Apple Introduces New MacBook Air and Mac Mini

[TravelerTechie]

You can get NVMe to USB-C and Thunderbolt now. You can also put the NVMe on a pcie card in a box along with your video card.

Boxes, boxes, and even more boxes.

I don’t know, it seems to me that for the price and effort and extra things you will need, it renders the “mini” factor useless. I’d rather build a tower and everything in one big box, nice, tidy and properly cooled.

 

[pastrychef]

Boxes, boxes, and even more boxes.

I don’t know, it seems to me that for the price and effort and extra things you will need, it renders the “mini” factor useless. I’d rather build a tower and everything in one big box, nice, tidy and properly cooled.

I agree. Many Mac users have been clamoring for a "Mac Pro Mini" for over a decade, but it's highly doubtful that Apple will ever produce such a machine...

I'm hoping that some enterprising people will build a single box that can house the guts of the Mac Mini and include one or two Thunderbolt 3 to PCI-e bridges. This would address eGPU and NVMe expansion while keeping everything nice and tidy in a single box. Additionally, a box such as this could help improve the thermals of the Mac Mini itself.

Something along the lines of this, but maybe with a little room above the power supply for the Mac Mini itself and an extra PCI-e slot:

 

[macs_forever]

I am just stunned that they haven't been willing to come up with the mac mini air. If you guys don't like all the boxes, how about giving the basic users a desktop that fits in your pocket? The only think I can think of that hinders them is how it would cannibalize the other mac product lines. I can tell you, a mac the size of an iPhone 7 plus is all my parents need. It doesn't have to perform. They are using a core2duo now.

 

[macs_forever]

I should try to find a macbook motherboard and make my own...

 

[pastrychef]

I should try to find a macbook motherboard and make my own...

Just use a LattePanda Alpha.

 

[jaymonkey]

Boxes, boxes, and even more boxes. I don’t know, it seems to me that for the price and effort and extra things you will need, it renders the “mini” factor useless.

Same problem as the TrashCan Mac Pro ... no internal expansion so Pro users have to have a multitude of daisy chained external devices which completely kills the concept of the design ....

Just been doing a quick price up ....
Mac Mini with the same CPU and 32Gb Ram (512Gb SSD) = £1969.00 ($2553)
As above but with 1Tb SSD = £2329 ($3021)

Yikes .. if you max out the new Mac Mini to i7 CPU, 64GB RAM, 2TB NVMe and 10GB Ethernet the price is

£3859.00 including all Apple Tax .. ($5000.00+ for our US friends)

Thats just plain ridiculous for a headless machine with no internal expansion and that will most likely thermal throttle ..
Utter madness .. but i'm sure the AppleFans they will buy them ... and then regret their purchase when the soldered on SSD fails and they loose all their data ... which happens more than you think with the current generation of From over Function Apple products .. looking at you 2016/2017 MBP

When are Apple going to realise that powerful computers require a powerful cooling solution.

Cheers
Jay

 

[liquidmotiondzn]

What do you think of the new Macs?

The design of the mac mini is great, but I would prefer my hackintosh instead.
The new MacBookAir looks interesting, exspecially for students who get discounts.

 

[maclover95]

Nice but to expensive, it´s not worth it because you can buy an i7k hackintosh build with GTX or AMD card and its gonna be twice as fast or even more, and the air nothing airing about it feels like base 13 inch Macbook pro without touch bar, and that price of 1100$ is not ok and i7 laptop with twice the power a gtx1060 and 2x NVME ports With upgradable ram and sata port on the top is about 1000$ i think apple makes this only for people with money and i really hope that gets them in debt on the end so they can stop with this unreal pricing...

 

[UtterDisbelief]

You can get NVMe to USB-C and Thunderbolt now. You can also put the NVMe on a pcie card in a box along with your video card.

Hi, yeah, I get that. I made the point earlier about the only way to keep using a new Mac Mini once the soldered-on SSD has begun to fail, is with an external box etc. I think @izo1 was making the point that new SSD technology can last 5-10 years before failing so the new Mini having a fixed SSD wasn't so bad.

I would disagree though. When an SSD begins to fail it is still usable until the percentage of write-ability has dropped to less than the capacity needed for the system to operate, build swap-files etc. That could start at any time depending on the use the machine is put to. For example someone could be editing large movie files, all the time, involving the movement of large blocks of data. 5-10 years can only be a guess, an average based on average use, and even then it's not very precise.

Once an SSD fails it needs replacing. End of. The data is still there but un-writable in ever increasing chunks once the onboard firmware has shuffled everything about as much as it can.

I really like the new Mini but think it is very odd to make the RAM upgradable but the SSD fixed and not.

 

[pastrychef]

Hi, yeah, I get that. I made the point earlier about the only way to keep using a new Mac Mini once the soldered-on SSD has begun to fail, is with an external box etc. I think @izo1 was making the point that new SSD technology can last 5-10 years before failing so the new Mini having a fixed SSD wasn't so bad.

I would disagree though. When an SSD begins to fail it is still usable until the percentage of write-ability has dropped to less than the capacity needed for the system to operate, build swap-files etc. That could start at any time depending on the use the machine is put to. For example someone could be editing large movie files, all the time, involving the movement of large blocks of data. 5-10 years can only be a guess, an average based on average use, and even then it's not very precise.

Once an SSD fails it needs replacing. End of. The data is still there but un-writable in ever increasing chunks once the onboard firmware has shuffled everything about as much as it can.

I really like the new Mini but think it is very odd to make the RAM upgradable but the SSD fixed and not.

I don't know if 5-10 years is a realistic lifespan for an SSD. I think I have quite a few SSDs in that age range and haven't had a failure. If a person is going to do that many writes where it can shorten the life span of an SSD, he/she should probably start off by using an external SSD.

I think average users can expect far more than just 10 years from an SSD. Beyond that, it might be time to upgrade computers anyway.