Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Resolved Why hasn't Apple updated the Mac mini since 2014
- Thread starter Hexley
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Complete laziness and Greed. Apple is so rich yet they can't apparently spec bump their range every year or so.
It’s not being updated because Apple doesn’t want to sell a cost effective Mac that can have a TB3 external enclosure attached. That would take serious $$$ away from iMacs.
You also open up the world of capable desktop(with TB3 enclosures), and cheap portible like MB Air.
Both cases allow for maximum customer choice, which Apple is very much against, if it means people choosing Lower margin Macs for less $$$
For Apple $$$ >>>>>>> customer choice
You also open up the world of capable desktop(with TB3 enclosures), and cheap portible like MB Air.
Both cases allow for maximum customer choice, which Apple is very much against, if it means people choosing Lower margin Macs for less $$$
For Apple $$$ >>>>>>> customer choice
Last edited:
Apple are not going after the cheap market for PCs, they are going after exclusivity. The Mac Mini doesn't really fit into this viewpoint.
Apple are positioning the iPad to be the cheap computer, so I don't think they will offer a Mini at all soon. What they may well do is have a base Mac Pro that offers the same functionality as a reasonably well-spec'd Mini. However, it won't be cheap.
Apple are positioning the iPad to be the cheap computer, so I don't think they will offer a Mini at all soon. What they may well do is have a base Mac Pro that offers the same functionality as a reasonably well-spec'd Mini. However, it won't be cheap.
Yep, it’ll be a headless iMac Pro minus a couple features that they’ll leave out just to give you incentive to get the iMac pro.
M
There is also the rumored low cost MacBook, which is expected to replace the MacBook Air later this year. https://www.macrumors.com/2018/05/29/pegatron-to-make-arm-based-apple-macbook/
"Pegatron is likely to land orders from Apple to produce an ARM-based MacBook model, codenamed Star with a series number N84, according to industry sources."
Why did they sell it to begin with?
Why is it still for sale in it’s current crappy form?
You cannot deconflict those two answers, without showing Apple’s disdain for its customers.
A boosted up mini would be enemy to iMac, iMac Pro, Mac Pro and all the other well selling QuadCore (and more)-stuff; i think, they let him die ... *_*
Well, there was a troubled gestation for the MacBook Pro 2016 models which notably drew away engineering resources and thanks to keyboardgate (as nobody is calling it) and the more pressing Mac Pro update saga which blew up at the start of 2017 you have 2 reasons why the Mini was put on hold.
Somewhere on the horizon is an EOL date for the Haswell CPU that the Mini uses but Apple can just leave the Mini to tick over while they have bigger fish to fry. Perhaps there was no time to spend looking at a refreshed Mini with engineering resources stretched thin? In addition, with the latest rumours suggesting a further delay in Macs until possibly October - we could be looking at a repeat of the big gap between the 2015 and 2016 models - don't forget that the iMac didn't even get an update until the following year at WWDC 2017.
The delay is fairly bad news, with Coffee Lake representing a massive upgrade in compute power for PCs this year so Apple's delay is mystifying until you consider their engineering teams may be short staffed trying to solve the MacBook Pro problems while juggling with the modular Mac Pro having put some effort into the iMac Pro.
A delay for any Mac over a year is bad news, especially following last year's updates which saw the MacBook Pros getting updates after just 9 months (between 2016 and 2017) but the iMac dragged on from 2015 to 2017 while the MBA became a zombie and we all know about the Mini.
It's the MacBook Pro that I worry the most about. Just how strange will a 16 month gap between June 2017 and October 2018 be (if Apple wait until October 2018 to update) when October 2016 to June 2017 was just 9 months. The MBP is the flagship Mac in effect.
It would be nice to have a Mac Mini SKU be a base SKU Modular Mac Pro but we won't see the MMP until next year (probably WWDC 2019) and you can't even be sure the MMP won't just start at iMac Pro money and not get anywhere near the Mac Mini price wise.
Somewhere on the horizon is an EOL date for the Haswell CPU that the Mini uses but Apple can just leave the Mini to tick over while they have bigger fish to fry. Perhaps there was no time to spend looking at a refreshed Mini with engineering resources stretched thin? In addition, with the latest rumours suggesting a further delay in Macs until possibly October - we could be looking at a repeat of the big gap between the 2015 and 2016 models - don't forget that the iMac didn't even get an update until the following year at WWDC 2017.
The delay is fairly bad news, with Coffee Lake representing a massive upgrade in compute power for PCs this year so Apple's delay is mystifying until you consider their engineering teams may be short staffed trying to solve the MacBook Pro problems while juggling with the modular Mac Pro having put some effort into the iMac Pro.
A delay for any Mac over a year is bad news, especially following last year's updates which saw the MacBook Pros getting updates after just 9 months (between 2016 and 2017) but the iMac dragged on from 2015 to 2017 while the MBA became a zombie and we all know about the Mini.
It's the MacBook Pro that I worry the most about. Just how strange will a 16 month gap between June 2017 and October 2018 be (if Apple wait until October 2018 to update) when October 2016 to June 2017 was just 9 months. The MBP is the flagship Mac in effect.
It would be nice to have a Mac Mini SKU be a base SKU Modular Mac Pro but we won't see the MMP until next year (probably WWDC 2019) and you can't even be sure the MMP won't just start at iMac Pro money and not get anywhere near the Mac Mini price wise.
The Mini is effectively dead. Apple’s primary focus is on the iPhone and iPad, with computers losing more and more attention within the company with each passing day.
There’s no way Apple does the necessary upgrades to make the Mini viable again, as it would cannibalize their other offerings ... and then there’s the profit margin factor. Apple doesn’t do anything without massive margins ... there’s just no money for them to make with the Mini any more.
Meh. I guarantee if there was any significant money to be made there, Apple would be all over it. They are not all over it because there isn't. Desktop/laptop computers are evil necessities (at least for the time being) in the Apple ecosystem... making a competitive Mini would impact the sales of other Apple computers, so Timmy and the boys at Cupertino are just sitting on it.
Because Apple is a public company that only cares about the shareholders, iPhones are where Apple makes the majority of their money so that is where they concentrate their efforts. Gone are the days of Apple being a computer company.
...because Timmy thinks that you don't need a Mac and all you need is an iPad
The existence of an iMac Pro would seem contradict your claim. If anything the iPad is intended to take the place of cheap Macs
Just an additional point from my previous post but I presume Apple were waiting for the value Intel chipsets for the iMac - 300 series chipsets are required for Coffee Lake - so it's a bit more than just dropping the new CPU in. The B360 chipset can't have been out very long at this point.
Apple survived as a company at one point, pretty much solely on the pro customers - purchasing and evangelizing the brand. When those core Apple loyalists turned on the company as part of the 2016 MBP debacle, by rightfully calling out Apple for their design choices and the pathetic state of the Mac Pro, even anti-computer Timmy had to take notice and do/promise SOMETHING.
But all you have to do is look around at the people trying to get this iMac pro serviced. Apple isn’t prepared for it, and is pretty hostile is many cases.
Non-MBP/MB and regular iMacs, are loathed at Apple. If they could drop down to those three lines, Apple would do it in a heartbeat. But those damnned customers and their wants, how annoying for Apple, right?
Last edited:
... T.C. is thinking $$$ only and dreaming of a shade of Steven Jobs' charisma, noblesse and sense ... but neither him nor the the other Apple-deputy alphas represent it, them heartbeat has become $-binary!
Last edited:
Notwithstanding the expected price of the modular Mac Pro perhaps the spiralling repair costs are part of the motivation for the modular Mac Pro. If they are truly listening to professionals they want a minimum of downtime and I imagine if Apple Store staff aren't going to be qualified to work on it (witness the iMac Pro issues) then perhaps they want to be considering workshops where you can ship a Modular Mac Pro off for repair or perhaps some sort of on-site repair situation with Apple Care?
I can imagine having to wait while your 2016/17 MacBook Pro spends time at an Apple Store having the keyboard butchered for repair isn't ideal.
If Apple want to produce a repairable 'professional' range of Macs it could be differentiated from regular Mac with Xeon CPUs, using high spec SKUs only, and priced accordingly.
That's me.
I have never owned a Mac and I would like to buy a Mac of some description. The Mac Mini best suits my needs because I don't desperately need a laptop, I have a monitor and Mac Pro/iMac Pro are overkill for what I would use it for.
You may be surprised that it's mostly not the hardware that puts me off. If I bought one today it would be the mid-range 2.6GHz with a keyboard and mouse. The real concern is, having dropped £857 on it, Apple announces a new macOS 6 months or a year later that doesn't work with the Mini.
I wouldn't be overly worried about the Mini being outdated. The Haswell CPUs are 64 bit, the only worry for me is the RAM (specifically in the base model) which is soldered onto the motherboard. I think the Mini would get a lot more buyers if Apple bumped the spec or dropped the price. As it has been for close to 4 years untouched apart from a price increase in Europe due to currency exchanges issues following the BREXIT vote the reasons to not buy just make it less and less desirable.
There could be a range of reasons for it not being updated in the last 4 years, but we know that a Thunderbolt 3 equipped Mini would make it a very desirable purchase going forward virtually regardless of the rest of the internal spec due to the expansion options that port would afford.
I have a vague theory for the long term future though, in that proper macOS machines going forward in several years time may require some sort of ARM co-processor which might run some system essential OS tasks which would allow the system to run quieter or more efficiently in terms of battery life. The corollary would be that Hackintoshing would become much harder.
In that long term future the Mini may be exclusively ARM based at Mini price points.
You might have to worry about 6 years from now, but not 6 months (although I suppose they could introduce an ARM computer that is incompatible with all current Macs). Anyway, this is Apple's support policy for old computers. Note this is specifically for hardware support though, and software typically has even longer compatibility. Also note that when calculating the age of your computer, Apple uses the date when it was discontinued, and not the date when it was introduced or your purchase date. Since the 2014 Mini is still in production, it should be supported at least until 2023, probably longer.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201624
"Owners of iPhone, iPad, iPod, or Mac products may obtain service and parts from Apple or Apple service providers for 5 years after the product is no longer manufactured—or longer where required by law"
Then, why doesn't Apple sell its computer division to HP or something?