Last year came and went without as much as a mention from Apple about the fate of its Mac mini line of desktop computers. The Mac mini lineup currently on sale through Apple, Amazon, and other retailers last saw its hardware updated in late 2012 at the original iPad mini event.
So it’s not too unreasonable to believe that a placeholder entry found online at computerstore.be, a Belgium retailer, found in MacRumors forums could be a genuine preview of what to expect in the updated hardware. The specs reference everything we would expect for a hardware updated Mac mini: Intel Iris graphics, 802.11ac wireless networking, Gigabit LAN, and more.
While the Mac mini is hardly a hero product for Apple in 2014, it would not be surprising to see the upgraded hardware appear on Apple’s website quietly without a major announcement or event.
The placeholder information is certainly not a definite indicator that Apple will update the Mac mini or when, but due to the duration of the current model on the market, it’s highly plausible at this point.
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I have really been hoping for an 4th Gen Haswell Mac mini with Iris Pro 5200 graphics. I’ll still buy one if its just Iris 5100, though. Hopefully my patience will pay off.
The Iris is also very good at executing OpenCL. Much better then mobile discrete chips and has much more bandwidth to the CPU and main memory then any discrete chip. It feels like there may be niche areas that could really benefit. Render clusters?
Mac Pro Mini?
I’m still waiting for a rack solution that replaces the bottom cover of the Mac Mini for mounting and airflow redirection. The current rack mounts are kludgy. The air inlet is built in to the bottom cover, so it is natural to use that to redirect airflow. Essentially the mount should just be a flat plane with a circular mount that resembles the bottom cover of the MacMini. The mount would both keep it in place and redirect the air inlet to the front of the mounting bracket.
Hopefully the new mini has dual thunderbolt 2.0 ports. These are frequently used as servers and the single thunderbolt port doesn’t quite cut it. These are basically the machines for niche areas. They are small and have front-to-back airflow making them easy to adapt to many situations. Sometimes it feels like Apple deliberately hobbles them so that they don’t compete with their other offerings when they really should be maximizing expansion options on this device. Personally I would love it if they threw a port under the bottom lid that could be used for an expansion chassis that can lock on where the bottom cover is.
Dear Zac Hall, computerstore.be is not a Belgium retailer, it is a DUTCH retailer called Coolblue, which has expanded into Belgium!!
Oh, well that changes everything!!
Reblogged this on Taste of Apple and commented:
Let’s see. I know a few folks who are waiting for an update. Definitely great for the average person looking to get onto a Macintosh.