No more quad i7 Mac Mini

[pixelzombie]

So does someone make an adapter for those of us that have firewire drives?

[tronnei]

pixelzombie wrote:
So does someone make an adapter for those of us that have firewire drives?

Apple (of course)

http://store.apple.com/us/product/MD464Z...re-adapter

[JoeH]

Apple still sells a Thunderbolt to Firewire adapter for $29 - http://store.apple.com/us/product/MD464Z...r?fnode=51. Whether there are others available at a lower price I don't know.

[Chakravartin]

2 Thunderbolt ports. Yay!

But...

Soldered RAM.

No server/2-drive config... unless you break the Fusion drive.

No FireWire.

No quad-cores.

I'm very pleased about the Thunderbolt, but the other stuff gives me enough pause that I feel okay about waiting for the inevitable Broadwell upgrade next year.


...


Late edit:

Also good: 802.11ac.

[sekker]

There's more. The solid state memory options are only available from Apple. And last time I checked, only an option at time of purchase.

If you want to add your own SSD, get a last-gen model or dump the hard drive from Apple.

[AllGold]

Soldered RAM.

No server/2-drive config... unless you break the Fusion drive.

No quad-cores.

There's more. The solid state memory options are only available from Apple. And last time I checked, only an option at time of purchase.

If you want to add your own SSD, get a last-gen model or dump the hard drive from Apple.

Man, I sure am getting tired of that kind of crap from Apple.

[deckeda]

How do we know RAM is soldered? And if a Fusion Drive is offered why wouldn't it have room for a standard 2.5" SSD?

[RAMd®d]

How do we know RAM is soldered? And if a Fusion Drive is offered why wouldn't it have room for a standard 2.5" SSD?

Good questions.

There's no admonition about getting the RAM you want when you order, as there is with the MBPs.

I would guess that if you don't order one with a Fusion drive, you can *probably* add cables and whatever to install an SSD. Apple could use a different mono that didn't have the needed connectors for the SSD portion of the Fusion drive. I don't know that it would be cost efficient for Apple to do so.

This is pretty much the mini that many of us were afraid we would get.

[RAMd®d]

And while I'm happy with getting a 2012 mini, I don't know that I wouldn't get one of the new versions, had I waited.

My mini was a refurb 2.6GHz/i7/8G/1T, for $759.

Again, it's a refurb, and the 8G o' RAM was a silent upgrade. Anybody know what this went for, new?

In all honesty, for my use, the I probably wouldn't notice any difference if the new $699 mini was secretly swapped in, except maybe for the Radeon 5000 graphics.

For most mini and potential mini users, the improved (somewhat) graphics is probably more useful than a hotter processor.

[Chakravartin]

deckeda wrote:
How do we know RAM is soldered?

'Might be wrong, but it uses LPDDR3 memory which is the same used in the MacBook Air.

Macworld UK thinks it's soldered in, but is still waiting to confirm it:
http://www.macworld.co.uk/review/mac-des...c-3474809/

Wait for the iFixit teardown to confirm:
https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown

deckeda wrote:
And if a Fusion Drive is offered why wouldn't it have room for a standard 2.5" SSD?

It would. But just one. No more 2-drive option. Having a second internal HD was handy.

It's possible that the 2-drive adapter sold by our sponsors for the 2012 Minis will still work or that they'll make a new adapter, so this may be correctable.