New Low-End iMac - End of the Mini?

[m404]

This is a quote from Dec. 2012 Paul Teich who writes for Dice.com


He predicted the demise of the large Mac Pro Tower two years ago.

except he was wrong from the get-go about the Mac Pro Tower being a server
The choice between servers was either the Mac Mini, or the Xserve … ofc, as an Admin you always had the choice to buy a Mac Pro , and install OSX Server onto it, but it definitely wasn't marketed like that?

And the demise of the Mac Pro Tower was completely wrong in terms of prediction, because everyone was "predicting" that it would die in favour of more powerful MacBooks and iPads … instead, it died only to be succeeded afterwards by the beast known as the current Mac Pro tube … so, the only thing that died is the ability to open it and do your own maintenance. The "powerful desktop machine" concept hasn't been scrapped by Apple _at all_ as you can see.

I predict the same thing, tbh … should the Mac Mini really disappear, then only because it is making room for something else to fill that gap … the cloud is absolutely inacceptible for Print and Advertising media, and these are _still_ nowadays apples bread and butter …

 

[trs96]

If the Mac Mini does survive, does anyone have any guesses what it could or would morph
into if Apple does a refresh ? Will it be smaller than a NUC ? A Raspberry Pi ?

My guess is that it will be integrated into a monitor, not an iMac monitor but something much
bigger that is a media hub for the whole home. A place where you can watch content from over
the internet or through a cable/satelite provider. Make phone/ video calls just as was
demonstrated at WWDC with the Yosemite OS. And of course it would have the Beats audio
system built in to listen to your iTunes library. It will be a conglomeration of all of the 20th century inventions that used to stand alone. TV, Radio, Telephone, Stereo receiver, DVD, Blu Ray player etc.
All of this over a fiber optic network so it has plenty of bandwidth at your disposal. Of course you'll
be able to control this new Mac with either your iPhone or iPad as well as a keyboard with a Magic
Trackpad integrated into it.

It may have a 4K display starting from a modest 32 Inch model a 40 inch and up to a 50 inch for those with a lot of cash to burn. Apple always likes to be first when it comes to new tech and 4K is the next big thing when it comes to displays. We'll be saying "how did I ever live with that grainy 1080p display ?

It will of course keep you mostly locked into the Apple ecosystem but I'm sure you'll still be able to
run Skype just like on the current Mac laptops and desktops. It will be the ultimate ALL in ONE
system of the 21st century. Unlike the Mac Pro which went from very large to very small the Mac
Mini will turn into an all in one Mac Macro ! I'd call it the Apple Macro One as it unifies all of these
different tech gadgets into a single working unit. Just thinking about all that brushed Aluminium that
will go into these makes me want to buy stock in Alcoa.

 

[niteFlight]

One thing I will say about the low-end iMac, it makes a very nicely packaged thin/zero desktop client. OS X is a fine cloud client OS- it's much more lightweight than Windows, and also more efficient in terms of RAM and CPU.

It definitely has to be priced more competitively, however. I'm sure if Apple made a volume deal with a customer, it would be.