It hasn't been a problem because Apple very carefully positions all it's products for the up-sell.
That is the whole point of my statement, the iMac can not replace the Mini for many users, it is not and never has been an up sell option. The iMac stands in a class of its own as an all in one. If you honestly think that Apple gets a lot of iMac sales due to people thinking the Mini is too little I have a bridge I'd like to sell you. If anything the up sell path has been towards the laptop line as they offer far better value than the iMac which is basically a rip off these days.
And I disagree that there is no overlap between iMac and Mac Mini users.
Well you are free to do so. However please consider how often you hear people say they where forced to go the laptop route because of Apples desktop line up.
You'll continue to be disappointed. What you are stating here is you want a top end iMac for half the price. That isn't going to happen.
I never said such a thing! I said I wanted a machine that delivers better than iMac performance for $1200, which is easy to do by the way. You have to understand that the iMac is grossly overpriced for what you get. Do a minimalists desktop Haswell board that Apple is so capable of and you can have a nice small machine with very good performance for $1200. Hell with Iris the discrete GPU can be an option just as it is on the iMacs now. So you build a pizza box style PC with one PCI Express slot for an optional GPU. The box is simple, the motherboard is simple, cooling is somewhat simple - simple equals low cost to manufacture. I can imagine an automated line popping these out with little human help.
Now given that, I mentioned pizza box for its simplicity, there are actually many designs that Apple could leverage that would still result in a low cost machine with the power of an iMac. Let's face it the electronics aren't that expensive. You look at the Mac Pro and you see cheap electronics price real high, now part of that is due to the construction of the case which is impressive. So maybe all of the Mac Pros high cost isn't due to margin. It this case for the Mini all we are asking for is a simple elegant case that doesn't blow up machine costs, allows Apple to maintain its margins, and gives us a desktop with respectable performance.
The interesting thing here is that the Mini isn't far from what is needed in such a machine. Basically you need to handle a higher wattage CPU, but with Haswell fairly decent desktop chips are already within the Minis power range. So you extend that power range a bit to handle either the desktop chips or one of Intels high wattage mobile chips. The reality is you could add a couple of inches in width and depth and transform the Mini into a pizza box machine and maybe even simplify its assembly. This idea that such a machine is impossible is bogus in my mind. At best you are adding a couple of hundred dollars to the Minis cost.
Now the above isn't a machine that would support a GPU card. Discrete CPUs are something that likely will soon drop off my checklist as AMD and Intel continue to enhance their APU offerings. So while the need for a discrete GPU might still be there in 2013 the need may evaporate in 2014. I only stress the GPU part of the equation because for the most part the GPU is more important that the CPU in modern machines.
In the end though all you really need to do is to look at what HP and Dell offer to corporate customers as far as PCs go. It is pretty easy to purchase a decent PC for $1200.
The whole problem with Apples lineup is that the Mini has been too small to deliver the midrange performance many of us want in a desktop machine. Here we are talking quad core CPUs at the very least. Iris plus graphics or support for discrete GPUs. The last time they tried a discrete GPU in a Mini it was a joke, not worth the money Apple was asking.
Come on Wizard69, please read the specs of the current model before posting. The i7 option is the 3615QM, a quad core CPU with a score of 7307 over at CPU Benchmarks. The top of the line iMac has a CPU score of 9423. Sorry I'm not sure what your definition of fast is but the Mac Mini is defiantly faster than your so called midrange. A midrange CPU score is 3500, yep you heard it, half of what you get with the Mac Mini i7. By the way 3500 is still quick enough to do most of what the average user needs to do. If you can watch full HD videos on a Lenovo Tablet 2 tablet with an Atom processor that has a score of 679, 7307 is rocket numbers and will run pretty much anything you throw at it. I defiantly agree with you about the video, we need something much, much faster.
Apple could give the Mini far more options gpu wise with redesign. It's not too far away with now being able to include an i7. But if they can get an i7, SSD+ and Pro (heh, heh, heh...) integrated graphics into an Air or Pro laptop then the Mini could be oh-so much more.
The machine Wizard is calling for is easily possible.
3rd party 27 inch IPS screen very affordable. Apple's made hard work of their desktop. It's somewhat cynical upwell. Greedy b*st*rdness in short.
I was around £982 randomly pressing buttons. Managed to get an 256 SSD in there. Decent R7 graphics. K/B/Mouse, speakers etc. Plus a rust platter. i7.
You could have an iPS screen 27 inched on top of that for..
£1320. R9 280X? £1490. That's almost a grand cheaper than what I payed for my top of the line iMac. The final payment of my 0% deal is due this month. Be glad to have payed that off.
Heh. For £2500, if I'd have waited...I could have had the Mac Pro... 'entry' model.' :P
Still, I think the 'entry' Mac Pro maybe less of a rip off when they upgrade it and include a 6 core and a 512 gig SSD instead.
The 4 core entry for £2500 is a bit rich. It's a decent spec apart from having to pay £2500 for a beeping quad core. I wonder how much their mark up is. :P
The dual GPUS and the next gen SSD are the real draws. And the design is killer.
That is the whole point of my statement, the iMac can not replace the Mini for many users, it is not and never has been an up sell option.
Except for HTPC and server users in what way is the iMac not a suitable replacement for the Mini as a desktop? That YOU don't like the monitor isn't indicative of anything other than YOUR personal preference.
The iMac stands in a class of its own as an all in one. If you honestly think that Apple gets a lot of iMac sales due to people thinking the Mini is too little I have a bridge I'd like to sell you. If anything the up sell path has been towards the laptop line as they offer far better value than the iMac which is basically a rip off these days.
The iMac is generally better value from a computing value than the equivalent priced laptop. You trade performance for mobility.
A $1200 MBP is a 2.4Ghz dual core i5 w/4GB RAM and a 128GB SSD
A $1200 iMac is a 2.7Ghz quad core i5 w/8GB RAM and a 1TB HDD
A $2600 MBP is a 2.3Ghz quad core i7 w/16GB RAM, 512GB SSD and 750M
A $2600 iMac is a 3.5Ghz quad core i7 w/16GB RAM, 1TB Fusion and a GTX 775M
A $3200 MBP is a 2.6Ghz quad core i7 w/16GB RAM, 1TB SSD and 750M
A $3100 iMac is a 3.5Ghz quad core i7 w/16GB RAM, 512GB SSD and GTX 780M
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Well you are free to do so. However please consider how often you hear people say they where forced to go the laptop route because of Apples desktop line up.
You and a few others say that. Most folks go laptop because it's fast enough and a lot more convenient.
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I never said such a thing! I said I wanted a machine that delivers better than iMac performance for $1200, which is easy to do by the way. You have to understand that the iMac is grossly overpriced for what you get.
Lol…you just said it again. You want better than iMac performance (3.5Ghz quad core i7 w/GTX 775M) for $1200 vs $2600. So what you want is an iMac for less than half the price so Apple makes half the revenue and half the profit even IF margins stay the same.
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In the end though all you really need to do is to look at what HP and Dell offer to corporate customers as far as PCs go. It is pretty easy to purchase a decent PC for $1200.
Yes, because Dell and HP are such successful desktop makers that they should be the model that Apple aspires to.
A $1200 Optiplex 9020 (the corporate desktop) is a 3.4Ghz Core i7-4770 w/8GB RAM, a 1TB HDD, HD8570 and 23" P2314 monitor. That's not a stunning machine and probably feels slower than the base iMac upgraded to Fusion drive for $1,499.
Amusingly the Optiplex 9020 lineup includes a 23" AIO.
Instead the mini is arguably the best in class SFF computer available as opposed to a mid range boxy ITX build.
No argument here, I think it's fast, real fast for the price. Like I stated above the difference in CPU performance between the top of the line iMac and Mac Mini is 2,116 using cpubenchmarks.com numbers. Now that might sound like big number and it is when you see a lot of low end laptops having a score of just 2,1116 but when we're looking at a computer that has a score above 7,000, an extra 2,000 isn't going to be noticeable unless your using the Mac Mini as a mini render farm. Also a score of 3500 is considered mid-range performance, 7307 is very. very fast and considered to be on the high end of the CPU spectrum especially when you factor in that the fastest CPU in the last generation of Mac Pro has a CPU score of 8630. and the new Macbook Pro's has a mark of 8517 the Mac Mini is one quick little machine. The new one will probably gain another 1,000 points on it's CPU score so I see absolutely nothing to complain about.
The only other mini type computer in which I would even consider is the Alienware X51, okay it's not as small as the Mac Mini but it isn't big either. The extra heft makes sense though when you look at the incredible specs, It has a new Haswell i7-4770 with an astounding CPU score of 9984 (side note, the XEON E5-1620 v2 found in the new Mac Pro for 3,000 has a CPU mark of 9298, so yeah this Dell is an extremely fast machine), a Nvidia 760 which is a trail blazer of a GPU, it's almost as fast as an ATI 7990, when overclocked it is, (Dell does sell the TI version of the 760 for an extra 200 which will then defiantly be the same speed as a ATI 7990), 8GB RAM, 1TB HD for only 1,100. Sorry but if you can live with Windows 7 this is defiantly the machine to buy, the price performance ratio is the best I have ever seen. It's a windows machine though and that is defiantly a hard sale around these parts but can you imagine if the Mac Mini had these specs for the same money, that would be off the chain and no doubt be the most successful Mac desktop of all time. I would defiantly buy a couple them.
Come on Wizard69, please read the specs of the current model before posting. The i7 option is the 3615QM, a quad core CPU with a score of 7307 over at CPU Benchmarks. The top of the line iMac has a CPU score of 9423.
OK so you reference data that supports my position, the Mini is a long ways from iMac performance and by definition an extremely long ways from Mac Pro performance.
By the way just because the Mini can be had with quad core today does not mean that we will get quad core in the next revision. Many of Intels Iris supported chips are dual core i86. What I don't want to see is a regression in the number of cores available, which is very possible. This is also why a bump in power/thermal capability would be nice.
Sorry I'm not sure what your definition of fast is but the Mac Mini is defiantly faster than your so called midrange. A midrange CPU score is 3500, yep you heard it, half of what you get with the Mac Mini i7.
Midrange is based on what is available from Intel at the time as their primary product line. Thus a Haswell based Mini should be able to deliver at least a 55 watt Haswell processor or something in that range. Actually 55 watts might be a bit on the low end side. However I hope you get what I mean here, midrange isn't in comparison to other product lines but rather the current implementation.
Sadly in this respect the Mini has always come up short. In part that is due to thermal considerations which is why I would prefer a bigger box.
By the way 3500 is still quick enough to do most of what the average user needs to do. If you can watch full HD videos on a Lenovo Tablet 2 tablet with an Atom processor that has a score of 679, 7307 is rocket numbers and will run pretty much anything you throw at it. I defiantly agree with you about the video, we need something much, much faster.
The GPU is a huge factor in modern operating systems! Frankly I'm not sure how the industry has managed to keep a focus on the CPU for so long. Let's face it between dedicated hardware for things like video decode and and much smarter GPU cores, the CPU is often only along for the ride.
You speak of Atom above which has of late been one of Intels most pathetic processors, to which AMD has responded with BRAZOS. The interesting thing here is that AMD got a huge number of design wins simply because of the much better GPU. Of course Intel is trying to turn this around and has focused on far better Atom chips but it highlights the importance of the GPU in delivering good interactivity. I might also suggest that this is part of Apples success with the "A" series chips.
In any event I don't buy the idea that The Mini runs anything you throw at it. I sit here with an iPad and a MBP not to far away. IPad certainly can't handle everything I'd like to throw at, thus I have to decide if my next technology buy is an iPad update or a new Mac. The point is each has performance problems right now depending upon what I do with them. Buying a Mini isn't an avenue to the land of excess performance.
Apple could give the Mini far more options gpu wise with redesign. It's not too far away with now being able to include an i7. But if they can get an i7, SSD+ and Pro (heh, heh, heh...) integrated graphics into an Air or Pro laptop then the Mini could be oh-so much more.
I really don't have anything against the Mini as a small form factor computer. They have their place and have been a staple of the IBM PC world for some time. Frankly even in the PC world they have been a high margin option.
However when the design is so small that you don't have a decent performance option and in Apples case nothing else in the lineup then I have a problem. Oh by decent performance I'm not just talking about the CPU in isolation, modern PCs need a decent GPU. This is where the lust for a Mini with an Haswell based Iris processor comes in. Why Apple is dragging its feet here is beyond me.
The machine Wizard is calling for is easily possible.
Anything is possible, we might even have warp drives in the future. Unfortunately I think wrap drives will come before Apple wises up and rationalizes the desktop line up.
3rd party 27 inch IPS screen very affordable. Apple's made hard work of their desktop. It's somewhat cynical upwell. Greedy b*st*rdness in short.
It really isn't greediness as they aren't totally out of line pricing wise on a small form factor PC running the latest mobile chips. The problem is there are better ways to deliver performance on the desktop, especially with Haswell. Haswell is now low enough in power that desktop chips might be viable in the right enclosure or Apple could go high end mobile.
In other words the Mini has a niche to fill but Apple has a gap to fill in their machine lineup.
I was around £982 randomly pressing buttons. Managed to get an 256 SSD in there. Decent R7 graphics. K/B/Mouse, speakers etc. Plus a rust platter. i7.
You could have an iPS screen 27 inched on top of that for..
£1320. R9 280X? £1490. That's almost a grand cheaper than what I payed for my top of the line iMac. The final payment of my 0% deal is due this month. Be glad to have payed that off.
Heh. For £2500, if I'd have waited...I could have had the Mac Pro... 'entry' model.' :P
*Passes someone the gun.
Lemon Bon Bon.
That price point on the entry level Mac Pro is asinine. It may or may not be excessive for what you get, that isn't really the point though. The point is Apple has no reasonable machine to fill the gap between the Mini and the Mac Pro. By the way, before anybody says anything, no the iMac is not a reasonable machine for the desktop.
The only other mini type computer in which I would even consider is the Alienware X51, okay it's not as small as the Mac Mini but it isn't big either. The extra heft makes sense though when you look at the incredible specs, It has a new Haswell i7-4770 with an astounding CPU score of 9984 (side note, the XEON E5-1620 v2 found in the new Mac Pro for 3,000 has a CPU mark of 9298, so yeah this Dell is an extremely fast machine), a Nvidia 760 which is a trail blazer of a GPU, it's almost as fast as an ATI 7990, when overclocked it is, (Dell does sell the TI version of the 760 for an extra 200 which will then defiantly be the same speed as a ATI 7990), 8GB RAM, 1TB HD for only 1,100. Sorry but if you can live with Windows 7 this is defiantly the machine to buy, the price performance ratio is the best I have ever seen. It's a windows machine though and that is defiantly a hard sale around these parts but can you imagine if the Mac Mini had these specs for the same money, that would be off the chain and no doubt be the most successful Mac desktop of all time. I would defiantly buy a couple them.
That is a sweet box and a good bang for the buck. And win7 isn't bad.
If that were the mini…well yeah, it would be immensely popular but you really would have to buy a couple of them to generate the same profit as an iMac. And the iMac would be history. Good for us. Not so good for Apple.
Except for HTPC and server users in what way is the iMac not a suitable replacement for the Mini as a desktop? That YOU don't like the monitor isn't indicative of anything other than YOUR personal preference.
So personal preference isn't a valid reason in your world view. I guess Detroit should go back to pain isn't all cars black too!
In any case the fact that I don't "want"the built in monitor isn't always a personal preference in many cases a separate monitor, that fits the application, is a requirement.
You and a few others say that. Most folks go laptop because it's fast enough and a lot more convenient.
If it was only me saying that I might have to admit a strange value system, however as you point out a few, actually many, feel the same way.
Lol…you just said it again. You want better than iMac performance (3.5Ghz quad core i7 w/GTX 775M) for $1200 vs $2600. So what you want is an iMac for less than half the price so Apple makes half the revenue and half the profit even IF margins stay the same.
Do you have a problem grasping English? I said I want a desktop computer that meets or exceeds the performance of an iMac in the $1200 range. I didn't say I want an iMac for half its price, huge difference.
Yes, because Dell and HP are such successful desktop makers that they should be the model that Apple aspires to.
Again you miss the entire point here, Dell and HP have very good margins on their sales to corporations. As such there is nothing to prevent Apple from building a decent desktop machine with good margins.
A $1200 Optiplex 9020 (the corporate desktop) is a 3.4Ghz Core i7-4770 w/8GB RAM, a 1TB HDD, HD8570 and 23" P2314 monitor. That's not a stunning machine and probably feels slower than the base iMac upgraded to Fusion drive for $1,499.
Amusingly the Optiplex 9020 lineup includes a 23" AIO.
Instead the mini is arguably the best in class SFF computer available as opposed to a mid range boxy ITX build.
There is nothing wrong with that. The problem that Apple needs to address is that there is nothing in the desktop line up between the Mini and the now very expensive Mac Pro. And no the iMac is not an acceptable machine.
In any event I don't buy the idea that The Mini runs anything you throw at it. I sit here with an iPad and a MBP not to far away. IPad certainly can't handle everything I'd like to throw at, thus I have to decide if my next technology buy is an iPad update or a new Mac. The point is each has performance problems right now depending upon what I do with them. Buying a Mini isn't an avenue to the land of excess performance.
The 2012 mini runs anything you throw at it so long as it doesn't require a discrete GPU. That means anything that the 2012 13" MBP was able to do only faster.
The expectation that an $800 machine gets you anywhere near "the land of excess performance" means your expectations are completely out of whack.
There is nothing wrong with that. The problem that Apple needs to address is that there is nothing in the desktop line up between the Mini and the now very expensive Mac Pro. And no the iMac is not an acceptable machine.
The iMac is a perfectly acceptable machine for many users. The problem is that you want Apple stuff for cheap. Apple doesn't work that way and it hasn't hurt them any.
So personal preference isn't a valid reason in your world view. I guess Detroit should go back to pain isn't all cars black too!
It's not a valid reason to expect Apple to change their lineup. There are many personal preferences that Apple completely ignores.
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In any case the fact that I don't "want"the built in monitor isn't always a personal preference in many cases a separate monitor, that fits the application, is a requirement.
Very few scenarios require a separate monitor. Of those, Apple has decided that it is not cost effective to meet.
For the average desktop user this is NOT a requirement.
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If it was only me saying that I might have to admit a strange value system, however as you point out a few, actually many, feel the same way.
Many people apparently like phones with physical keyboards. So what?
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Do you have a problem grasping English? I said I want a desktop computer that meets or exceeds the performance of an iMac in the $1200 range. I didn't say I want an iMac for half its price, huge difference.
No. To Apple it is exactly the same statement. You want to effectively halve their ASP and profits per unit. You want a Mac with a fast Core i7 and a better than average GPU. The only option Apple provides is a machine that costs $2200. You want it for $1200. Even if the margins were identical between the two (which it wouldn't be) on a per unit basis they make about half as much. They'd have to double volume JUST to stay even.
This isn't going to happen.
Would you pay $2000 for a 3.5Ghz Core i7 with a GTX 775M Mac Mini? That would sit between the $800 Core i7 Mini with HD5000 and the $3000 Mac Pro.
No argument here, I think it's fast, real fast for the price. Like I stated above the difference in CPU performance between the top of the line iMac and Mac Mini is 2,116 using cpubenchmarks.com numbers. Now that might sound like big number and it is when you see a lot of low end laptops having a score of just 2,1116 but when we're looking at a computer that has a score above 7,000, an extra 2,000 isn't going to be noticeable unless your using the Mac Mini as a mini render farm.
There are many uses where the extra performance can be very noticeable. The idea that the only average use is crunching spread sheets is bogus. One popular use for Minis is in XCode development and frankly cores and performance means everything when running a compiler.
Also a score of 3500 is considered mid-range performance, 7307 is very. very fast and considered to be on the high end of the CPU spectrum especially when you factor in that the fastest CPU in the last generation of Mac Pro has a CPU score of [URL=http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?
I'm not sure why anybody would use last years hardware to arrive at a midrange performance number. This is the year of Haswell, midrange has to be determined by what is shipping new this year. Top end is a six core machine, so that puts midrange performance pretty high on the scale.
cpu=Intel+Xeon+X5675+%40+3.07GHz]8630[/URL]. and the new Macbook Pro's has a mark of 8517 the Mac Mini is one quick little machine. The new one will probably gain another 1,000 points on it's CPU score so I see absolutely nothing to complain about.
Well we can hope. In any event the problem with the Mini is that is is fine for what it is but that is an extremely limited machine.
The only other mini type computer in which I would even consider is the Alienware X51, okay it's not as small as the Mac Mini but it isn't big either. The extra heft makes sense though when you look at the incredible specs, It has a new Haswell i7-4770 with an astounding CPU score of 9984 (side note, the XEON E5-1620 v2 found in the new Mac Pro for 3,000 has a CPU mark of 9298, so yeah this Dell is an extremely fast machine), a Nvidia 760 which is a trail blazer of a GPU, it's almost as fast as an ATI 7990, when overclocked it is, (Dell does sell the TI version of the 760 for an extra 200 which will then defiantly be the same speed as a ATI 7990), 8GB RAM, 1TB HD for only 1,100.
Nice machine! Apple could sell something similar with one slot for an optional GPU card for the same price. By the way, Dell has fairly good margins on the Alienware lineup. So if Apple went the one slot route I really don't see a problem with margins which seems to worry so many.
Sorry but if you can live with Windows 7 this is defiantly the machine to buy, the price performance ratio is the best I have ever seen. It's a windows machine though and that is defiantly a hard sale around these parts but can you imagine if the Mac Mini had these specs for the same money,
You can always install Linux or BSD on it!!! I may seem like a rabid Mac fan on this forum but I still have this desire to run old fashion UNIX or Unix like boxes. The interesting thing here is the Mini is actually a good box for these alternative OS's. Windows (burdened with it at work) just gets worst with every release.
that would be off the chain and no doubt be the most successful Mac desktop of all time. I would defiantly buy a couple them.
I'm not sure what Apples problem with expanding the desktop lineup is. Sure the market is shrinking for low end machines, few would dispute that. However for these higher end machines, computers that are used professionally the market is stable.
People complain about Apple loosing income, but I think that is ridiculous. First; the high price on the Mac Pro will drive more customers away because of no viable option. Second; a decent desktop would generate far more sales than the iMac ever did! So they can keep the margins and just sell a lot more hardware.
Let's face it, unless Apple can reconfigure the desktop lineup with new machines, they will leave the impression in many customers minds that they have been abandoned. As good as the machine is the new Mac Pro is way to expensive to put on people's desks. It isn't a mainstream desktop by any measure. At the opposite end you have the Mini, which nice fills a niche. In between customers are screwed, they have nothing to choose from. This is a problem that just got bigger with the release of the Mac Pro and frankly I don't see any good in the arrangement for Apple.
The 2012 mini runs anything you throw at it so long as it doesn't require a discrete GPU. That means anything that the 2012 13" MBP was able to do only faster.
That is baloney and frankly I think you know that. Of course if your definition of run is dog slow then maybe you are right.
The expectation that an $800 machine gets you anywhere near "the land of excess performance" means your expectations are completely out of whack.
No the point is the machine is limited performance wise. This is why I believe that Apple could do a hell of a lot better with a machine in the $1200 range. I don't expect the best or even middling in performance out of the Mini due to what it is.
The iMac is a perfectly acceptable machine for many users.
Sure it is, that doesn't invalidate my position.
The problem is that you want Apple stuff for cheap.
That is asinine considering I'm suggesting a machine with a much higher entry level price than the Mini. In any event I'm not sure why you keep twisting this into a suggestion that I want Apple stuff cheap, anybody with a reasonable mind would realize that I'm asking for a machine that would be far more expensive than the Mini.
Apple doesn't work that way and it hasn't hurt them any.
Hasn't hurt the company because the Mac Desktop lineup is a tiny part of the equation these days. The attitude though has lead to a desktop lineup few are happy with. That unhappiness have resulted in quarter after quarter declines in desktop sales. It isn't just a shift in the industry, it is a very real perception that Apples desktop lineup offers very poor value even in comparison to their laptop hardware.
That is baloney and frankly I think you know that. Of course if your definition of run is dog slow then maybe you are right.
Nope. The mini is faster than the 2012 13" MBP. Are you claiming that the 2012 13" MBP is dog slow?
No the point is the machine is limited performance wise. This is why I believe that Apple could do a hell of a lot better with a machine in the $1200 range. I don't expect the best or even middling in performance out of the Mini due to what it is.
The mini is only really limited as a gaming box and no more limited than the 13" MBP of the same generation.
Even the $3000 Mac Pro is "limited performance wise".
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I never said such a thing! I said I wanted a machine that delivers better than iMac performance for $1200, which is easy to do by the way. You have to understand that the iMac is grossly overpriced for what you get. Do a minimalists desktop Haswell board that Apple is so capable of and you can have a nice small machine with very good performance for $1200. Hell with Iris the discrete GPU can be an option just as it is on the iMacs now. So you build a pizza box style PC with one PCI Express slot for an optional GPU. The box is simple, the motherboard is simple, cooling is somewhat simple - simple equals low cost to manufacture. I can imagine an automated line popping these out with little human help.
Now given that, I mentioned pizza box for its simplicity, there are actually many designs that Apple could leverage that would still result in a low cost machine with the power of an iMac. Let's face it the electronics aren't that expensive. You look at the Mac Pro and you see cheap electronics price real high, now part of that is due to the construction of the case which is impressive. So maybe all of the Mac Pros high cost isn't due to margin. It this case for the Mini all we are asking for is a simple elegant case that doesn't blow up machine costs, allows Apple to maintain its margins, and gives us a desktop with respectable performance.
The interesting thing here is that the Mini isn't far from what is needed in such a machine. Basically you need to handle a higher wattage CPU, but with Haswell fairly decent desktop chips are already within the Minis power range. So you extend that power range a bit to handle either the desktop chips or one of Intels high wattage mobile chips. The reality is you could add a couple of inches in width and depth and transform the Mini into a pizza box machine and maybe even simplify its assembly. This idea that such a machine is impossible is bogus in my mind. At best you are adding a couple of hundred dollars to the Minis cost.
Now the above isn't a machine that would support a GPU card. Discrete CPUs are something that likely will soon drop off my checklist as AMD and Intel continue to enhance their APU offerings. So while the need for a discrete GPU might still be there in 2013 the need may evaporate in 2014. I only stress the GPU part of the equation because for the most part the GPU is more important that the CPU in modern machines.
In the end though all you really need to do is to look at what HP and Dell offer to corporate customers as far as PCs go. It is pretty easy to purchase a decent PC for $1200.
The whole problem with Apples lineup is that the Mini has been too small to deliver the midrange performance many of us want in a desktop machine. Here we are talking quad core CPUs at the very least. Iris plus graphics or support for discrete GPUs. The last time they tried a discrete GPU in a Mini it was a joke, not worth the money Apple was asking.
Come on Wizard69, please read the specs of the current model before posting. The i7 option is the 3615QM, a quad core CPU with a score of 7307 over at CPU Benchmarks. The top of the line iMac has a CPU score of 9423. Sorry I'm not sure what your definition of fast is but the Mac Mini is defiantly faster than your so called midrange. A midrange CPU score is 3500, yep you heard it, half of what you get with the Mac Mini i7. By the way 3500 is still quick enough to do most of what the average user needs to do. If you can watch full HD videos on a Lenovo Tablet 2 tablet with an Atom processor that has a score of 679, 7307 is rocket numbers and will run pretty much anything you throw at it. I defiantly agree with you about the video, we need something much, much faster.
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/syscon_int.php?prodid=FS-348-OE
What the Mini could have been. A nice mid range computer. Some nice specs can go into this. Vanilla box. Chocolate Orange. Or Strawberry.
Lemon Bon Bon.
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-073-BX
Looks nice in midnight black...
Or...
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/syscon_int.php?prodid=FS-348-OE
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/syscon_int.php?prodid=FS-348-OE
La Cube.
Apple could give the Mini far more options gpu wise with redesign. It's not too far away with now being able to include an i7. But if they can get an i7, SSD+ and Pro (heh, heh, heh...) integrated graphics into an Air or Pro laptop then the Mini could be oh-so much more.
The machine Wizard is calling for is easily possible.
3rd party 27 inch IPS screen very affordable. Apple's made hard work of their desktop. It's somewhat cynical upwell. Greedy b*st*rdness in short.
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/syscon_int.php?prodid=FS-348-OE
I was around £982 randomly pressing buttons. Managed to get an 256 SSD in there. Decent R7 graphics. K/B/Mouse, speakers etc. Plus a rust platter. i7.
You could have an iPS screen 27 inched on top of that for..
£1320. R9 280X? £1490. That's almost a grand cheaper than what I payed for my top of the line iMac. The final payment of my 0% deal is due this month. Be glad to have payed that off.
Heh. For £2500, if I'd have waited...I could have had the Mac Pro... 'entry' model.' :P
*Passes someone the gun.
Lemon Bon Bon.
Still, I think the 'entry' Mac Pro maybe less of a rip off when they upgrade it and include a 6 core and a 512 gig SSD instead.
The 4 core entry for £2500 is a bit rich. It's a decent spec apart from having to pay £2500 for a beeping quad core. I wonder how much their mark up is. :P
The dual GPUS and the next gen SSD are the real draws. And the design is killer.
Lemon Bon Bon.
That is the whole point of my statement, the iMac can not replace the Mini for many users, it is not and never has been an up sell option.
Except for HTPC and server users in what way is the iMac not a suitable replacement for the Mini as a desktop? That YOU don't like the monitor isn't indicative of anything other than YOUR personal preference.
The iMac is generally better value from a computing value than the equivalent priced laptop. You trade performance for mobility.
A $1200 MBP is a 2.4Ghz dual core i5 w/4GB RAM and a 128GB SSD
A $1200 iMac is a 2.7Ghz quad core i5 w/8GB RAM and a 1TB HDD
A $2600 MBP is a 2.3Ghz quad core i7 w/16GB RAM, 512GB SSD and 750M
A $2600 iMac is a 3.5Ghz quad core i7 w/16GB RAM, 1TB Fusion and a GTX 775M
A $3200 MBP is a 2.6Ghz quad core i7 w/16GB RAM, 1TB SSD and 750M
A $3100 iMac is a 3.5Ghz quad core i7 w/16GB RAM, 512GB SSD and GTX 780M
You and a few others say that. Most folks go laptop because it's fast enough and a lot more convenient.
Lol…you just said it again. You want better than iMac performance (3.5Ghz quad core i7 w/GTX 775M) for $1200 vs $2600. So what you want is an iMac for less than half the price so Apple makes half the revenue and half the profit even IF margins stay the same.
Yes, because Dell and HP are such successful desktop makers that they should be the model that Apple aspires to.
A $1200 Optiplex 9020 (the corporate desktop) is a 3.4Ghz Core i7-4770 w/8GB RAM, a 1TB HDD, HD8570 and 23" P2314 monitor. That's not a stunning machine and probably feels slower than the base iMac upgraded to Fusion drive for $1,499.
Amusingly the Optiplex 9020 lineup includes a 23" AIO.
What the Mini could have been. A nice mid range computer.
Instead the mini is arguably the best in class SFF computer available as opposed to a mid range boxy ITX build.
Instead the mini is arguably the best in class SFF computer available as opposed to a mid range boxy ITX build.
No argument here, I think it's fast, real fast for the price. Like I stated above the difference in CPU performance between the top of the line iMac and Mac Mini is 2,116 using cpubenchmarks.com numbers. Now that might sound like big number and it is when you see a lot of low end laptops having a score of just 2,1116 but when we're looking at a computer that has a score above 7,000, an extra 2,000 isn't going to be noticeable unless your using the Mac Mini as a mini render farm. Also a score of 3500 is considered mid-range performance, 7307 is very. very fast and considered to be on the high end of the CPU spectrum especially when you factor in that the fastest CPU in the last generation of Mac Pro has a CPU score of 8630. and the new Macbook Pro's has a mark of 8517 the Mac Mini is one quick little machine. The new one will probably gain another 1,000 points on it's CPU score so I see absolutely nothing to complain about.
The only other mini type computer in which I would even consider is the Alienware X51, okay it's not as small as the Mac Mini but it isn't big either. The extra heft makes sense though when you look at the incredible specs, It has a new Haswell i7-4770 with an astounding CPU score of 9984 (side note, the XEON E5-1620 v2 found in the new Mac Pro for 3,000 has a CPU mark of 9298, so yeah this Dell is an extremely fast machine), a Nvidia 760 which is a trail blazer of a GPU, it's almost as fast as an ATI 7990, when overclocked it is, (Dell does sell the TI version of the 760 for an extra 200 which will then defiantly be the same speed as a ATI 7990), 8GB RAM, 1TB HD for only 1,100. Sorry but if you can live with Windows 7 this is defiantly the machine to buy, the price performance ratio is the best I have ever seen. It's a windows machine though and that is defiantly a hard sale around these parts but can you imagine if the Mac Mini had these specs for the same money, that would be off the chain and no doubt be the most successful Mac desktop of all time. I would defiantly buy a couple them.
By the way just because the Mini can be had with quad core today does not mean that we will get quad core in the next revision. Many of Intels Iris supported chips are dual core i86. What I don't want to see is a regression in the number of cores available, which is very possible. This is also why a bump in power/thermal capability would be nice. Midrange is based on what is available from Intel at the time as their primary product line. Thus a Haswell based Mini should be able to deliver at least a 55 watt Haswell processor or something in that range. Actually 55 watts might be a bit on the low end side. However I hope you get what I mean here, midrange isn't in comparison to other product lines but rather the current implementation.
Sadly in this respect the Mini has always come up short. In part that is due to thermal considerations which is why I would prefer a bigger box. The GPU is a huge factor in modern operating systems! Frankly I'm not sure how the industry has managed to keep a focus on the CPU for so long. Let's face it between dedicated hardware for things like video decode and and much smarter GPU cores, the CPU is often only along for the ride.
You speak of Atom above which has of late been one of Intels most pathetic processors, to which AMD has responded with BRAZOS. The interesting thing here is that AMD got a huge number of design wins simply because of the much better GPU. Of course Intel is trying to turn this around and has focused on far better Atom chips but it highlights the importance of the GPU in delivering good interactivity. I might also suggest that this is part of Apples success with the "A" series chips.
In any event I don't buy the idea that The Mini runs anything you throw at it. I sit here with an iPad and a MBP not to far away. IPad certainly can't handle everything I'd like to throw at, thus I have to decide if my next technology buy is an iPad update or a new Mac. The point is each has performance problems right now depending upon what I do with them. Buying a Mini isn't an avenue to the land of excess performance.
However when the design is so small that you don't have a decent performance option and in Apples case nothing else in the lineup then I have a problem. Oh by decent performance I'm not just talking about the CPU in isolation, modern PCs need a decent GPU. This is where the lust for a Mini with an Haswell based Iris processor comes in. Why Apple is dragging its feet here is beyond me. Anything is possible, we might even have warp drives in the future. Unfortunately I think wrap drives will come before Apple wises up and rationalizes the desktop line up. It really isn't greediness as they aren't totally out of line pricing wise on a small form factor PC running the latest mobile chips. The problem is there are better ways to deliver performance on the desktop, especially with Haswell. Haswell is now low enough in power that desktop chips might be viable in the right enclosure or Apple could go high end mobile.
In other words the Mini has a niche to fill but Apple has a gap to fill in their machine lineup.
That price point on the entry level Mac Pro is asinine. It may or may not be excessive for what you get, that isn't really the point though. The point is Apple has no reasonable machine to fill the gap between the Mini and the Mac Pro. By the way, before anybody says anything, no the iMac is not a reasonable machine for the desktop.
The only other mini type computer in which I would even consider is the Alienware X51, okay it's not as small as the Mac Mini but it isn't big either. The extra heft makes sense though when you look at the incredible specs, It has a new Haswell i7-4770 with an astounding CPU score of 9984 (side note, the XEON E5-1620 v2 found in the new Mac Pro for 3,000 has a CPU mark of 9298, so yeah this Dell is an extremely fast machine), a Nvidia 760 which is a trail blazer of a GPU, it's almost as fast as an ATI 7990, when overclocked it is, (Dell does sell the TI version of the 760 for an extra 200 which will then defiantly be the same speed as a ATI 7990), 8GB RAM, 1TB HD for only 1,100. Sorry but if you can live with Windows 7 this is defiantly the machine to buy, the price performance ratio is the best I have ever seen. It's a windows machine though and that is defiantly a hard sale around these parts but can you imagine if the Mac Mini had these specs for the same money, that would be off the chain and no doubt be the most successful Mac desktop of all time. I would defiantly buy a couple them.
That is a sweet box and a good bang for the buck. And win7 isn't bad.
If that were the mini…well yeah, it would be immensely popular but you really would have to buy a couple of them to generate the same profit as an iMac. And the iMac would be history. Good for us. Not so good for Apple.
In any case the fact that I don't "want"the built in monitor isn't always a personal preference in many cases a separate monitor, that fits the application, is a requirement. If it was only me saying that I might have to admit a strange value system, however as you point out a few, actually many, feel the same way. Do you have a problem grasping English? I said I want a desktop computer that meets or exceeds the performance of an iMac in the $1200 range. I didn't say I want an iMac for half its price, huge difference. Again you miss the entire point here, Dell and HP have very good margins on their sales to corporations. As such there is nothing to prevent Apple from building a decent desktop machine with good margins.
There is nothing wrong with that. The problem that Apple needs to address is that there is nothing in the desktop line up between the Mini and the now very expensive Mac Pro. And no the iMac is not an acceptable machine.
In any event I don't buy the idea that The Mini runs anything you throw at it. I sit here with an iPad and a MBP not to far away. IPad certainly can't handle everything I'd like to throw at, thus I have to decide if my next technology buy is an iPad update or a new Mac. The point is each has performance problems right now depending upon what I do with them. Buying a Mini isn't an avenue to the land of excess performance.
The 2012 mini runs anything you throw at it so long as it doesn't require a discrete GPU. That means anything that the 2012 13" MBP was able to do only faster.
The expectation that an $800 machine gets you anywhere near "the land of excess performance" means your expectations are completely out of whack.
There is nothing wrong with that. The problem that Apple needs to address is that there is nothing in the desktop line up between the Mini and the now very expensive Mac Pro. And no the iMac is not an acceptable machine.
The iMac is a perfectly acceptable machine for many users. The problem is that you want Apple stuff for cheap. Apple doesn't work that way and it hasn't hurt them any.
So personal preference isn't a valid reason in your world view. I guess Detroit should go back to pain isn't all cars black too!
It's not a valid reason to expect Apple to change their lineup. There are many personal preferences that Apple completely ignores.
Very few scenarios require a separate monitor. Of those, Apple has decided that it is not cost effective to meet.
For the average desktop user this is NOT a requirement.
Many people apparently like phones with physical keyboards. So what?
No. To Apple it is exactly the same statement. You want to effectively halve their ASP and profits per unit. You want a Mac with a fast Core i7 and a better than average GPU. The only option Apple provides is a machine that costs $2200. You want it for $1200. Even if the margins were identical between the two (which it wouldn't be) on a per unit basis they make about half as much. They'd have to double volume JUST to stay even.
This isn't going to happen.
Would you pay $2000 for a 3.5Ghz Core i7 with a GTX 775M Mac Mini? That would sit between the $800 Core i7 Mini with HD5000 and the $3000 Mac Pro.
I'm not sure what Apples problem with expanding the desktop lineup is. Sure the market is shrinking for low end machines, few would dispute that. However for these higher end machines, computers that are used professionally the market is stable.
People complain about Apple loosing income, but I think that is ridiculous. First; the high price on the Mac Pro will drive more customers away because of no viable option. Second; a decent desktop would generate far more sales than the iMac ever did! So they can keep the margins and just sell a lot more hardware.
Let's face it, unless Apple can reconfigure the desktop lineup with new machines, they will leave the impression in many customers minds that they have been abandoned. As good as the machine is the new Mac Pro is way to expensive to put on people's desks. It isn't a mainstream desktop by any measure. At the opposite end you have the Mini, which nice fills a niche. In between customers are screwed, they have nothing to choose from. This is a problem that just got bigger with the release of the Mac Pro and frankly I don't see any good in the arrangement for Apple.
No the point is the machine is limited performance wise. This is why I believe that Apple could do a hell of a lot better with a machine in the $1200 range. I don't expect the best or even middling in performance out of the Mini due to what it is.
Nope. The mini is faster than the 2012 13" MBP. Are you claiming that the 2012 13" MBP is dog slow?
The mini is only really limited as a gaming box and no more limited than the 13" MBP of the same generation.
Even the $3000 Mac Pro is "limited performance wise".