUC, and opt for the intel box almost every time?
https://appleinsider.com/articles/1...ably-getting-trounced-by-cheap-intel-hardware
https://appleinsider.com/articles/1...ably-getting-trounced-by-cheap-intel-hardware
The mini looks bad compared to the NUC because Apple never refreshed it. That doesn't answer the question of why Apple never refreshed it.
I think it has more to do with the $ than being compared to the NUC. Having more powerful and cheaper non-Mac alternatives is nothing new.
I think that the profit margins on the Mac Mini is not nearly has high as it is on other Macs. Maybe the Apple leadership viewed every Mini sale as a loss of a sale on an iMac or MacBook, which probably have much better margins.
The 2012 Mac Mini was really nice, but then they neutered the Mini with the changes of the 2014 model. Since then, the 2012 models have kept their resale values really high, I wished I would have picked one up.
I think that the profit margins on the Mac Mini is not nearly has high as it is on other Macs. Maybe the Apple leadership viewed every Mini sale as a loss of a sale on an iMac or MacBook, which probably have much better margins.
The 2012 Mac Mini was really nice, but then they neutered the Mini with the changes of the 2014 model. Since then, the 2012 models have kept their resale values really high, I wished I would have picked one up.
There are four plausible reasons, in my opinion:
- The low-end user market / Windows to Mac switchers - This was the original reason for the Mac mini's existence. However, in 2018 fewer people use traditional desktops when compared to ten years ago, and instead go for laptops, tablets, or even smartphones for the majority of their computer usage.
- The server market - Apple previously sold a server version of the Mac mini, and it makes a great low-power server. However, as shown by the discontinuation of the server model in 2014 and more recently the crippling of MacOS Server, Apple has largely chosen to abandon the server market.
- The HTPC market - Apple is pushing the Apple TV as a HTPC replacement, and has increased its capability quite a bit since 2014.
- Profit margin - As mentioned by @vertical smile, cheaper products such as the Mac mini typically have the lowest profit margin. Apple would rather customers buy iMacs or MacBooks with a higher profit margin.
This is a simple answer.
Apple obviously thought that their limited resources were best used supporting other products.
Money.
The Mini apparently doesn't offer enough ROI for Apple to do much with it. I think that is shortsighted, and makes me think of Jobs' interview where he talks about why Xerox failed, but given Cook and Apple's obsession with short term numbers, that appears to be the most likely reason.
The Mini apparently doesn't offer enough ROI for Apple to do much with it. I think that is shortsighted, and makes me think of Jobs' interview where he talks about why Xerox failed, but given Cook and Apple's obsession with short term numbers, that appears to be the most likely reason.
I'll take a different tack, from a business owner's perspective while agreeing with the profit margin bit only on the SKUs themselves. Personally and in my offices I've got several 2012 i7 Mini Servers running - I didn't see a need to update to the newer model at the time, and still don't see a need in that I hunted down refurb and NIB 2012 i7 units even after the 2014 came out solely because I wanted GPU resources in a Mini. But, that's not what I see to be a solid rationale for updating the Mini.
It's my experience with Intel NUCs that sit in my offices - some of them are older but have been updated with newer components, and a couple of them are almost brand new. Simply put, the iterative CPU updates and fairly-level performance of SATA SSDs over the past 4-6 years don't justify a capital expenditure for updates - repairs and replacements, yes, but not updates. The performance return between Haswell and the 7th Gen CPUs barely registers IMO as an indicator to spend capital on updating a computer and most of my peers that I chat with are talking with their checkbooks in much the same way. The new Intel 8th-Gen CPUs changed that, and the new NUCs have those CPUs in them - and they pretty much blow the older NUCs away as in they easily multiply by at least double the financial return when compared to the few NUCs that have been updated to "last year's" CPU.
The combination of the finally-available troika of TB3, really fast SSDs, and 8th-Gen Intel CPUs in the newest NUCs make these NUCs a beast when compared to what I could buy even earlier this year, plus the addition of Bluetooth 5 makes it a bit nicer. Updates from the Haswell units have been IMO pretty much ranking a "why bother?" - the return wasn't even worth the labor needed to swap out a new CPU, until now. Even personally, I'm budgeting for a new Mini should it have the 4 above additions. My 2¢.
It's my experience with Intel NUCs that sit in my offices - some of them are older but have been updated with newer components, and a couple of them are almost brand new. Simply put, the iterative CPU updates and fairly-level performance of SATA SSDs over the past 4-6 years don't justify a capital expenditure for updates - repairs and replacements, yes, but not updates. The performance return between Haswell and the 7th Gen CPUs barely registers IMO as an indicator to spend capital on updating a computer and most of my peers that I chat with are talking with their checkbooks in much the same way. The new Intel 8th-Gen CPUs changed that, and the new NUCs have those CPUs in them - and they pretty much blow the older NUCs away as in they easily multiply by at least double the financial return when compared to the few NUCs that have been updated to "last year's" CPU.
The combination of the finally-available troika of TB3, really fast SSDs, and 8th-Gen Intel CPUs in the newest NUCs make these NUCs a beast when compared to what I could buy even earlier this year, plus the addition of Bluetooth 5 makes it a bit nicer. Updates from the Haswell units have been IMO pretty much ranking a "why bother?" - the return wasn't even worth the labor needed to swap out a new CPU, until now. Even personally, I'm budgeting for a new Mini should it have the 4 above additions. My 2¢.
My guess would be anyone of a few things:
1. Update's where started but got cancelled due to market forces
2. Apple had a product map for the Trash Can Mac Pro which took it to a lower starting level but couldn't execute on that plan.
3. Design and engineering bandwidth. With the HomePod, iPhone, iPads, iMac Pro etc etc its possible the design team and engineering teams where just saturated
I think 1 or 3 are more likely, but 2 would not surprise me. I don't think it was intentional.
1. Update's where started but got cancelled due to market forces
2. Apple had a product map for the Trash Can Mac Pro which took it to a lower starting level but couldn't execute on that plan.
3. Design and engineering bandwidth. With the HomePod, iPhone, iPads, iMac Pro etc etc its possible the design team and engineering teams where just saturated
I think 1 or 3 are more likely, but 2 would not surprise me. I don't think it was intentional.
After 2012 models, intel processor updates were pretty poor until this year.
There were the 5w processors in the MacBook but the mid range ended up as dual core which were slower than than the 2012 models (quad core)
I ended up selling my 2012 quad core which, whilst I’d upgraded it a bit managed to sell do £600 which is ridiculous for the age of it.
There were the 5w processors in the MacBook but the mid range ended up as dual core which were slower than than the 2012 models (quad core)
I ended up selling my 2012 quad core which, whilst I’d upgraded it a bit managed to sell do £600 which is ridiculous for the age of it.
The Mac mini was the gateway drug to Apple. It's purpose has been superceded by the iPad & iPhone.
iPad and iPhone are the cash cows for Apple. Resources, research and development all went to those devices while the MAC lineup languished. If we get a new Mini this fall it will likely be the last as the MAC lineup eventually becomes vintage hardware.
Because the iPhone makes Apple money. The mini, although a great piece of hardware that many of us enjoy, does not fill Apple's coffers. It's all about money.
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I totally agree, however; I use a computer. I use one everyday all day, six to seven days a week, and will for the foreseeable future. If Apple drags it's feet with their PC releases and MacOS updates, I will be forced to go elsewhere.
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I totally agree, however; I use a computer. I use one everyday all day, six to seven days a week, and will for the foreseeable future. If Apple drags it's feet with their PC releases and MacOS updates, I will be forced to go elsewhere.
Oh come on... this tired narrative again?
Intel makes dozens of processors every year... including some that would be perfectly suitable for the Mac Mini.
The problem is... Apple. They choose which processors to use.
Yes... the 2012 Mac Mini had the quad-core i7-3615QM while the 2014 Mac Mini had the dual-core i7-4578U. That was Apple's decision, though. Apple should have used the quad-core i7-4870HQ for the 2014 model. But they didn't.
Apple could have updated future Mac Minis with the i7-5750HQ and i7-6770HQ... quad-core chips at 45W with Iris Pro Graphics.
But Apple didn't!!!
So before you start blaming Intel for the lack of Mac Mini updates... take a stroll through ark.intel.com to see all the processors that were actually available.
You might discover that it was Apple's fault... not Intel's...
Shocker!
limited as in what? I can't see too many limits existing at a trillion dollar company for this type of thing
Apple is a trillion dollar company primarily because they don't spend money like a drunken sailor on shore leave. The trillion dollar is only remotely coupled to the number of people, time , and resources assigned to the Mac Mini ( or whole Mac product line up). Stocks don't pay the bills ( salaries , equipment, etc. ) . The money sloshing around in the Scrooge McDuck money pit doesn't particularly pay for them either.
Pointing at Apple's stock price and cash reserves is primary pointing at stockholder assets; not product development assets. To some extent that is exactly why Apple hasn't put substantially more money into the Mac Mini. Doing so would do relatively very little to move the Apple stock price or the money pit depth. If putting $100M into a Mac Mini would get Apple $120M and putting $100M into product Y would get Apple $350M then they will put money into product Y. There is only a finite number of people Apple can hire/engaged for product development in a fixed amount of time if keep quality standards high.
The net cash flow from operations/business is closer to the scope of how Apple is probably under investing in the Mac business. That is large, but no where in the trillions or hundreds of billions of dollar range. Most of the flow is being generated from non-Mac businesses. So pool looking at is even smaller than that.
The way I understand it is that Apple pulled all engineering resources from the Mac line to concentrate on all the iToys. The main reason it's taking until 2019 to come out with a new Mac Pro is that Apple had to essentially rebuild an engineering team to start design work on it, since all the original team members had been scattered hither and yon. Remember that Ive and his group only design the pretty exteriors of these computers, the real talent is the ones who put together the insides and they are often hamstrung by Ive's team because at Apple function follows form, so if they have to squeeze everything into a pretty box that can only hold half of what's needed then they need to start determining what necessary bits need to be sacrificed to make it fit. This is why I predict the 2019 Mac Pro will be a major disappointment if Ive is let anywhere near it.
I think the 'they wanted to' needs a fair amount of unpacking. The issue goes back to why they wanted to do the Mini in the first place. Then the context of then versus current issues and market forces. Finally, Apple "areas of focus" (e.g., which features are they trying to roll out to all Macs. )
1. While the Mac Mini was obviously created to present a low cost entry option for Mac users, how Apple went about that is an issue. The Mac Mini came as laptops started to dominate the Mac market. So the Mini cruised in the bow wave of the laptops for major parts. Macbook processors , storage drives , and to a decent extent ports were driven to higher economy of scale to the Mini by just using what Apple was buying anyway in very large numbers. So a "keyboard" less and "headless" laptop. (for example take the CPU package from the high volume MBA and slap that into the base Mini model because can drive bigger volume discounts from Intel and can amortize R&D on that boot/support code over a larger base. )
One problem has been is that the Mini's needs have somewhat forked off of the parts pool that Apple has shifted the laptops into. ( ever thinner laptops (soldered components ) , price creep (Retina , then Touch Bars ) , SSD only , etc. were not things the Mac Mini necessarily needed. )
For example, "analyst" predictions 3-4 years ago often put SSDs in HDDs price points If Apple could just replace the 500GB HDD with an equally priced 500GB SSD then the mini could simply toss all HDDs and still hit its 'normal' entry level price points. Well, that didn't happen. Apple's focus on APFS on being SSD targeted first and then other drives "maybe eventually when we get time for it" is somewhat illustrative that Apple's mentality of "betting the farm" on SSDs several years ago. ( that is also driven by a skew that iOS's SSD only has on shared infrastructure like the file system code. )
IMHO, if Apple could have shipped a Mini purged of a HDD earlier they probably would have put a higher priority on it. That the Mini price points probably means some HDD is present ( perhaps baseline of a Fusion Drive) they would have kicked the can down the road.
2. Apple is a bit freaked out about how to drive growth on relatively flat unit sales. Apple has been distracted on how to raise average selling prices to offset iPhone unit sales trying to plateau. (if there is still revenue growth then the stock price doesn't have to significantly fall backward since huge growth expectations are pre-built into the current price). To some extent the same issue with Macs ( users buying a longer refresh rates). Apple hasn't been pressed about either extreme end of the Mac product line up. ( which are not the primary drives of Mac sales or revenue. )
The Mini is at the "boring" end of their product line where they have an "entry" level price product because they "have to" but it is high market pressures to drift into the "race to the bottom" market. Initially the Mini got pitched as being a key part of the "switcher" campaign to get folks off of Windows. I suspect over time that Apple has found that the Mini really isn't. Apple is getting more than reasonable number of switchers across a fairly broad set of Mac offerings. The Mini isn't the lynchpin.
So in short, Apple lost some of the "why are we doing this" motivation. I think they are now shifting to some hope of raising up the average selling price of the Mini ( not get rid of the lowest models because market necessity ), but selling more BTO configurations.
3. Apple has a problem sending all of their product through a relatively fixed sized industrial design team. If have a core team that is 10-14 folks in size and have 16-20 products then can perhaps sustain a bi-yearly rate on all of those for substantive changes. But if keep the same 10-14 folks and then have 20-30 products then the sustained rate of updates is not going cover the entire product scope.
I suspect while there may be more folks assigned to industrial design that there still is a core "Politburo" that is a choke point on the process flow. At some point Apple gets into "rob Peter to pay Paul" trade-offs when design hiccups occur and there is much more push/pull across the whole product lines than there really needs to be. Some products are higher priority than others and it can be easy to dynamically resource starve low priority products over time.
It would probably help the Mac Product line up if it had more resources that couldn't be assigned as gap filling floaters to other projects that hit hiccups. Given the across the board spotty upgrades of the Macs over the last 3-4 years it hard to see how there could be fully staffed teams for every Mac product. Everything has the outward appearance of 2-3 teams trying to keep up after 6 product lines. A relatively constant "rob Peter to pay Paul" exercise.
I suspect that because that Mac buyers were taking longer to buy upgrades some Scrooge McDuck thought this was a slick way to goose more margin out of the Mac product line ( and probably used that to justify big bonuses for being clever). I think the chickens are finally coming in to roost on that. It runs inherently counter to Apple's policy of don't comment on future products ( "talk" by doing rather than burying folks in power point slides and slick talk. ). There are signs Apple has finally woken up to that inherent conflict.
4. As someone else mention the market the Mini is in is significantly changing. AMD and Intel competition is bringing a major evolutionary jump to the Mini space. Even if Apple doesn't find the Mini "exciting' or would prefer to avoid revising something with a HDD in it ( "maybe we can hold our breath until QLC gets more mature and cheap" ) the time has simply just run out on kicking the Mini refresh can down the road. In short, there were no Mini updates because they weren't working on any, but now they have simply just run out of rational excuses not to.
Four cores going mainstream means there is a normative deviation in addition to just plain "old" nature to the Mini. Apple finally is adding Fusion to AFPS ( so a Fusion Mini wouldn't be a file system "step child"). At this point Apple has to update the Mini or else sales will fall off a cliff from where they are at now ( which may have staid in a steady comatose range for last 1-2 years. )
hither and yon is probably an exaggeration. Multiple accounts point to Apple having a Function/Matrix organization. So a collection of wi-fi folks work on wi-fi solutions over all of the Apple products. Displays something similar. They can be prioritized on which products are higher priority than others ( so work can slow on something low priority ), but they are "lost and scattered" organizationally.
Similar in software. Moving to APFS is more a move by Apple to removing the forking between variants of HFS+ that had built up over time than remove cannibalize a team for some other product.
Pragmatically, they probably do have some staffing loses/gaps with folks who might strongly prefer to work on more mainstream design constraints.
One of the major issues with the next Mac Pro is whether Apple committed to it being a literal desktop or it could go back to being a deskside design. That is a constraint that Ive really shouldn't be in charge off. It isn't so much a matter of Ive being near it, but of folks who compose the requirements he has to meet just "mail it in". That doesn't mean Apple is going to build an 100% alter to commodity parts. That's not going to happen. However, some trade-offs need to be called (and Apple can still push the envelope so not solely iterating on 15 year old design constraints. ).
I'm piling on my OP with one more bit that's "changed", couldn't write about it due to an NDA until they hit the wholesale or retail channel and now they've launched even though they're only being shopped around by vendors as "black boxes" for now and I'm only going to guess that Apple has been testing the new chips as well. The new NUCs by Intel should be shipping sometime this month, the now-formerly-named "Crimson Canyon NUCs" or CYS models (NUC8i3CYSM/NUC8i3CYSN - will be only available through SimplyNUC, at least for now?) are the first NUCs to include the integrated AMD Radeon 540 (though Intel is *still* not mentioning AMD, funny, that...), with Cannon Lake processors.
Apple would be able to work with AMD and not have to deal with Intel's GPU drivers. We've only tested the i3 and it's pretty snappy, but no DisplayPort although two HDMI 2.0b ports. Also, all of the good stuff is welded in and not upgradeable - sound familiar - but these NUCs are going to be frickin' awesome as HTPCs! But...
Intel will be shipping a few updated kits around the same timeframe, but with 8th-Gen Kaby Lake CPUs, Intel GPU, TB3/USB Gen2, Optane support, and support dual drives and up to 32GB of RAM and is upgradeable. See Page "iv" for the options that will be available
Hoping for the best of both options, the new AMD option is much nicer than the previous Intel-only integrated GPU and it's a shame that they're not in the new kits (yet?).
I chatted up some of my peers that use both Windows and Macs late in the week, asking what they're considering with the near future. Funny that some of them are looking at the new NUC kits and making Hackintoshes out them and installing Win 10 Pro on their 2012 Minis (pretty much all server units, like my office) as Intel's iGPU drivers are much newer for the 4000 and Windows works great in Boot Camp so far. Cheers!
Apple would be able to work with AMD and not have to deal with Intel's GPU drivers. We've only tested the i3 and it's pretty snappy, but no DisplayPort although two HDMI 2.0b ports. Also, all of the good stuff is welded in
and not upgradeable - sound familiar - but these NUCs are going to be frickin' awesome as HTPCs! But...Intel will be shipping a few updated kits around the same timeframe, but with 8th-Gen Kaby Lake CPUs, Intel GPU, TB3/USB Gen2, Optane support, and support dual drives and up to 32GB of RAM and is upgradeable. See Page "iv" for the options that will be available
Hoping for the best of both options, the new AMD option is much nicer than the previous Intel-only integrated GPU and it's a shame that they're not in the new kits (yet?).
I chatted up some of my peers that use both Windows and Macs late in the week, asking what they're considering with the near future. Funny that some of them are looking at the new NUC kits and making Hackintoshes out them and installing Win 10 Pro on their 2012 Minis (pretty much all server units, like my office) as Intel's iGPU drivers are much newer for the 4000 and Windows works great in Boot Camp so far. Cheers!
I'm piling on my OP with one more bit that's "changed", couldn't write about it due to an NDA until they hit the wholesale or retail channel and now they've launched even though they're only being shopped around by vendors as "black boxes" for now and I'm only going to guess that Apple has been testing the new chips as well. The new NUCs by Intel should be shipping sometime this month, the now-formerly-named "Crimson Canyon NUCs" or CYS models (NUC8i3CYSM/NUC8i3CYSN - will be only available through SimplyNUC, at least for now?) are the first NUCs to include the integrated AMD Radeon 540 (though Intel is *still* not mentioning AMD, funny, that...), with Cannon Lake processors.
Apple would be able to work with AMD and not have to deal with Intel's GPU drivers. We've only tested the i3 and it's pretty snappy, but no DisplayPort although two HDMI 2.0b ports. Also, all of the good stuff is welded in
Intel will be shipping a few updated kits around the same timeframe, but with 8th-Gen Kaby Lake CPUs, Intel GPU, TB3/USB Gen2, Optane support, and support dual drives and up to 32GB of RAM and is upgradeable. See Page "iv" for the options that will be available
Hoping for the best of both options, the new AMD option is much nicer than the previous Intel-only integrated GPU and it's a shame that they're not in the new kits (yet?).
I chatted up some of my peers that use both Windows and Macs late in the week, asking what they're considering with the near future. Funny that some of them are looking at the new NUC kits and making Hackintoshes out them and installing Win 10 Pro on their 2012 Minis (pretty much all server units, like my office) as Intel's iGPU drivers are much newer for the 4000 and Windows works great in Boot Camp so far. Cheers!
Isn't the problem with the i3-8121U Cannon Lake that the test units seen in the wild so far have deactivated graphics so a discrete GPU has to be forcibly used? These external GPUs won't be that interesting to Apple as they use Quicksync heavily which is built into the iGPU and the performance per watt isn't that interesting either.
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If Apple are indeed listening to professionals this time they can't be letting function follow form again but they could at least talk to the design guys as Apple still has a certain reputation for nice quality gear and not just beige boxes.
If the Mac Pro 2013 was a failure because of designing themselves into a thermal corner they have to regain the trust of the professional community by at least going some way back towards their needs for the 2019 Mac Pro. We can assume that Apple will be looking towards a single powerful GPU after the failure of their dual GPU design ideas on the 2013 Mac Pro. Going dual processor again like the old classic Mac Pro could make the Mac Pro 2019 very expensive indeed at Apple's current prices on their 'Scalable' range. How many people are likely to throw well into 5 figures at a Mac Pro after Apple's track record for the last 8 years?
Quote from Craig Federighi: "Being able to put larger single GPUs required a different system architecture and more thermal capacity than that system was designed to accommodate. So it became fairly difficult to adjust."
If the Mac Pro is priced incredibly high because of dual processors it at least could reopen the door for a more ambitious Mac Mini if it's not just being updated because Intel's core count is going up and Apple are only now moving because they don't want to see sales collapse on lines that matter.
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Some answer were close but the truth is mobile gear breaks more often and is lost more often and is stolen more often.
so the money is in iPad , iPhones and laptops. Apple cares about money no more no less.
They are building a new mini now because 4k tv is cheap. Guys like me that want a 50 to 70 inch screen for a monitor
will upgrade to 4k as soon as the 2018 mini comes out.
I will use an external thunderbolt case to boot with and I am done for 5 more years.
so the money is in iPad , iPhones and laptops. Apple cares about money no more no less.
They are building a new mini now because 4k tv is cheap. Guys like me that want a 50 to 70 inch screen for a monitor
will upgrade to 4k as soon as the 2018 mini comes out.
I will use an external thunderbolt case to boot with and I am done for 5 more years.
Ultimate choice of CPU could be interesting, especially if Apple are considering adding a T2 co-processor or discrete GPU for home cinema/gaming use, or even redesigning the case to allow more flexibility in CPU choice beyond throwing 15/28w CPUs into the existing case and calling it a day.
To keep average selling prices higher they only have to make Fusion Drive (or SSD) standard to allow for making the case smaller and losing the Retina display whereas the iMac continues with the bigger hard drives to keep their entry prices low.
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Home media centre users are name checked in the Bloomberg article. The difference now is that these users will be intending to plug in 4k screens so Apple would need to allow a discrete GPU option (and not just via a bulky eGPU) because I think Iris Graphics isn't going to be a good experience on a 4k screen at 60Hz.
Is this a big enough potential user group for Apple though? A Kaby Lake G would certainly be enough horsepower for that but will need a redesigned case and in any event Apple could probably go for a CPU+dGPU combo without buying in the KBL+G which has its own technical limitations.
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