The 2010 Mac mini looks more like an Apple TV than a Mac. What we finally got, after years of waiting, was a redesigned Mac mini: Intel alone has an internal policy that doesn’t allow the introduction of any new feature into a design that doesn’t increase performance by at least 2% for every 1% increase in power consumption. In 2005 very few companies were concerned about power consumption, today it’s even more important than overall performance. Small for its time, but bulky compared to what companies like Zotac have been able to do with off the shelf components since then. Originally the mini was 2” tall and measure 6.5” on each side.

While the role of the Mac mini has changed over the years, so has hardware. Apple’s customers either wanted a notebook or an iPhone, and if they wanted a netbook Apple eventually addressed that market with the iPad.

The need for an ultra cheap introduction to OS X had passed. A couple years ago we regularly saw rumors of Apple killing off the mini entirely. Nearly all other consumer targeted Apple hardware gets visual updates more regularly than the Mac mini.Īll signs pointed to the mini going the way of the dodo. The fact that Apple didn’t overhaul the chassis in nearly five years exemplifies the mini’s importance to Apple. It wasn’t Apple TV-bad, but definitely not in Apple’s top 3. The Mac mini arrived with a bang but was quickly relegated to an almost niche product. For others it was a nice looking HTPC an Apple nettop before the term existed. The mini became a plain old desktop Mac for those who didn’t want an integrated display. The need for an introductory Mac so that users might test drive OS X declined. The mini continued to receive updates, but its role in Apple’s lineup shifted. Apple’s resurgence coincided with the shift from desktop to notebook computers and thus the preferred entry platform for many into the Mac world were the PowerBook G4, MacBook and MacBook Pro. Interest in Apple has obviously gone up since then.

Like many Macs, all it really needed was a memory upgrade. It wasn’t fast, but with a 1.25GHz PowerPC G4 it was quick enough for most of what you needed to do with a Mac back then. In this pre-hackintosh world, Apple was enough of a curiosity that a $499 Mac made a lot of sense. The OS was 10.3, the hardware was a PowerMac G5 and Apple was still the quirky company with a 2% market share.įive years ago I reviewed my third Mac, the very first Mac mini. Six years ago I tried using a Mac exclusively for 30 days.

Maximum ram in a mac mini mid 2010