How nice if the delay translate to the followings:
1. Mini Mac Pro form factor (maybe half the size?)
2. Quad-core Hanswell CPU as baseline
3. 128GB SSD
All the above @ still the same price point.
I'd point out that hardly anyone can realistically live with only 128GB, and in an era when you can buy a normal SATA 256GB SSD for well under $200 retail, skimping on storage capacity makes no sense. Apple's current PCIe SSD's should be even more cost effective to make, since they're nothing more than bare circuit boards.
And yeah, I do understand that the suggestion was made in order to come up with a low price entry level model. ;–)
Apple touts the Mac mini as the most power efficient desktop out there. They would definitely be interested in further savings in electricity consumption.
My hunch is that they've had a look at the Geekbench scores showing the high end Mac Mini beating much more expensive iMacs and decided that situation is depressing iMac sales and therefore costing them profits. How to react? Make the iMac more appealing by having it compete against previous generation minis. Then, once the initial sales rush subsides and people start talking about what the next generation of iMac might include, quietly upgrade the mini.
Maybe not when it is first released, but currently it is expensive for its out-of-date specification.
At this point Apple might as well wait for Broadwell to become available from Intel unless they plan to speed up the refresh cycle on the Mini. Otherwise in a couple of months it will be architecturally out-of-date again.
Broadwell is going to be late, very late. It might not even ship until 2015.
Apple touts the Mac mini as the most power efficient desktop out there. They would definitely be interested in further savings in electricity consumption.
My hunch is that they've had a look at the Geekbench scores showing the high end Mac Mini beating much more expensive iMacs and decided that situation is depressing iMac sales and therefore costing them profits. How to react? Make the iMac more appealing by having it compete against previous generation minis. Then, once the initial sales rush subsides and people start talking about what the next generation of iMac might include, quietly upgrade the mini.
Not saying it doesn't happen but I think the number of people who look at Geekbench scores and then purchase a Mac Mini over an iMac is extremely small.
GPU and RAM are the big things for us photographers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NeilM
Haswell is only a moderate upgrade for non-battery use, although its improved integrated graphics would be nice. I'd expect much of the benefit from the next Mini upgrade to come from faster RAM and a PCIe SSD. Apple should really take that old 5400 rpm drive out and shoot it. Hope they won't drop the FW800 port, but they probably will.
I'm tempted to wish for a new form factor. Maybe something vertical, like the love child of a Mac Pro and the newest Airport Extreme? Small footprint, vertical cooling. The current Mini form factor was in part determined by the optical drive, but that's long gone.
Completely agree. Drop the FW800 and give me another TB port. Make it two TB2 ports. If I need a FW800 connection then someone can make a TB->FW800 adapter and get rich if the demand is there.
Quote:
Originally Posted by macxpress
I think if they were to add a 2nd Thunderbolt port then getting rid of the FW800 port would be fine with me. I agree with the 5400 RPM hard drive. Thats almost shameful. I too would like to see a Mac Pro type design. Maybe this is why you didn't see it updated???
Agreed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by macxpress
I do think they should spec it better when/if updated. Things like 2 thunderbolt ports (nix FW800), fusion drives, maybe even PCIe based flash, Iris Pro graphics, quad-core chips across the lineup, maybe even a redesign of the case.
I don't think a mini that requires external drives is going to work in this segment. I like having two internal SSD drives and the current form factor works well. Reduce the size but lets keep two internal SSD drives if we can. Besides, $199 is cheap and I doubt Apple would agree to something so cheap in that sector because it would eat into existing Mini sells not to mention iMac sales too.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TechProd1gy
They need to blow this space up and come out with the super mini. Essentially a Apple TV size device with the power of an iPhone/iPad. Sell it for $199.00
Average user doesn't need the power of the current mac mini.
"Intel's Haswell line of processors were mostly focused on mobile devices such as notebooks, as the chipmaker concentrated on reducing power consumption to enhance battery life. Such performance gains would obviously not translate to the Mac mini, which is not a mobile computer."
Say WHAT?
The Haswell chips are capable of more FLOPS per watt than Ivy Bridge, and are a perfect candidate for a small computer with limited cooling ability. (Which is the problem most laptops are up against.) They may allow Apple to use the actual Haswell-DT chips in the Mac Mini, rather than Ivy Bridge-M processors like the previous generation uses, which are optimized for mobile usage. Granted, the max TDP of the Haswell-DT chips are higher, but with more P-States, they could keep thermal problems to a minimum.
Haswell is only a moderate upgrade for non-battery use, although its improved integrated graphics would be nice. I'd expect much of the benefit from the next Mini upgrade to come from faster RAM <span style="line-height:1.4em;">and a PCIe SSD. Apple should really take that old 540</span>
<span style="line-height:1.4em;">0 rpm drive out and shoot it. Hope they won't drop the FW800 port, but they probably will.</span>
I'm tempted to wish for a new form factor. Maybe something vertical, like the love child of a Mac Pro and the newest Airport Extreme? Small footprint, vertical cooling. The current Mini form factor was in part determined by the optical drive, but that's long gone.
I have strongly believed that with the new AirPort Extreme & T-C that Apple would update the Apple TV & Mac-mini in similar form.
That being Cubed not a tower like the former, this way they can add more spec to them (capacity SSD or old HD) among other things.
I have the mid-2011 Mini w/Radeon HD 6630M and it's been doing just fine for me since I bought it. I would be tempted by a Haswell Mini if there was a graphics option that would be an upgrade over my Radeon graphics in my current version. I know from reviews that once you get up to about 4xAA the Iris Pro drops off in framerates quite a bit, so I'm not sure how it would compare. Yes this is mostly for WoW and Diablo 3, but I do enjoy doing some gaming on my Mac
Might pick up one of these. Trying to get off of Windows. Tough since I need to buy new software (Quickbooks, Excel, ect)
Why? I’m running Windows 7 (and Windows 8 & XP and Ubuntu) as a virtual machine via VMware Fusion. It turned my mac into the best Windows machine I’ve ever owned.
I run Windows for exactly that same reason. Quickbooks for Windows is far superior to the Mac version.
In your case, you can just copy your current Windows installation into a virtual machine and import it on your mac and you’re done. I’ve done that to many other people migrating from a PC to a Mac but still needs to run Windows.
I don’t think I could ever go back to a standalone Windows PC again.
Broadwell is going to be late, very late. It might not even ship until 2015.
Intel CEO stated just the other day that production starts in this quarter and shipping H2CY14. There may be some Broadwell models that won't ship until next year but I'm sure the Mini would only use the standard mass-market models which should be delivered this year.
So an underpowered Mac that will utilize an old sub-par and cheap (ugly) PC monitor, keyboard and mouse?
Doesn't sound like the kind of Apple experience Cupertino would ever aim for.
The display Apple makes isn't really special. I suspect they use the "docking" functionality as a major selling point. Otherwise there are better options in that price range. Admittedly the aesthetics of the display case matter very little to me.
someone can make a TB->FW800 adapter and get rich if the demand is there.
No problem: Apple already makes one, as well as TB->GigE adapters. Both come in handy for our office MacBook Airs, which lack both FW and wired ethernet.
I'd point out that hardly anyone can realistically live with only 128GB, and in an era when you can buy a normal SATA 256GB SSD for well under $200 retail, skimping on storage capacity makes no sense. Apple's current PCIe SSD's should be even more cost effective to make, since they're nothing more than bare circuit boards.
Cloud computing is here now. Not everybody has fully embraced it yet, but most people with smart phones already use it to some degree. Flickr now gives away 1000 Gigabytes of picture storage. Google Drive gives away 15 GB. Dropbox gives away 2 GB. Ubuntu One gives away 5 GB. Box.net gives away 10 GB and there are several others. Sugar Sync offers 100 GB storage for $9.99 per month.
All of these can be accessed not just from ones home computer but from all of ones mobile devices anywhere. Internal storage won't be necessary for average users. As internet connection speeds improve the lag time between uploading and downloading files won't be a big issue. My local internet service provider is doubling the basic speed from 15 Mbps to 30Mbps at the same price as before. This isn't impressive for some people but it will make a big difference in convenience.
Accessing these is becoming very easy with services like Jolicloud. It was at first a Linux OS. Now they have dropped that and made it an in-browser hub. Which means that anybody using Chromium can go to one page and access all of these services and more.
Chromebooks are doing the same thing. They have very little storage on board and use the cloud to store files. The Chromium browser has many plug-ins that allow access to online services that don't rely on internal programs. These can be used by anybody on any machine.
With these services your computing experience is totally enhanced. They don't depend solely on your computer. Any mobile device will work. If your computer is damaged or just dies, there will be zero problems just getting another one and logging in to your stuff. Nothing will be lost. If you're away from your machine you can borrow another and access everything.
I recently did an inventory of my files. All of my text files take up less than 2 GB. It is the image files, video presentations, and home movies that take up the rest of the space. By putting my non-essential images in the cloud I can keep my on board storage very small. I put my work stuff in the cloud and only keep my current work on the machine. With this setup I can live with a very small hard drive. Right now my entire HDD has just 16.9 GB used and that includes several recently recorded TV shows that have piled up over the last week due to not having the time to watch them. After I watch them they will be deleted. For those of you who love to record movies and keep them you probably are already using external hard drives. So having a small drive on your main machine doesn't matter.
Two years ago I would have thought owning a 60 GB SSD was just too small. Now I find that size is much bigger than I really need. A 30 GB SSD would work for me now. Would this work for everybody? I don't think so, but for many people storing their information in the cloud makes a lot of sense because of the convenience of accessing it from any device anywhere.
Would a Mac Mini really need a big SSD? Not if one embraces the cloud for storage. This also means that the Apple iPad 16 GB model used at home could be all that one needs. Buying the larger storage models would be a waste of money.
I have the mid-2011 Mini w/Radeon HD 6630M and it's been doing just fine for me since I bought it. I would be tempted by a Haswell Mini if there was a graphics option that would be an upgrade over my Radeon graphics in my current version. I know from reviews that once you get up to about 4xAA the Iris Pro drops off in framerates quite a bit, so I'm not sure how it would compare. Yes this is mostly for WoW and Diablo 3, but I do enjoy doing some gaming on my Mac
I'm in the same boat. I also have a Mac mini with the AMD Radeon 6630M and do a lot of gaming on Steam. It does do okay, but I would like to see Iris Pro graphics on a new one. Not just Iris, Iris Pro...I'd love to have Crystalwell like the Retina MBP has, but I know thats probably too expensive for something in the price range of a Mac mini. I don't really have the money to get an iMac or something like that with better graphics.
Its great for everyday tasks, especially since upgrading the RAM and installing an SSD. I also put the 2nd HD kit in it so I kept the original 500 GB HD inside it. So I have 2 hard drives inside it which is kind of cool for something so small.
I realize the basis of your argument probably assumes an "average user", however that is defined. I'd posit that a buyer of a Mac Mini is probably a bit above average compared to the typical purchaser at Best Buy or Costco if for no other reason than the fact some assembly is required. My mid-2011 Mini, at the heart of my video system, just completed an upgrade that included a 448GB SSD. It uses two hard-connected spinning drives to store exported video and records incoming video by virtue of eyeTV. It's not uncoming in racing season for it to pull down 15 hours of 1080p video in a week. The cloud can't handle the transfer times to make that feasible. And until fiber becomes as universal as copper, bandwidth nor ubiquity of access can be assumed as a choice for any consumer.
I'd point out that hardly anyone can realistically live with only 128GB, and in an era when you can buy a normal SATA 256GB SSD for well under $200 retail, skimping on storage capacity makes no sense. Apple's current PCIe SSD's should be even more cost effective to make, since they're nothing more than bare circuit boards.
And yeah, I do understand that the suggestion was made in order to come up with a low price entry level model. ;–)
I am sure there is demands for small storage capacity system as NAS is fast becoming norm in houses. Probably PCIe SSD would make more sense if it is more cost effective in Apple's perspective.
Comments
Hmmm...
How nice if the delay translate to the followings:
1. Mini Mac Pro form factor (maybe half the size?)
2. Quad-core Hanswell CPU as baseline
3. 128GB SSD
All the above @ still the same price point.
I'd point out that hardly anyone can realistically live with only 128GB, and in an era when you can buy a normal SATA 256GB SSD for well under $200 retail, skimping on storage capacity makes no sense. Apple's current PCIe SSD's should be even more cost effective to make, since they're nothing more than bare circuit boards.
And yeah, I do understand that the suggestion was made in order to come up with a low price entry level model. ;–)
Great, I just bought none in December!
Then you're good to go
</yes I know it was a typo>
Apple touts the Mac mini as the most power efficient desktop out there. They would definitely be interested in further savings in electricity consumption.
My hunch is that they've had a look at the Geekbench scores showing the high end Mac Mini beating much more expensive iMacs and decided that situation is depressing iMac sales and therefore costing them profits. How to react? Make the iMac more appealing by having it compete against previous generation minis. Then, once the initial sales rush subsides and people start talking about what the next generation of iMac might include, quietly upgrade the mini.
Maybe not when it is first released, but currently it is expensive for its out-of-date specification.
At this point Apple might as well wait for Broadwell to become available from Intel unless they plan to speed up the refresh cycle on the Mini. Otherwise in a couple of months it will be architecturally out-of-date again.
Broadwell is going to be late, very late. It might not even ship until 2015.
Apple touts the Mac mini as the most power efficient desktop out there. They would definitely be interested in further savings in electricity consumption.
My hunch is that they've had a look at the Geekbench scores showing the high end Mac Mini beating much more expensive iMacs and decided that situation is depressing iMac sales and therefore costing them profits. How to react? Make the iMac more appealing by having it compete against previous generation minis. Then, once the initial sales rush subsides and people start talking about what the next generation of iMac might include, quietly upgrade the mini.
Not saying it doesn't happen but I think the number of people who look at Geekbench scores and then purchase a Mac Mini over an iMac is extremely small.
GPU and RAM are the big things for us photographers.
Quote:
Haswell is only a moderate upgrade for non-battery use, although its improved integrated graphics would be nice. I'd expect much of the benefit from the next Mini upgrade to come from faster RAM and a PCIe SSD. Apple should really take that old 5400 rpm drive out and shoot it. Hope they won't drop the FW800 port, but they probably will.
I'm tempted to wish for a new form factor. Maybe something vertical, like the love child of a Mac Pro and the newest Airport Extreme? Small footprint, vertical cooling. The current Mini form factor was in part determined by the optical drive, but that's long gone.
Completely agree. Drop the FW800 and give me another TB port. Make it two TB2 ports. If I need a FW800 connection then someone can make a TB->FW800 adapter and get rich if the demand is there.
I think if they were to add a 2nd Thunderbolt port then getting rid of the FW800 port would be fine with me. I agree with the 5400 RPM hard drive. Thats almost shameful. I too would like to see a Mac Pro type design. Maybe this is why you didn't see it updated???
Agreed.
I do think they should spec it better when/if updated. Things like 2 thunderbolt ports (nix FW800), fusion drives, maybe even PCIe based flash, Iris Pro graphics, quad-core chips across the lineup, maybe even a redesign of the case.
I don't think a mini that requires external drives is going to work in this segment. I like having two internal SSD drives and the current form factor works well. Reduce the size but lets keep two internal SSD drives if we can. Besides, $199 is cheap and I doubt Apple would agree to something so cheap in that sector because it would eat into existing Mini sells not to mention iMac sales too.
They need to blow this space up and come out with the super mini. Essentially a Apple TV size device with the power of an iPhone/iPad. Sell it for $199.00
Average user doesn't need the power of the current mac mini.
Say WHAT?
The Haswell chips are capable of more FLOPS per watt than Ivy Bridge, and are a perfect candidate for a small computer with limited cooling ability. (Which is the problem most laptops are up against.) They may allow Apple to use the actual Haswell-DT chips in the Mac Mini, rather than Ivy Bridge-M processors like the previous generation uses, which are optimized for mobile usage. Granted, the max TDP of the Haswell-DT chips are higher, but with more P-States, they could keep thermal problems to a minimum.
I have strongly believed that with the new AirPort Extreme & T-C that Apple would update the Apple TV & Mac-mini in similar form.
That being Cubed not a tower like the former, this way they can add more spec to them (capacity SSD or old HD) among other things.
Might pick up one of these. Trying to get off of Windows. Tough since I need to buy new software (Quickbooks, Excel, ect)
Why? I’m running Windows 7 (and Windows 8 & XP and Ubuntu) as a virtual machine via VMware Fusion. It turned my mac into the best Windows machine I’ve ever owned.
I run Windows for exactly that same reason. Quickbooks for Windows is far superior to the Mac version.
In your case, you can just copy your current Windows installation into a virtual machine and import it on your mac and you’re done. I’ve done that to many other people migrating from a PC to a Mac but still needs to run Windows.
I don’t think I could ever go back to a standalone Windows PC again.
Broadwell is going to be late, very late. It might not even ship until 2015.
Intel CEO stated just the other day that production starts in this quarter and shipping H2CY14. There may be some Broadwell models that won't ship until next year but I'm sure the Mini would only use the standard mass-market models which should be delivered this year.
So an underpowered Mac that will utilize an old sub-par and cheap (ugly) PC monitor, keyboard and mouse?
Doesn't sound like the kind of Apple experience Cupertino would ever aim for.
The display Apple makes isn't really special. I suspect they use the "docking" functionality as a major selling point. Otherwise there are better options in that price range. Admittedly the aesthetics of the display case matter very little to me.
someone can make a TB->FW800 adapter and get rich if the demand is there.
No problem: Apple already makes one, as well as TB->GigE adapters. Both come in handy for our office MacBook Airs, which lack both FW and wired ethernet.
Cloud computing is here now. Not everybody has fully embraced it yet, but most people with smart phones already use it to some degree. Flickr now gives away 1000 Gigabytes of picture storage. Google Drive gives away 15 GB. Dropbox gives away 2 GB. Ubuntu One gives away 5 GB. Box.net gives away 10 GB and there are several others. Sugar Sync offers 100 GB storage for $9.99 per month.
All of these can be accessed not just from ones home computer but from all of ones mobile devices anywhere. Internal storage won't be necessary for average users. As internet connection speeds improve the lag time between uploading and downloading files won't be a big issue. My local internet service provider is doubling the basic speed from 15 Mbps to 30Mbps at the same price as before. This isn't impressive for some people but it will make a big difference in convenience.
Accessing these is becoming very easy with services like Jolicloud. It was at first a Linux OS. Now they have dropped that and made it an in-browser hub. Which means that anybody using Chromium can go to one page and access all of these services and more.
Chromebooks are doing the same thing. They have very little storage on board and use the cloud to store files. The Chromium browser has many plug-ins that allow access to online services that don't rely on internal programs. These can be used by anybody on any machine.
With these services your computing experience is totally enhanced. They don't depend solely on your computer. Any mobile device will work. If your computer is damaged or just dies, there will be zero problems just getting another one and logging in to your stuff. Nothing will be lost. If you're away from your machine you can borrow another and access everything.
I recently did an inventory of my files. All of my text files take up less than 2 GB. It is the image files, video presentations, and home movies that take up the rest of the space. By putting my non-essential images in the cloud I can keep my on board storage very small. I put my work stuff in the cloud and only keep my current work on the machine. With this setup I can live with a very small hard drive. Right now my entire HDD has just 16.9 GB used and that includes several recently recorded TV shows that have piled up over the last week due to not having the time to watch them. After I watch them they will be deleted. For those of you who love to record movies and keep them you probably are already using external hard drives. So having a small drive on your main machine doesn't matter.
Two years ago I would have thought owning a 60 GB SSD was just too small. Now I find that size is much bigger than I really need. A 30 GB SSD would work for me now. Would this work for everybody? I don't think so, but for many people storing their information in the cloud makes a lot of sense because of the convenience of accessing it from any device anywhere.
Would a Mac Mini really need a big SSD? Not if one embraces the cloud for storage. This also means that the Apple iPad 16 GB model used at home could be all that one needs. Buying the larger storage models would be a waste of money.
I have the mid-2011 Mini w/Radeon HD 6630M and it's been doing just fine for me since I bought it. I would be tempted by a Haswell Mini if there was a graphics option that would be an upgrade over my Radeon graphics in my current version. I know from reviews that once you get up to about 4xAA the Iris Pro drops off in framerates quite a bit, so I'm not sure how it would compare. Yes this is mostly for WoW and Diablo 3, but I do enjoy doing some gaming on my Mac
I'm in the same boat. I also have a Mac mini with the AMD Radeon 6630M and do a lot of gaming on Steam. It does do okay, but I would like to see Iris Pro graphics on a new one. Not just Iris, Iris Pro...I'd love to have Crystalwell like the Retina MBP has, but I know thats probably too expensive for something in the price range of a Mac mini. I don't really have the money to get an iMac or something like that with better graphics.
Its great for everyday tasks, especially since upgrading the RAM and installing an SSD. I also put the 2nd HD kit in it so I kept the original 500 GB HD inside it. So I have 2 hard drives inside it which is kind of cool for something so small.
I realize the basis of your argument probably assumes an "average user", however that is defined. I'd posit that a buyer of a Mac Mini is probably a bit above average compared to the typical purchaser at Best Buy or Costco if for no other reason than the fact some assembly is required. My mid-2011 Mini, at the heart of my video system, just completed an upgrade that included a 448GB SSD. It uses two hard-connected spinning drives to store exported video and records incoming video by virtue of eyeTV. It's not uncoming in racing season for it to pull down 15 hours of 1080p video in a week. The cloud can't handle the transfer times to make that feasible. And until fiber becomes as universal as copper, bandwidth nor ubiquity of access can be assumed as a choice for any consumer.
I just want a Haswell spec bump. Don't change the case. Let me keep my SATA drive connector and my upgradeable RAM.
I'd point out that hardly anyone can realistically live with only 128GB, and in an era when you can buy a normal SATA 256GB SSD for well under $200 retail, skimping on storage capacity makes no sense. Apple's current PCIe SSD's should be even more cost effective to make, since they're nothing more than bare circuit boards.
And yeah, I do understand that the suggestion was made in order to come up with a low price entry level model. ;–)
I am sure there is demands for small storage capacity system as NAS is fast becoming norm in houses. Probably PCIe SSD would make more sense if it is more cost effective in Apple's perspective.
I have never saw a SSD for under $200 with that much storage space yet.