I wonder why they did this? In the case of the macbooks and iMacs at least, it can be somewhat justified as a space saving measure. However the new mini is the same size as the old one and it's already quite tiny.
I think that's what lots of people are wondering. There doesn't seem to be a good reason here, from the customer's point of view. It looks like they're just trying to push people to buy new machines instead of upgrading the old ones, which is disappointing. I was waiting for the update, and I even bought one, but I returned it a few days later; too much about it just wasn't acceptable.
It looks like they're just trying to push people to buy new machines instead of upgrading the old ones, which is disappointing.
Or getting power users to buy the non-base models. I have a 2012 Mac Mini base model, and upgraded it to 16 GB RAM and a 256GB SSD for little cost. It should go without saying that I'll keep it for a while and probably double the SSD in some point in the future.
If Apple were just trying to get people to buy upgraded stuff from them, I'd understand. But they're not even doing that very well; the $699 configuration minis still come standard with a 5400 rpm spinning disk, for example, and SSDs and 16GB RAM are both considered "customized Macs" that you can't just walk into any Apple Store and buy.
One tangible reason is support costs. A new Mac mini is never going to the Genius Bar because of bad third party memory, or badly seated memory, or a static shock administered to the mother board while the memory was being changed.
Even if those are quite rare, support incidents can be expensive, so it could be a dollar or two average per mini being saved.
I remember when CMOS was new and static really did damage just about every part you handled if you weren't careful. Little conductive wrist band connected to steel desk, carbon coated conductive foam to work on and so on. But for the life of me I can't remember when a part failed due to static in the last decade or even longer. If anything broke it was either a cable or a soldered connection to a board.
Sure, I've had RAM break, but that was factory installed RAM that was several years old. This is definitely anecdata but it would be interesting to know how much damage static really does these days. If you're going out of your way to pet your cat prior to installing your RAM chips on a glass floor or something like that then you're probably asking for it. But regular precautions (place RAM container on the case before opening package, hold the case while inserting the RAM) seem to be more than enough. On chip ESD protection has come a long way since the 80's.
The "most users" thing might be technically true, but I bet a lot of the minis belonging to those users were still being upgraded after being sold by the original owners.
I think "capture" is the key word. They're not trying to create wealth for their users with this action; they're trying to capture it for their company and its shareholders.
Presumably everything they do is to make more money. Let's just say that customers who buy base models then go on newegg and add memory or replace hard drives, put on their static arm bands, open cases and match connectors and so on, are not their target audience.
They would like people to go buy a higher end model. The profit on RAM is probably pretty good given performance boost vs the cost of RAM. It is an opportunit they would be silly to waste.
It undermines/reinforces their brand though. These misleading sticker prices with car-salesman trim levels piss off users except the Mercedes class who enjoy conspicuous consumption.
Presuming the market for Macs is relatively fixed, and that soldered RAM was the "status quo" configuration previous to recent iterations, it's plausible that the change to user-upgradable RAM to impacted sales for other, higher margin Macs in a noticeable, provable way.
Probably for ease of design and manufacturing. Apple raids the corporate parts bin: the lowest SKU, like the base iMac, is a MacBook Air in a box. The mid and high tier SKUs are repackaged 13" MacBook Pros.
Of course the other comments are true, but I could easily see Apple justifying this as a reduction in power draw. They made a big deal out of the mini's efficency at the keynote.
Justification or excuse? For a desktop machine it is not that much of an issue. And since Mac Minis are already using mobile CPUs, they were already very low-power compared to other desktop machines.
There is always an excuse. In reality, they have changed their model to 'upgrades only at purchase'. Unfortunately, their machines are so good that we all accept this...
Hackintosh on a NUC seems like the way to go at this point. It'd be interesting if Apple just started using actual NUCs instead of making their own inferior version.
