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Tim Cook Confirms the Mac Mini Isn't Dead (macrumors.com)
Apple has refreshed just about every Mac product within the last couple of years -- except for the Mac Mini. Naturally, this has left many analysts questioning whether or not the company would be phasing out the Mini to focus more on its mobile devices. A MacRumors reader decided to email Apple CEO Tim Cook to get an update on the Mac mini and he received a response. Cook said it was "not time to share any details," but he confirmed that the Mac mini will be an important part of the company's product lineup in the future. MacRumors reports: Cook's response echoes a similar statement from Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller, who commented on the Mac mini when Apple's plans for a new Mac Pro were unveiled. "The Mac mini is an important product in our lineup and we weren't bringing it up because it's more of a mix of consumer with some pro use," he said. Positioned as a "bring your own peripherals" machine that comes without a mouse, keyboard, or display, the Mac mini is Apple's most affordable desktop machine. The current version is woefully outdated though, and continues to use Haswell processors and integrated Intel HD 5000/Intel Iris Graphics. It's not clear when Apple will introduce a new Mac mini, and aside from a single rumor hinting at a new high-end Mac mini with a redesign that "won't be so mini anymore," we've heard no rumors about work on a possible Mac mini refresh.
My faith in the veracity of Tim Cook's claims remains dead.
Put up or shut up. Apple has reached a level of credibility that I though was reserved for Microsoft.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Tim Cook has shown he doesn't care about the Mac in general, let alone the Mac Mini. After launching the iPad Pro he asked, "Why would you buy a PC any more?" He believes the future of computing is tablets and smartphones and doesn't understand people have actual work to do.
To a large extent this shows why he shouldn't be running Apple. Since he took over they haven't managed to introduce a single new product line that has had any major impact on the market, but he has caused the Mac to lose about a third of its users. His whole plan for Apple seems to be "lets just keep releasing increment improvements to the iPhone".
The difference between Apple under Steve Jobs and Apple under Tim Cook is astounding. Under Tim Cook it is doing nothing, and he could easily be replaced by a block of wood and you would see no impact on the company. Just what is he being paid for?
The way Apple talks about the Mini makes it sound like they completely neglected to work on that line of products, as if they were overwhelmed by the rest!
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
If they hadnt glued to a stick it would be pushing up the daisies.
The two WORST SELLING Macs on Apple's lineup - the Mac Pro and Mac Mini.
And they always have been that way, before the Mac Pro became the trash can style computer - back when it was the super expandable computer with expansion slots and everything.
Neither of them are technically "dead" since Apple will sell you a new one that's years old and due for refreshes, but they're not stunning sellers that Apple finds worthy of putting more than the minimal amount of engineering effort into.
The Mac Pro does have a future - a tiny one for the tiny population of people who really need the power it has. The Mac Mini has always been more vague since other than a small desktop PC, it was always in a weird spot - did Apple position it as a living room computer driving the big screen TV, or as a regular desktop PC?
Anyhow, both have historically been poor sellers for several models now - both Mac Pro and Mac Mini owners have wondered for several generations of hardware - prior to the trash can design and even back wen Minis had optical drives.
I want a full sized tower. It should use all 110 volts coming out of the wall for high availability duty cycle for the whole warranty period and beyond. It needs room for a lot of internal drives for low latency high volumes of data. It should be pushed hard and be able to take it, no thermal throttling. I want a desktop unit, not a laptop in a desktop shell.
When you get that done, we'll talk about replacing the MacBook Pro 17 inch.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
I wouldn't take that reply to mean that it is dead or not. This isn't because we're dealing with Apple it's because we're dealing with a company. By comparison if Chevrolet announced this afternoon that they are canceling the Camaro again, Chevy fans would be up in arms over the brand abandoning them. If they instead coyly said they were "committed" to it and then gradually reduced production over the next few years until dropping it entirely by 2020 they could say it was "market pressures" and "consumer demand", without there having been any company plans for it before then.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
We wanted a Mac Mini, so we bought an Intel NUC and turned it into a Hackintosh. It works great. We ended up spending almost the same amount of money, but the result was something vastly more powerful.
There are a few shortcomings, though, so if you're thinking of taking this route, you should do your research on the process and limitations first.
And still uses a 5400 RPM HDD. You Windows and Linux users have no idea how slow macOS is on anything but SSDs.
The whole macOS development team should be forced to use the low-end model of the least powerful Mac. Then either macOS would run fine on it (and fly on anything else) or they'd be able to put enough pressure internally at Apple to upgrade the damn thing to SSD.
#DeleteFacebook
Went to an Apple store recently while waiting for the wife. A year or so ago they had at least four tables or more of MacBook Pros, MacBooks, and iMacs. A few days ago? Only one table out of about twenty had a couple of iMacs and Macbook Pros. Literally the whole store had nothing but iPhones and various tablets. It was like I walked into an AT&T store. Apple is pushing mobile devices, they apparently don't give a rats butt about desktops or laptops.
Lets assume I'm an Apple Fan Boy because that is probably more true than false.
Tim is a huge fuck up. He could have at least $20,000 more of my money than he does.
If he would have offered a good MPB three years ago, I would have bought it and would have probably purchased another MPB this year.
If there was an updated Mac Mini, I would have bought one within the past twelve months.
If there was an updated Mac Pro -- especially if it could be upgraded -- I would have bought one of those within the past two years.
If I had not been teased with the iMac Pro, I would have bought an iMac a few months back.
Sure... I probably would not have purchased ALL of those but I bet I would have purchased more than just a couple. I can't predict. But the point is that Apple treats the Mac like a red headed step child and that is driving revenue down. Instead of being able to have a need and immediately fill it with a solid viable Mac, I search and surf, get frustrated, and decide that my need isn't that great after all and go back to just watching porn.
The plus side is that I still have the $20,000 in my pocket and, of course, technology is getting better and cheaper. My needs keep changing. So my room full of junk to sell on eBay is only half full instead of flooding over.
Why not Linux? Because I'm possessed by the Adobe hordes. Yea, there are open source wanna be's but I'm addicted to the Creative Suite with its 15 or so applications and the way they are all integrated.
Why not a Hackintosh? Mostly because I have yet to have a true need that is real. The machines I have are able to do the work I need. My first Hackintosh I assume will be a non-trivial journey. Ten years ago, I would have enjoyed it. Now I just want to go buy something that works. I can afford it and I've lost the key curiosity that would make such an adventure fun. Its basically "been there, done that" and I'm not anxious to do it again.
The only good thing I can say about Tim is, for whatever reason, the stock keeps going up. The $20K I keep mentioning I used to buy Apple stock with and its now worth $30K. Attaboy Tim!
It sounds like you may have identified one reason why Apple isn't too motivated to get the mini into shape.
As the cheapest thing that runs OSX, they are an obvious cannibalization risk to any product further up the chain that either isn't a terribly good value; or is a good value for what it offers; but doesn't offer what buyers actually want(eg. the iMac is actually pretty reasonable when you compare it to other all-in-ones; it can be tricky to even find alternatives with screens that nice; but you really have to want exactly the features it offers for the price tag to not hurt).
Back before iOS was a big thing, the mini helped justify it's existence by being the gateway drug to Apple; a drop in upgrade for the monitor and peripherals you already have; cheap enough to fill out computer labs, that sort of thing. Now, it's fairly clear that iphones and ipads are intended as the entry-level option; which makes an actually competent(ie. not that one with 4GB of non-upgradeable RAM) versions of the mini look more like threats to better, but not necessarily better enough to justify their price tag, Apple products; rather than a shot across the bow of the assorted shoddy wintels of the world.
To be honest, a decently specced Mac Mini type device , with swappable ram and SSD , with some sort of affordable way to throw a graphic card in (perhaps just put out an affordable thunderbolt cage?) would satisfy a whole raft of users left in the lurch after the seemingly frozen state of the mac pro. 2017 maybe we dont need monsters anymore, but a decently modern machine with some capacity to grow would be fine for most of apples remaining professionals in the creative and coder fields.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
After launching the iPad Pro [Tim Cook] asked, "Why would you buy a PC any more?"
When did he announce availability of Xcode on the iPad App Store?
Under Tim Cook it is doing nothing, and he could easily be replaced by a block of wood and you would see no impact on the company.
That's racist against Pinocchio, Tommy Timbertoes, and other wooden people. #triggered
The 2014 Mac Mini was a downgrade, going from four cores to two. I'm hoping Apple can do a refresh of the Mini to make it attractive, but still reasonably priced.
I wish Apple could come out with a Mac Mini at a decent price point, with a modern CPU architecture. That, and refresh it yearly, so we are not dealing with 2014 tech in 2017.
Apple HAS the resources to aggressively work on ALL fronts. An investment manager will put most his eggs into the high growth investments and skip the lower growth ones; it's warped priorities. The Mac department makes plenty of profit to fund their own progress but instead they are funding stronger products with that money. They'd be doing better if they just isolated money from the two.
They should just serve their own customers; forget about innovation on the Mac line, just keeping up with their existing customer needs would be enough. They've not done anything to progress Macs in many years; it's all been steps backwards outside of tech updates which are too slow.
Pro Desktop:
If you want to innovate and serve pro developers of iDevices... A rack mountable tower that makes NO SOUND. Like the old cheese grater but EVERYTHING can be swapped out... more like a PC. Sell motherboards and cpus finally. If Apple can't upgrade often they could at least make it easy to upgrade the parts... just subcontract with ASUS or something. If they want to "innovate" they'd make nice little plastic lego blocks out of everything; including the CPU and RAM. Sure I could buy ram and take apart your lego... but for a little premium a lot of people would just buy your lego brick and pop it in/out.
Schools: mini... bring back emac as weak mini.
have little need of Apple anymore, except legacy. Mac mini's do not serve them anymore... no security ports. Too expensive to not have upgradable. iMacs too much to service. Innovation here would be to amortize costs to ease the school funding problems--- pay $200 per mini per year. Get a new one every couple years, quick replacements. Hell, operate parts of the service at a loss and take the PR and tax write offs. Contracts for the bond-funding schools deal with-- so pay upfront for X years being an option. Mac management used to be cheaper, now it's more work than windows. Virtual Box management like integration (or other VM.) since schools have old software needs.
Mini for headless uses:
if there is a niche to fill that a weak cheap mini would meet. otherwise I think Intel and some other tiny business PCs are doing great; but the above emac mini would serve that too. Apple TV is supposed to take over the TV niche for the mini; make the leap already. HDMI? a joke.
Laptops:
No MagSafe!@#! Lack of connectivity is too extreme in the consumer laptop. Make it stronger... it shouldn't break from 1 drop like a phone or tablet. It's life is short. tablet+keyboard. and the keyboards suck.
Pro Laptops:
SUCK. Not enough balls to admit the mistakes either. Dongles negate portability. no magsafe. no upgrades. Needs reasonably priced RAM at high amounts, then i wouldn't care. thunderbolt 3 external cases would almost replace towers. PROs need USB-A and have cameras worth $$$$ using SD cards. USB-A and mini are standards that will not go away, people are not going to upgrade their USB-A powered toys. USB-C should have been fixed or disputed not just embraced because it's a total fuckup... 1 plug for everything should make you think lord of the rings... not in a good way either. ESC key needs to be tactile. F1 keys double function has been fucked up for many years... Apple never got it; they didn't need a touch screen to fix it. and the keyboards suck. they don't know buttons.
iMacs:
Servicing is a mess; however, the stores are all over. OS X and software has been slipping for years. My old relatives and neighbors are happy... except extra sharp displays serve them no purpose. The keyboards and mice are horrible for those users... especially the batteries and charging issues for them. and the keyboards just suck.
iMac Pro:
I don't know but I'm only now thinking of replacing my 30" monitor with 5k. It has lasted over a decade thru at least a dozen macs. Tying that quality display to a CPU may not make sense long term unless resale works out well... but it's easier to sell an old tower than a display.
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