An Important Part of Our Product Line Going Forward
It’s been three years since the current Mac mini was released on Oct 16, 2014. “All About That Bass” was the number one song in the land. Four hundred million humans have been born since that day and have never known a new Mac mini. My daughter is one of them. She already walks and talks and just moved to her big-girl bed. Three years is a long time.
Even as a new machine in 2014, the size was unchanged. With every other Apple product shrinking, the Mac mini has kept the same shape for 7 years, despite losing options like optical drives, dual drives, and port variations. Keeping this same shape has been great for our data center rack plans, but I wouldn’t mind seeing the next version…
MacRumors reader Krar 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.
[…]
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.
Schiller: “On that I’ll say 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. … The Mac Mini remains a product in our lineup, but nothing more to say about it today.”
Update (2017-10-20): Bob Burrough:
In my opinion, the Mac mini is supremely damning, because the minimum effort is just updating the CPU, RAM, storage each year. They didn’t.
Like how would they answer “Why didn’t you update the Mac mini?”
“We’re undergoing a difficult and sophisticated redesign.” I don’t think so.
But, over the past few years, you’ve likely noticed a growing concern across the web that Apple doesn’t care about the Mac any more. I doubt that sentiment would be as significant or as pervasive if Apple were providing spec bump updates along the way.
[…]
Also, for what it’s worth, I think it’s difficult to justify charging the as-new price on a Mac that hasn’t been updated in three years. Not from a sales perspective, mind you, but from an ethics perspective — Macs aren’t houses, for example, and 2014 was a long time ago in technology terms.
Update (2017-10-24): Jason Snell:
I can see how those who are pessimistic about Apple’s current and future stewardship of the Mac platform would choose to believe that this statement provides no information about the company’s plans. But I’m not one of them. I think there will be a new Mac mini and I hope that when we finally see it, it’s the smallest one yet.
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The Mac lineup is showing an alarming lack of strategy. It really is concerning, considering all devs have to use a Mac to create their apps.
MacBook: Too slow even for heavy browsing, botched ports and keyboard
MacBook Air: Shitty display, still great connectivity
MacBook Pro: Too expensive at the low end, not powerful enough at the high end, irritating touch bar, botched ports and keyboard
iMac: This lineup is actually quite sensible
Mac Pro: A thousand years old, no PCI slots, no 5K option
Mac Mini: Crippled, neglected, old, long forgotten and never truly loved by Apple
Why is Mac progress so stuck? It‘s actually easy to give people what they want: Put the MBP chips with iMac ports in the Mini. Make a tower case with some PCI slots and lots of RAM banks. Release a 5K display without the iMac attached. Stop fucking with the perfectly fine scissor-key keyboard and make the desktop ones backlit. It‘s all way easier than making a better iPhone, for crying out loud!
Sorry for the /rant.
Not really missing 5K here for the Mac Pro.
Still using an Apple 30" display with the thunderbolt+USB -> Dual DVI adapter (the one that is a complete failure on MacBooks but works like a charm on the Mac Pro).
@Lee the Mac Pro maybe old, but it does do 5K via dual DisplayPort. I've had mine hooked up to a 5K Dell UP2715K for a couple of years now. Works perfectly.
