Tim Cook Calls the Mac mini “Important”
It has been three years since Apple last updated the Mac mini, and that revision was in many ways a downgrade from its predecessor. Despite that dubious history, Apple CEO Tim Cook told a MacRumors reader via email that Apple plans for the Mac mini to be an “important part of the company’s product lineup in the future.” Given that Apple has ignored the Mac mini for so long, we’re taking Cook’s claim with the proverbial grain of salt, but we’d love to see Apple put a new spin on the idea of a miniature Mac.
Talk is cheap.
An updated Mac mini would be a more convincing argument. In fact, any substantial progress in terms of Mac innovation would be a welcome change.
Translation: "As long as the fools buy it as is, we'll leave it alone. Same with the MacPro."
All comments are true BUT it is still a great product at a reasonable price. We picked up eight of the i7's with SSDs (macmini6,2) in 2011 and they are still working like champs in spite of going from 10.7 to 10.12 during that time with no hardware upgrades. I get it that new and better is always attractive but it's nice to see a solid design survive.
You should consider that part of the criticism is related precisely to the fact that Apple no longer sells the awesome i7 Mac minis you bought. When they last 'refreshed' the mini in 2013 they watered down the entire line so that the best mini you could then buy was barely comparable to the performance of other medium level Macs.
Somehow Apple is now operating under the misguided premise that whoever wants nice specs also wants a big device and that people who like small devices all want cheap, so they get lackluster performance. But this goes entirely against the former Apple. When the 2013 Mac mini came out its quad-core i7 could easily hold a candle to a very decently spec'ed iMac. Likewise, when the iPhone SE came out its internals were very close to the then flagship 6s. Now, Apple basically says that if you prefer svelte you also want slow/cheap.
OTOH with the iMac Apple had no problems shedding features/performance in order to go full anorexic. Go figure.
The very fact that he answered that email suggests strongly that the mini is going to be updated soon.