Other Apple Announces Mac Mini Refresh

[Windfall]

I’d like to see stats about actual Pros swapping the boot drive of an OEM pc
I think they just drop it in and move on, mostly...and bring it to Apple when it malfunctions...

Another field where just dropping it in as fast as possible is crucial are Mini colocation farms

(and these are the reason the Mini has the exaxct shape and size from 2010 and won’t change anytime soon)

They use them as farms? Like renderfarms?? Doe sthe software exist for that?

 

[all-in]

They use them as farms? Like renderfarms?? Doe sthe software exist for that?

Those vaults host your Minis for you and you work on one or multiple of them from remote. Here’s 50 ways to use a colocated Mini server in a farm:

https://macminicolo.net/blog/files/50-ways-to-use-your-server.html

A few of those mentioned softwares actually allow to cluster or load balance multiple Minis to speed things up.

 

[AMv8-1day]

Sorry for the confusion, It was poorly worded, but I wasn't implying that we were in a shouting match, but that I'd already seen performance specs and compared them with market trends.

Just for quick reference, these are the prices that Apple is charging:
256GB upgrade = $200 ($1.56/GB)
512GB upgrade = $400 ($1.04/GB)
1TB upgrade = $800 ($0.89/GB)
2TB upgrade = $1,600 ($0.83/GB)

Then a sampling of the open market:
NVMe:
Intel 760p
512GB = $160 - $0.31/GB
Samsung 970 Evo
500GB = $150 - $0.30/GB
BPX Pro
480GB = $130 - $0.27/GB
ADATA XPG SX8200
480GB = $110 - $0.23/GB
Crucial P1
500GB = $110 - $0.22/GB
Intel 660p
512GB = $100 - $0.20/GB

XPoint:
Intel 905P
960GB = $1300 - $1.35/GB
Intel 900P
480GB = $600 - $1.25/GB

Seriously though, you know what else gets faster every year? a competitive market. Ask Intel. Then ask Nvidia how they're enjoying their lack of competition.
Their SSDs get faster every year because it would be impossible not to. They would have to purposely design slower performing NAND and controllers from the ground up. The rest of the industry has already designed better storage, Apple is just taking middle of the road crap, slapping their name on it, and hiding it behind a half-assed proprietary controller/interface. When a Mom & Pop shop like MyDigitalDiscount is putting out better NVMe drives than the richest company in the world for a tiny fraction of the price, it's time to hang it up.

The rest of the NVMe industry has long since broken into 3,000MB/s territory for literally 25¢ a Gig, yeah, it's "far". Samsung basically started north of 2,500MB/s with their first consumer NVMe SSD in the 950 Pro way back in 2015. Congrat's Apple, you deserve all the praise for catching up to a 3 year old Samsung part that debuted at lower price points 3 years ago with the industries first consumer NVMe drive. This isn't an argument FOR isolating their SSD business with proprietary crap, it's an argument AGAINST it.
They are trying to control the narrative, forcing comparisons between their trailing NVMe speeds against 4 year old SATA benchmarks.
They're getting faster every year because the rest of the market started much faster than they did. Why do you think AMD was able to come out of no where with an insanely better performing chip architecture after bulldozer? Because you shouldn't be benching them against their 4 year old terrible product, you should be benching against the rest of the current market. Maybe they were ballers in middle school, but that doesn't count in college.

Again, I would still be annoyed and mock them for their insane mark-ups, but I wouldn't be so critical if their entire business model wasn't designed not to innovate, but to isolate and eliminate competition within their walled garden. Nevermind the purposeful nonexistence of a post purchase internal expansion option of any kind, 1st or 3rd party. "Oh, you didn't realize that you would need more than 128GB on your desktop at purchase? That's too bad... And your 16GB iPhone is too full of basic apps to upgrade to the latest iOS? Sucks for you... but we'd be happy to sell you THIS year's crap!"

Apple isn't an SSD company, they're a money making factory taking advantage of a lack of regulation and open loopholes. Spurning open standards and market competition whenever possible.

Oh, and I already know how a T3 performs:
Samsung Portable SSD T3 2TB Review - 2TB In Your Pocket


Regarding the Luna DNK-H, of course it's based off of the Mac mini, I wouldn't be eyeing it for a Mac loving friend's PC/Hackintosh build if it weren't. But as I mentioned, it's able to take full advantage of the last 8 years of open platform innovation while the Mac mini has been running uninspired 4 year old hardware in a world of 8-core CPUs in laptops and 16-32 core CPUs in desktops.
But exactly like you said, it's based off of an 8 YEAR OLD design! And this is what they give use to replace that design!?!
I don't dispute that the Mac mini design wasn't revolutionary 8 years ago, or even that it needs to be able to run supercomputer power today just because it was designed 8 years ago. But at the very least, it should be able to handily outperform or match other mini PCs on the market, especially considering they're primarily running 4x4" or 5x5" formfactor motherboards in significantly smaller cases than the Mac mini, save for the Hades Canyon I guess. Just take a look at the ECS Liva Q2, or the Intel stick PC's and tell me that Apple couldn't have done better than this. Either with a smaller formfactor, or more performance in the same formfactor. To be honest, an MXM capable option should have at least be considered by this point with all of the mini-STX and micro-STX boxes. If Microsoft can jam one into their crazy detachable keyboard Surface Book, Apple should be able to figure out a dual cooling solution in a square box.

 

[AMv8-1day]

When you're in a desert of updates, an oasis every several years is cause for praise. But, to be fair, Apple didn't get away with it. They've been rightly receiving massive criticism regarding the mini for years, especially from their fans (after all, the mini's fans were some of the few people who cared enough during those years to actually complain!). And I agree with you about their practice of maintaining launch prices so much later. It's indecent.

Yeah, but do you think that any of the Apple fanboys remembered that when they watched that keynote? They didn't say "No! I'm taking a stand!" or "too late, I've moved on!"? They said "Shut up and take my money!" and the news cycle focused on the "Revolutionary new Apple products". Like the rest of the industry hadn't already been doing all of these things. Story over. Even with the unhealthy amount of tech zeitgeist I ingest on a daily basis, I would really have to look to find actual outrage over the many desktop products that Apple has let languish for years on end. Could you imagine if Asus or HP dared to stop releasing product refreshes? They would be deemed untouchable by market analysts and lenders in a week.

The new Mac mini supports Bluetooth 5.0. Check the tech specs page linked earlier in the thread.

Totally right, my bad on that bit. Must've missread or seen an inaccurate spec sheet somewhere.

As for Wi-Fi 6 (née 802.11ax)

Yeah, I'm annoyed, but ultimately understand the whole "Wifi 6!" rebadge. Explain it nice and simple for the normies. Numbers good. Letters bad!

,a handful of companies have announced products with draft Wi-Fi 6 support, but the Wi-Fi 6 standard isn't due to be finalized until late next year.I'll grant that Apple could be doing better, given that the second draft was finalized late last year and that 802.11 standards are usually considered stable once version 2 of the draft spec is finalized.

Regarding the certification, it is a bit of a mess, but "Draft 2" is solidly expected to be the hard standard going forward, and any further tweaks between now and official ratification are supposed to be in S/W and easily deployed in a patch. Hence the reason Asus felt comfortable enough to release their family of "Wifi 6" products, half of which went on sale about a month ago.

Even so, with the final standard not being due for release until next year (and with Intel's silicon not being finalized until just a few months ago), I'm not going to ding a company for not having support in products released this year.

Well stated, but I would easily argue that a company that prides itself on "innovation" and "Pioneering" and whatever other marketing BS they can get Jony Ives to say, releasing a product with last gen anything is pretty dumb when you're already operating on a 4 year refresh cycle.
We waited 4 years for this, and will likely have to wait another 4, if Apple bothers at all to continue with the Mac mini line. They certainly haven't indicated that they have any interest in their desktop platforms moving forward.

Although obviously Intel coming to market with their 802.11ax NICs, similar to Apple, will signal an inflection point for the standard adoption, that doesn't actually affect Apples hardware as they've been using Broadcom NICs for years and Broadcom started manufacturing and selling at least 3 different Wifi 6 chips months ago. Even securing chip contracts with ISP provider products from Arris. Wifi 6 will be in your crappy Comcast router before it's in your Apple desktop.

Anti-competitive? Not even remotely. I'm not trying to argue about it; I'm just confused why someone would even make that claim in the first place.

What could be more anti-competitive than physically removing any direct competition from the entire ecosystem?
They physically created a proprietary hardware spec that provides absolutely no added benefit over industry standards like M.2 and U.2, further aiding to my argument, they just went with the industry on the S/W side, conforming to AHCI, then later NVMe, after guaranteeing that no one would be able to mount a 3rd party storage device to compete directly. No added PCIe lanes, no alternate bus, communication stack, nothing to be able to point to and say "We saw a problem and forged our own solution!" Just McDonald's triangle screws bolted onto industry standards.

 

[AMv8-1day]

Have you been in an independent animation or video studio? Rows of external drives all lined up. Internal slots isn't a big deal.

People asking for GPU buy an eGPU then you can choose what the hell you want. I know for a fact that if they wedged in vega mobile or similar and the base model was $1200 everyone would be up in arms "apple tax what about the people who don't need GPU".

Apple is going I think in a very interesting direction. One that I can get on board with, but like almost everyone in this thread won't buy any of it. I will buy a mac mini because my iMac is from 2011. It is getting a little long in the tooth now. I have no need for a GPU don't game. If I continue to learn CAD and see a use (at the moment using makespace pc) I may have a need for an eGPU. Do I need a stack of mac minis as a render farm? No. But it looks bloody interesting and I will follow what people get up to with the option. Do I need a mac pro? No, but after this release, I am looking forward to seeing what Apple has planned.

"you can only please some of the people some of the time"

More storage? plug it in. Ports galore.
GPU? plug it in. Apple dev team released eGPU code at set the community running.
More memory? plug it in. We got it wrong, now you can.
Need more screen real estate? plug it in.

All complaining about Apples business practices aside, I'll likely be recommending the i3/8GB/256 model to my landlord. He's not happy with the slow fusion drive crap mini he bought 1.5 years ago, completely unaware that they hadn't refreshed the hardware in years. Also anaware what a fusion drive was... I just would've been a much more enticing option if they had gone the full modular route and allowed customers to swap/add their storage or at bare minimum charged a semi reasonable amount for storage over 128GB. That said, already eagerly awaiting the iFixit teardown and the How-to's on upgrading the CPU, and cross your fingers, mounting an adapted M.2 SSD?

 

[Windfall]

All complaining about Apples business practices aside, I'll likely be recommending the i3/8GB/256 model to my landlord. He's not happy with the slow fusion drive crap mini he bought 1.5 years ago, completely unaware that they hadn't refreshed the hardware in years. Also anaware what a fusion drive was... I just would've been a much more enticing option if they had gone the full modular route and allowed customers to swap/add their storage or at bare minimum charged a semi reasonable amount for storage over 128GB. That said, already eagerly awaiting the iFixit teardown and the How-to's on upgrading the CPU, and cross your fingers, mounting an adapted M.2 SSD?

My goal is to have everything in one unit. I don't want to plug stuff in.

 

[AMv8-1day]

My goal is to have everything in one unit. I don't want to plug stuff in.

Agreed, which is why it would be it would be REEAAALLY annoying to have to recommend secondary storage via Thunderbolt/USB-C.
For clarification, I am holding out hope that someone figures out how to INTERNALLY adapt and mount an SSD, even if it's the Toshiba RC100 2242 M.2.

 

[Boil]

Pros won't be very forgiving to non-upgradable storage. If there was 5x M.2 slots, I would buy one. Even if there were 4.

So you want more drive slots than have ever been in ANY Intel Mac (the Cheese Grater Mac Pros had four drive bays)...?!?

Come on bro, even the vast majority of PC motherboards have a max of three M.2 slots; please do not start about all the SATA ports available on modern mobos, as the mini does not have the space for an assortment of 2.5" SSDs...

Upgrade pricing aside, the SG mini looks to be a very capable machine; i7 8700 CPU, 64GB DDR4 RAM, 2TB NVMe SSD, four TB3/USB-C ports, two USB-A ports & 10Gb Ethernet...!

The two things Apple really needs to do is offer expansion modules that will stack under the SG mini & look just as slick as a stack of SG minis themselves...

I could see a market for a MXM-format equipped eGPU, with and option of RX5xx-series & Vega 56 GPUs; and another chassis housing four m.2 NVMe SSDs & a RAID controller...

A SG mini & the two modules outlined above would make an awesome Pro Mac mini; not tons of horsepower like an iMac Pro or Mac Pro (implying the forthcoming modular Mac Pro, noit the current outdated offering), but more than enough to get shitte done...

 

[all-in]

My goal is to have everything in one unit. I don't want to plug stuff in.

To the very least one should plugin a local HDD for the fastest possible hourly backup and recovery...or at least I prefer it over network backup...

Ideally I would have i7-8700, 64GB RAM just because, 2TB flash and a 4TB quiet 2.5” hdd for Time Machine backup over thunderbolt...and since we’re dreaming, I would also plugin that new 1200$ ultra silent 8K-ready blackmagic Vega56 eGPU...so I’m ready for 2019 dp1.4 8K displays

The mini would be equipped with 10G ethernet, connected to a netgear XS512EM switch (all 10G ports, fairly compact) and then a synology ds1618+ (upgraded with 32GB RAM and dual 10Gbe pcie NIC, and six 14TB drives)...all 10Gbe along the way for my Mini’s big storage...

I’m a simple man

 

[Boil]

Ideally I would have i7-8700, 64GB RAM just because, 2TB flash and a 4TB quiet 2.5” hdd for Time Machine backup over thunderbolt...and since we’re dreaming, I would also plugin that new 1200$ ultra silent 8K-ready blackmagic Vega56 eGPU...so I’m ready for 2019 dp1.4 8K displays

The mini would be equipped with 10G ethernet, connected to a netgear XS512EM switch (all 10G ports, fairly compact) and then a synology ds1618+ (upgraded with 32GB RAM and dual 10Gbe pcie NIC, and six 14TB drives)...all 10Gbe along the way for my Mini’s big storage...

I like it, excepting the mismatched components (being the eGPU & the Time Capsule box)...

But speaking of Time Capsule box, another matching chassis/footprint Apple or a third-party could do would be a combo of a 10Gb switch (one WAN & three LAN ports) & Time Capsule HDD...

So, we know the fully pimped out SG mini is $4,200 & the Vega 56 Blackmagic eGPU is $1,200; how much for your router & pimped out NAS...?

 

[all-in]

I like it, excepting the mismatched components (being the eGPU & the Time Capsule box)...

But speaking of Time Capsule box, another matching chassis/footprint Apple or a third-party could do would be a combo of a 10Gb switch (one WAN & three LAN ports) & Time Capsule HDD...

So, we know the fully pimped out SG mini is $4,200 & the Vega 56 Blackmagic eGPU is $1,200; how much for your router & pimped out NAS...?

I wouldn’t use a Time Capsule, that’s ancient by now.
I was thinking of a Lacie D2 thunderbolt 3.

If I gave up thunderbolt 3 for just usb 3.0 (probably enough for little hourly backups), then the mentioned OWC ministack could be an option

https://www.owcdigital.com/products/ministack

again, with a 2.5” 4TB and not a 3.5”, for the sake of quietness.

So for starters this cute little stack would be a self sufficient 2TB flash + 4TB backup unit. It’s unfortunate I can’t find an ultra short usb-c to usb-B_3.0 cable, so the cable would criss cross from one of the Mini’s usb-A to the OWC usb-B on the opposite side. The shortest usb-c to usb-b I can find is 1m.

Then for the 10Gbe networking and NAS...the XS512EM is proprably the most compact (hence suited for home use) fully 10Gbe, BUT I should add that if one only wants the Mini and the NAS to be on 10G, and all other stuff on 1G, the fanless GS110mx is also an option (it only has two 10G ports). As for the NAS, I’m used to Synology and I love their OS, but unfortunately they currently make it extremely hard to pick a 10G enabled NAS in the mid to lower tiers of their line up...and even if you splurge for the mentioned 6-bay, you still have to choose between 10G and ssd cache...still the 1618+ is my best bet currently if I wanna stay on Sinology’s side and not jump to QNAP...
- GS110mx 200€ or XS512EM 900€
- ds1618+ 900€
- 2 x 16GB sodimm ddr4 300€ (non-ECC) or 500€ (ECC)
- Intel x550T2 dual 10Gbe pcie3.0 8x NIC 300€
- 6 x 14TB HDDs 3000€

sooooo...lots of money

roughly 10k€/$ for fully pimped Mini (hopefully with aftermarket RAM) + vega56 silent eGPU + 10G networking and 84TB NAS

and don’t forget to start saving for next year’s 3000$ Apple Cinema Display 8K (the current Dell one is 3800€/$, hopefully in 2019 8K displays will be slightly cheaper)

 

[GuilleAcoustic]

I'm not an Apple fan, quite the opposite to be honest, but that Mac mini cluster makes me sad about thin mini-ITX wasted potential.

I've been convinced for years that thin ITX should be used to make stackable cluster nodes or ultra thin rackable nodes in PXI like chassis. Instead of that, it's been wasted as AIO motherboards or VESA mounted office desktop...........

Well done on that Apple, now I'm grumpy

 

[Boil]

...and a 4TB quiet 2.5” hdd for Time Machine backup over thunderbolt...

...speaking of Time Capsule box, another matching chassis/footprint Apple or a third-party could do would be a combo of a 10Gb switch (one WAN & three LAN ports) & Time Capsule HDD...

I wouldn’t use a Time Capsule, that’s ancient by now.

...OWC ministack...

https://www.owcdigital.com/products/ministack

again, with a 2.5” 4TB and not a 3.5”, for the sake of quietness.

...can’t find an ultra short usb-c to usb-B_3.0 cable...

and don’t forget to start saving for next year’s 3000$ Apple Cinema Display 8K...

I was referencing the IDEA of a Time Capsule, not thinking you were going to use an actual Time Capsule, and then I gave MY idea of what a new Time Capsule could be...

I think if a third-party (like OWC) or Apple themselves could make the expansion modules I have outlined (eGPU / RAID / 10Gb Ethernet hub & Time Machine backup drive), they could also make stubby TB3/USB-C interconnects...

I would really like to see Apple do the eGPU though, for a (hopefully) lower overall cost, since Apple should be able to get a better price on the MXM GPU cards by buying in volume...

Example - Sonnet has an eGPU in a relatively compact chassis, which makes me think they are using MXM GPU cards within...

https://www.sonnettech.com/product/egfx-breakaway-puck.html

But the options are a RX560 for $400 or RX570 for $600...

Now, pricing for these GPUs run about $100 or so for the RX560s & $150 and up for the RX570s...

I know the chassis & PSU & TB3 stuff in these expansion boxes cannot be worth $300 or more, so the extra cost indicates (to me) that these might be MXM format GPU cards...?

Now look at the size, the Sonnet Puck chassis is 6" wide x 5.1" depth x 2" tall; it would definitely fit into the SG mini footprint, just requiring a taller chassis (the SG mini is 7.7" square & 1.4" tall)...

If chassis design / footprint expansion modules for the SG mini do not emerge, I just may be saving for a baseline (okay, maybe one or two upgrades) forthcoming modular Mac Pro...

Or, I may just say "frak it all", and give a pimped out 3rd Gen 12.9" iPad Pro (w/Apple Smart Keyboard Folio & 2nd Gen Apple Pencil) as my only 'computer' a try...! ;^p

Now, if I could get Apple & the cell phone service providers to see the wisdom of allowing an Apple Watch to make/take cell phone calls & such WITHOUT having to own an iPhone or an active iPhone cell service account...

 

[Windfall]

So you want more drive slots than have ever been in ANY Intel Mac (the Cheese Grater Mac Pros had four drive bays)...?!?

Come on bro, even the vast majority of PC motherboards have a max of three M.2 slots; please do not start about all the SATA ports available on modern mobos, as the mini does not have the space for an assortment of 2.5" SSDs...

Upgrade pricing aside, the SG mini looks to be a very capable machine; i7 8700 CPU, 64GB DDR4 RAM, 2TB NVMe SSD, four TB3/USB-C ports, two USB-A ports & 10Gb Ethernet...!

The two things Apple really needs to do is offer expansion modules that will stack under the SG mini & look just as slick as a stack of SG minis themselves...

I could see a market for a MXM-format equipped eGPU, with and option of RX5xx-series & Vega 56 GPUs; and another chassis housing four m.2 NVMe SSDs & a RAID controller...

A SG mini & the two modules outlined above would make an awesome Pro Mac mini; not tons of horsepower like an iMac Pro or Mac Pro (implying the forthcoming modular Mac Pro, noit the current outdated offering), but more than enough to get shitte done...

I realize 5 is unreasonable. But ASrock but 3 in a bit more space than this. No expandable storage is STUPID.

 

[all-in]

It’s a bit packed in there with the new blower with supposedly 2x airflow...can’t wait for iFixit to disassemble it...

On the iMac Pro they use 2 striped removable “brainless” flash modules...the brain (controller and its RAM) being in the T2 (an iPhone-grade ARM SoC soldered on the motherboard)...so, while removable/upgradable, they’re proprietary...that’s the best we could have hoped for on the Mini..but not much more...since the controller has been moved into the T-chip, regular off the shelf SSDs are out of question...

 

[Aichon]

Yeah, but do you think that any of the Apple fanboys remembered that when they watched that keynote? They didn't say "No! I'm taking a stand!" or "too late, I've moved on!"?

You're right that fanboys don't say those things, but that's because people who say those things stopped being fanboys. For instance...

They're sexy little things, but too little too late for me, since I gave up waiting for a true successor to my 2011 BTO Mac mini (that benchmarked about as good as the 2014 models) and finally just built my own SFF PC.

I refer to myself as a "recovering fanboy". I used to drink the Kool-Aid, but somewhere between the dark days of the '90s and when the iPhone launched I matured enough to realize that it was silly to identify myself by my brand loyalty or defend them when they had done something wrong. While they still make many products I prefer, I no longer attach myself to them. Instead, I've made a point of ensuring that if and when that time comes, I can take my stuff and jump ship as easily as possible.

What could be more anti-competitive than physically removing any direct competition from the entire ecosystem?

I see what you're getting at, but it seems to me that it's built on a misconception, since that isn't what anti-competition is.

Ask yourself this question: as it relates to anti-competition, how is what Apple is doing with SSDs any different than if your company decided to bring its IT staff in-house instead of relying on outside contractors? What about when fashion labels use custom fabric blends? When cruise lines send their ships to their own private islands? When Sony put blu-ray players and Cell processors in every PS3? When a car company develops its own engine? When Apple adopted A-series chips or custom metal alloys?

There's no shortage of examples of companies switching to proprietary products or services from standard ones available on the open market. As I've been saying, the reason why is because there's nothing inherently anti-competitive about their doing so.

Fundamentally, anti-competition laws are about protecting the nature of competition, not the scope of competition. Sellers are not entitled to buyers, markets grow and shrink, and if sellers fail to demonstrate the value they bring to the table, buyers are welcome to withdraw from the market by taking their business elsewhere, including taking it in-house if they think they can do the job better/faster/cheaper themselves. The scope of the market shrinks when that happens, but there's nothing inherently anti-competitive about it.

In contrast, were Apple to pay Best Buy to NOT sell HP or Dell PCs, that would be a paradigmatic example of anti-competitive behavior; Apple would gain an undue advantage for their PCs by precluding their competitors from being present in the competition. The scope wouldn't change, but the nature of the competition would.

But Apple doesn't compete against SSD manufacturers. There are no buyers for their SSDs because Apple doesn't sell them, and the sellers in the SSD market are just as able to compete with one another now as they were before. The market may have shrunk, but the competition still operates the same way.

Of course, Apple is no saint in this area. If you look back at eBooks, Apple's behavior was anti-competitive and they were rightly slapped down by the courts for engaging in it (though I think there are others who also deserve a good slapping down for their monopsonistic abuses), but nothing about a switch to proprietary SSDs (whatever their design) is anti-competitive, at least with regards to the SSD or PC markets.

(The only way I could possibly see this being anti-competitive is inasmuch as it may impact aftermarket repairs, which is a market that Apple competes in and which this change might affect, but to be anti-competitive there would have to be a number of other factors at play that are unknown at this time, such as whether or not Apple makes the drives available to repair centers and at what cost.)

 

[AMv8-1day]

God, all this talk of effectively dongling out the desktop with external SSDs, hard storage, eGPUs, more useful ports, etc. is ridiculous.
This is NOT an iPhone. It is not an iPad. It is not a Macbook. It is a DESKTOP. They don't need to waterproof it, they don't need to make it thinner than a 3.5mm jack, it doesn't need to eliminate moving parts for mobile hardening, It needs to be smaller than a normal desktop, pretty, and fully functional WITHOUT dongles.
I agree, it doesn't "need" a 3.5" drive, but a 4-5TB rotating storage option should be available, even if the have to make it half an inch thicker. Hell, if you're going to make it thicker to fit one drive, you could probably fit two and then develop some storage software to allow it to act as a home storage server on the side. Give that ARM chip something to do when it's not invalidating repairs.
The 10Gbit NIC was probably the biggest surprise I saw and a very welcome addition, might as well take advantage of it by placing the Mac mini as the central computing hub for a post PC household. Everyone's using iPhones, iPads, and Macbooks? Let them access household storage and/or heavier computing power via the home PC/server.

 

[all-in]

Now that I think about it, how come we can’t swap the boot drive of phones? Outrageous!



Maybe, just maybe, there are huge advantages in terms of predictabilty?
Apple in 3 words: unrestrained by legacy. Weird T2+flash storage system? Check. Remove F keys? No probs. Crazy fast (just look at the new iPads benchmarks) ARM based laptops in 2020? Where do I have to sign.

If people want legacy compliance they should look elsewhere honestly...no need to slow down Apple for the rest of us...

 

[VisualStim]

people in this thread dont realize that final cut pro X renders solely on OpenCL aka AMD gpus hence why the egpu talk. It really doesnt matter what your Apple setup is, as long as you have a really good EGPU setup you will steam roll Adobe Premiere

 

[potoooooooo]

God, all this talk of effectively dongling out the desktop with external SSDs, hard storage, eGPUs, more useful ports, etc. is ridiculous.
This is NOT an iPhone. It is not an iPad. It is not a Macbook. It is a DESKTOP. They don't need to waterproof it, they don't need to make it thinner than a 3.5mm jack, it doesn't need to eliminate moving parts for mobile hardening, It needs to be smaller than a normal desktop, pretty, and fully functional WITHOUT dongles.
I agree, it doesn't "need" a 3.5" drive, but a 4-5TB rotating storage option should be available, even if the have to make it half an inch thicker. Hell, if you're going to make it thicker to fit one drive, you could probably fit two and then develop some storage software to allow it to act as a home storage server on the side. Give that ARM chip something to do when it's not invalidating repairs.
The 10Gbit NIC was probably the biggest surprise I saw and a very welcome addition, might as well take advantage of it by placing the Mac mini as the central computing hub for a post PC household. Everyone's using iPhones, iPads, and Macbooks? Let them access household storage and/or heavier computing power via the home PC/server.

You've clearly never been to a real pro shop then. Moving things into external modules is fantastic for tons of pros. Instead of replacing an entire PC you can replace pieces one by one, while still retaining the simple plug and play manner. No messing around inside of a PC, just plugging and unplugging thunderbolt ports. Much easier for large pro setups that aren't swimming in cash.

Not to mention, Apple's pro target audience for the mac mini doesn't use local storage. Either NAS or SAN units, or external hard drives and SSDs. They have the actual hard usage data and they concluded this is the best move forward.