I'm sorry Mr Gallagher and Mr. Wuerthele, but you cannot redefine what "Pro" means just for Apple. Everyone abides by the same definition of "Pro" or nobody does. I'm afraid you are guilty of a classic hypocrisy move... one definition for me, and one for thee. When the components you might wish to upgrade (RAM, HDD, CPU, GPU) are soldered to the board, I'm afraid you cannot claim that system to be professional in any way... You might get away with "Prosumer", but not "Professional".
Okay, I'll bite. What's Apple's definition of "Pro" then? Show me where they codified it? Apple uses "Pro" as nothing more than a marketing term, and never has applied a classification to what makes one product pro and one not.
Upgrading components is in utterly no way the definition of "Pro." That may be YOUR definition, but it means you're calling Disney, Pixar, NASA, IBM, and most of the rest of the market not pro because they don't crack the cases open -- and never have, even when the door folded down. You really don't have any room to call somebody else a hypocrite in this matter.
I'm sorry Mr Gallagher and Mr. Wuerthele, but you cannot redefine what "Pro" means just for Apple. Everyone abides by the same definition of "Pro" or nobody does. I'm afraid you are guilty of a classic hypocrisy move... one definition for me, and one for thee. When the components you might wish to upgrade (RAM, HDD, CPU, GPU) are soldered to the board, I'm afraid you cannot claim that system to be professional in any way... You might get away with "Prosumer", but not "Professional".
Okay, I'll bite. What's Apple's definition of "Pro" then? Show me where they codified it? Apple uses "Pro" as nothing more than a marketing term, and never has applied a classification to what makes one product pro and one not.
Upgrading components is in utterly no way the definition of "Pro." That may be YOUR definition, but it means you're calling Disney, Pixar, NASA, IBM, and most of the rest of the market not pro because they don't crack the cases open -- and never have, even when the door folded down. You really don't have any room to call somebody else a hypocrite in this matter.
It's not just about not being able to upgrade. Components fail. Apple hardware is no less susceptible to this than other hardware. If you can't upgrade the SDD, then you certainly can't repair it. Which begs the question: What happens when parts fail? Do these devices need to be sent back to Apple or taken to an Apple authorized repair facility?
I'm sorry Mr Gallagher and Mr. Wuerthele, but you cannot redefine what "Pro" means just for Apple. Everyone abides by the same definition of "Pro" or nobody does. I'm afraid you are guilty of a classic hypocrisy move... one definition for me, and one for thee. When the components you might wish to upgrade (RAM, HDD, CPU, GPU) are soldered to the board, I'm afraid you cannot claim that system to be professional in any way... You might get away with "Prosumer", but not "Professional".
Okay, I'll bite. What's Apple's definition of "Pro" then? Show me where they codified it? Apple uses "Pro" as nothing more than a marketing term, and never has applied a classification to what makes one product pro and one not.
Upgrading components is in utterly no way the definition of "Pro." That may be YOUR definition, but it means you're calling Disney, Pixar, NASA, IBM, and most of the rest of the market not pro because they don't crack the cases open -- and never have, even when the door folded down. You really don't have any room to call somebody else a hypocrite in this matter.
It's not just about not being able to upgrade. Components fail. Apple hardware is no less susceptible to this than other hardware. If you can't upgrade the SDD, then you certainly can't repair it. Which begs the question: What happens when parts fail? Do these devices need to be sent back to Apple or taken to an Apple authorized repair facility?
I don’t think I understand the question fully. If they fail, then yes. That also has no bearing on “pro” though.
Where do you get off saying we can't complain? That's a horrific, narrow attitude. I think the mini will be good for some people, but I take exception to two issues - 1) It's too expensive for the base model. This is supposed to be the entry level computer that wins over your standard Windows goon. Except now its approaching twice the price of the original mini. I'm betting it has an impressive profit-margin for the company though. 2) Lack of a discreet GPU option yet again. But the ability to add an eGPU partially offsets that, I suppose. Still, should have it as an option. I honestly feel that they set their price points to keep demand down. Otherwise I was wanting to order one yesterday, but I decided not to. (because of the price mainly.)
Nope. Apple doesn't pitch this as an entry level computer. Here's the first full paragraph on the Mac mini page: "In addition to being a great desktop computer, Mac mini powers everything from home automation to giant render farms. And now with eighth-generation Intel quad-core and 6-core processors and Intel UHD Graphics 630, Mac mini has even more compute power for industrial-grade tasks. So whether you’re running a live concert sound engine or testing your latest iOS app, Mac mini is the shortest distance between a great idea and a great result."
Nothing on the page suggests a "getting started on Mac" use case. The "switcher" use case was over a decade ago. This is not your father's Mac mini.
I'm sorry Mr Gallagher and Mr. Wuerthele, but you cannot redefine what "Pro" means just for Apple. Everyone abides by the same definition of "Pro" or nobody does. I'm afraid you are guilty of a classic hypocrisy move... one definition for me, and one for thee. When the components you might wish to upgrade (RAM, HDD, CPU, GPU) are soldered to the board, I'm afraid you cannot claim that system to be professional in any way... You might get away with "Prosumer", but not "Professional".
So where is "the" definition? I'm an IT professional in a company with a couple hundred of us. Our laptops and desktops get replaced every 2 or 3 years, but they are never upgraded. Does that mean we aren't professionals?
I think the new mini is a fine machine and probably worth the money (in Apple categories of course - no doubt that you will get away with less in the Windows PC world). However, what people are complaining about ist that the entry level bar to an Apple PC has been raised considerably over time: The initial mini was USD 500 IIRC and now we are at USD 800, even taking into account inflation that's a lot more.
Nope. $600 in 2005 at launch, stayed at $600 until 2014 (with a brief period at $700 in 2010), when it dropped to $500 with all upgradeability removed.
The $500 cheap mini only existed in the crippled 2014 edition.
US $600 in 2005 dollars is about $775 in 2018 dollars. So the $800 price is a course correction. $700 would have been better, but if it stays at $800 for the next ten years, the low end will be a bargain in 2028!
[TLDR: The 2018 mini is not an upgrade of the mini. It is
Apple’s response to calls for a mid-range, mini-tower class computer (with the upgrades
on the outside, thus the large number of Thunderbolt ports that someone was questioning
earlier in this thread). Now the complaints are that the lower-end purposes for
the mini have been abandoned via the price increases.]
Before you tell somebody they are wrong, you should make
sure you are right. You are not.
The original 2005 Mac mini (PPC) had a base price of $499. I
believe the $599 base price came with the upgrade to Intel CPUs. Inflation
should be partially offset by the general trend of technology getting cheaper, but
even still I wouldn’t argue that Apple should still have a $499 offering. A
$599 offering I think was expected by most folks.
For pro users, the new Mac mini is probably an OK deal. But
where I disagree with the article’s argument (for argument’s sake?) was that
the mini was primarily aimed at the pro market and that pros were the only ones
complaining about the lack of better options. The 2018 model has shifted the
mini to being a pro machine in lieu of the non-existent mid-range headless Mac
people have also been asking for. Yes, pros used the mini before that. Server
farms used it. And the 2018 model most certainly addresses those markets.
But it comes at the cost of dismissing the hobbiest/prosumer
market and the switchers (although I always had doubts how big that market was).
Those who maybe didn’t need the power all of the time but wanted it for occasional
heavy tasks. Folks using it for home automation, HTPC, personal/home server. And
folks who had a monitor already or preferred to purchase one separately for
much less than the incremental cost of getting a monitor built into an iMac.
I have three Mac minis: 2005, 2009, 2012 (which I bought
from Apple refurb after the downgraded 2014 came out). None of them were
purchased because I necessarily needed a new computer. None have ever been my
primary computer. At the prices offered at the time, they were as much impulse
purchases as anything else. Getting the most CPU I felt reasonable knowing I
could upgrade RAM and storage (which I did on every single one of them). If the
only option would have been to predict what my future needs would be and buy
that much RAM/storage from Apple at the time of purchase, I probably would have
never purchased a single mini (and certainly not three!).
It’s too bad Apple couldn’t have come up with a way to also
have a $599 option. I don’t know where the cost savings would come from, but I’m
sure they could have come up with something if they had wanted to. Less expensive
SSD (if not for the “true pro” use case, is the blazing fast SSDs Apple is
using necessary)? Fewer TB ports (non-pros certainly don’t need four)? Options
for 4-core i5 and i7 processors?
It’s not necessarily that the 2018 Mac mini isn’t a fair
value for the prices offered, but that it’s no longer desirable for at least a
portion of the classic target customer for the mini. A $799 base price is no
longer an enticing entry point into considering getting a mini. The cost of
internal storage is my biggest complaint. I need more storage, but it doesn’t
all have to be expensive, top of the line SSDs. Yes, easy enough to add
external storage, but that costs more compared to internal and is unappealing
for some applications such as HTPC or wherever space is limited. My 2012 mini has
3 TB of internal storage (1 TB SSD + 2 TB HD) which can hold all the files I
want on the mini (SSD) plus the Time Machine backups for our laptops (HD)
without cluttering my space with cables and external drives.
That’s why I believe what they were really trying to do with
the 2018 mini was address the complaints about the lack of an expandable
mini-tower class computer. Again, look at all those TB ports! And that’s fine.
The new mini fits the bill. The new target audience can upgrade their minis
with external GPUs, fast storage, and other expensive TB accessories. But the
cost of entry has gone up considerably, and in so doing Apple has abandoned the
mini’s original purpose in life, which is why you are still hearing complaints.
I was waiting for the newest Mac Mini to see if that nasty, inefficient case-design had been fixed. It wasn’t, so I bought the most expensive, 27” Retina iMac (not the Pro).
I could have gotten the iMac Pro, but it’s rather more than I need, as I drift into retirement.
My complaint about the Mac Mini (after owning five of them, all generations) is that they overheat. The one on my desk is sitting on a wire rack in the open air, with a USB-powered fan underneath it.
Even so, it gets hot periodically, according to SMC Fan Control. Even with the fan manually cranked as fast as it goes.
My office and my desk are NOT hot, nor poorly ventilated. I like my A/C, too. The Mac Mini just does not have a good design that allows for good enough airflow, and the chips age quickly as a direct result.
I’ve bought my last Mac Mini. The current one is crashing horribly, and I have to power it down and restart if I want to get any work done.
I have been a professional Mac consultant since 1985, by the way. I’ve seen Mac Minis with similar heating issues with dozens of clients. I want a computer that will last me ten years. My Mac Minis tend to last maybe three or four.
This is why I refuse to buy another compact Mac for heavy CPU/GPU use. Thermal designs suck for heavy usage. I won’t buy a laptop, a mini, or a new iMac.
I’ve been waiting for a very long time for Apple to produce a new Mac Pro. When they finally did announce one in 2013, it was a tiny compact machine. I pretty much threw my hands up and waited for the retina display to be announced for this machine.
It never was.
I still haven’t bought a new machine. I expected the pro line to disappear. I predicted the iMac Pro would happen and it did. I would never spend my own money on such a ridiculous product. I was relieved to hear that whoever at Apple was having the idiot moment had been corrected and a new Mac Pro was in development.
Still waiting.
I bought a used iMac 12,2 in desperation because my surviving MacBook Pro display is too small for Logic X and photography. It was a refurb from a third party and I half regret buying it. I had to service the machine and discovered how horrifically these bastards are constructed for servicing. I never want to open the damn thing again. I should’ve hired out the service to an authorized service center and had them put in an SSD while it was being done but I had already spent more money on used hardware than I felt was rational. I was stuck and needed something.
Let me know when the next damned Mac Pro is announced. I can’t wait to be let down by Apple yet again. Until then, I’ll keep being enraged by Apple’s utter refusal to fix bugs in iOS (the worst being Safari’s text edit views) and in various places in Mac OS (just today I found that Audio MIDI Setup in Sierra has a new bug: the icon browser in the device properties window won’t show different folder contents when you select different folders).
This article is a long-winded “we don’t care what the costs and thermals are; shut up and buy it”. Not at all helpful to anyone but Apple.
Honestly I kind of wish I wouldn't have gotten my Quad Core 13 inch this summer. If I would have waited I could have had a 6 core mini and an Air for the price.
If this Mac Mini would have been announced 18 months ago, I would have bought 3 machines for my software development company. Now the window of opportunity is gone and it probably remain closed for the next 2 years
As a professional my main complaint about Apple is lack of transparency and roadmap. If I need to take a business decision that has a >$100K impact I cannot wait 4 years until Tim Cook decides that a new machine will be announced. I need a roadmap that I can rely upon.
I do understand that for the consumer market Apple cannot disclose new product announcement, but for a professional market this is different. So if this machine is targeted at a professional market, the attitude of Apple about secrecy must change.
Agree! And furthermore, AppleInsider does a disservice to its readers by dismissing them as complainers. Four years was a long time to wait. Many have moved on.
I'm sorry Mr Gallagher and Mr. Wuerthele, but you cannot redefine what "Pro" means just for Apple. Everyone abides by the same definition of "Pro" or nobody does. I'm afraid you are guilty of a classic hypocrisy move... one definition for me, and one for thee. When the components you might wish to upgrade (RAM, HDD, CPU, GPU) are soldered to the board, I'm afraid you cannot claim that system to be professional in any way... You might get away with "Prosumer", but not "Professional".
This Mac mini is pretty upgradable. The RAM isn't soldered, and the storage and GPU can both be upgraded through Thunderbolt. The only thing you are stuck with is the CPU.
All the announcements were pretty meh to be honest. Wasn’t anything anyone really needed. The only thing I took away from the event is that only affluent people are wanted as the Apple customer. They completely ignored the entry level market with the Mac mini. Won’t be able to recommend Apple products at all to the average individual anymore considering all that most people do is check email and watch cat videos.
More like it was not what you wanted and you're trying to turn that into I know what Apple needs better than Apple does. Where are your stats of what users need? Where's your feedback from tons of users of what the Mac mini should have been? Just because Apple didn't make a "cheap" $400/$500 Mac that YOU wanted, doesn't mean they totally missed the market. Apple is and never was, in a race to the bottom. If you want that, go buy a Dell. Ever think that based on feedback from its users, Apple saw they needed to take the Mac mini in a different direction? It wasn't exactly a huge seller (one of the worst in the Mac lineup actually), even when it was updated so obviously the "cheap" Mac you're dreaming of wasn't what users wanted. You aren't going to get the specs of this Mac mini and have it be $500...you're living in a huge fantasy world if you even begin to think that.
Welcome to the AI Forums, but you will never get far being an Armchair Executive who thinks they know how to run Apple better than Apple.
I'm sorry Mr Gallagher and Mr. Wuerthele, but you cannot redefine what "Pro" means just for Apple. Everyone abides by the same definition of "Pro" or nobody does. I'm afraid you are guilty of a classic hypocrisy move... one definition for me, and one for thee. When the components you might wish to upgrade (RAM, HDD, CPU, GPU) are soldered to the board, I'm afraid you cannot claim that system to be professional in any way... You might get away with "Prosumer", but not "Professional".
Okay, I'll bite. What's Apple's definition of "Pro" then? Show me where they codified it? Apple uses "Pro" as nothing more than a marketing term, and never has applied a classification to what makes one product pro and one not.
Upgrading components is in utterly no way the definition of "Pro." That may be YOUR definition, but it means you're calling Disney, Pixar, NASA, IBM, and most of the rest of the market not pro because they don't crack the cases open -- and never have, even when the door folded down. You really don't have any room to call somebody else a hypocrite in this matter.
I quite agree. Pro designates somebody making a living using the machine. I knew of few pros who would want to take time away from their jobs to upgrade a machine.
So, back to one of my earlier posts: This poster (and many others) confuse "Pro" with "Power User". They are not the same. In fact, a pro is as likely to select a lower end machine (if it does what they need) over a high powered but expensive one. With pros, at least responsible ones, its always a matter of cost vs benefit.
Appears Apple is taking the mini to the next level. Many basic things done in 2012 on a "new" Mac Mini, are largely being done on the go with phones and tablets. The previous article about schools issuing iPads to new students tends to confirm cloud services and information accessibility have changed. The casual user is happy to forgo the traditional desktop with a $500 tablet. Billing, accounting, household expenses, tracked in the cloud. Printing done wirelessly. Photo editing and sharing through social media. I see the new 2018 storage and port setup geared towards processing power at the desk. The new mini is looking for creators instead of users. That said, increasing the entry level by $300, seems be leaving tinkerers, the budget minded, and multitasking behind. On the other hand when the redesigned 2010 "flat mini" series was introduced it started at $699 ($810 in 2018 money) for a base Core 2 Duo 2.4, which went back to $499 after the 2014 refresh. Going back to 2010 shows similar price shock comments.
I’ve got two Mac Minis and bought them with mid specs. Back then the upgrade prices seemed a lot more reasonable than they do now. It seems like prices are triple instead of double what I would pay from an A grade RAM and harddrive/SDDs.
My complaint before this mini was always that they were using laptop parts. Thankfully that has changed but it doesn’t matter to me anymore.
We have a late 2017 27” iMac that was almost maxed out. It has been great for gaming (Seven Days To Die) and for non gaming tasks. Note, this is my personal machine.
But I’ve found that I spend seven hours a day on my 12.9” iPad Pro and it is increasingly rare that I even look at my iMac. Now that the new 12.9” iPads are out, I wish I could connect my 27” screen to it and that they would make a version of Seven Days To Die for iPad. Here’s wishing.
I'm sorry Mr Gallagher and Mr. Wuerthele, but you cannot redefine what "Pro" means just for Apple. Everyone abides by the same definition of "Pro" or nobody does. I'm afraid you are guilty of a classic hypocrisy move... one definition for me, and one for thee. When the components you might wish to upgrade (RAM, HDD, CPU, GPU) are soldered to the board, I'm afraid you cannot claim that system to be professional in any way... You might get away with "Prosumer", but not "Professional".
Okay, I'll bite. What's Apple's definition of "Pro" then? Show me where they codified it? Apple uses "Pro" as nothing more than a marketing term, and never has applied a classification to what makes one product pro and one not.
Upgrading components is in utterly no way the definition of "Pro." That may be YOUR definition, but it means you're calling Disney, Pixar, NASA, IBM, and most of the rest of the market not pro because they don't crack the cases open -- and never have, even when the door folded down. You really don't have any room to call somebody else a hypocrite in this matter.
It's not just about not being able to upgrade. Components fail. Apple hardware is no less susceptible to this than other hardware. If you can't upgrade the SDD, then you certainly can't repair it. Which begs the question: What happens when parts fail? Do these devices need to be sent back to Apple or taken to an Apple authorized repair facility?
I don’t think I understand the question fully. If they fail, then yes. That also has no bearing on “pro” though.
My comment had less to do with the Pro vs. Not-Pro debate. I honestly have no opinion there, since each person's definition of "Pro" is bound to vary considerably.
I'm more or less just thinking about how these companies would possibly use a device like this without repairability (if that's even a word) .If you have a farm of these, some component is bound to fail. It's just the reality of electronics--no matter the quality of the components that make up the electronics. The companies you mentioned never crack them open at all? Not even to make repairs? I've built out data centers. Stuff breaks. And rather than be down a server, I can just pop in new components and have my downed server back up and running in a few hours. We keep spares of certain types of hardware--RAM, hard drives, CPUs. It's not an option with a device like this. You just have to wait for it to get repaired, do without, or keep spare computers around.
Appears Apple is taking the mini to the next level. Many basic things done in 2012 on a "new" Mac Mini, are largely being done on the go with phones and tablets. The previous article about schools issuing iPads to new students tends to confirm cloud services and information accessibility have changed. The casual user is happy to forgo the traditional desktop with a $500 tablet. Billing, accounting, household expenses, tracked in the cloud. Printing done wirelessly. Photo editing and sharing through social media. I see the new 2018 storage and port setup geared towards processing power at the desk. The new mini is looking for creators instead of users. That said, increasing the entry level by $300, seems be leaving tinkerers, the budget minded, and multitasking behind. On the other hand when the redesigned 2010 "flat mini" series was introduced it started at $699 ($810 in 2018 money) for a base Core 2 Duo 2.4, which went back to $499 after the 2014 refresh. Going back to 2010 shows similar price shock comments.
Right. The comments were because they were overpriced back then too, for what you got. Comparatively speaking, these are overpriced. Does that sound better?
I already have a 6-core i5 Mini on order . This is exactly what I needed. I do a lot of photography and work extensively with Lightroom and Photoshop. Those apps need power, but not Mac Pro power. I already have a Dell 32” 4K monitor with full AdobeRGB support, which is better for my use than the P3 of the iMac (which is a video standard and does not align with pro photo printers).
I had moved to Windows for my photo work , but now I can go back to my preferred OS on the Mac Mini.
Comments
Nothing on the page suggests a "getting started on Mac" use case. The "switcher" use case was over a decade ago. This is not your father's Mac mini.
[TLDR: The 2018 mini is not an upgrade of the mini. It is Apple’s response to calls for a mid-range, mini-tower class computer (with the upgrades on the outside, thus the large number of Thunderbolt ports that someone was questioning earlier in this thread). Now the complaints are that the lower-end purposes for the mini have been abandoned via the price increases.]
Before you tell somebody they are wrong, you should make sure you are right. You are not.
The original 2005 Mac mini (PPC) had a base price of $499. I believe the $599 base price came with the upgrade to Intel CPUs. Inflation should be partially offset by the general trend of technology getting cheaper, but even still I wouldn’t argue that Apple should still have a $499 offering. A $599 offering I think was expected by most folks.
For pro users, the new Mac mini is probably an OK deal. But where I disagree with the article’s argument (for argument’s sake?) was that the mini was primarily aimed at the pro market and that pros were the only ones complaining about the lack of better options. The 2018 model has shifted the mini to being a pro machine in lieu of the non-existent mid-range headless Mac people have also been asking for. Yes, pros used the mini before that. Server farms used it. And the 2018 model most certainly addresses those markets.
But it comes at the cost of dismissing the hobbiest/prosumer market and the switchers (although I always had doubts how big that market was). Those who maybe didn’t need the power all of the time but wanted it for occasional heavy tasks. Folks using it for home automation, HTPC, personal/home server. And folks who had a monitor already or preferred to purchase one separately for much less than the incremental cost of getting a monitor built into an iMac.
I have three Mac minis: 2005, 2009, 2012 (which I bought from Apple refurb after the downgraded 2014 came out). None of them were purchased because I necessarily needed a new computer. None have ever been my primary computer. At the prices offered at the time, they were as much impulse purchases as anything else. Getting the most CPU I felt reasonable knowing I could upgrade RAM and storage (which I did on every single one of them). If the only option would have been to predict what my future needs would be and buy that much RAM/storage from Apple at the time of purchase, I probably would have never purchased a single mini (and certainly not three!).
It’s too bad Apple couldn’t have come up with a way to also have a $599 option. I don’t know where the cost savings would come from, but I’m sure they could have come up with something if they had wanted to. Less expensive SSD (if not for the “true pro” use case, is the blazing fast SSDs Apple is using necessary)? Fewer TB ports (non-pros certainly don’t need four)? Options for 4-core i5 and i7 processors?
It’s not necessarily that the 2018 Mac mini isn’t a fair value for the prices offered, but that it’s no longer desirable for at least a portion of the classic target customer for the mini. A $799 base price is no longer an enticing entry point into considering getting a mini. The cost of internal storage is my biggest complaint. I need more storage, but it doesn’t all have to be expensive, top of the line SSDs. Yes, easy enough to add external storage, but that costs more compared to internal and is unappealing for some applications such as HTPC or wherever space is limited. My 2012 mini has 3 TB of internal storage (1 TB SSD + 2 TB HD) which can hold all the files I want on the mini (SSD) plus the Time Machine backups for our laptops (HD) without cluttering my space with cables and external drives.
That’s why I believe what they were really trying to do with the 2018 mini was address the complaints about the lack of an expandable mini-tower class computer. Again, look at all those TB ports! And that’s fine. The new mini fits the bill. The new target audience can upgrade their minis with external GPUs, fast storage, and other expensive TB accessories. But the cost of entry has gone up considerably, and in so doing Apple has abandoned the mini’s original purpose in life, which is why you are still hearing complaints.
I’ve been waiting for a very long time for Apple to produce a new Mac Pro. When they finally did announce one in 2013, it was a tiny compact machine. I pretty much threw my hands up and waited for the retina display to be announced for this machine.
It never was.
I still haven’t bought a new machine. I expected the pro line to disappear. I predicted the iMac Pro would happen and it did. I would never spend my own money on such a ridiculous product. I was relieved to hear that whoever at Apple was having the idiot moment had been corrected and a new Mac Pro was in development.
Still waiting.
I bought a used iMac 12,2 in desperation because my surviving MacBook Pro display is too small for Logic X and photography. It was a refurb from a third party and I half regret buying it. I had to service the machine and discovered how horrifically these bastards are constructed for servicing. I never want to open the damn thing again. I should’ve hired out the service to an authorized service center and had them put in an SSD while it was being done but I had already spent more money on used hardware than I felt was rational. I was stuck and needed something.
Let me know when the next damned Mac Pro is announced. I can’t wait to be let down by Apple
yet again. Until then, I’ll keep being enraged by Apple’s utter refusal to fix bugs in iOS (the worst being Safari’s text edit views) and in various places in Mac OS (just today I found that Audio MIDI Setup in Sierra has a new bug: the icon browser in the device properties window won’t show different folder contents when you select different folders).
This article is a long-winded “we don’t care what the costs and thermals are; shut up and buy it”. Not at all helpful to anyone but Apple.
More like it was not what you wanted and you're trying to turn that into I know what Apple needs better than Apple does. Where are your stats of what users need? Where's your feedback from tons of users of what the Mac mini should have been? Just because Apple didn't make a "cheap" $400/$500 Mac that YOU wanted, doesn't mean they totally missed the market. Apple is and never was, in a race to the bottom. If you want that, go buy a Dell. Ever think that based on feedback from its users, Apple saw they needed to take the Mac mini in a different direction? It wasn't exactly a huge seller (one of the worst in the Mac lineup actually), even when it was updated so obviously the "cheap" Mac you're dreaming of wasn't what users wanted. You aren't going to get the specs of this Mac mini and have it be $500...you're living in a huge fantasy world if you even begin to think that.
Welcome to the AI Forums, but you will never get far being an Armchair Executive who thinks they know how to run Apple better than Apple.
Every single click, whether it's a Finder window or App, results in a two-minute wait while the beach ball spins...
The only thing I'll miss are the dual 1TB internal drives!
My complaint before this mini was always that they were using laptop parts. Thankfully that has changed but it doesn’t matter to me anymore.
We have a late 2017 27” iMac that was almost maxed out. It has been great for gaming (Seven Days To Die) and for non gaming tasks. Note, this is my personal machine.
But I’ve found that I spend seven hours a day on my 12.9” iPad Pro and it is increasingly rare that I even look at my iMac. Now that the new 12.9” iPads are out, I wish I could connect my 27” screen to it and that they would make a version of Seven Days To Die for iPad. Here’s wishing.
I'm more or less just thinking about how these companies would possibly use a device like this without repairability (if that's even a word) .If you have a farm of these, some component is bound to fail. It's just the reality of electronics--no matter the quality of the components that make up the electronics. The companies you mentioned never crack them open at all? Not even to make repairs? I've built out data centers. Stuff breaks. And rather than be down a server, I can just pop in new components and have my downed server back up and running in a few hours. We keep spares of certain types of hardware--RAM, hard drives, CPUs. It's not an option with a device like this. You just have to wait for it to get repaired, do without, or keep spare computers around.
I had moved to Windows for my photo work , but now I can go back to my preferred OS on the Mac Mini.