https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/08/report-apple-plans-mini-er-mac-mini-its-first-design-update-in-14-years/
What was "mini" in 2010 is not particularly mini in 2024.
Never gonna be a thing with the way Apple Silicon Macs are built.
I was hoping when the Mac Pro came out they'd do some sort of 2 tier memory solution where you have 32 gigs of very fast ram, and 1TB of slow RAM. But instead they just put glued two M2s together and called it a day.
This is the only thing that would justify a Mac Pro imo. I guess that and third party GPU support. The current one is silly with the studio existing.
I just hope a well specced Mini doesn't sell for more than the base model Studio, and still have worse specs.
Just give me 32 gigs of ram, 4 thunderbolt ports, and 10 gig ethernet so my poor i5 Mac Mini can retire. He's been screaming in pain.
If it’s smaller than the current mini, it’ll likely have a lot less ports. They’ll probably do this to push people to the Studio.
The article said smaller but taller, so I’m thinking Airport-shaped with still plenty of room for ports.
Article said one HDMI, at least 3 USB-C + power. Doesn’t mention Ethernet at all. Does the Apple TV have Ethernet? That looks like the form factor they’re starting from.
Last I checked they had two tiers of TV. Base model was WiFi only, and the slightly more expensive one had more storage and an Ethernet port.
Hopefully this will mean competitive pricing once again, since they have the Studio to take care of the pro-sumer market now.
Realistically they could just make this a hybrid model that can be either an entry level Mac or an Apple TV all in one device.
The “Apple Hub”, use it as an Apple TV or use as a lightweight family computer on your existing display. Perfect!
Then sell for $225 with 1TB nvme and 16GB RAM but no display or camera.
You know Apple will not do that price.
The 8 to 16gb ram upgrade for the MacBooks is $250 alone. For the upgrade to 1TB they charge $500
Likewise. The price point might be a bit higher but for a dual purpose device I’d probably go up to $349
I hope they don’t get stingy on the ports.
I know some people will “everything is usb-c now!” except everything isn’t, so stop.
I have a ten year old Mac Mini on my desk that has two FireWire, four usb, an sd card reader, and Ethernet. I still want most of these things (though, of course swap FireWire for some number of usb-c). I don’t want to HAVE to buy a dock for this machine.
In hearing that it’ll be smaller, my initial assumption is Apple will do the Apple thing and arbitrarily reduce the number of ports while saying “if you want more here’s the Mac Studio that’s way more expensive!”
If it’s the size of an Apple TV it will definitely only have a few ports. I can’t speak for anyone else but I’m personally fine with that, 1-2 USB-C, 1 USB-A, Ethernet, Power and HDMI would be fine IMO.
I think this was more of an issue when USB-C docks were less compatible and more expensive. Now you can get all the ports you need for $20. Just doesn’t seem like much of a big deal to me, when 90% of them are going to be connected to a monitor, wireless KB & mouse and WiFi and the occasional USB key or printer.
I had the original AppleTV back when it really was a “hobby”. It ran a lightly modified OS X (Tiger if I remember right). It was basically the same size as the current Mac Mini and a thinner version and design of the contemporaneous polycarbonate Mac Mini.
I had a Mac Mini as a media centre before I had an Apple TV.
Purposely bought a server model that fried both its drives, never to be seen again. It was not a happy experience, or one that I'd recommend.
The UI alone required both keyboard and mouse, you're forever dealing with on-screen alerts, none of the software is really intended for full screen use 100% if the time, etc.
On the plus side, you can have an on screen clock all the time if you want, something I've never achieved with the Apple TV.
Not sure why you're being down voted. I bought a 2012 Mac mini a few years ago and it ultimately became the media centre PC, but it was never perfect for the same reasons you said.
And this week the damn thing just died, absolutely no power. I presume the PSU died but yet to confirm. Now I'm planning to replace it with a Leader SN6 NUC I have around running some Linux distro with KDE and using the KDE Connect app to control it instead
And this week the damn thing just died
Just in time to buy the new one! Coincidence? Probably.
I've had good success using old laptops and old desktops running Linux as media center devices. The hardest part is getting them to recognize Windows networks, and that's not very hard at all. I thought I'd be removing some headaches by replacing the Linux machine with an Nvidia Shield device, but it has just caused different headaches, and is pretty slow. I'm about to start shopping for hardware to build a slick little mini PC for integration into my home theater system.
On what situation do people buy this over a macbook? When they absolutely need an ethernet port?
I already have a screen and keyboard and mouse and a desk and I don't care about it being portable (so don't need a battery). So I don't want to pay for what I already have or don't need.
Plus I need use those things for the Windows laptop that work gives me when I'm working at home.
If I needed portability, then yeah, sure Macbook makes more sense. But the desktop isn't dead just yet.
I'm not super bothered about it being smaller, it's quite small already, although I understand the current gen has a lot of empty space inside the case, so I guess it makes sense to make it smaller and it gives the marketing team something to talk about.
