Heads Up! 2018 Mac Mini "Pro" = More Money!

[audiophile65]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-20/apple-is-said-to-plan-revamped-low-cost-macs-to-reignite-sales

 

Yep! The 2018 Mac Mini "Pro" will, no doubt, be more expensive than past Mini's with a much greater emphasis on professional users. Eighth-generation Intel processors and more beefier innards will surely drive the new Mini to prices not seen before. Also, the Mini will not be so "mini" anymore -- expect a more robust size this time around.

 

Looks like I'm going for 2014 later this month or September, as we will not see the new Mini or other new Macs until, at the earliest, October.

[One and a half]

Hey maybe the spittoon or trash can style will make a comeback.

 

The elephant in the room is this headline. When a company takes focus off what it started with, the heritage is lost and cannot be built up again with only memories of past glories.

• Apple reported fewest Mac sales since 2010 during last quarter

[gmgraves]

49 minutes ago, audiophile65 said:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-20/apple-is-said-to-plan-revamped-low-cost-macs-to-reignite-sales

 

Yep! The 2018 Mac Mini "Pro" will, no doubt, be more expensive than past Mini's with a much greater emphasis on professional users. Eighth-generation Intel processors and more beefier innards will surely drive the new Mini to prices not seen before. Also, the Mini will not be so "mini" anymore -- expect a more robust size this time around.

 

Looks like I'm going for 2014 later this month or September, as we will not see the new Mini or other new Macs until, at the earliest, October.

I think that this move was inevitable. After all, what is a Mini (circuit-wise) if not a headless iMac? And we all know that Apple introduced the iMac Pros last year with either an 8, 10, 14, or 18 core Xeon "W" running at over 4 GHz. I would never buy an iMac because I think an all-in-one, while an attractive package, has the some of the same problems as does an audio receiver. If one part goes up-the-pipe, you've lost the whole system. It is has recently been brought to my attention the importance of a separate display as my 2009 vintage HNC 25" monitor died recently. These things simply do not last forever. The $5000 starting price of the iMac Pro makes my skepticism of the all-in-one "integrated" concept even more acute. With the iMac Pros starting at five-grand, expect the "Mini Pro" to start at at least $3.5 K and going north from there. 

[wgscott]

25 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

I think that this move was inevitable. After all, what is a Mini (circuit-wise) if not a headless iMac? And we all know that Apple introduced the iMac Pros last year with either an 8, 10, 14, or 18 core Xeon "W" running at over 4 GHz. I would never buy an iMac because I think an all-in-one, while an attractive package, has the some of the same problems as does an audio receiver. If one part goes up-the-pipe, you've lost the whole system. It is has recently been brought to my attention the importance of a separate display as my 2009 vintage HNC 25" monitor died recently. These things simply do not last forever. The $5000 starting price of the iMac Pro makes my skepticism of the all-in-one "integrated" concept even more acute. With the iMac Pros starting at five-grand, expect the "Mini Pro" to start at at least $3.5 K and going north from there. 

 

At least you can take a receiver apart with a screwdriver, instead of a pizza cutter, a bunch of suction cups, a guitar pick and then you have to glue the whole mess back together, just to replace a hard drive and failing power supply.  (Yes, I am bitter about this.)

[asdf1000]

29 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

expect the "Mini Pro" to start at at least $3.5 K and going north from there. 

 

Oh wow. Hope not.

 

USD1200 for an 8th Gen i7 with 16gb DDR4 RAM and 250gb SSD Mac Mini would be nice.

 

More expensive than the equivalent Intel NUC is be expected, but I would hope not USD3.5k kind of expensive.

 

[rando]

I highly expect all of these new computers to ship with the new 9th gen Intel chips and high MSRP's as a casualty of RAM prices. 

 

This is actually the only apple product that might interest me slightly in a number of years.

 

 

[Panelhead]

  This is great. I really do not need another Mini. But maybe you cannot have too many. 

  The RAM should not add that much, 16 GD should be 300.00, a 512 GB SSD another 300.00. So maybe 1500.00 all tricked out.

    

[koupa]

I would like to see an option with two disks. Maybe a M2 as a boot device and an 2,5 - 3,5 internal. It would be an excellent media player.

[gmgraves]

17 hours ago, wgscott said:

 

At least you can take a receiver apart with a screwdriver, instead of a pizza cutter, a bunch of suction cups, a guitar pick and then you have to glue the whole mess back together, just to replace a hard drive and failing power supply.  (Yes, I am bitter about this.)

Well yes. for that small portion of the population who is qualified to do their own troubleshooting and repair, the fact that Minis, in general, are very difficult to disassemble is off-putting in the extreme. When my mini died, several year ago, I thought it was the power supply, so I watched an online video showing how to disassemble one. One look at that and I got cold feet and took the thing to the Apple store. Let them fix it. Turned out it was a good thing that I didn't order a new power supply on E-bay like I started to do because my "diagnosis" was wrong. It was not the power supply, but the Mboard that was bad. Apple charged me almost $600 to fix it! The price Apple charges for parts is what made me somewhat bitter. It's outrageous. I could have come very close to buying a new, faster Mini for that much money. But my whole life was on that computer so I grudgingly paid it. I suspect that one would have to be  a Swiss watchmaker to take one those puppies apart and reassemble it successfully!

[gmgraves]

17 hours ago, Em2016 said:

 

Oh wow. Hope not.

 

USD1200 for an 8th Gen i7 with 16gb DDR4 RAM and 250gb SSD Mac Mini would be nice.

 

More expensive than the equivalent Intel NUC is be expected, but I would hope not USD3.5k kind of expensive.

 

Not for a 8 core Xeon. Especially Given the price of the comparable iMac ($5000). To come up with the price of USD3.5K, I just subtracted what I thought the 27" screen is worth. Whatever the price, I expect the thing to be lightning fast. Those Xeon are that!

[Ralf11]

Restricting how drug users can modify their delivery devices means that it is easier to support the devices.

 

It also means they are forced to upgrade more often...

 

And... it means that the Vision of a Unitary Esthetic is realized.  Of course, you may regard that as a Jobsian Nightmare.

 

I am bitter that Apple's worthless OS "upgrade" broke the search function in the Finder (on both my machines) and they have not fixed it after a year since they "were able to duplicate it in engineering."

 

 

[gmgraves]

23 minutes ago, koupa said:

I would like to see an option with two disks. Maybe a M2 as a boot device and an 2,5 - 3,5 internal. It would be an excellent media player.

My Mini is circa 2012, and it has room (I've read) for two 2.5" drives. I wanted to put a pair of 1TB SSDs in the thing, but ended-up putting the second disc in an external USB housing due to the difficulty of taking a Mini apart. (just watch the video on OWC's web site (www.macsales.com) It will dissuade the most intrepid of DIY'ers from attempting to take the thing apart! 

[wgscott]

40 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

Well yes. for that small portion of the population who is qualified to do their own troubleshooting and repair, the fact that Minis, in general, are very difficult to disassemble is off-putting in the extreme. When my mini died, several year ago, I thought it was the power supply, so I watched an online video showing how to disassemble one. One look at that and I got cold feet and took the thing to the Apple store. Let them fix it. Turned out it was a good thing that I didn't order a new power supply on E-bay like I started to do because my "diagnosis" was wrong. It was not the power supply, but the Mboard that was bad. Apple charged me almost $600 to fix it! The price Apple charges for parts is what made me somewhat bitter. It's outrageous. I could have come very close to buying a new, faster Mini for that much money. But my whole life was on that computer so I grudgingly paid it. I suspect that one would have to be  a Swiss watchmaker to take one those puppies apart and reassemble it successfully!

 

I've done it with the minis.  The newer iMacs (2012 and newer) are a whole different world of hurt.

[wgscott]

24 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

My Mini is circa 2012, and it has room (I've read) for two 2.5" drives. I wanted to put a pair of 1TB SSDs in the thing, but ended-up putting the second disc in an external USB housing due to the difficulty of taking a Mini apart. (just watch the video on OWC's web site (www.macsales.com) It will dissuade the most intrepid of DIY'ers from attempting to take the thing apart! 

 

It is actually not all that bad.  I have two internal SSDs in mine (a 2012 mini), and a third in an external drive.

[gmgraves]

14 minutes ago, wgscott said:

 

I've done it with the minis.  The newer iMacs (2012 and newer) are a whole different world of hurt.

Amen to that, brother! I won't touch the inside of my Mini. 

[gmgraves]

14 minutes ago, wgscott said:

 

It is actually not all that bad.  I have two internal SSDs in mine (a 2012 mini), and a third in an external drive.

You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!

[Ralf11]

I am holding onto my 2012 Mini for just this reason (plus possible use of the Firewire port).  The 750 HDD is plenty to hold the current music library, which is now on a newer iMac.

[semente]

19 hours ago, gmgraves said:

I think that this move was inevitable. After all, what is a Mini (circuit-wise) if not a headless iMac? And we all know that Apple introduced the iMac Pros last year with either an 8, 10, 14, or 18 core Xeon "W" running at over 4 GHz. I would never buy an iMac because I think an all-in-one, while an attractive package, has the some of the same problems as does an audio receiver. If one part goes up-the-pipe, you've lost the whole system. It is has recently been brought to my attention the importance of a separate display as my 2009 vintage HNC 25" monitor died recently. These things simply do not last forever. The $5000 starting price of the iMac Pro makes my skepticism of the all-in-one "integrated" concept even more acute. With the iMac Pros starting at five-grand, expect the "Mini Pro" to start at at least $3.5 K and going north from there. 

Can't you buy a pill-shaped Mac Pro for less than 2k?

[gmgraves]

8 minutes ago, semente said:

Can't you buy a pill-shaped Mac Pro for less than 2k?

Certainly not new. The cheapest of the cylindrical Mac Pros is $3000, but they don't have the latest Xeons in them. They are only 3.5 GHz processor and 6 Core (at that price). The iMac Pro is a later 4.3 GHz Xeon W and 8 core (minimum) plus a 27-inch screen. Even though the Mini Pro is probably inevitable, from a marketing standpoint, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me unless they can make it for significantly cheaper than the Mac Pro (which is only about 6-inches tall, itself).  

[semente]

Up to now I have been using a MacBook Pro feeding a Raspberry Pi with the HQP endpoint. But since there's no functional Linux driver for my new DAC I have connected the MBP to the TEAC using USB.

The TEAC only takes DSD128 so I don't need a very powerful machine for the time being, though I may try to use HQP to perform room correction.

I wonder if I should consider getting a headless Mac but definitely not at those prices.

[mrvco]

2 hours ago, gmgraves said:

Not for a 8 core Xeon. Especially Given the price of the comparable iMac ($5000). To come up with the price of USD3.5K, I just subtracted what I thought the 27" screen is worth. Whatever the price, I expect the thing to be lightning fast. Those Xeon are that!

 

$3.5k is Mac Pro money.  I'd expect something headless nearing the price range of the current non-Pro iMac models.

 

I'm just hoping for a Mac Mini (pro or otherwise) that can run 2 displays at 4k60 (or 5k60 so it can be used with the Ultrafine display)... that costs less than the Mac Pro and has comparable performance to the non-Pro iMacs.  I'm ready to move on from the iMac for my desktop... oh and I'm read for a Retina MacBook Air too ? . ... and then there is my 2012 core i7 MacMini running HQP and Roon Core ?

[Panelhead]

  I have three Mini’s and had another. Changing out the drive is not that difficult once past the initial fear of killing it. 

  Getting the locating pins  drive seated on the blind side is the key. Once seated it is easy. 

  After swapping at least 6 it is a 30 minute job from start to finish. 

  Takes me longer to SuperDuper a new drive than to install.

  Reminds me there is a 512 Samsung 860 upstAirs waiting to be cloned and installed. 

  Prices are through the floor for SSD. The 512 GB Samsung was 129.00 at Fry’s. 

  I heard the 2014 and later are not RAM or disc upgradable. Maybe this Mini Pro will offer this function.

[audiophile65]

I'm just wondering about something. If I got my 2014 Mac Mini with 1TB 5400 RPM internal HDD (instead of gouging for a much more expensive 2 TB internal Fusion Drive), and I do currently have 2 2TB USB 3.0 HDDs (OWC's) and 2 1TB USB 2.0 HDDs (Oyen MiniPro's) as backups (yes, a total of 4 backup ext. HDDs, all with nothing but music), I was wondering if I would be able to use yet another external drive (an HDD or even an SSD hooked into one of the Mini's 4 USB3.0 ports) as an additional means of a music source? It might not be very practical in the long run, but again I thought I'd bring up the question.

[Ralf11]

Thumperbolt is a very good interface - is that what you want to use?   Even USB 2.0 should work if buffered well.

 

OWC is the go to for add-ons.

[gmgraves]

5 hours ago, mrvco said:

 

$3.5k is Mac Pro money.  I'd expect something headless nearing the price range of the current non-Pro iMac models.

 

I'm just hoping for a Mac Mini (pro or otherwise) that can run 2 displays at 4k60 (or 5k60 so it can be used with the Ultrafine display)... that costs less than the Mac Pro and has comparable performance to the non-Pro iMacs.  I'm ready to move on from the iMac for my desktop... oh and I'm read for a Retina MacBook Air too ? . ... and then there is my 2012 core i7 MacMini running HQP and Roon Core ?

I hope you're right. But how could an iMac with the 4.3 GHz Xeon W sell for five grand and a headless version of same sell for less than half of that? Perhaps if Apple uses the older, slower, Xeon chips and relegates the number of cores to 6 or 8, they could get by with selling the thing for $2000-$2500. If so, it would be worth looking at.