I don't need huge solid state options because i'm eventually going to go with a 4-Bay NAS device or Drobo. In a couple of years i'd love to see a 64-bit ARM based mini for $399.
I think even Mr. Wizard has been muting the possibility of such a machine...
We must remember, though, we can get (or will be able to get...) an A7x cpu with Rogue on the entry iPad '5' soon.
Maybe the 'new' Mini will be the new ATV box. An A7? 8? 9? chip in such a tiny box with Rogue+ graphics would be a remarkable machine. Open the SKU on it and...give it the same cheap price...you'd have your desktop replacement right there for 'most' people.
At some point, more powerful iOS devices are going to blur the lines for computing for 'most' people.
And some people will ask why they'd need an overpriced mini when you can get something 'just as fast' for their everyday computing needs and it includes a retina screen. That is a beginning reality for an iPad 5 A7X. And the 'line in the sand' is going to get blurry if iOS gets 3 more years of those kinds of performance updates while Intel knocks out 7% here or there on their cpus.
It's already started with cannibalisation for laptops...just as laptops hammered desktop sales.
If I could have a 15 inch iPad in the next two years with a blisteringly fast A8 or A9X processor and Rogue +++ GPU...plus nimble, fast and progressive software like Procreate I'd have to ask why I'd need an iMac with Photoshop or Mac Pro for anything other than administering my creative art into 'formats.'
Why does using the i7-4750HQ raise the price by $100?
They mark up the cost of the components to get the retail price. Raising build costs by $60 would raise retail prices by ~$80. They might be willing to go to $849 but the Mini sells in low enough units as it is, cutting the margins is probably not something they want to do. I think a Mini at $899 with the i7-4750HQ would be worth the money though given that the graphics performance would be somewhere between a 640M and 650M. If they'd made a $999 model last year with quad i7 plus 650M, people said they'd have been happy with that so $899 for that performance this year would be a good option. The reason not to put Iris in the entry model is to keep the upsell to the quad model and also to maintain the low entry price for people who just need a basic desktop. The $599 could be dual core i5 with 4600 and $899 quad i7 with Iris Pro, both configurable with OS X Server.
They mark up the cost of the components to get the retail price. Raising build costs by $60 would raise retail prices by ~$80. They might be willing to go to $849 but the Mini sells in low enough units as it is, cutting the margins is probably not something they want to do. I think a Mini at $899 with the i7-4750HQ would be worth the money though given that the graphics performance would be somewhere between a 640M and 650M. If they'd made a $999 model last year with quad i7 plus 650M, people said they'd have been happy with that so $899 for that performance this year would be a good option. The reason not to put Iris in the entry model is to keep the upsell to the quad model and also to maintain the low entry price for people who just need a basic desktop. The $599 could be dual core i5 with 4600 and $899 quad i7 with Iris Pro, both configurable with OS X Server.
I like it! I would have really liked a Mac mini with a 650M, though I don't think that was ever a thought for Apple sad to say. What about using the i7-4850HQ instead though? Could you put that in under an $899 price tag given that it is $468 vs. the $440 cost of the i7-4750HQ?
I think even Mr. Wizard has been muting the possibility of such a machine...
An A7 Mini would be extremely attractive for a number of uses, however I think it is a long ways from a primary desktop machine. Examples include media/AV server, XCode server, CNC controller, rig controller for a Ham radio. Many of these uses could leverage A7+ in both a Mini and laptop configuration.
We must remember, though, we can get (or will be able to get...) an A7x cpu with Rogue on the entry iPad '5' soon.
Hopefully before November. What will be interesting here is the process that chip is built on, will it be sub 22nm? It really depends on how Apple goes about getting their 2X or better ipad performance increase.
Maybe the 'new' Mini will be the new ATV box. An A7? 8? 9? chip in such a tiny box with Rogue+ graphics would be a remarkable machine.
Yes it would. Of course it isn't just the CPU chip that has to go in the box but here everything else is shrinking too. If not shrinking wafers are getting stacked so RAM and Flash will fit in the box but you still have the issue of power. Even so I'd expect the thermal issues to go away with new process shrinks.
Open the SKU on it and...give it the same cheap price...you'd have your desktop replacement right there for 'most' people.
Lemon Bon Bon.
My biggest fear with Apples ARM initiative is that these machines will be locked down iOS devices. Personally I would want a machine with that low level access that Mac OS does so well. I don't see myself getting away from the idea of script writing and other uses that UNIX enables so elegantly. That is why if Apple puts ARM on the desktop or laptop they will need an OS that is as flexible and powerful as Mac OS. A locked down machine ala iOS just doesn't cut the mustard. I'd accept a hybrid of Mac OS and iOS if it left that flexibility intact. In a nut shel I need to be able to run my own code and hook up whatever hardware I want.
With an ARM based Mini you're not going to see SoC designed for mobile use IMO. They aren't fast enough.
Exactly they aren't fast enough to compete with Intel desktops one on one as someones primary computer. Yet!! They are however fast enough to do many specific tasks which would make for a very interesting low end box.
You're going to see the lineage of A5X (A57 v8 Arm cores) which aren't designed for mobile applications but rather
small power efficient servers.
Yes these will come, however what is the difference between a mobile chip and a server chip. Certainly the server chip will have specific hardware for the task at hand but so does the mobile chip. The differences boil down to increased clock rates, cash sizes and other tweaks for the desktop. These tweaks lead to more power used in the desktop hardware so the difference really is watts and not much more.
In essence in a few years Apple will once again be able to control the whole widget. Intel will NOT be inside and Apple
can tweak OS X and Xcode to optimize OS X even more.
Well yeah if they keep OS/X around and don't try to force iOS down our throats on the desktop.
SSD will be right on a very fast bus and external storage will be
augmented via Thunderbolt 2 or 3. It's an appliance and that's all that people will really need.
There are two types of users. People that just want to run a few apps to do the social or work thing and then there are the more advanced user capable of leveraging the OS to a far greater extent. It is the more advanced user that would be concerned about Apple dropping i86 and possibly moving to iOS on ARM hardware.
I cannot allow my thread to get any dust on it. Any rumors pointing towards a possibly October 15th release?
Gee I could use someone to do some dusting around my house. ????????
In any event I'm with you the lack of rumors Mac related is pretty sad. The iMac update was decent but not really unexpected. The lack of a concurrent Mini update has me suspecting that the Mini is getting a more involved overhaul if it will continue to exist at all. In a nut shel the iMac release was a phoned in upgrade, if they had the intention to do that for the Mini it would have been released already. At this point I believe Intel is shipping everything required to do the easy Mini update, so something new must be coming.
In any event yeah the rumor mill is silent, if the hardware is going to come this year, realistically they only have about a month left in the year to do a release. The idea being that the Mini is a "consumer" product that needs to be in the public mind before holiday shopping season. Beyond that the Mac Pro needs to ship soon before Apples advertising blitz wears thin. I still have this idea that what Apple needs to do is release a Mini replacement that is basically the Mac Pros little brother.
Why? Mass production to lower the cost of the Mac Pro. With suitable volumes they can get some really good pricing on the aluminum extrusions and other parts that make up the Pro. Imagine a trash can half the height of the new Mac Pro, almost a donut. People don't like to admit this but Apple put a hell of a lot of engineering into the Mac Pro, they would be smart to leverage that good work in a low cost model.
Let's face it both models, the Mini and the Pro have suffered declining sales over the last couple of years. Using the same chassis parts across two platforms is a smart move.
I would hate to see the mini be discontinued. It is so awesome in my view. I think they are going slowly so that Apple can keep the buzz up a little at a time.
The weird thing is that Apple [presumably] has Mac Pro, iPad, Mini and MacBook Pro updates still to go before Christmas.
That's a lot of announcements sandwiched into October and November.
I know the last two aren't confirmed, but Apple revved the low end MacBooks, and it would be weird to deny high end users the option of this year's internet standard (ac) when shopping for a laptop for the new school term.
And even though the Mini isn't really loved by Apple, when the Pro price is announced there had better be an affordable desktop option or the "Apple is for rich people" line is going to be all over Facebook.
So my thinking is there's an October iPad 5 introduction, with a fairly silent MacBook Pro update to add 802.11ac and Haswell.
Then there's a November Mac Pro/Final Cut announcement with Thunderbolt 2 being prominently shown off, and a quiet Mini announcement simultaneously. The Mini has a more powerful $999. model, and both desktops use the new Apple Retina Pro Display (or whatever they call it.)
Since Apple makes a big deal about Black Friday in its stores, I'm assuming these happen well in advance of that event.
I am so eagerly waiting for October 15rh and hoping so hard for a mini update with Iris Pro and a PCIe SSD. I might have to wait to afford it but it'll be worth it. While I know CPU performance over the past few years has been marginal (Sandy to Ivy and now Ivy to Haswell), I wonder if integrated GPU performance will continue to have substantial jumps starting with Haswell and onward.
I am dreaming for a revamped mini that has a better cooling fan so that it will work well with heavy rendering with a nod towards render farms, oh, and an 8-core CPU. If so, I could pick up 2 or 3 and add more later. Ha!
Alas, I do wake up from time to time and realize that that is not likely, so I hope they do a good improvement. I will consider it, but it is looking highly likely that I will look first at a 12-core MacPro, unless it would require selling the house.
I clicked on this thread expecting to see a joke about a "mini" roomba.
I'd really like to see Apple get into robotics, so a Mini roomba might make sense. Personal robotics, that is actually useful robots is about where the computer world was before the 6502 was developed. It is about the right time for Apple to shake up the industry.
I would hate to see the mini be discontinued. It is so awesome in my view. I think they are going slowly so that Apple can keep the buzz up a little at a time.
It is never good to see an old friend pass on. However in this case a dying Mini could leave room in Apples lineup for something better.
As to keeping the buzz up I don't buy that. It isn't in Apples interest to have half assed product releases like we just had for iOS devices. The reason we didn't get iPads is because the product isn't ready, in fact I can argue that iOS 7 isn't ready for the iPads right now. As for the Mini, it is all speculation right now of course. In any event I just see the timing as right to introduce a new platform for the entry level to mid level performance range. Since the desktop market is collapsing all around Apple it would be best to leverage as much of the new Mac Pro hardware as is possible. This is where I see a "pro" chassis, with desktop parts in it, being a practical way to address a shrinking market they have no control over.
Comments
Yeah i'd like a Haswell Mini with Iris pro.
I don't need huge solid state options because i'm eventually going to go with a 4-Bay NAS device or Drobo. In a couple of years i'd love to see a 64-bit ARM based mini for $399.
I think even Mr. Wizard has been muting the possibility of such a machine...
At some point, more powerful iOS devices are going to blur the lines for computing for 'most' people.
And some people will ask why they'd need an overpriced mini when you can get something 'just as fast' for their everyday computing needs and it includes a retina screen. That is a beginning reality for an iPad 5 A7X. And the 'line in the sand' is going to get blurry if iOS gets 3 more years of those kinds of performance updates while Intel knocks out 7% here or there on their cpus.
It's already started with cannibalisation for laptops...just as laptops hammered desktop sales.
If I could have a 15 inch iPad in the next two years with a blisteringly fast A8 or A9X processor and Rogue +++ GPU...plus nimble, fast and progressive software like Procreate I'd have to ask why I'd need an iMac with Photoshop or Mac Pro for anything other than administering my creative art into 'formats.'
Lemon Bon Bon.
They mark up the cost of the components to get the retail price. Raising build costs by $60 would raise retail prices by ~$80. They might be willing to go to $849 but the Mini sells in low enough units as it is, cutting the margins is probably not something they want to do. I think a Mini at $899 with the i7-4750HQ would be worth the money though given that the graphics performance would be somewhere between a 640M and 650M. If they'd made a $999 model last year with quad i7 plus 650M, people said they'd have been happy with that so $899 for that performance this year would be a good option. The reason not to put Iris in the entry model is to keep the upsell to the quad model and also to maintain the low entry price for people who just need a basic desktop. The $599 could be dual core i5 with 4600 and $899 quad i7 with Iris Pro, both configurable with OS X Server.
I like it! I would have really liked a Mac mini with a 650M, though I don't think that was ever a thought for Apple sad to say. What about using the i7-4850HQ instead though? Could you put that in under an $899 price tag given that it is $468 vs. the $440 cost of the i7-4750HQ?
My biggest fear with Apples ARM initiative is that these machines will be locked down iOS devices. Personally I would want a machine with that low level access that Mac OS does so well. I don't see myself getting away from the idea of script writing and other uses that UNIX enables so elegantly. That is why if Apple puts ARM on the desktop or laptop they will need an OS that is as flexible and powerful as Mac OS. A locked down machine ala iOS just doesn't cut the mustard. I'd accept a hybrid of Mac OS and iOS if it left that flexibility intact. In a nut shel I need to be able to run my own code and hook up whatever hardware I want.
With an ARM based Mini you're not going to see SoC designed for mobile use IMO. They aren't fast enough.
You're going to see the lineage of A5X (A57 v8 Arm cores) which aren't designed for mobile applications but rather
small power efficient servers.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6420/arms-cortex-a57-and-cortex-a53-the-first-64bit-armv8-cpu-cores
In essence in a few years Apple will once again be able to control the whole widget. Intel will NOT be inside and Apple
can tweak OS X and Xcode to optimize OS X even more. SSD will be right on a very fast bus and external storage will be
augmented via Thunderbolt 2 or 3. It's an appliance and that's all that people will really need.
There are two types of users. People that just want to run a few apps to do the social or work thing and then there are the more advanced user capable of leveraging the OS to a far greater extent. It is the more advanced user that would be concerned about Apple dropping i86 and possibly moving to iOS on ARM hardware.
Press release might be around that time frame and to purchase be end of Month or first week of November!
Instead of just guessing . Wait and see and have patience.
Gee I could use someone to do some dusting around my house. ????????
In any event I'm with you the lack of rumors Mac related is pretty sad. The iMac update was decent but not really unexpected. The lack of a concurrent Mini update has me suspecting that the Mini is getting a more involved overhaul if it will continue to exist at all. In a nut shel the iMac release was a phoned in upgrade, if they had the intention to do that for the Mini it would have been released already. At this point I believe Intel is shipping everything required to do the easy Mini update, so something new must be coming.
In any event yeah the rumor mill is silent, if the hardware is going to come this year, realistically they only have about a month left in the year to do a release. The idea being that the Mini is a "consumer" product that needs to be in the public mind before holiday shopping season. Beyond that the Mac Pro needs to ship soon before Apples advertising blitz wears thin. I still have this idea that what Apple needs to do is release a Mini replacement that is basically the Mac Pros little brother.
Why? Mass production to lower the cost of the Mac Pro. With suitable volumes they can get some really good pricing on the aluminum extrusions and other parts that make up the Pro. Imagine a trash can half the height of the new Mac Pro, almost a donut. People don't like to admit this but Apple put a hell of a lot of engineering into the Mac Pro, they would be smart to leverage that good work in a low cost model.
Let's face it both models, the Mini and the Pro have suffered declining sales over the last couple of years. Using the same chassis parts across two platforms is a smart move.
Gee I could use someone to do some dusting around my house. ????????
I clicked on this thread expecting to see a joke about a "mini" roomba.
The weird thing is that Apple [presumably] has Mac Pro, iPad, Mini and MacBook Pro updates still to go before Christmas.
That's a lot of announcements sandwiched into October and November.
I know the last two aren't confirmed, but Apple revved the low end MacBooks, and it would be weird to deny high end users the option of this year's internet standard (ac) when shopping for a laptop for the new school term.
And even though the Mini isn't really loved by Apple, when the Pro price is announced there had better be an affordable desktop option or the "Apple is for rich people" line is going to be all over Facebook.
So my thinking is there's an October iPad 5 introduction, with a fairly silent MacBook Pro update to add 802.11ac and Haswell.
Then there's a November Mac Pro/Final Cut announcement with Thunderbolt 2 being prominently shown off, and a quiet Mini announcement simultaneously. The Mini has a more powerful $999. model, and both desktops use the new Apple Retina Pro Display (or whatever they call it.)
Since Apple makes a big deal about Black Friday in its stores, I'm assuming these happen well in advance of that event.
I cannot allow my thread to get any dust on it. Any rumors pointing towards a possibly October 15th release?
With the iMac updated quietly last week, I wonder if we could see the mini updated this week...
Which would mean in the next 24 hours...
But, I'd rather see a bigger revamp on the 15th!
I am dreaming for a revamped mini that has a better cooling fan so that it will work well with heavy rendering with a nod towards render farms, oh, and an 8-core CPU. If so, I could pick up 2 or 3 and add more later. Ha!
Alas, I do wake up from time to time and realize that that is not likely, so I hope they do a good improvement. I will consider it, but it is looking highly likely that I will look first at a 12-core MacPro, unless it would require selling the house.
I'd really like to see Apple get into robotics, so a Mini roomba might make sense. Personal robotics, that is actually useful robots is about where the computer world was before the 6502 was developed. It is about the right time for Apple to shake up the industry.
It is never good to see an old friend pass on. However in this case a dying Mini could leave room in Apples lineup for something better.
As to keeping the buzz up I don't buy that. It isn't in Apples interest to have half assed product releases like we just had for iOS devices. The reason we didn't get iPads is because the product isn't ready, in fact I can argue that iOS 7 isn't ready for the iPads right now. As for the Mini, it is all speculation right now of course. In any event I just see the timing as right to introduce a new platform for the entry level to mid level performance range. Since the desktop market is collapsing all around Apple it would be best to leverage as much of the new Mac Pro hardware as is possible. This is where I see a "pro" chassis, with desktop parts in it, being a practical way to address a shrinking market they have no control over.