Mac Mini: Apple's Upgradable Desktop.
As expected Apple refreshed the Mac mini last week. Apart from a modest performance improvement the mini was left unchanged. While bigger changes would have been more interesting, the refresh was better than nothing.
I have recently been looking at options for my next Mac, for my needs i value CPU grunt and low power consumption. The latest Mac mini delivers on both, my next priority is storage and upgradability.
This got me thinking, the Mac mini is actully suprisingly upgradable. Getting at the RAM is trvial and getting to both internal hard drive slots is pretty straight forward.
This is in stark contrast to the iMac. Upgrading the hard drive in the iMac is a challenge, you have to remove the motherboard and do clever things with tempreture sensors.
A 2012 Mac Mini offers the performance of 2010 Mac Pro in a fraction of the space at a fraction of the cost. It’s easier to upgrade than an iMac and uses less power than pretty much everything on the market.
My iMac currently relies on external storage for all my media, the ability to pop two drives in the mini means i wont have to rely on external drives anymore. What’s more easy upgradability means it’s simple to add storage in the future as prices drop. The new mini also uses a third less power and have twice the GPU grunt for converting blu-rays.
I moved away from the Mac mini platform about a year ago in favour of an iMac. It may be time to start considering a return.