Imagining a new Mac mini: What would you like to see?

rayz336

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Mar 10, 2011
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I'd like to see it get smaller since Apple removed the disc drive. That coupled with the latest Intel chips and at least a terabyte hard drive would be a good Mac Mini for me.
 

Chuck08

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Jul 26, 2013
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I could see them putting in extra ports (thunderbolt or USB 3) and getting rid of onboard storage all together. External harddrives are "cheap" for the consumer and it would save space and let them put in nicer components while keeping the price low.
 

Art Tabb

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Jan 24, 2014
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I saw a 2.3 quad-core i7 Mac mini with 8 gigs RAM got within 10 points of the new quad-core Xeon Mac Pro on Geekbench 3 today. Given that, it doesn't need much, and Apple probably knows this better than anybody. Anyway, here's what I'd like to see:
Haswell processors for the graphics only. Leave the rest (and cost) as is.
I agree with Peter: trade in the Firewire port for a second Thunderbolt port and raise it to Thunderbolt 2.
WiFi up to ac.
Leave the rest as is. An internal PCIe plus SATA could increase the price. Let's not go there. The current Mac mini Fusion drive runs just over 500 R/W on Blackmagic, which is plenty.
 

Brynmr

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I have a 2009 Mac Mini which is buggy beyond belief. Slow, freezes, coughs and chokes along at a frustrating pace. For us people living on a fixed income, or anyone with limited means, I'd like to see a Mini that could last 8 or more years without having to buy a completely new machine. Maybe a few less expensive tweaks/upgrades along the way. Some of us just want to be on social media. We don't need any more storage space or faster process times. I have 3 Minis that apart from the browser work just fine. Give me a $100 upgrade to get one of them functioning smoothly online.
 

Tomaburque

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Jan 20, 2014
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The Iris Pro graphics in the new Haswell chip are about 2x better than current integrated graphics and should be good enough for some low end 3d gaming. The new chipset for Haswell has PCIe to unbottle neck the pipeline to the SSD.

What I would really like to see is a headless iMac with desktop class cpu and discrete graphics I can use with my own monitor.
 

Algus

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Apr 22, 2013
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I haven't been unhappy with what I can push on my Ivy Bridge GPU but my poor old Mac Mini has to get shut down and take a breather after long gaming sessions. I'm really optimistic about the kind of performance I'd be able to get out of a Haswell with Iris GPU for the games that I play.

Now I just wish Apple would announce something because I've been putting off upgrading my current unit in the hopes that I could grab a Haswell i7 and upgrade that but I may have to settle.
 

TechnologyTwitt

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Oct 28, 2013
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What's the general consensus on the $499 model Mac Mini, to be used for conventional browsing, email, document creation, etc. Probably the most pressing thing it will see is World of Warcraft.

Any feedback would be appreciated.
 

TechnologyTwitt

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Just fine for all those tasks except not sure on WoW. But it would definitely benefit from upgrading the RAM to 8GB. And apparently you cannot upgrade memory later on like with prior Mac minis so you'll be stuck with only 4GB forever on the lower model.

Thanks for the input. I have the 2010 Mac Mini, with 4GB.

Would it be almost as beneficial (performance wise) to simply bump up the ram to 8 instead of getting the 2014 Mini?
 

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