Your Future Mac Mini Wish List

[barkmonster]

Realistically, I'd hope for something like this:-

1) As far as the case design I want 2 changes and 1 feature to stay the same:

Keep the easy access RAM upgrades.

Re-design the case to be slightly taller, have the hard drive on a sled attached to the back panel which can slide out with 2 release catches on either side of the case.

Power button on the FRONT of the Mac Mini. Apple would find a way of it being dead centre while having perfect aesthetics, they'd probably make it glow with a gentle blue hue and flash brighter when the optical drive is being accessed.

I take the Blu-Ray = A bag of hurt idea seriously, I can't see them even compromise by offering a Blu-Ray reader/DVD Writer Combo drive as a BTO option.



BOTH models would have these common features:

4Gb RAM STANDARD

7200RPM Momentus XT Hybrid drive STANDARD

SSD (Sandforce based) as a realistically priced BTO option + £50 for a 60Gb, + £100 for a 120Gb

This works out as both fair and something Apple would be willing to do because they already charge so much for small CPU bumps and slightly larger drives.

Also, Apple would be able to play up the faster boot times across the range by comparing it to the old Mac Mini and the BTO SSD

1 x Firewire 800

1 x Firewire 1600

4 x USB 2.0

1 x USB 2.0/eSATA combo connector

Core i3

Dual HDMI, 1 carrying audio

Dedicated GPU with it's own VRAM

256Mb system RAM being used by the GPU on a system with 2Gb is too much. My 9 year old G4 has 1.5Gb and a 256Mb graphics card, where's the progress?



Entry Level £499

2.26Ghz Core i3
4Gb RAM
320Gb HD

Higher End £649

2.54Ghz Core i3
4Gb RAM
500Gb HD

They'd still be slower than the iMac and the Mac books so Apple wouldn't be gouging sales and it would be significantly better value for money (as in WORTH the asking price to begin with).

 

[talmy]

1 x Firewire 800

1 x Firewire 1600

4 x USB 2.0

1 x USB 2.0/eSATA combo connector

No Macs ever have enough ports. http://images.macrumors.com/vb/images/smilies/frown.gif I think they want everything to be connected wirelessly. However FW1600 seems to be DOA, especially compared to USB 3.0. eSTATA is unlikely to appear because unlike USB/Firewire you can't hot swap eSATA drives, which goes against Apple friendly design.

Dual HDMI, 1 carrying audio

Good for entertainment center I guess, but not for large *computer* monitors.

They'd still be slower than the iMac and the Mac books so Apple wouldn't be gouging sales and it would be significantly better value for money (as in WORTH the asking price to begin with).

I'm frankly upset by the latest price increase and that, over time, they've gone up in price 40% (in USA) when electronics are still dropping in price.

 

[rtrt]

eSTATA is unlikely to appear because unlike USB/Firewire you can't hot swap eSATA drives, which goes against Apple friendly design.

dont think there's any reason why you cant hot swap esata - my MP has 2 different sata cards and i can plug unplug the data cables whilst the MP is running no problem.

the issue on the MP is the power disconnect/connect whilst the MP is running. Someone (NANOFROG ?)mentioned a while back you need a specific design of psu that provides something called an inrush power limiter, to prevent damaging the psu when connecting a drive to the running MP psu. The MP apparently doesn't have that capability.

On a mini it'd be a little different - if we're talking 3.5" drives then the power will be external and so presumably no problem.

if it's 2.5" drives then i'm not sure if you can get power over esata? if yes then presumably you just need to design that esata port for a power supply set up as you would for usb or firewire.

 

[Bkxmnr]

AMD Fusion.

 

[talmy]

dont think there's any reason why you cant hot swap esata - my MP has 2 different sata cards and i can plug unplug the data cables whilst the MP is running no problem.

I heard that it doesn't work because the drives are only discovered at bootup and there is no way to unmount them. However upon further reading it appears to be controller dependent, so Apple might be able to do it. More likely though we will either get USB3 or optical.

 

[kazmac]

agree with this

A current generation processor would be nice.
Since the next jump in computers without an all-in-one configuration is the expensive Mac Pro, I'd like to see a Mac Mini, a Mac Mini Server, and a Mac Mini Extreme. Extreme using more the i5 with more robust graphics and a 500gb hard drive.
No middle ground with Apple. If you don't want an Imac, you may choose between a Mini with a processor that is 3 years old, or a Pro that's over two grand. Shameful.

after 11 years: I'm done with iMacs. This one I purchased this past August will be the last. I wanted to keep the mini I got a couple of months earlier but because of the old tech and crappy speakers, I returned it.

So my future Mac Mini:

i3
4GB ram standard
discreet gpu
much better speakers
air style ssd drive 64gb (to start)

ditch the optical drive

I would love option of dual ssd drives

I have no qualms with the hdmi/usb offerings of the current Mini, but wouldn't mind at least one usb on either side for easier software installation etc.

how about $599 to start?

 

[animatedude]

Three models:

1. Return to $499 price of base model.
2. Mac mini server needs design mods to be more server-like:
a. Get rid of sound/speaker, dual monitor connections, less video RAM overhead (256MB is too much!), SD slot. None of this is useful for a server.
b. Add second FW800 or ESATA. Improves disk bandwidth.
c. Add second Ethernet port. Allows using mini as router without USB dongle.
3. Create a new "high end" non-server model with higher performance (like everyone else is clamoring for!)

more on this please i don't get it..

 

[Drago89]

1.Price drop back to 599$ .. it's 100$ more for the new design, hdmi port and sd card slot ?c'mon apple ...
2.Remove the optical drive, so we can see the new i's cpus.i3 or i5 doesn't rly matter to me and put some midrange gpu.
3.4gb of ram

Not so hard to make, right ?

 

[rtrt]

I heard that it doesn't work because the drives are only discovered at bootup and there is no way to unmount them. However upon further reading it appears to be controller dependent, so Apple might be able to do it. More likely though we will either get USB3 or optical.

now i see where you're coming from - as you say apple can allow or not.

in the case of the MP, my example was referring to a 3rd party PCIe card.

But in fact a better, closer to a mac mini example, would be the 1 or 2 on board spare sata ports (for sata optical drive(s)) in the MP.

These as you say are supposed to not be hot pluggable - haven't tried myself.

sorry for the confusion

 

[talmy]

more on this please i don't get it..

Regarding: "add second Ethernet port. Allows using mini as router without USB dongle." on the server model. This isn't needed for other uses. You can use the mini as a router and it is better to configure for serving to the Internet if it has two Ethernet ports (like the Mac Pro). One connects to the Internet and the other to the LAN. That way the Internet traffic doesn't have to travel over the LAN. Currently you have to use the USB Ethernet adapter/dongle. Plenty of room for this and a second FW800 once you get rid of the unnecessary (for server) stuff.

 

[animatedude]

Regarding: "add second Ethernet port. Allows using mini as router without USB dongle." on the server model. This isn't needed for other uses. You can use the mini as a router and it is better to configure for serving to the Internet if it has two Ethernet ports (like the Mac Pro). One connects to the Internet and the other to the LAN. That way the Internet traffic doesn't have to travel over the LAN. Currently you have to use the USB Ethernet adapter/dongle. Plenty of room for this and a second FW800 once you get rid of the unnecessary (for server) stuff.

wait..this is interesting.

explain the set up if there was 2 ethernet ports wether it's two ports on the mini or one on the mini and one on the USB dongle.do you have a DSL connection?

 

[barkmonster]

No Macs ever have enough ports. http://images.macrumors.com/vb/images/smilies/frown.gif I think they want everything to be connected wirelessly. However FW1600 seems to be DOA, especially compared to USB 3.0. eSTATA is unlikely to appear because unlike USB/Firewire you can't hot swap eSATA drives, which goes against Apple friendly design.



Good for entertainment center I guess, but not for large *computer* monitors.



I'm frankly upset by the latest price increase and that, over time, they've gone up in price 40% (in USA) when electronics are still dropping in price.

It's more an entertainment centre product though, purely entry level.

I'm sure people in the market for a screen over 1920 x 1080 resolution can afford the iMac and kill 2 birds with 1 stone.

No one with any common sense would buy a £649 computer with 2Gb, a 5400rpm drive and a 2.4Ghz CPU from 3 years ago + £899 worth of display when they could get an iMac for £1399 with a 3.2Ghz Core i3, 4Gb and a 1TB 7200rpm drive with a built in 27" display.

Even looking for a cheaper brand of 27" display than Apple would only close the gap slightly but most other brands are stuck at 1080p resolutions, defeating the point of a larger than 23" LCD to start with.

 

[talmy]

No one with any common sense would buy a £649 computer with 2Gb, a 5400rpm drive and a 2.4Ghz CPU from 3 years ago + £899 worth of display when they could get an iMac for £1399 with a 3.2Ghz Core i3, 4Gb and a 1TB 7200rpm drive with a built in 27" display.

You're right, of course. My 27" iMac has tons of pixels. OTOH, we have 3 Mac minis, one drives a TV, the other a cheap computer monitor over VGA, and the third is headless. But even so, I haven't been happy with HDMI (it seems to take several seconds to "negotiate" and isn't as flexible) but have found DisplayPort to work like a champ except, of course, connecting to TVs. The current configuration of 1-HDMI plus 1-DisplayPort looks like a good compromise.

 

[calaverasgrande]

Regarding: "add second Ethernet port. Allows using mini as router without USB dongle." on the server model. This isn't needed for other uses. You can use the mini as a router and it is better to configure for serving to the Internet if it has two Ethernet ports (like the Mac Pro). One connects to the Internet and the other to the LAN. That way the Internet traffic doesn't have to travel over the LAN. Currently you have to use the USB Ethernet adapter/dongle. Plenty of room for this and a second FW800 once you get rid of the unnecessary (for server) stuff.

actually it is unnecessary to have two ethernet adapters for the mini to function as a router.
There is a type of config known as "router on a stick". Essentially you plug both the external network and internal network in to the same switch. It has to be a smart switch, like a Cisco 2950 or 3760 etc. Something that does Vlans. The external network will be on one Vlan, lets say 10.10.254.0/28 or it could be an even smaller subnet. The internal network would be something like 192.168.1.1/24. The Mac Mini router merely does the layer three "routing" between vlans.

But I can buy a Cisco 2600 for a lot less than a mini on ebay!

I would want to have multiple NICs for redundancy. Most real servers I have ever used have at least 2 nics and usually several more for out of band remote management, heartbeat etc.
Here is a crazy idea, what if Apple implemented some kind of fiber data connector? Sure it sounds crazy but Apple was crazy to kill the floppy too right?

 

[haoqfu]

$100 cheaper
i3 for lower model
i5 for higher end
4GB RAM by default
128GB flash storage or ssd (default)
dual mini displayports (don't want to hook up dual 27" displays with different resolutions. what's on your mind, apple?!)

 

[iamthedudeman]

It's more an entertainment centre product though, purely entry level.

I'm sure people in the market for a screen over 1920 x 1080 resolution can afford the iMac and kill 2 birds with 1 stone.

No one with any common sense would buy a £649 computer with 2Gb, a 5400rpm drive and a 2.4Ghz CPU from 3 years ago + £899 worth of display when they could get an iMac for £1399 with a 3.2Ghz Core i3, 4Gb and a 1TB 7200rpm drive with a built in 27" display.

Even looking for a cheaper brand of 27" display than Apple would only close the gap slightly but most other brands are stuck at 1080p resolutions, defeating the point of a larger than 23" LCD to start with.

Did you ever consider the fact that not every one wants a "all in one computer"?
What good is a so called superior display if it has a "yellow hue", grey banding"stuck or dead pixels etc.
I went through five imacs' all had various issues with the screen.that is five returned iMacs. If some thing goes on a iMac, you are screwed. It can't be upgraded other than the memory or modifying it on your own.

Having a stand Alone desktop allows you to change out the various components has it's advantages. Need a updated monitor, swap it out, need a new computer only, get it, want the latest web cam, get it.
You can up grade a mini every year if you wanted to. Sell it for little loss if any at all and buy a new one with little out of pocket costs. it is easier to sell a mini than a iMac.


The mini server model with 8 gig ram is just as fast as last years 3.06 27 iMac. That person with that 3.06 iMac that he bought in 2009 Is going Keep it. As most iMac users by them and keep them. Or you can upgrade your mini every year or every other year. A sandybridge higher spec mini from 2011 at attached to a quality monitor seems more appealing than a 27 iMac 3.06 c2d.

 

[vert18]

Future Mac:

2 Ethernet gigabit ports
What ever is better than wifi n/g at the time
1 or 2 Hot-swapable drives
the core OS on a SSD (as main drive)
no built in optical drive... too many things can go wrong with em
a matching dvd or even blu-ray drive that can sit with it is fine
and the OS X to have the ability to play/burn blu-ray regardless
built in tv-tuner x 2

I'd prob run debian linux on it tho <eg>

 

[Wendell F]

The iMac won't be far behind with the removal of the Super Drive though.

What's with all the anti-optical drive talk I've been seeing all of MR? I guess I understand removal from laptops and minis so you can fit more/better stuff inside, but taking it out of the iMac? Let's face it, some people want an All-In-One when they buy an All-In-One. In fact, I'd guess most. I understand that cheap thumb drives and SD cards have killed a lot of the need for burning discs, but we all do, from time to time, need to read discs. My guess is most people would rather have a conveniently-located disc drive than 2 SSD's and an external SuperDrive. Especially for HTPC stuff.

That said, if killing the optical means better parts, I say off with its head. I'd rather put game DVD's into an external drive and have them look good on-screen.