- LATE 2014 MAC MINI GRAPHICS CARD UPDATE
- LATE 2014 MAC MINI GRAPHICS CARD UPGRADE
- LATE 2014 MAC MINI GRAPHICS CARD PORTABLE
The mini’s fans, myself included, are a vocal minority and fond of its versatility, but Apple is becoming increasingly consumed with gadgets, consumer electronics, wearables, and even fashion. The first, and likely correct, theory is that the Mac mini is simply not a priority for Apple.
So, why did it take so long to produce an arguably mediocre product?
LATE 2014 MAC MINI GRAPHICS CARD UPDATE
Apple waited almost two years - 723 days - to update the Mac mini, and there are no fundamental changes to to the product that justify the delay. But questions over the new model’s underpowered components and the timing of its release remain. Some users may indeed value the 2014 Mac mini’s advantages over the 2012 model, even if those advantages are relatively minor. So, yeah, militant environmentalists will appreciate the efficiency improvements, but for everyone else, such improvements are only a small bonus that’s likely to go unnoticed. Assuming the absolute highest cost of 36 cents per kilowatt hour, you’re still only looking at $10.48 worth of energy for the entire year. With an average energy cost in the United States of about 12 cents per kilowatt hour, the 2014 Mac mini’s 5 watts of savings at idle equates to about $3.49 per year. To put energy efficiency in perspective with a best-case scenario, let’s say that your future Mac mini will idle for 16 hours per day, which is not an unrealistic figure considering that the system will have periods in an idle state even while you’re using it. Of course, the 2012 model was already idling at an impressive 10 watts, so the roughly 5 watt idle usage from the 2014 model suddenly appears less significant. The exact numbers vary wildly depending on the task, but you can expect the Intel HD 5000 or Iris 5100 GPUs in the 2014 Mac mini to beat the Intel HD 4000 GPU in the 2012 model by between 15 and 80 percent.Įnergy Efficiency: As mentioned earlier, this isn’t a huge deal for most users, but the 2014 Mac mini uses half the power at idle compared to the 2012 model. Graphics: If you plan to use your Mac mini for any kind of gaming or computational work that leverages the GPU, the 2014 mini will offer a bit more performance. Okay, so I’ve been pretty hard on the 2014 Mac mini so far, and while I think it’s a terrible deal for most users, there are still a few reasons that a new 2014 model makes sense over a used 2012-era mini. Is such a drastic loss of performance worth saving just a few watts at idle? Who Would Buy This Thing? Even with a reduction in idle power usage (which I’ll touch on in a moment), the 2012 Mac mini was already one of the most efficient desktop computers on the market.
LATE 2014 MAC MINI GRAPHICS CARD PORTABLE
In fact, Apple has made great strides in terms of battery life on the company’s MacBook line, with new models occasionally slower than their predecessors over the years.īut the Mac mini is a desktop, and power consumption is nowhere near the same level of importance compared to a portable device. Of course, there are occasions when a reduction in performance from one model to the next is not necessarily a bad thing, and the trade-off between performance and battery life is a perfect example.
LATE 2014 MAC MINI GRAPHICS CARD UPGRADE
Want the maximum 16GB of RAM for your new Mac? That’ll be $300 extra at checkout, with no option to find a cheaper third party alternative, or upgrade down the road if memory prices decrease. It was soon revealed that Apple was using soldered RAM in the new Mac minis, an unfortunate development that meant that customers would no longer be able to upgrade their memory after purchase. Apple also cut the entry level price by $100 to boot, bringing the system back to its original, psychologically significant $499 price point.īut it didn’t take long for even this arguably consolation prize-style update to begin to unravel. Finally. Sure, the new model sported the same form factor as its predecessor, and there was seemingly nothing radical to justify Apple’s delay in updating the product, but at least the Mac mini could finally get the “new” features that have been available on other Macs for over a year, such as PCIe-based flash storage, Haswell processors, and 802.11ac Wi-Fi. Mac mini fans waited a heck of a long time for an update and, upon witnessing Apple’s unveiling of the 2014 Mac mini during October’s iPad event, issued a collective sigh of relief. The New Mac mini is Quickly Turning into a Disaster
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