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Desktops (Apple) OS X Software Apple Hardware Technology

Tim Cook Confirms the Mac Mini Isn't Dead (macrumors.com) 191

Posted by BeauHD from the life-support dept.
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 The current version is woefully outdated though, and continues to use Haswell processors and integrated Intel HD 5000/Intel Iris Graphics.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.
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Tim Cook Confirms the Mac Mini Isn't Dead More

Tim Cook Confirms the Mac Mini Isn't Dead

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  • Of course it's not dead... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    That which is dead cannot die.

  • Opportunist confirms (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Saturday October 21, 2017 @05:28AM (#55408587)

    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.

    • Apple like many companies has fallen to the bean counters which eventually put out successful companies to pasture. Not to die, but to become a zombie that barely resembles it's former self that feeds of the market: eating brains and following the herd of mutual funds.

      Tim is another money man who has transformed a company into a kind of mutual fund; the kind of thing that he was good at within the company helped him rise to power to the point where the core purposes were overtaken with the sole purpose of

  • The Mac Is Dead (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 21, 2017 @05:29AM (#55408589)

    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?

    • agreed the mac needs a come back and Tim Cook does not seem to push Intel for new hardware... yeah great LTE... what a waste of engineering at intel when a japanese form could have done the work

      intel need to focus their efforts on desktop Mac's and make that something to be proud of again !

      https://john.jones.name

    • Re:The Mac Is Dead (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 21, 2017 @07:27AM (#55408817)

      If they don't care about the mac mini they should at least allow third-party PC vendors to build one. I'm tired of the single supplier model (and corresponding higher prices) of mac hardware.

      The mac lineup needs a cheap desktop.

      • Re:The Mac Is Dead (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Saturday October 21, 2017 @07:38AM (#55408847)

        No, it needs a new desktop.

        The price of a Mac is at least partly justified by its hassle-free ecosystem. At least that's what it HAD. And yes, people are willing to pay a premium for the promise that their computer will "just work". This does unfortunately also require a single-supplier model to ensure that all components are up to the task, for you'll certainly find someone willing to cut corners (pardon the pun) and deliver a cheaper, crappier knockoff that does not work 100% of the time but only 90%, which isn't good enough if you want "just works".

        But their computers just went stale, this isn't "tried and forged in the fire of time", this is just "tired and to be fired in time".

        • Apple isn't good enough at software to support third party peripherals like graphics and I/O on their OS.

          It's as simple as that. They eventually gave up on producing a robust MacOS with preemptive multitasking and just rolled a GUI layer on top of a UNIX-like conglomeration from outside the company.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by hey! ( 33014 )

            Er, no. There is nothing Unix "-like" about NeXTSTEP, which is the basis for the MacOS; both NextSTEP and MacOS *are* Unixes descending from BSD 4.4.

            Apple had done a lot of excellent software when Jobs came in from Next and decided to bring NextStep with him. Hypercard and Applescript, for example. OpenDoc had tremendous promise, I thought, to simplify application development, although it had gotten a little ahead of what was typical hardware resources for the era (e.g. it added 2 MB of RAM to an app's m

        • I recently switched back to Linux. I couldn't be happier. As a bonus, GNU radio is easier to set up on Linux.

    • He probably understands that there's work to be done, he just doesn't understand why anyone would want a Mac for that.

      And in the state the Mac computers are today, neither do I.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by deviated_prevert ( 1146403 )

        He probably understands that there's work to be done, he just doesn't understand why anyone would want a Mac for that.

        And in the state the Mac computers are today, neither do I.

        If a new mac mini came with the possibility of a connection system that could have other important functions attached to it, it could take over a great deal of very different functions.

        These important functions are defined by the users, who include but is not limited to every, music composer, rock band, portable music studio, mobile teaching institution or teachers. Perhaps even flexible connections for CNC, chemical controls, specialized industrial controls. The list is only limited to the inventive capac

      • Walk around Apple, and you see the real hardware work - schematic capture, PCB layout, mechanical engineering - all done on Windows. Sure, it's Bootcamp on Apple hardware, but OSX doesn't support a single professional package needed to actually ENGINEER their hardware products...

    • he has caused the Mac to lose about a third of its users.

      Citation? Over 8 years, Mac sales appear to be flat [macrumors.com], but I don't see them declining.

    • Apple should be split in three internally:
      - Macs + macOS
      - iPhone/iPad/iWatch + iOS
      - AirPorts, Time Capsule, etc

      And don't leave the industrial designers in charge of GUIs. They seem to lack the necessary knowledge.

      And like it or not, bring back Scott Forstall. Watch his parts of keynotes again. He's one of the few who seemed to understand how things should work. He should be the one in charge of Macs and macOS.

      And Mr. Cook... your job is to lead Apple. That means all things Apple, not just the damn iPhone an

    • 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?

      How can you be so decisive about Apple management? Even if I think Apple would do better with Jobs (for a number of reasons including an important one: staff dedication), Cook is in charge of more than 100 thousand people worldwide and the company did not fall apart, so far. Initially, he couldn't take the risk to largely innovate and (if that didn't work) being accused of breaking Jobs' work. Now the time has come to change and innovate, and that should come from someone else. After Jobs' death, Cook took

    • I've been saying this for years now. Tim Cook actually is a decent COO and should be paid perhaps $200K/year in such a role (what he's worth to the company). *Anybody* can do what he's doing, which is to keep the company doing what it's doing. I hate to say that, but Jobs did something very different, which was the actual CEO's job. Cook is not a CEO.

      I'm glad the Mini is still around, but my fear is that Cook's idea is to remove all the ports and sell a box that has a power cord and a power switch.

      • You have to wonder if Steve Jobs pushed the guy into the position for purely selfish/narcissistic reasons, knowing he would fail thereby 'proving' that he was the heart of Apple. Or maybe there just was nobody else.

    • 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

    • It's not just Tim Cook. After the iPhone was released, a lot of people who had been at Apple from the Next days began to retire. The average quality of libraries at the code level began to suffer first, then it became more and more noticeable (XCode? What monstrosity of Agility got inflicted on that?) Now there are strange things like the touch bar. The drop in quality is obvious because good people left and they got infected by process.
    • He was a supply chain guy, logistics. No vision.

  • The way Apple talks about the Mini... (Score:3)

    by hcs_$reboot ( 1536101 ) on Saturday October 21, 2017 @05:30AM (#55408591)
    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!

  • Pining for the fjords (Score:5, Funny)

    by Carewolf ( 581105 ) on Saturday October 21, 2017 @06:22AM (#55408691) Homepage

    If they hadnt glued to a stick it would be pushing up the daisies.

    • It has gone on an extended excursion to meet Steve Jobs.

      The Mac Mini is an X Box.... No wait, that's not right.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Megane ( 129182 )
        A modern soldered-4GB Mac Mini isn't useful for much more than a media player. I got one cheap and that's actually what I use it for, as a MythTV client. But you can actually use an Xbox to play games.

    • Well, it hears the call of its master...

  • They aren't dead, they're on life support (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tlhIngan ( 30335 ) <slashdot.worf@net> on Saturday October 21, 2017 @06:29AM (#55408703)

    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.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The Mac Pro does have a future - a tiny one for the tiny population of people who really need the power it has.

      The MA Pro doesn't have much in the way of power. A $300 Ryzen 7 will outperform a Mac Pro on most things. A $500 one will. And a $1000 Threadripper will thrash a $4000 (upgraded CPU price) Mac Pro.

      I can go to Amazon and have on my desk, tomorrow, for $2000, a 16 core, 32 thread, 128GB system with a TB SSD. I can get more ram and a faster nvme too if I needed it. Apple would START pricing at $3999 for an 8/16 with 32GB and 256GB.

      There is precisely one reason to buy Apple for development work:
      You want to se

      • Re:They aren't dead, they're on life support (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Paul Fernhout ( 109597 ) on Saturday October 21, 2017 @10:42AM (#55409549) Homepage

        "I can go to Amazon and have on my desk, tomorrow, for $2000, a 16 core, 32 thread, 128GB system with a TB SSD. I can get more ram and a faster nvme too if I needed it. Apple would START pricing at $3999 for an 8/16 with 32GB and 256GB."

        The closest I see on Amazon to those specs on Amazon is around US$5000 for "ADAMANT 16X-Core Liquid Cooled Workstation Desktop PC AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X 3.4Ghz 128Gb DDR4 5TB HDD 500Gb M.2 SSD 1000W PSU AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 8GB |3Year Warranty & Lifetime Tech Support|".

        That is US$3000 more than you said was on Amazon and comparable with what you said Apple pricing would be.

        So, links or it didn't happen. :-)

        That said, I agree with much of the recent grousing about Apple about limitations for a professional computer user (like few ports, short battery life, and no pen interface on the recent MacBook Pro) or excessive costs and a short warranty for a home user for what you get (which has been true on and off for Apple for decades, but the OS and better design used to make up for some of that). Also, the move to lead-free solder across the industry has caused much early failures of Apple equipment (including a MacBook Pro I have from ~2011 and otherwise might still be using).

        On the other hand, my multi-core Mac Pro from 2008 still works remarkably well (after various upgrades for memory, SSD, and graphics). And older MacBook Pros from the 2010 time period otherwise seemed like a fairly good deal at the time even maybe up to 2015 -- especially if you wanted a centered trackpad on a 15" laptop. And going further back to when Apple was more innovative, the Newton was groundbreaking and just reaching potential success with the MP2000 with the StrongArm. I liked having multiple monitor support on Nubus when many Windows users could not even understand multiple monitors setups were possible with a computer. HyperCard came from Apple and is still an amazing idea even now. And Squeak Smalltalk was/is neat.

        So, yes, it is hard to look at an Apple with massive amounts of cash in the bank and wonder, why can't they produce innovation or a compelling professional computer anymore? Aside from early quality issues for both, Microsoft seems to be doing better with the SurfaceBook Pro and the Lenovo Yoga 720 seems amazing.

        For me, the biggest disappointment given Apple's roots and the initial 1984video advertisement for the Mac, is perhaps that one might hope, as with HyperCard, Apple might take the side of the users against, say, social media surveillance, creating a "FreedomBox" Mac Mini..

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
        "In one interpretation of the commercial, "1984" used the unnamed heroine to represent the coming of the Macintosh (indicated by her white tank top with a stylized line drawing of Appleâ(TM)s Macintosh computer on it) as a means of saving humanity from "conformity" (Big Brother).["

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
        "FreedomBox is a community project to develop, design and promote personal servers running free software for distributed social networking, email and audio/video communications."

        Guess Linux is carrying on that idea... Writing this using Gallium OS on a repurposed Chromebook...

    • The mac mini used to have a reason to exist, back when it had four cores. That was the only time, though. Nobody is quite sure why Apple expected to sell the cost-reduced version.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by epine ( 68316 )

        The mac mini used to have a reason to exist, back when it had four cores. That was the only time, though. Nobody is quite sure why Apple expected to sell the cost-reduced version.

        Yes, and that's the irony here, because if Apple were still selling an even more outdated version at exactly same price as it's original price (with the accessible RAM slots), it would still be a vastly better value than their current offering.

        Before it became merely unloved and neglected, upon its design was inflicted grievous bod

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        The mac mini used to have a reason to exist, back when it had four cores. That was the only time, though. Nobody is quite sure why Apple expected to sell the cost-reduced version.

        At least that you can blame on Intel. The Mac Mini's motherboard (the "logic board" in Apple speak) is a single socket. There's only one chip Intel makes that shares a socket with both i5s and i7s, which lets you have a quad core i5, but only a dual core i7.

    • These models don't need to be "best sellers". They need to fill niches which are not filled by any of their other models. Apple don't have a powerful and expandable system for high-end usage; none of their current offerings are good for that. Something that you can fill full of storage, GPUs and other PCI-E boards and do some serious stuff with. We'd buy them for work if they were available; we used to have several G5 towers. We also had several Xserves; if we could buy a current rackmount system we would. The mini is a desktop without a built-in display like the imac; I'd buy one if they made it a decent spec. At work, we develop cross-platform software and struggle greatly with Mac hardware. We need CI systems and would use a rackmount of pro tower for this if one was available. We use a couple of minis on a rack shelf, but they are miserable for CPU, storage and remote management. We use MacBook pros for personal use, but they are also woeful; they are handily beaten by a Dell a quarter of the price. I spend most of my time using Linux for development as a result; you can develop on a much more capable system: huge amount of storage, and as much CPU and memory as you like, plus a decent keyboard. Apple have badly dropped the ball here. They should be making high end systems to showcase the very best they have to offer. It doesn't matter about dedicating massive engineering resources to it; a tower is a tower, and it's not a fashion statement unlike their other models. I care more about what's inside the box.

      • > These models don't need to be "best sellers"

        No, but I saw a recently bought Mac Pro being booted up. With Yosemite (OS X 10.14). That thing had been sitting in a box somewhere for THREE years.

        They don't need to be best sellers but I don't have to tell you that for computer hardware, the above situation is complete bonkers.

    • Re:They aren't dead, they're on life support (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Dutch Gun ( 899105 ) on Saturday October 21, 2017 @09:05AM (#55409143)

      Mac Minis fill an important niche role. They're great when you need a secondary Mac computer at low costs for various task. At a recent job, we installed a Mac Mini as a signing server. Anything more powerful would have been a complete waste of a computer. Pros were used for the primary build servers, but I felt bad for the IT people trying to rack-mount those cylindrical monstrosities.

      In my own case, if the Mac Mini did not exist, it's questionable whether or not I'd have created a Mac port for my game. For $800, I was able to purchase an inexpensive Mac and hook it up to my system with a KVM switch. I also have a similarly specced Linux dev box hooked up this way as well. This allows me to quickly switch between the three three major desktop OS dev environments. So, now, my game will be released on Windows, Mac, and Linux from day one.

      Unless Apple allows third-party macOS machines to be built, it has to remain somewhat attuned to the needs of power-users and developers, who occasionally need niche products like the Mini and Pro. With these niches fulfilled, these users may turn elsewhere, and possibly have a proportionally significant impact on the rest of the ecosystem. Keep in mind that iPhone developers still need a Mac desktop machine to build apps.

      • I assume that they are concerned that this would make it too easy on hackintosh or something; but if they are going to ignore the segment, it'd be nice if Apple would just offer some sort of license that blesses a VM to run OSX.

        I've had to deal with a few of the 'put a mac mini in because we need a little bit of OSX' situations; and it just kind of sucks. They aren't as magnificently unrackable as the "pro"(is anything?); but are otherwise more or less wholly unsuitable. We would have happily paid Apple

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by rl117 ( 110595 )
          Likewise, at my work we would be very happy to ditch the awful mac minis for VMs on our beefy ESX cluster. And we would be happy to pay for it, just as we do for other software licensing. It wouldn't even lose them money--we would still be using Macs as client systems; we would simply be using more appropriate hardware in the datacentre.

    • 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.

      If Apple really wanted to dedicate minimal amount of engineering they could have given the processor and memory a bump and swapped out the 5400RPM HDD for a SSD. It would have been a decent (if uninspiring) upgrade.

      Alas, for a product they consider "important", they could

      • That's what I did to a core2duo mini. SSD and RAM maxed out. Still working as a media center, even if Amazon down-rezes the picture because the Thunderbolt port is one iteration before HDCP nonsense. If you Open Save and Print, with occasional video, you don't need anything newer. The Core2Duo can run 1080p. Ok, I wouldn't game on it, but for internet video, seamless.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kwerle ( 39371 )

      And all that is find. Not really, but whatever.

      It's a 4 year old computer. Sell it for 30% of its 4 year ago price.

  • So, the price will go up (again) or it won't fit its niche anymore?

  • Don't care. Where's my full sized tower? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sandbagger ( 654585 ) on Saturday October 21, 2017 @07:03AM (#55408779)

    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.

    • If it uses 110 volt, that's less than half the voltage in most of the world

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
      I think it uses all the wolts anyhow, but how many amps do you think it will need?

    • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

      by DNS-and-BIND ( 461968 )
      Towers are last century's tech. You think any of Apple's designers would be caught dead creating something like that? The future is tablets, my friend. You think a designer is going to get her next job with "designed a tower PC" on her resume? She'd be laughed out of Linkedin.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by l20502 ( 4813775 )
      But older tower macs seem pretty finicky with power [youtu.be] compared to common ATX power supplies.

    • It should use all 110 volts coming out of the wall

      It does already. What it doesn't is using all the amperes coming out of the wall.

  • Apple makes desktops!? I thought they were a phone company!/s

  • What the "market" will actually decide is something different.

  • Weasel words (Score:5, Insightful)

    by damn_registrars ( 1103043 ) <damn.registrars@gmail.com> on Saturday October 21, 2017 @07:31AM (#55408823) Homepage Journal
    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.
  • but it is underpowered and a little dated, they need to up the specs to a quad core i7 and 16 gigs ram, with some newer video gpu,

    i like the new Mac Pro, the black round one that looks like a waste basket, they look well built, and for 3000+ bucks they damn well better be

  • Sorry Tim, I can't hear those words without thinking of the Monty Python bit from "Holy Grail"

  • Intel NUC (Score:4, Informative)

    by crow ( 16139 ) on Saturday October 21, 2017 @08:38AM (#55409059) Homepage Journal

    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.

    • From what I've read in most hackintosh threads, if you stick with an Intel CPU the problems are usually related to wi-fi, bluetooth and audio. If using an AMD or nVidia GPU, sticking with something already used by Apple is usually enough.

  • Among the iSheep. Among the rest of us, utter indifference.

  • The current version is woefully outdated (Score:3)

    by DontBeAMoran ( 4843879 ) on Saturday October 21, 2017 @08:50AM (#55409097)

    The current version is woefully outdated though, and continues to use Haswell processors and integrated Intel HD 5000/Intel Iris Graphics.

    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.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      HUH? You can upgrade the internal drive to SSD quite easily. Actually my Mac mini came with SSD.

      • So what? Given the way Apple are going, upgrades are becoming either extremely hard or impossible to do. All Macs should have an SSD in 2017. Apple has enough courage to dump USB-A ports but is still clinging to mechanical HDDs as if their profits depended on it. No more HDDs, no more fusion drives either. There's so little flash in the latest versions as to be useless.

  • Apple is waiting to release the new Mini at the same time as OS 11. And then say, "Sorry older Mini users. You'll just need to upgrade."

  • ... it certainly looks neglected. How long has it been since the last real upgrade to the Macmini hardware?

  • Don't go by what Tim says, go by what he does (Score:3)

    by Whatsmynickname ( 557867 ) on Saturday October 21, 2017 @09:43AM (#55409297)
    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 tw

  • The Mac Mini died for us when they removed the ability to expand the RAM and the Kensington lock port, making them utterly unsuitable for deployment in labs and classrooms. With the MacBook, one might have (falsely) tried to argue that such moves were "necessary" (nope) to make it thinner (even though nobody wanted it thinner) but with the Mac Mini, the thing is the same damn size. This proved that the move to eliminate expandable memory served no other purpose than to screw over users and ensure they have

  • I have no inside information or anything, so take this at face value .... just an educated guess by a guy who follows the industry.

    But all of the recent rumors about what the next Mac Pro workstation will be lines up nicely with a new Mac Mini. Basically, the next Mac Pro should be a very modular system that allows you to build it with as much or as little as you need.

    It makes a lot of sense that you could start such a machine with a "base" that's essentially a Mac Mini. You could design the case so the exp

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