According to the little information circulating on the fate of the Mac Mini product line, it’s far easier to accurately speculate on what the next MacBook Pro will look like, as well as its internals, than it would be to guess our way into a 2016 Mac Mini’s specs or design. The Mac Mini is very much a blank slate. Its design hasn’t changed since 2014, and its internals have seen very few superficial upgrades in 2015, with not much to write about.
In its most current configuration, the Apple Mac Mini’s CPU ranges from a 1.4GHz Intel Core i5, to a 3.0GHz Dual Core i7. At its most entry level stage, the Mini ships with a 500GB spinning drive, all the way up to either a 2TB Fusion Drive, or a 1TB SSD. Memory configuration on the current Mini supports up to 16GB, and graphic performance is handled by an Intel Iris Graphics GPU.
Up to 2015, this is a respectable setup, considering that a plastic box measuring 7.7”x7.7”x1.4” is all there is to work with, while not counting four USB 3.0 ports, an SDXC card slot, an HDMI, two Thunderbolt 2 ports, audio I/O jacks, and a Gigabit Ethernet port, and especially not to mention extra chips handling 602.11ac Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 4.0.
With that said, a fully-decked Apple Mini is still about the only available Mac with a price tag under a thousand dollars (before tax), but is that good enough for 2016?
One thing that is important to consider, is that, while no consumer device is future-proof, it should at the very least provide for a reasonably forward-thinking array of features that ensure a slower path towards obsolescence. This is why all new laptops and devices are expected to offer certain features, such as USB Type-C ports, DisplayPort/HDMI, and, ideally, no more spinning drives.
Granted that the specs of the current Mac Mini are good enough for any consumer whose budget is out of range of an iMac Retina, or a MacBook, it’s very possible that Apple may just decide to go back to the drawing board, with rumors pointing to October as an ideal time for a new Mac reveal, since that is what some reports are indicating, in respect to the upcoming MacBook Pro.
A thinner Mac Mini? It’s a possibility, but this is not a MacBook, so this type of trend may not apply, as much as it would in regard to internals, which are expected to feature improved graphic performance through a veering off from Intel Iris Graphics to an AMD Polaris architecture, considering that the latest Polaris benchmarks are quite impressive within relatively small form factors, including mobile.
Unless Apple finds a way to reduce the thermal footprint of the Mac Mini, any more RAM than 16GB could make the internals way too hot, especially with a 3.0GHz Intel Core Skylake or Kaby Lake CPU. In addition, a fanless design could be in the cards, which is why it’s crucial for Apple to work on optimizing the notoriously poor airflow within the Mac Mini, by either making the rear air vent bigger, or introducing a better way to dissipate heat, perhaps through the use of an aluminum body to use as a heatsink, much like Apple has done with the 12 inch MacBook Retina.
Word has it that the next MacBook will ditch the headphone jack, in favor of a Thunderbolt connector. If that happens, there is also a chance that the change will spread across most future Macs, including the Mac Mini.
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