In the "unintended consequences" territory, there is the issue that since the current form factor has been used for 15 years, the racks, mounts, and cabling systems are then all rended obsolete. If Apple really presses this, are we looking at an iMac killer? A Thunderbolt dongle sized thingy that attaches to a monitor? Choices are good; I'm curious about this.
Mac Mini is supposed to fill the "desktop consumer level" niche. How about a "whole home Mac" that replaces the AppleTV, sits on the home network and cabled to the TV, but is available for any monitor, any where on that network? IOW, the CPU is home network based, not a box sitting next to the monitor (which is exactly what an iMac is for one screen.) Nifty idea, but of course, making a product that reduces the need for consumers to buy your other products isn't...insanely great.
Edit: and...and...and...make that cabled box a new wifi Airport base station. Yeah, I know...and a unicorn pony as well.
"sits on the home network and cabled to the TV" - that is as far from nifty as the Moon.
Call it a local cloud mac. It needs to be HDMI connect to a TV, (latency and that's where to watch actual video) but I see no reason why a desktop CPU needs to be near a display. In fact, I think macOS now has a "sidecar" feature to use an unwired iPad as a screen. Put a single mac on the home network to run all the desktops (CPU-less monitor, keyboard, mouse "stations") in a home. Or even a smallish office, so long as the needs are modest (email, browsing, capacity GPU stuff.) Why not? YYMV, but it seems a viable product choice.
I'm good with my Mini M2 Pro. I bought it last year. I'm retired now. I expected when I bought it to last me 10+ years. But I might trade up when the MacOS no longer can be upgraded. it rests perfectly next to my Studio Display stand, and within the width of the monitor. I didn't know this market needed smaller. I think heat dissipation could be a real concern as the encasement gets smaller. I used to own a iMac 27". After seeing other monitors, there was no way, I was giving up the 5K. Samsung and Dell do not compare to build quality. In fact, I might be getting a second one for dual-screen. Right now, I rely on a MacBook Air 13" as a Universal Control "second screen" (yes, I know it's still using that processor. But I can't slide over windows from the main screen. I connected the two via a high quality TB4 cable. And the fluidity of moving between the two is excellent now. Before the TB4 cable, there was delays in connecting, and skipping with the trackpad pointer.
Concur, but I have a simple M1 mini that fits my needs. I retired a mid-2009 27" iMac for this with an HP 4k 27" screen. I expect this to fulfill my needs for at least as long as the last iMac did. My guess is that CPUs see shorter lifespans than monitors, but it is hard to imagine a better screen than a quality 4k version. I do also have a M1 MBA; and it has occurred to me that I could simply dock that when I need/want a desktop. Choices are good, and all these devices have utility and value (including the various iOS/ padOS devices I have as well.)
PLEASE! No external power supply required. It suck on the iMac, and would suck way more on the mini. The old mini had a stupid external brick, and they made it awesome with the current design. The size is great because you can put a pair of them in a single rack space easily. Make it smaller so you can put 3 might be interesting, but too small and you can't have enough ports to be useful. A smaller computer that needs dongles and adaptors is NOT an improvement!
Now, if they offered a DC power supply jack alongside an internal power supply, THAT would be appealing. Probably not likely though.
Apple could copy a concept similar to Lenovo's corporate Tiny-In-One monitor. This allows users to select a display size ranging from 22" to 27" and connect the PC into the back of the display. It eliminates the need for external power supplies, saves desk space, and includes additional ports on the monitor. Another advantage is the ability to upgrade the PC independently of the monitor. I think an option like this could even replace the iMac.
A miniaturized Mac Mini could also pave the way (finally) for a "chin-less" iMac. The learnings of the Mac Mini revision could be applied toward relocating the computer portion of an iMac from the chin to the base on which an iMac now sits. It would have to be somewhat thicker, no doubt, but not excessively so.
No, it isn't. You've just made it take up more space somewhere else. And even worse, instead of using a standard connector like USB-C or even an ordinary barrel plug, it's YET ANOTHER STUPID PROPRIETARY CONNECTOR. Apple has an addiction, and they need to admit it and get help.
What would be the 24" - 27" monitor of choice to pair this with these days? Anything out there remotely as good as an iMac display but less expensive than a Studio monitor?
Back in the spring when I realized there would be no new Macs at WWDC, I bought a refurbished m2 pro Mac mini to replace my 27 inch iMac.
I initially bought a Dell monitor to go with it, thinking it was a great deal relative to the Apple studio display. I was horrified by it. It looked so much worse than my iMac when I saw them side by side. I sent back the Dell and shelled out the money for the Apple. The web cam is as poor as reviews say, but the most important thing by far is the display quality.
Maybe Apple will make a less expensive 24 inch display….
It's not necessarily that the Studio Display is expensive, it's that the competition is all low-price junk. If the LG 5K uses the similar display, but everything else about it is cheap quality garbage and people think Apple should drop their quality to compete.
I've always used iMacs, but since Apple has abandoned the 27" display, and what will replace it now has me considering a Mac Studio. That means buying a display. The Studio Display (imho) is still the best display on the market and expensive as it is, it will be a better investment than anything the competition has.
Thanks all for the feedback. I'm starting to think that the latest iMac is the better value (for me). I am fine with the 24" screen for this application and it's less expensive than a comparable Mac Mini and Studio Monitor combo. About $1,000 less based on how I would configure them using today's product.
No, the mini is a better value, and less expensive. You don't need an Apple monitor, they're ridiculously overpriced garbage. And iMacs are just plain wasteful, monitors keep working long after the computers they were originally attached to are obsolete.
A miniaturized Mac Mini could also pave the way (finally) for a "chin-less" iMac. The learnings of the Mac Mini revision could be applied toward relocating the computer portion of an iMac from the chin to the base on which an iMac now sits. It would have to be somewhat thicker, no doubt, but not excessively so.
yes chinless is the way to go. Use that real estate for the screen. Have connectors at the bottom, sides, and back for convenience.
Also what about wider screens? I got a widescreen monitor 6 months ago and it is much better than having 2 screens next to each other. Granted I don't do any graphics work etc., but it is good to have such a wide canvas to play with.
What would be the 24" - 27" monitor of choice to pair this with these days? Anything out there remotely as good as an iMac display but less expensive than a Studio monitor?
Back in the spring when I realized there would be no new Macs at WWDC, I bought a refurbished m2 pro Mac mini to replace my 27 inch iMac.
I initially bought a Dell monitor to go with it, thinking it was a great deal relative to the Apple studio display. I was horrified by it. It looked so much worse than my iMac when I saw them side by side. I sent back the Dell and shelled out the money for the Apple. The web cam is as poor as reviews say, but the most important thing by far is the display quality.
Maybe Apple will make a less expensive 24 inch display….
It's not necessarily that the Studio Display is expensive, it's that the competition is all low-price junk. If the LG 5K uses the similar display, but everything else about it is cheap quality garbage and people think Apple should drop their quality to compete.
I've always used iMacs, but since Apple has abandoned the 27" display, and what will replace it now has me considering a Mac Studio. That means buying a display. The Studio Display (imho) is still the best display on the market and expensive as it is, it will be a better investment than anything the competition has.
Thanks all for the feedback. I'm starting to think that the latest iMac is the better value (for me). I am fine with the 24" screen for this application and it's less expensive than a comparable Mac Mini and Studio Monitor combo. About $1,000 less based on how I would configure them using today's product.
No, the mini is a better value, and less expensive. You don't need an Apple monitor, they're ridiculously overpriced garbage. And iMacs are just plain wasteful, monitors keep working long after the computers they were originally attached to are obsolete.
The 27" iMac from some years ago (2009 or so) actually did allow you to use its screen as a display for a separately attached mac. It doesn't take much imagination come up with an explanation for why this feature was removed. I wouldn't call the ASD "garbage" but it is expensive. As a previous commenter pointed out, the bar for this is pretty low - a lot of monitors made by The Usual Suspects really are garbage. I shopped long and hard for a viable alternative, and found the HP Z27 acceptable. It has faults, and YMMV, but it is an acceptable 4K screen at about 1/2 the price of the ASD. I expect it to...well...outlast me. I'm hoping the M1 Mac mini I have does so too, but I do have options I wouldn't have had with another iMac.
I've had a lot of iMacs. They are good value. Apple is really good about pricing them so the separate monitor+macmini alternative is not an easy choice. But you are correct: it is the CPU that needs update more often than the screen. It is hard to imagine something better than the current generation of 4K screens, but I likely would have said that of my 2009 27" iMac's "HD 1080 hi-resolution screen" in 2009 too.
Apple could copy a concept similar to Lenovo's corporate Tiny-In-One monitor. This allows users to select a display size ranging from 22" to 27" and connect the PC into the back of the display. It eliminates the need for external power supplies, saves desk space, and includes additional ports on the monitor. Another advantage is the ability to upgrade the PC independently of the monitor. I think an option like this could even replace the iMac.
The Lenonvo approach is an interesting implementation on a common theme. If you look at the Mini PC market, e.g., starting with the Intel NUC and a subsequent stream of similar implementations, many mini PCs come with a VESA mounting plate that allows you to mount the mini PC on the back of any monitor or TV that has a VESA mount. The only fly in the ointment with most of these "minis" come with a big honking power brick. For what it's worth some monitors also come with power bricks. Yuck. For home or office use the power brick doesn’t really bother me as long as the power cords can be routed neatly up to where the mini PC is mounted. In my case it would be routed along the articulated VESA mounting arm along with the monitor's power cord.
Rack mounted computers are a different story altogether. While there are plenty of rack mount adapters to put Mac Pro, Mac Studio, and Mac mini into standard sized racks or custom racks these adaptations are never ideal simply because those Macs weren't really designed for rack mounting in the same way that a dedicated server computer board/slice is designed from the ground up to be rack mounted. Think about all the wasted I/O ports on a rack of Mac minis. Think about all the missing redundant Ethernet ports missing from all those Mac minis. Do you really need wireless connectivity or audio ports or a highly aesthetic designer case on rack mounted computer? Purpose built rack mount computers would not have a brick or wall wart and would get power directly from a UPS backed up power source in the rack. In some cases like industrial PCs, power would come from a DC power bus in the rack attached to Phoenix style connectors on the computers. Some rack mounted computers are air/water cooled with an expectation that they would be housed in a climate controlled enclosure. I don't see a lot of evidence of Apple ever putting a lot of effort into purpose building rack mounted Macs, although it does sound like they are working on such a system for their internal server systems.
The biggest limitation that I see when it comes to rolling your own modular iMac-like setup using Apple-only component parts is Apple's poor support for standard VESA mounting on their own monitors. Yes, you can buy an Apple monitor like the Studio Display with a VESA mount Frankenstein'd on the back of the monitor (I have one). But why doesn't Apple simply use the VESA mount as the base layer of their monitor mounting system? Just mate the fancy pants Apple monitor stand on top of the VESA base plate. If you buy a non-VESA Studio Display you cannot easily reconfigure it to use a VESA mount. Likewise, if you buy a VESA compatible Studio Display you cannot easily revert to using Apple's proprietary mount. Even Dell monitors that have Dell's proprietary mounting system can be removed and underneath, lo and behold, therein lurks a standard VESA mount. How did Apple not stumble upon this amazing monitor mounting technology?
The standard iMac was the worst of both worlds when it came to monitor mounting, even beyond the fact that its beautiful display was doomed once its conjoined computer twin crapped out or became too slow for productive use. I've seen iMacs mounted on VESA arms using 3rd party adapters where the damn iMac base is still hanging there like a non-functioning limb. In my case my standard 27" iMac's internal mounting mechanism suddenly went limp and the whole screen flopped over so it was facing the ground. Nice! I was able to find a homegrown 3D printed brace and perform some creative carving of packing foam to restore it to a secure fixed position. But it is such a kludge. If the iMac's mount was VESA based I'd have stuck it on a VESA mounting arm - which would deliver the space age miracle of being able to move the monitor side-to-side AND up-and-down AND tilt it too. OMG, how is this even possible?
There are times when I think that Apple expects you to conform to the needs of the computer and its designer rather than the other way around. Thankfully, most of us are compliant and accept it without questioning why it has to be this way because there are so many other things that Apple gets just right.
Time is ripe to completely rethink what a "computer" is. I hope to see Apple continue moving away from "appliance-like" computers and into more modular computing.
Imagine a decade-long strategy where the Mac mini is sold as a module. Next year, add a second module to double its speed, capacity, etc. Don't replace your existing Mac. Don't open it up and swap out parts. Just plug in another module. Same computer, upgraded. That's where Apple should be going. Would require some "grid computing" type tech, and there are rumblings of Xgrid-type software being resurrected. That would be amazing!
Time is ripe to completely rethink what a "computer" is. I hope to see Apple continue moving away from "appliance-like" computers and into more modular computing.
Imagine a decade-long strategy where the Mac mini is sold as a module. Next year, add a second module to double its speed, capacity, etc. Don't replace your existing Mac. Don't open it up and swap out parts. Just plug in another module. Same computer, upgraded. That's where Apple should be going. Would require some "grid computing" type tech, and there are rumblings of Xgrid-type software being resurrected. That would be amazing!
Thing is: Apple's SOC has gotten so efficient because they are integrated chips. The M series gets faster and more power efficient because they are right on the chip. I don't think it currently technically feasible to just add modules to increase speed or actual capacity. Others might know better. That said, what you suggest is valid: modularizing particularly the peripherals seems viable. My first mac, the Duo230 docked to provide multiple screens (the mini dock) or a slide in conversion to a desktop. That was revolutionary at the time (1992.) Many now have no need for a desktop, and hence the rise of iOS/ padOS. The only real need for a desktop system is the professional studio work - the kind photographers, designers, gamers, developers film makers - need and want. That's Apple Studio and Apple display and Mac Pro all the way on macOS. Consumer devices? I like a desktop for the big screen, but my iPhone or iPad could drive it easily. I'd consider that if a M series iPad ran macOS. No reason it can't for my needs.
Oh...and notice the disappearing need for local storage. There was a shitstorm when the optical drives went away. I keep one now only for legacy things like DVD movies and music. And now, who needs a huge HDD for local storage? Admitted, the free 5GB on iCloud is BS, but gone are the days when I needed huge storage. A backup? Sure. And there is something to keeping movies local somehow.
But remember: Steve was famous for making "personal computers" the next "office or home appliance." 30+ years ago.
...5 paragraphs cut to save trees... Sorry for getting off track from the Mac mini topic, but I think both the Mac mini and Apple TV are products that can serve many different needs and could serve even more if Apple tweaked them up a bit more into being building blocks of modular, flexible, and extensible computing and media systems. The days of extensibility based on single product enhancements is over. Everything is sealed up tight. But extensibility via combining and integrating essential 1st party and 3rd party building block products like the Mac mini, Apple TV, HomePods, HomeKit, and mobile devices is still very much in play.
Thanks for all that information! It's just what I needed. One of the best Dell monitor features is its built-in KVM (on many models) which would be really handy for me.
Oh...and notice the disappearing need for local storage. There was a shitstorm when the optical drives went away. I keep one now only for legacy things like DVD movies and music. And now, who needs a huge HDD for local storage? Admitted, the free 5GB on iCloud is BS, but gone are the days when I needed huge storage. A backup? Sure. And there is something to keeping movies local somehow.
Different users, different needs.
I have two 18TB eternal hard drives for Music, Films and TV shows purchased from iTunes and other sources.
I have an 8TB hard Drive for current work, and multiple hard drives for archived work (over 40TB worth). I regularly work on multiple projects with multiple .psb files in the 30GB range - those files eat up disk space fast.
Working on multiple iterations of files in Premiere Pro and After Effects also eats up a ton of disk space real fast.
What would be the 24" - 27" monitor of choice to pair this with these days? Anything out there remotely as good as an iMac display but less expensive than a Studio monitor?
Back in the spring when I realized there would be no new Macs at WWDC, I bought a refurbished m2 pro Mac mini to replace my 27 inch iMac.
I initially bought a Dell monitor to go with it, thinking it was a great deal relative to the Apple studio display. I was horrified by it. It looked so much worse than my iMac when I saw them side by side. I sent back the Dell and shelled out the money for the Apple. The web cam is as poor as reviews say, but the most important thing by far is the display quality.
Maybe Apple will make a less expensive 24 inch display….
It's not necessarily that the Studio Display is expensive, it's that the competition is all low-price junk. If the LG 5K uses the similar display, but everything else about it is cheap quality garbage and people think Apple should drop their quality to compete.
I've always used iMacs, but since Apple has abandoned the 27" display, and what will replace it now has me considering a Mac Studio. That means buying a display. The Studio Display (imho) is still the best display on the market and expensive as it is, it will be a better investment than anything the competition has.
Thanks all for the feedback. I'm starting to think that the latest iMac is the better value (for me). I am fine with the 24" screen for this application and it's less expensive than a comparable Mac Mini and Studio Monitor combo. About $1,000 less based on how I would configure them using today's product.
Yes, hard to beat the value of an iMac if the 24" screen size works for you. Plenty of power, outstanding display, solid webcam, decent speakers... all self-contained and just one cord for a clutter-free desk. I had an iMac 27" from when it first debuted until June 2021 when my iMac M1 arrived. I had real concerns about missing the extra screen real estate, but the 24" size has worked out great... I've never missed the 27" at all and I vastly prefer the smaller form factor overall of the M-series iMacs. If you can hold off, the iMac M4 probably debuts before end of year--and even if you don't need the M4, you'll get a better price on M3 closeouts.
PLEASE! No external power supply required. It suck on the iMac, and would suck way more on the mini. The old mini had a stupid external brick, and they made it awesome with the current design. The size is great because you can put a pair of them in a single rack space easily. Make it smaller so you can put 3 might be interesting, but too small and you can't have enough ports to be useful. A smaller computer that needs dongles and adaptors is NOT an improvement!
Now, if they offered a DC power supply jack alongside an internal power supply, THAT would be appealing. Probably not likely though.
There is a lot of empty space inside the current model. In the following video around 3:15, with the fan removed, half the mini is empty:
This mini size was basically unchanged for 14 years, 1.4" x 7.7" x 7.7":
This was designed to support DVD drives and 2.5" hard drives. They could make it smaller like the Apple TV or just thinner like the laptops. They could probably get it close to the Macbook Pro thickness but half the current height should be doable:
Comments
Concur, but I have a simple M1 mini that fits my needs. I retired a mid-2009 27" iMac for this with an HP 4k 27" screen. I expect this to fulfill my needs for at least as long as the last iMac did. My guess is that CPUs see shorter lifespans than monitors, but it is hard to imagine a better screen than a quality 4k version. I do also have a M1 MBA; and it has occurred to me that I could simply dock that when I need/want a desktop. Choices are good, and all these devices have utility and value (including the various iOS/ padOS devices I have as well.)
Also what about wider screens? I got a widescreen monitor 6 months ago and it is much better than having 2 screens next to each other. Granted I don't do any graphics work etc., but it is good to have such a wide canvas to play with.
I've had a lot of iMacs. They are good value. Apple is really good about pricing them so the separate monitor+macmini alternative is not an easy choice. But you are correct: it is the CPU that needs update more often than the screen. It is hard to imagine something better than the current generation of 4K screens, but I likely would have said that of my 2009 27" iMac's "HD 1080 hi-resolution screen" in 2009 too.
The Lenonvo approach is an interesting implementation on a common theme. If you look at the Mini PC market, e.g., starting with the Intel NUC and a subsequent stream of similar implementations, many mini PCs come with a VESA mounting plate that allows you to mount the mini PC on the back of any monitor or TV that has a VESA mount. The only fly in the ointment with most of these "minis" come with a big honking power brick. For what it's worth some monitors also come with power bricks. Yuck. For home or office use the power brick doesn’t really bother me as long as the power cords can be routed neatly up to where the mini PC is mounted. In my case it would be routed along the articulated VESA mounting arm along with the monitor's power cord.
Rack mounted computers are a different story altogether. While there are plenty of rack mount adapters to put Mac Pro, Mac Studio, and Mac mini into standard sized racks or custom racks these adaptations are never ideal simply because those Macs weren't really designed for rack mounting in the same way that a dedicated server computer board/slice is designed from the ground up to be rack mounted. Think about all the wasted I/O ports on a rack of Mac minis. Think about all the missing redundant Ethernet ports missing from all those Mac minis. Do you really need wireless connectivity or audio ports or a highly aesthetic designer case on rack mounted computer? Purpose built rack mount computers would not have a brick or wall wart and would get power directly from a UPS backed up power source in the rack. In some cases like industrial PCs, power would come from a DC power bus in the rack attached to Phoenix style connectors on the computers. Some rack mounted computers are air/water cooled with an expectation that they would be housed in a climate controlled enclosure. I don't see a lot of evidence of Apple ever putting a lot of effort into purpose building rack mounted Macs, although it does sound like they are working on such a system for their internal server systems.
The biggest limitation that I see when it comes to rolling your own modular iMac-like setup using Apple-only component parts is Apple's poor support for standard VESA mounting on their own monitors. Yes, you can buy an Apple monitor like the Studio Display with a VESA mount Frankenstein'd on the back of the monitor (I have one). But why doesn't Apple simply use the VESA mount as the base layer of their monitor mounting system? Just mate the fancy pants Apple monitor stand on top of the VESA base plate. If you buy a non-VESA Studio Display you cannot easily reconfigure it to use a VESA mount. Likewise, if you buy a VESA compatible Studio Display you cannot easily revert to using Apple's proprietary mount. Even Dell monitors that have Dell's proprietary mounting system can be removed and underneath, lo and behold, therein lurks a standard VESA mount. How did Apple not stumble upon this amazing monitor mounting technology?
The standard iMac was the worst of both worlds when it came to monitor mounting, even beyond the fact that its beautiful display was doomed once its conjoined computer twin crapped out or became too slow for productive use. I've seen iMacs mounted on VESA arms using 3rd party adapters where the damn iMac base is still hanging there like a non-functioning limb. In my case my standard 27" iMac's internal mounting mechanism suddenly went limp and the whole screen flopped over so it was facing the ground. Nice! I was able to find a homegrown 3D printed brace and perform some creative carving of packing foam to restore it to a secure fixed position. But it is such a kludge. If the iMac's mount was VESA based I'd have stuck it on a VESA mounting arm - which would deliver the space age miracle of being able to move the monitor side-to-side AND up-and-down AND tilt it too. OMG, how is this even possible?
There are times when I think that Apple expects you to conform to the needs of the computer and its designer rather than the other way around. Thankfully, most of us are compliant and accept it without questioning why it has to be this way because there are so many other things that Apple gets just right.
Time is ripe to completely rethink what a "computer" is. I hope to see Apple continue moving away from "appliance-like" computers and into more modular computing.
Imagine a decade-long strategy where the Mac mini is sold as a module. Next year, add a second module to double its speed, capacity, etc. Don't replace your existing Mac. Don't open it up and swap out parts. Just plug in another module. Same computer, upgraded. That's where Apple should be going. Would require some "grid computing" type tech, and there are rumblings of Xgrid-type software being resurrected. That would be amazing!
Oh...and notice the disappearing need for local storage. There was a shitstorm when the optical drives went away. I keep one now only for legacy things like DVD movies and music. And now, who needs a huge HDD for local storage? Admitted, the free 5GB on iCloud is BS, but gone are the days when I needed huge storage. A backup? Sure. And there is something to keeping movies local somehow.
But remember: Steve was famous for making "personal computers" the next "office or home appliance." 30+ years ago.
I have two 18TB eternal hard drives for Music, Films and TV shows purchased from iTunes and other sources.
This mini size was basically unchanged for 14 years, 1.4" x 7.7" x 7.7":
https://support.apple.com/en-us/112588
This was designed to support DVD drives and 2.5" hard drives. They could make it smaller like the Apple TV or just thinner like the laptops. They could probably get it close to the Macbook Pro thickness but half the current height should be doable: