As we reported earlier, it’s now three years since Apple last updated its popular Mac mini. The company giving very little attention to this machine since 2014 has fuelled speculations that there might never be an updated version again.
Luckily, a brave Mac fan by the name of Krar recently emailed Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, in an attempt to get an update on what was in store for the Mac mini – and Cook actually responded. In his email, he said it wasn’t yet ‘time to share any details’ but assured the writer that the Mac mini was here to stay, and that it would play a vital role in the firm’s product line-up in future years.
Cook’s reply confirms what Phil Schiller, Apple’s head of marketing, said earlier when plans for a new Mac Pro surfaced: “The Mac mini is an important product in our line-up and we weren’t bringing it up because it’s more of a mix of consumer with some pro use.”
The Mac mini is the Cupertino-based company’s lowest prices desktop computer – provided you already have a keyboard, mouse and display. The present version is horribly outdated, however, and continues to use Intel Iris/ Intel HD 5000 graphics and Haswell processors.
It’s not obvious when Apple plans to launch a new Mac mini, and apart from a faint rumour about the possibility of a redesigned version that ‘won’t be so mini anymore,’ nothing concrete has surfaced in recent times.
With 2017 in its last quarter, it’s unlikely that a new version, possibly with Kaby Lake Refresh chips and a quad-core processor, will be launched before 2018.
However, with both Cook and Schiller confirming Apple’s plans to keep the Mac mini in production, the timing of a new model might be uncertain – but in this case, we can be fairly sure that all good things will indeed come to those who wait.