Mike Wuerthele
In response to an email concerned about the future of the Mac mini, Apple CEO Tim Cook responded that the Mac mini will continue — but didn't share any specifics about the product's future.
A MacRumors reader wrote to Cook, asking if there was "anything in the pipeline" regarding the Mac mini, that was last updated over three years ago.
Cook responded affirmatively, "while it is not time to share any details," the product is still "an important part of the product line going forward."
The response is not the first time that an Apple executive has said that the Mac mini survives at Apple. In April, Phil Schiller briefly noted the product when discussing a new Mac Pro and professional iMac that turned out to be the iMac Pro.
"The Mac mini is an important product in our lineup," said Schiller at the time. "We weren't bringing it up because it's more of a mix of consumer with some pro use."
There have been no credible rumors about the Mac mini in some time. The 2014 Mac mini was generally regarded as a down-grade from the 2012 model, with the entry-level model seeing a slower processor than the predecessor but granted a price cut, plus quad-core i7 processors completely stricken from the line.
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118 Comments
I love my Mac mini.
It must be annoying for Tim to have every reply posted online. No wonder he keeps them short and vague.
“Introducing Mac Mini with A12 processor”
Would you buy it?
But really with iPads and Apple TVs running A-processors and MacBooks/iMacs being more efficient I see Mac Minis becoming less important and becoming a smaller niche.
I have had really no doubts that the Mac Mini would get updated, I just felt that it's future and the future "modular" mac pro would likely be intertwined (not necessarily forming the same product line, but the market slotting would depend and relate to the lowest end of the module mac).
I'd love my mac Mini a lot more if it was easier to swap out the internal HD and RAM ... jeez what a PITA on my late 2012 i5, 4GB RAM model. I use it as a headless a server for Plex and Home sharing. It is soooo (f****g) slow I have to upgrade something. I don't mean its serving operations, it works fine, I mean doing anything on it directly. I can go for coffee while waiting for it to open System Preference for example. What have folks found to be the best bang for the buck, SSD or RAM or both?