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Comment by antr | Hacker News Reader

I can only hope for Apple to revive the Mac Mini, or the " Bring Your Own Display, Keyboard and Mouse" concept.

I think there is a (small) market for Apple, but it is also a way bring new users into the Mac ecosystem (although the iPhone/iPad do this).

I want a small, but affordable Mac to have as a backup and toy around... and as a Mac user, the Mac Mini was perfect. I'll cross my fingers.

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Tim Cook supposedly confirmed that a new Mac mini is in the works by way of email:

> I'm glad you love the Mac mini. We love it too. Our customers have found so many creative and interesting uses for the Mac mini. While it is not time to share any details, we do plan for Mac mini to be an important part of our product line going forward.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/10/the-mac-mini-isnt-de...

Maybe it's just the mishmash of corporate speak but that statement says the exact opposite to me.

Maybe I'm just more used to corporate speak, but "we can't share details yet but this product will be important to us in the future" couldn't be more clear in indicating that a redesign is in progress and they're not dropping the line.

Think my point is more what would Tim Cook say if he didn't care about the Mac Mini at all going forward? I feel it would be similar to that statement.

It hasn't been updated in 3 years and the phrasing he used didn't mention "future" just "an important part of our product line going forward." which is pretty non-committal IMHO

If he didn't care about the Mac Mini at all he wouldn't have said anything.

At this point of time(3 years after the latest release), not saying anything would be construed as abandoning the Mac Mini.

I would bet that he was force to say something to assuage concerned Apple users.

I see it as their inevitable first step of an iOS based computer. With their CPUs and GPUs being where they are at now I'd imagine it won't be too long.

Right. I see the iPhone with external displays & keyboard. See it's revived!

I think, Apple should have a roadmap where all of their Mac will be SSD by default. The current iMac and Mac mini, is still on super slow HDD.

But those NAND prices per GB aren't coming down. I think might be one of the most important reason why Apple hasn't has new Mac mini.

This is especially true when Apple said APFS is specially designed for NAND, and not HDD.

NAND prices per GB are actually starting to come back down, now. Most of the 3D NAND tooling change-overs are completing at the various NAND fabs, so NAND prices should only continue to fall in the coming months/years in $/GB pricing metrics.

You can get consumer grade 500GB-class SATA 2.5" SSDs for $130 (or less!) now from multiple vendors. This time last year these were up around $200 (EDIT: this may not be accurate!). Consumer SATA SSDs were some of the first to transition to 3D NAND.

For example: https://camelcamelcamel.com/SanDisk-Ultra-2-5-Inch-Height-SD...

Well it is coming down now only because Samsung is trying to lock in as much market share of NAND as possible this year, before the Chinese has their NAND Fab running and start race to bottom.

Note that many of these high capacities SSDs are able to sell at lower prices due to them not having any onboard dram, meaning the mapping data for wear leveling is either stored on the nand itself or in the system ram which causes random read/write to slow down a significant amount.

DRAM is still extremely expensive, so you're probably on-point about part of the low price being the lack of DRAM. It would be interesting to see tear downs of current consumer and enterprise SSDs to better understand how they work.

The middle 21.5" 4k iMac still come with a HDD. In Canada this is a $1,729.00 machine. This is simply ridiculous.

The 27" models all have Fusion Drives, but I'm not familiar with them, so don't know their performance level.

> but it is also a way bring new users into the Mac ecosystem

Does Apple want new users in the Mac ecosystem? I thought Tim Cook's future was "Post-PC"

Until you can run Xcode in iOS, you'll need a Mac to make apps for Apple's various platform.

Who knows what WWDC 2018 might bring.

yeah, I think Xcode for iOS is going to be here sooner rather than later. They are already testing the water waters of compiling (I think) in Swift Playgrounds.

I do hope they keep the Mac. It's the main reason why I am in Apple's ecosystem. If that goes, so does my interest in their mobile devices.

I'd like this too, but can we enhance to have a standard monitor mount where you can clip in a Small box to the monitor which supplies power and cable-less HDMI port? Kinda like a componentized all in one.

They have that already, the macbook or macbook pro if you need additional power. These can act as a hub you connect externals to, with the added benefit that they can be used offsite.

iPad is converging on this space IMO.

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