lpkeith51

I have been selling Mac's since the original. My first Mac was a 128K single floppy drive unit. It went through a number of upgrades before I replaced it. It seems like ages ago but that was 1984, Oh I guess that was ages ago. Anyway it now seems like ages ago since we have seen creativity in hardware from Apple. The Mac Mini is the best example of a loss of creativity and sensitivity to the market of small business computing. I work in a market where we replace Windows PC computers and do not need the full iMac in order to achieve the benefits of Apple's OS for these offices. I often migrate the PC to a Parallels or Fusion installation on the Mac so that they can still access the old PC apps and data if needed. This usually only lasts for a short period before they never use the Windows apps or refer back to the virtual Windows computer. The last rendition of the Mac Mini was a downgrade from previous versions and the 2012 i7 with two hard drives for $999 gave us the most bang for the buck. The performance was good enough to run both environments and with the 16 GB of RAM we could allot enough RAM to each OS. What really helped in convincing the offices we worked with was the fact that they did not have to buy new monitors or keyboards or mice. That saved them money and made the transition cost much lower (sometimes as many as 25 Mac Minis at a time were implemented) and there was less resistance to upgrading to a complete Mac office. Now the current crop of Mac Mini computers is a bit of a stretch especially if you want 16 GB of RAM (which you cannot upgrade yourself - sounds a lot like the closed architecture of my original Mac) and the hard drives are slow unless you upgrade to an SSD drive. The Processor is a dual-core i7 with fairly decent performance but not really current or satisfactory in performance for these offices. For a 3.0GHZ Dual-Core Intel i7 with 16 GB of RAM and a 512GB Flash Storage drive the cost is $1599 (way the heck out of reasonableness). The iMac equivalent is $2199. The i5 version is almost useless in most of these offices unless they only run a few apps and replace the slow 5400 rpm drive with a SSD drive and upgrade the RAM. The cost then becomes really not a comfortable fit for these offices when replacing 5 to 10 computers. So for many small businesses the cost to move to the Mac platform becomes a hinderance and generally we need to convince them to buy the iMac and upgrade them so they are generally spending a lot more. So you can imagine the resistance and negativity that occurs. In my humble opinion Apple has really missed the boat in this market. We need a small footprint Mac with respectable and flexible configurations. Many corporations and small businesses would be much happier and willing to buy these units and supply their own monitors, keyboards, mice and various selections of hard drives and ram configurations. If I was designing this it would have a neat SSD HD slot that could easily allow for a slide in upgraded drive and a simple memory door that would make it really easy to upgrade the RAM to at least 32 GB. Maybe this would be a drive empty case that you simply plugged an external drive on to and obviously connect other drives to as well. Some drives are so small that you could easily have a half inch thick Mac Mini and a small drive and take it too and from work almost like a portable and then plug in your monitor (of preference at home and work) and keyboards or mice as needed. Anyway, I hope Apple starts thinking outside the box again. I miss Steve in many ways and it seems that the creative visionary is missing at Apple currently. Only regarding hardware. Love the OS and progress at this years WWDC.

Since the first time a Windows Tablet was created I have hoped for a full OS X tablet. There are some great things about Apple's iPad and having a very light MacBook platform but these do not meet the needs of most of my hundreds of clients that need a full OS X touch screen tablet. The MacBook would be perfect if we could rotate the screen and lay it on top of the keyboard and then it goes into a touch screen mode. But to carry a laptop in the environs of my clients and hundreds of thousands of similar industry professionals, requiring a keyboard while carrying this around open and then need to enter complex data or draw or dictate or capture digital data like X-Rays, etc. makes the laptop an obstacle to efficient usability. The iPad is not acceptable because it does not truly live up to a full OS X multi tasking full application functionality device. When Apple decides to one up the Windows Surface Pro and do so convincingly then we will have the solution that everyone is really looking for from what is suppose to be the leading creative company in the world.