This has overtones of the shift from the Apple // to the Mac. The reliance on the iPhone has become very risky. Phones are a bit like fashion and can quickly go out of style and you then have a huge company with no significant products.
Yep. As much as it pains me to admit. Selling desktops from 2013!!!??? Full price. Cmon, this should piss you guys off. It's unacceptable. I'm just as big Apple fan as any, but realize if your in denial, or defending Apple for this, you are enabling Apple to be lackluster, adding to Apple's demise. Vote with your wallet. Please don't buy this stuff. Send a message to Apple. They need to do better. They can do better. /end of rally speech.
This has overtones of the shift from the Apple // to the Mac. The reliance on the iPhone has become very risky. Phones are a bit like fashion and can quickly go out of style and you then have a huge company with no significant products.
But I also think Apple wants to get off the "cra-cra train" of the yearly cycle of hardware updates...
...
The iMacs need an update, maybe edge-to-edge screen.
...
Software is second to none. I remember when Pages came out, I love the simple design and it has only got better as it has matured. I prefer the Apple apps b/c of the seamless integration between devices.
...
Anyway, I'm probably stating the obvious.
Yeah, but you're stating the obviously wrong.
All Apple management cares about is share prices and "growth". That's why the "cra cra" rapid product release (rapidly releasing the same thing every few months, never getting the bugs fixed). Apple WANTS that stupid and irrationally short cycle so they can keep promoting fiscal growth to major shareholders. They have no loyalty to customers or product. Only to shareholders and Wall Street. [...]
That this company, with all its money, cannot manage to maintain focus on multiple products, cannot manage to maintain expertise, cannot manage its own managers... It's incredible mismanagement and should really be an incredible embarrassment to the leadership. But the leadership has lost sight of any real goal aside from Wall Street demands. There's not really any leadership, in fact. Just following where the shareholders want Apple to go: low investment in existing product, wasteful fad developments, too rapid a development cycle...
I have to say this is pretty much the opposite of true. In fact Apple is often criticized by wall street and others for not catering to wall street. It's even been written about -- how catering to wall street is the "dumbest idea in the world" (words of ex-GE CEO) and that the better approach is "delighting the customer" and letting the profits follow...and who is the poster boy for this model? Apple. read it and weep:
Certainly appears that the professional Mac is going the way of the dodo at Apple. Which to seems self defeating to me considering the only way to develop iOS apps is to use a Mac. (Yes, I know about PC Hackintosh, but it's not approved). You need a reasonably beefy Mac to do decent development.
Isn't neglecting the tools that support your bread and butter platform suicide? I hope we're not going back to the dark days of Metrowerks CodeWarrior!
Apple's commitment to Swift is (IMO) an indicator that they are still committed to the desktop, but the desktop is usually a laptop.
Also, I'm guessing that the Mac Pro may finally disappear and in its place the iMac may be supplemented with an iMac Pro.
That could spell the end of their use in our plant. Not only is the attached monitor superfluous and unnecessary in our system, it would actually get in the way.
Well, it's just a theory. Presumably there will still be room for the Mac mini, but I really don't know.
I wonder about the direction of the mini. It was, if I understand correctly, originally intended to be a budget-sensitive way for people to get a Mac at a time when desktop computers were still common in most households.
Based purely on personal observation and gut instinct, I wonder if the "typical" buyer of the mini has changed? I suspect the people who buy minis are not setting them up in the home office (hasn't that market been replaced with laptops, iPads, and, to a lesser degree, iMacs?), but rather are pro's and prosumers who are looking for a less expensive alternative to the Mac Pro.
If I'm right, then building a mini with an i3 processor designed to hit a price point is aiming at a disappearing market, whereas dropping the quad-core option is missing where the puck is going.
I'd like a Pro at home, but it's too big and too expensive for my particular application. A tricked-out mini isn't cheap either, but it still offers savings by eliminating the cost of things that have limited benefit to the semi-pro user, like a second GPU, Xeon CPU, and multiple Thunderbolt busses. Plus it offers the benefits of hardware-assisted transcoding and a size that allows it to be placed just about anywhere.
Am I the only one who would buy the equivalent of the new MacBook Pro in a Mac Mini chassis?
Yep. As much as it pains me to admit. Selling desktops from 2013!!!??? Full price. Cmon, this should piss you guys off. It's unacceptable. I'm just as big Apple fan as any, but realize if your in denial, or defending Apple for this, you are enabling Apple to be lackluster, adding to Apple's demise. Vote with your wallet. Please don't buy this stuff. Send a message to Apple. They need to do better. They can do better. /end of rally speech.
That's a risky strategy. Look at monitors and Airports. "They're not selling so we're discontinuing them." Minis and Pros go YEARS without updates.
I took an alternative approach when I bought this MacBook Pro. I paid the absolutely ass-raping, egregious price for the 2TB storage upgrade to send a message to Apple that we want as much internal storage as they can cram in there. By doing so, I also sent another, unintended message: that buyers will accept statospherically-high prices for build-to-order upgrades when they don't have third-party alternatives.
Voting with one's wallet doesn't necessarily tell the vendor what one is thinking or actually wants.
Yep. As much as it pains me to admit. Selling desktops from 2013!!!??? Full price. Cmon, this should piss you guys off. It's unacceptable. I'm just as big Apple fan as any, but realize if your in denial, or defending Apple for this, you are enabling Apple to be lackluster, adding to Apple's demise. Vote with your wallet. Please don't buy this stuff. Send a message to Apple. They need to do better. They can do better. /end of rally speech.
I took an alternative approach when I bought this MacBook Pro. I paid the absolutely ass-raping, egregious price for the 2TB storage upgrade to send a message to Apple that we want as much internal storage as they can cram in there. By doing so, I also sent another, unintended message: that buyers will accept statospherically-high prices for build-to-order upgrades when they don't have third-party alternatives.
Voting with one's wallet doesn't necessarily tell the vendor what one is thinking or actually wants.
1) It tells the vendor exact what it wants to know.
2) Yes, you do have 3rd-party alternatives: everything PC vendor but Apple are your other options.
I wonder about the direction of the mini. It was, if I understand correctly, originally intended to be a budget-sensitive way for people to get a Mac at a time when desktop computers were still common in most households.
Based purely on personal observation and gut instinct, I wonder if the "typical" buyer of the mini has changed? I suspect the people who buy minis are not setting them up in the home office (hasn't that market been replaced with laptops, iPads, and, to a lesser degree, iMacs?), but rather are pro's and prosumers who are looking for a less expensive alternative to the Mac Pro.
If I'm right, then building a mini with an i3 processor designed to hit a price point is aiming at a disappearing market, whereas dropping the quad-core option is missing where the puck is going.
I'd like a Pro at home, but it's too big and too expensive for my particular application. A tricked-out mini isn't cheap either, but it still offers savings by eliminating the cost of things that have limited benefit to the semi-pro user, like a second GPU, Xeon CPU, and multiple Thunderbolt busses. Plus it offers the benefits of hardware-assisted transcoding and a size that allows it to be placed just about anywhere.
Am I the only one who would buy the equivalent of the new MacBook Pro in a Mac Mini chassis?
No, you are not the only one.
There are multiple markets that can/would be served by new Mac Minis that spanned up to the point of a MacBook Pro equivalent in a Mac mini chassis. It would be rather easy to build a version that had the computing (CPU) power of a Mac Pro 2010 but with less need for high power graphics (i.e. Polaris 9 based).
The old quad core was a nod to the fact that many were being mounted vertically in a rack and put in server rooms for small niche purpose servers -- and in a few cases Mac mini based co-location services for a completely self-contained small server (not a slot on a larger box) which gives you both full control and access to high speed, high availability co-located devices -- for relatively cheap. There are still many people that given the choice would stick with Mac mini rather than some other Linux based hardware. You are in complete control of your own box (whether co-located or in your own server room) and may be used for many dedicated purposes. I actually bought 3 refurb models that were even lower powered for things like this in around 2010.
There is a large block of people that don't need the graphics horsepower of a Mac Pro and are still fine with the CPU power of older Mac Pros -- especially now that it could handle up to 4 4K monitors for regular use.
There are many people like me that are also averse to the iMac just because I don't much like all-in-one computers.... I have had too many monitors die - many more monitors than I have had computers die.
For me a quad-core (MacBook Pro equivalent) would be superior to using a MacBook Pro because for a laptop I don't need power and I am happy with the weight and usefulness of the smaller MacBook for when I have to take it with me. I would thus only be using it for desktop purposes - and I don't want to have to worry... did I cycle the battery so that I don't destroy it. Then of course clamshell mode operation is not always that healthy for a laptop for long term desk usage.
The low end of the Mac mini line would still be the lowest point for entry into the Mac market as well. I have posted the wish of having it back and some of those posts receive the most "likes" of any posts about the Mac mini... so even though it is not scientific -- there is still a lot of love for the Mac mini.... You will also notice that there are more and more windows copycat versions of that model now -- so it obviously fits a wider audience for that type of computer -- not just people like me.
That's just ridiculous. MS' HW sales are low and they are still selling with Windows that they have a very, very long road of taking on other WinOEMs before they begin to affect Apple.
But I also think Apple wants to get off the "cra-cra train" of the yearly cycle of hardware updates...
...
The iMacs need an update, maybe edge-to-edge screen.
...
Software is second to none. I remember when Pages came out, I love the simple design and it has only got better as it has matured. I prefer the Apple apps b/c of the seamless integration between devices.
...
Anyway, I'm probably stating the obvious.
Yeah, but you're stating the obviously wrong.
All Apple management cares about is share prices and "growth". That's why the "cra cra" rapid product release (rapidly releasing the same thing every few months, never getting the bugs fixed). Apple WANTS that stupid and irrationally short cycle so they can keep promoting fiscal growth to major shareholders. They have no loyalty to customers or product. Only to shareholders and Wall Street.
Why is it when people suggest changes for new Mac hardware, they almost invariably suggest cosmetic changes like "edge to edge screens"? How about hardware that has good thermal design and doesn't self-destruct under heavy workload, and more functionality via ports & RAM...??
Apple's software is second (or third) to almost all, at this point. Especially the iWork suite. Pages was absolutely brutalized when Apple ditched the desktop version for the weak iOS port. Didn't you ever use iWork prior to the iOS port? The original versions had far more feature parity with the big names in productivity suites. iWork was actually an MS Office replacement for many people. Now we have a suite that's an embarrassing joke, with bare minimum functionality (and hidden controls on iOS for things like "replace all"). If all you do is use iOS devices, of course you don't know the difference, but plenty of other people do know the difference.
Seamless integration was accomplished by screwing up the Mac platform, rather than making the iOS platform catch up to it. We've been seeing this for years now. Since 2013, really. These claims of Apple nearly abandoning the Mac internally are not at all a surprise to the Mac users who've been paying attention to Apple's treatment of the platform. Things like the iWork lobotomy were early and striking signs.
That this company, with all its money, cannot manage to maintain focus on multiple products, cannot manage to maintain expertise, cannot manage its own managers... It's incredible mismanagement and should really be an incredible embarrassment to the leadership. But the leadership has lost sight of any real goal aside from Wall Street demands. There's not really any leadership, in fact. Just following where the shareholders want Apple to go: low investment in existing product, wasteful fad developments, too rapid a development cycle...
The original iWork was a real PITA to work with, and as far as I remember, it was an outsourced product, at least partially. I couldn't paginate a 300 pages book with simple formatting on my 2008 MBP 13", it was so slow... iWork has been totally re-written from scratch, ported to the cloud and became cross-platform as such and offered collaboration in the last update. Modern code, modern UI, small footprint and reachability from everywhere. Those are what define today's iWork. Compared to original iWork, it is a great progress, not a regress.
But I also think Apple wants to get off the "cra-cra train" of the yearly cycle of hardware updates...
...
The iMacs need an update, maybe edge-to-edge screen.
...
Software is second to none. I remember when Pages came out, I love the simple design and it has only got better as it has matured. I prefer the Apple apps b/c of the seamless integration between devices.
...
Anyway, I'm probably stating the obvious.
Yeah, but you're stating the obviously wrong.
All Apple management cares about is share prices and "growth". That's why the "cra cra" rapid product release (rapidly releasing the same thing every few months, never getting the bugs fixed). Apple WANTS that stupid and irrationally short cycle so they can keep promoting fiscal growth to major shareholders. They have no loyalty to customers or product. Only to shareholders and Wall Street.
Why is it when people suggest changes for new Mac hardware, they almost invariably suggest cosmetic changes like "edge to edge screens"? How about hardware that has good thermal design and doesn't self-destruct under heavy workload, and more functionality via ports & RAM...??
Apple's software is second (or third) to almost all, at this point. Especially the iWork suite. Pages was absolutely brutalized when Apple ditched the desktop version for the weak iOS port. Didn't you ever use iWork prior to the iOS port? The original versions had far more feature parity with the big names in productivity suites. iWork was actually an MS Office replacement for many people. Now we have a suite that's an embarrassing joke, with bare minimum functionality (and hidden controls on iOS for things like "replace all"). If all you do is use iOS devices, of course you don't know the difference, but plenty of other people do know the difference.
Seamless integration was accomplished by screwing up the Mac platform, rather than making the iOS platform catch up to it. We've been seeing this for years now. Since 2013, really. These claims of Apple nearly abandoning the Mac internally are not at all a surprise to the Mac users who've been paying attention to Apple's treatment of the platform. Things like the iWork lobotomy were early and striking signs.
That this company, with all its money, cannot manage to maintain focus on multiple products, cannot manage to maintain expertise, cannot manage its own managers... It's incredible mismanagement and should really be an incredible embarrassment to the leadership. But the leadership has lost sight of any real goal aside from Wall Street demands. There's not really any leadership, in fact. Just following where the shareholders want Apple to go: low investment in existing product, wasteful fad developments, too rapid a development cycle...
Very good point about iWork. I was surprised when MS Office was demoed at the iPAD PRO premiere. Now I realize that Cook probably uses Excel (like most other MBA's) and really doesn't care about the software or Macs. He has his iPad for that.
Am I the only one who would buy the equivalent of the new MacBook Pro in a Mac Mini chassis?
Not at all, and it has been done before. I bought myself a mid-2010 Mac Mini and two 13" MBPs all around the same 1-2 month time frame, and displays aside, the architecture and components were identical.
I question the sources but some of this does not surprise me at all. While Apple still pushes out great products they lack excitement. Ask me how often I use the toucher on my new MacBookPro? Hardly at all. It is a gimmick. Truth hurts I know but let's call it like it is.
Ah, yes, the good ol' "because I don't use it, no one does, therefore it's junk" argument. Classic.
People are so full of themselves to assume that because they didn't use it no one is. LMAO!!!
For power users, Apple should optimize the theoretical MacBook Pro for performance and connectivity, worrying about size, weight, and battery life secondarily. A 13-inch model might have similar performance specs to a tricked-out version of the proposed MacBook Air but with an industrial design that offers more ports: MagSafe, Thunderbolt 3, Thunderbolt 2 port, USB-A, HDMI, Ethernet, and an SD card slot. Its price might start around $1500 and go up with additional CPU and storage. For those who need the ultimate power, the 15-inch model could support amounts of RAM above what laptop chipsets can generally handle, along with a plethora of build-to-order options that could push its price from a starting point of maybe $1800 into the stratosphere. Such specs would reduce battery life and increase weight but would enable mobile professionals to rely on a single machine.
The core problem is that Apple no longer seems to understand how Mac users choose their machines. Right now, it’s nearly impossible to figure out what Mac laptop to buy, because the three key differentiators of price, size, and performance are difficult to tease out, with all the models converging on the MacBook Air’s focus on size at the expense of price and performance.
Plus, as Andy Ihnatko also pointed out, Apple has become a design and manufacturing company, not an engineering company. Unsurprisingly, the only Mac for which design and manufacturing matter more than anything else is the canonical MacBook Air, which needs to be magically small and light and is willing to compromise on price and performance.
The prime directive of an engineering company is to provide products that solve users’ problems. It’s all about helping users achieve their goals with the least amount of wasted time and effort. That used to describe Apple to a T.
Nowadays, Apple is ignoring the desires of many Mac users and focusing on making gorgeous objects that are possible purely because of the company’s leadership in advanced manufacturing techniques. That has a place with an iPhone or iPad, but who cares if an iMac is thin? You look at the front, not the edge! We don’t mind if our Macs are carved from single blocks of aluminum and feature chamfered edges, but that design won’t make us more productive.
When it comes to Macs, form should follow function, not force us into uncomfortable compromises.
I'm sorry but I care about battery life of any mac I'm using. I have a 2016 MBP and it's been good to me so far.
For power users, Apple should optimize the theoretical MacBook Pro for performance and connectivity, worrying about size, weight, and battery life secondarily. A 13-inch model might have similar performance specs to a tricked-out version of the proposed MacBook Air but with an industrial design that offers more ports: MagSafe, Thunderbolt 3, Thunderbolt 2 port, USB-A, HDMI, Ethernet, and an SD card slot. Its price might start around $1500 and go up with additional CPU and storage. For those who need the ultimate power, the 15-inch model could support amounts of RAM above what laptop chipsets can generally handle, along with a plethora of build-to-order options that could push its price from a starting point of maybe $1800 into the stratosphere. Such specs would reduce battery life and increase weight but would enable mobile professionals to rely on a single machine.
The core problem is that Apple no longer seems to understand how Mac users choose their machines. Right now, it’s nearly impossible to figure out what Mac laptop to buy, because the three key differentiators of price, size, and performance are difficult to tease out, with all the models converging on the MacBook Air’s focus on size at the expense of price and performance.
Plus, as Andy Ihnatko also pointed out, Apple has become a design and manufacturing company, not an engineering company. Unsurprisingly, the only Mac for which design and manufacturing matter more than anything else is the canonical MacBook Air, which needs to be magically small and light and is willing to compromise on price and performance.
The prime directive of an engineering company is to provide products that solve users’ problems. It’s all about helping users achieve their goals with the least amount of wasted time and effort. That used to describe Apple to a T.
Nowadays, Apple is ignoring the desires of many Mac users and focusing on making gorgeous objects that are possible purely because of the company’s leadership in advanced manufacturing techniques. That has a place with an iPhone or iPad, but who cares if an iMac is thin? You look at the front, not the edge! We don’t mind if our Macs are carved from single blocks of aluminum and feature chamfered edges, but that design won’t make us more productive.
When it comes to Macs, form should follow function, not force us into uncomfortable compromises.
I'm sorry but I care about battery life of any mac I'm using. I have a 2016 MBP and it's been good to me so far.
Not to mention poor form generally is indicative of poor craftsmanship overall.... something that has been quite common in the windows world unfortunately for windows users. There has been some improvement in the last few years with a few actually manufacturing better crafted computers.
But I also think Apple wants to get off the "cra-cra train" of the yearly cycle of hardware updates...
...
The iMacs need an update, maybe edge-to-edge screen.
...
Software is second to none. I remember when Pages came out, I love the simple design and it has only got better as it has matured. I prefer the Apple apps b/c of the seamless integration between devices.
...
Anyway, I'm probably stating the obvious.
Yeah, but you're stating the obviously wrong.
All Apple management cares about is share prices and "growth". That's why the "cra cra" rapid product release (rapidly releasing the same thing every few months, never getting the bugs fixed). Apple WANTS that stupid and irrationally short cycle so they can keep promoting fiscal growth to major shareholders. They have no loyalty to customers or product. Only to shareholders and Wall Street.
Why is it when people suggest changes for new Mac hardware, they almost invariably suggest cosmetic changes like "edge to edge screens"? How about hardware that has good thermal design and doesn't self-destruct under heavy workload, and more functionality via ports & RAM...??
Apple's software is second (or third) to almost all, at this point. Especially the iWork suite. Pages was absolutely brutalized when Apple ditched the desktop version for the weak iOS port. Didn't you ever use iWork prior to the iOS port? The original versions had far more feature parity with the big names in productivity suites. iWork was actually an MS Office replacement for many people. Now we have a suite that's an embarrassing joke, with bare minimum functionality (and hidden controls on iOS for things like "replace all"). If all you do is use iOS devices, of course you don't know the difference, but plenty of other people do know the difference.
Seamless integration was accomplished by screwing up the Mac platform, rather than making the iOS platform catch up to it. We've been seeing this for years now. Since 2013, really. These claims of Apple nearly abandoning the Mac internally are not at all a surprise to the Mac users who've been paying attention to Apple's treatment of the platform. Things like the iWork lobotomy were early and striking signs.
That this company, with all its money, cannot manage to maintain focus on multiple products, cannot manage to maintain expertise, cannot manage its own managers... It's incredible mismanagement and should really be an incredible embarrassment to the leadership. But the leadership has lost sight of any real goal aside from Wall Street demands. There's not really any leadership, in fact. Just following where the shareholders want Apple to go: low investment in existing product, wasteful fad developments, too rapid a development cycle...
Oh come on... Apple waited several years to redesign the MBP and Trash Can and people have been complaining left and right. They aren't just throwing products into the wild on fad developments because of a rapid development cycle.
Yep. As much as it pains me to admit. Selling desktops from 2013!!!??? Full price. Cmon, this should piss you guys off. It's unacceptable. I'm just as big Apple fan as any, but realize if your in denial, or defending Apple for this, you are enabling Apple to be lackluster, adding to Apple's demise. Vote with your wallet. Please don't buy this stuff. Send a message to Apple. They need to do better. They can do better. /end of rally speech.
Comments
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/11/28/maximizing-shareholder-value-the-dumbest-idea-in-the-world/
I wonder about the direction of the mini. It was, if I understand correctly, originally intended to be a budget-sensitive way for people to get a Mac at a time when desktop computers were still common in most households.
Based purely on personal observation and gut instinct, I wonder if the "typical" buyer of the mini has changed? I suspect the people who buy minis are not setting them up in the home office (hasn't that market been replaced with laptops, iPads, and, to a lesser degree, iMacs?), but rather are pro's and prosumers who are looking for a less expensive alternative to the Mac Pro.
If I'm right, then building a mini with an i3 processor designed to hit a price point is aiming at a disappearing market, whereas dropping the quad-core option is missing where the puck is going.
I'd like a Pro at home, but it's too big and too expensive for my particular application. A tricked-out mini isn't cheap either, but it still offers savings by eliminating the cost of things that have limited benefit to the semi-pro user, like a second GPU, Xeon CPU, and multiple Thunderbolt busses. Plus it offers the benefits of hardware-assisted transcoding and a size that allows it to be placed just about anywhere.
Am I the only one who would buy the equivalent of the new MacBook Pro in a Mac Mini chassis?
I took an alternative approach when I bought this MacBook Pro. I paid the absolutely ass-raping, egregious price for the 2TB storage upgrade to send a message to Apple that we want as much internal storage as they can cram in there. By doing so, I also sent another, unintended message: that buyers will accept statospherically-high prices for build-to-order upgrades when they don't have third-party alternatives.
Voting with one's wallet doesn't necessarily tell the vendor what one is thinking or actually wants.
2) Yes, you do have 3rd-party alternatives: everything PC vendor but Apple are your other options.
http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2016/12/microsoft-is-feisty-and-showing-that-theyre-hungry-to-take-on-apple-and-scratch-their-way-back-to-the-top.html
There are multiple markets that can/would be served by new Mac Minis that spanned up to the point of a MacBook Pro equivalent in a Mac mini chassis. It would be rather easy to build a version that had the computing (CPU) power of a Mac Pro 2010 but with less need for high power graphics (i.e. Polaris 9 based).
The old quad core was a nod to the fact that many were being mounted vertically in a rack and put in server rooms for small niche purpose servers -- and in a few cases Mac mini based co-location services for a completely self-contained small server (not a slot on a larger box) which gives you both full control and access to high speed, high availability co-located devices -- for relatively cheap. There are still many people that given the choice would stick with Mac mini rather than some other Linux based hardware. You are in complete control of your own box (whether co-located or in your own server room) and may be used for many dedicated purposes. I actually bought 3 refurb models that were even lower powered for things like this in around 2010.
There is a large block of people that don't need the graphics horsepower of a Mac Pro and are still fine with the CPU power of older Mac Pros -- especially now that it could handle up to 4 4K monitors for regular use.
There are many people like me that are also averse to the iMac just because I don't much like all-in-one computers.... I have had too many monitors die - many more monitors than I have had computers die.
For me a quad-core (MacBook Pro equivalent) would be superior to using a MacBook Pro because for a laptop I don't need power and I am happy with the weight and usefulness of the smaller MacBook for when I have to take it with me. I would thus only be using it for desktop purposes - and I don't want to have to worry... did I cycle the battery so that I don't destroy it. Then of course clamshell mode operation is not always that healthy for a laptop for long term desk usage.
The low end of the Mac mini line would still be the lowest point for entry into the Mac market as well. I have posted the wish of having it back and some of those posts receive the most "likes" of any posts about the Mac mini... so even though it is not scientific -- there is still a lot of love for the Mac mini.... You will also notice that there are more and more windows copycat versions of that model now -- so it obviously fits a wider audience for that type of computer -- not just people like me.
That will cease but perhaps not in 2017. But it will cease.